Would you shut up already?

Well, I knew it had been awhile since I blogged but February??

My word. I've been a busy lady, I guess. 

I could review all that busyness, but this is not the time nor the place.

I'm talking about our family trip to Scotland.

It has become clear to me over the past couple years that when it comes to travel, I get a wild hair (from where, I don't know) and just run with it. 

I had never had any thought of going to the Galapagos, but when I heard about it from N's high school in October 2020 (for an April 2022 trip), I just thought, "Let's do it." 

So we did. And it was awesome. 

D and I had briefly talked about taking the kids to Boston because G had mentioned something about it from an interest in a video game (which inspired our trip with the kids to Las Vegas in 2021). With G being the most difficult to please (in all respects) out of the family, we sort of let his interests guide our plans. At one point, sometime in early 2022, I guess, I asked him, "Would you prefer to go to Boston or Scotland?"

Smart boy said "Scotland."

Why did Scotland pop into my head? It's cool there, generally, which has become the primary factor in where we go. G hates hot weather, and as an almost 50-year-old woman, I don't need any additional help being hot, so cooler is absolutely alright with me. 

But did I have a burning desire to visit Scotland? Not especially. 

Still, the words had come out of my mouth, so I proceeded to plan a trip last summer. 

Sometimes I think my unconscious brain is busy working while my conscious brain just dithers about because D and I did celebrate 25 years of marriage last fall. Why not make this trip the June after our anniversary a milestone holiday? And we took the kids because they are not quite old enough to be totally solo for 10 days, and our parents are just a little too old to be dealing with not quite old enough kids for 10 days. 

I worked with Tenon Tours to plan the trip and was very happy with how everything turned out. Could we have done it for less money? Certainly, but part of what we wanted was to spend a night in a castle, and that wasn't cheap. They selected a manor house for us to stay in for two nights, and that was an amazing experience. We got to do a falconry experience was that phenomenal. 

At the manor house, while playing pool, M said, "This place is really cool, but if I stayed in places like this all the time, it wouldn't be special." And I think that sums up this trip for us. 

We visited the following towns/villages/cities in Scotland: Edinburgh, Kingussie, Forres, Inverness, Findhorn, Portree, Glencoe, Ballachulish, Fort William, Mallaig, Stirling, and Falkirk. And we saw so many amazing things. 

It has been a complete drag to come back to real life. Real life is so dull. (I say or think this and then fight the shame/guilt that reminds me that I am so privileged to be able to go on such a trip and then come home and complain about my very easy existence.) I have been posting photos on social media (partly because it brings me joy and I do like sharing it with others; I try not to be too insufferable by posting only a few photos, not big photo dumps of 45 pics.) I feel certain at least several people I know are thinking, Would you can it?

Still, the most wonderful part of the trip was spending time with my family at a time when we spend less time together. In some ways, this may have been a last hurrah for us (I hope not, but life changes whether you want it to or not.)

Some highlights of small moments: 

Apparently, at one point I said, "Ice cream is calling my name," and my kids have now made that one of  the "mom" phrases they make fun of me about. 

They also made fun of me because every time D has a camera in his hands, I ask, "Are you taping me?" And he always gets me on tape asking that question. (After 25 years, you kind of know someone.)

The kids, while D and I were checking into our hotel in Glencoe, made several videos in which the boys spoke as their alter egos, Eugene and Theodore. Theodore (G) gave Eugene (M) a hug which made Eugene fart, causing uproarious laughter that was caught on video. 

N, in her excitement over being able to drink legally as a 19-year-old in Scotland, ordered the typical beverage that everyone orders at an Italian small plate restaurant: a margarita. 

G's socks stunk so badly that all their shared rooms smelled like corn chips until I could find a laundry on the Isle of Skye. 

The best thing I have discovered about getting away from real life is that it takes away all the distractions that keep me from noticing my kids---the laundry, the paperwork, the phone calls, the vacuuming. It makes me focus on the moment. And we're getting short time on moments when I have the opportunity to notice them. 

We don't know people

I am not a sentimental person at all, but I have realized today that I think I have allowed some form of sentimentality to dupe me. 

I'm sure I'm not the only person who has done this. I think it is probably a human trait that many people share, and it is the idea that if you once knew someone, you know them still. 

The truth is that I don't know anyone completely, not even myself. 

Even though I think I know my husband (whom I've known for 25 years), I don't. Not completely. I make an assumption that I know what he would do and how he would act based on my experience with him and how he has acted in the past. 

But people change, don't they?

And often people do not change. 

It dawned on me today that someone I have known for many years in a cursory way but who I used to be good friends with three decades ago is both very different from what I remember and also not different at all. 

With social media and our insistence on calling people "friends" who really aren't friends, I forget that very few people I'm "friends" with are deep friends. They may be people I know or have worked with. They may even be people I really, really like. They are friends "lite." 

[I'm having a mother memory here whereby I recall my mother lecturing me on the difference between acquaintances and friends, and I think I rolled my eyes a lot, and yet...here I am.]

And having these friends "lite" is not a bad thing. These people make up a community, and there can be fun and support there.  These people can be a network of advice, connections, business opportunities, education. I am in no way suggesting the camaraderie isn't real or important. 

But the downside is that we can feel betrayed or angered or astounded when friends "lite" seem different from how we knew them or what our perception of them was because they are part of our community. 

Social media makes us feel compelled to sound our barbaric yawps (present company included). And when someone yawps in a way we didn't expect, we feel confused at best. Betrayed at worst. 

My memory had sentimentalized my friendship with this person and smoothed its edges with nostalgia.

But what I remembered today is that my friendship with this person ended because of a poor judgment this person made that could have put my life in danger (drunk driving in high school). 

And then I remembered that this person recently made another judgment that ended up in a very public and embarrassing loss of her career. 

And now this person is trafficking in conspiracy theories. 

I say now, but maybe I should not be surprised. Maybe this is a pattern of poor judgment that has only now become apparent to me. 

Maybe this person has changed?

Or maybe this person hasn't?

Maybe I have defined this person based on simply having "known" her (or maybe more correctly, known of her) since I was a young teenager. A long lens facing backward is sometimes fuzzy. 

I generally try not to hold people's stupid teenage decisions against them as adults because I made MANY stupid teenage decisions. I did many things that were idiotic or cruel, and it saddens me sometimes to think that somewhere people may have an idea of me as being idiotic or cruel because I try very hard not to be either now. 

But even if I were to eliminate the teenage poor judgment event, I still have two poor judgment events in the past six months that make me realize I don't know this person and shouldn't be surprised by anything simply because she is part of my social media community. 

Perhaps the only thing we share is that we are each people on the periphery of each other's social media community. 

And momma, I'm sorry for rolling my eyes. You were right. You were right. 

How childhood returns when the old folks pass

My uncle died last week; he was 94.
He had been wanting to die for a year since his common-law wife died in February 2019; he was simply undone by regret and grief.
With a long life behind him and a desire to die, I cannot possibly be sad for my uncle.

What I have felt is a profound remembrance of my childhood of which my uncle played a strange part.

Both my mother and father came from large Catholic families.
My mother was the youngest of six children; my father was the second youngest of seven children.
Both my mother and father were older parents; my mom was 35 and my dad was 31 when I was born.
This means that most of the cousins whom I remember as a child, the ones I played with, were actually the grandchildren of my aunts and uncles.

My uncle who passed was divorced from the mother of his children and lived with my grandma when I was a kid.
What this meant is that every visit, every week, to grandma's house was also a visit to Uncle Ed.

I remember the shed behind the house that we weren't supposed to go into but that held a magical allure for us because Uncle Ed kept his gardening stuff there (and maybe dangerous stuff, or at least that is what we surmised.)
I remember watching my dad and Ed work in the garden together.

While they worked, my brother and I regularly jumped in the compost bin that was behind the garden, right by the fence that demarcated grandma's property from the drive-in where my dad had worked as a teenager.

I remember thinking my Uncle Ed was old then.
He was in his 50s, I guess, but he had lost his hair, and he just kind of always had a grumpy personality.
(Although given what his childhood home had been like, I suppose that isn't so unexpected.)

He drank Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and would give me and my brother sips of the last dregs of it, which was always a thrill when we were kids.
(Now, in the midst of a pandemic and given my germaphobe OCD, the idea of drinking my uncle's backwash is almost more than I can stand.)

I remember not fully understanding the situation between Uncle Ed and Aunt Louise when I was a kid. (Aunt Louise the girlfriend and eventual common-law wife, not Aunt Louise the sister of Uncle Ed who was my actual by-blood aunt.)
But I didn't spend a whole lot of time wondering about it.
She was just always there if there was any kind of family gathering or fried chicken dinner.

(Of course, I didn't fully understand that Ed's ex-wife lived one house away from my grandma. I remember being a little confused because in my head, I always thought of Aunt Louise as his wife.)

Next to my grandma's house was a run-down shack in the midst of overgrown weeds and grass that we were not allowed to enter.
One time, Uncle Ed put a sheet on and ran out of it to try to scare us kids.

My dad and uncle owned rental property when I was a kid, so we often saw my uncle when my dad cut grass at the apartment.
It wasn't uncommon for them to work on a project together.
Uncle Ed helped my parents finish the basement in my childhood home.
They bought a home together to rent that had at least seven layers of wallpaper on the walls.
I can still smell the heady mix of vinegar and adhesive when we went there to attempt to scrape it all away.

I don't know that I thought much about how he and my dad were brothers, despite a 17-year age difference, but I can still hear him say my dad's name.
Usually, it seemed like he was saying, "Now Donnie," as the preface of something my dad was doing in a way that Ed didn't agree with.

When I was older, in college, my parents would take me to eat at a VFW Post, where we would often eat dinner with Uncle Ed and Aunt Louise.
I spent many a Friday night in their company during college.

I can't think back on my childhood without Uncle Ed feeling like a pretty significant part of it.
And that doesn't sadden me as much as make me realize how much further it is in my past than what I'm usually aware of.
It is like a time period stays the same in my memory until someone from that time period dies, and then that time period somehow destabilizes.
The memory is still there, but slightly more fuzzy, the edges a little blurrier.

The particular sadness of strawberry suckers

A number of years ago, I read a novel titled The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. The premise was that a girl and her brother had unusual gifts; hers was that if she tasted a food, she would feel the emotions that the person who made it experienced as they were making it.

Yesterday, M came to me crying because of a strawberry sucker.

He said the particular strawberry flavor of this sucker reminded him of when he was little, and I kept suckers in the glove box of the car. If we had to be in the car longer than expected or the kids got cranky, I would sometimes offer them a sucker from the stash.

M said he remembered asking for a sucker and me saying yes.

He cried on my shoulder and said he didn't want to eat suckers again.

I asked him if his memories of the sucker stash and being in the car were good or bad, and he said good. It just made him sad to think about it.

I didn't (and don't) know what to make of this little episode other than to say I think M is the point of his development when he's realizing the power of feeling multiple emotions at the same time and being a little overwhelmed by the experience.

His mom is experiencing this in reaction to his experience.

My own tame version of #metoo

When #metoo began trending, I thought about whether I had ever been sexually harassed or assaulted.

I know that may sound silly--to have to think about it--but I doubt I'm the only woman who had to think back throughout her life experiences.

Of course, any kind of violent or serious sexual assault doesn't require a lot of thought, but the thing with sexual harassment is that it is insidious. It often appears harmless, and perhaps a woman wonders whether she is making a big deal about something that wasn't intended in an intimidating or uncomfortable way. I think there is a certain amount of disbelief that goes along with it, a certain wondering, "Did that just happen the way I think it happened?"

I thought back to when I was a preteen. I'm not 100% sure how old I was, but I think I was around 11...maybe 12.  My parents took me and my brother to Panama City Beach, FL, and I met a cute boy. I don't remember his name or what he looked like. I think he was around 13 or 14.

We met at the pool and sat beside it talking. When my parents called me back to the room, I remember him escorting me. When we got into the elevator, he pushed the emergency stop button on the wall. It came to a sharp standstill. I don't remember if there was an alarm. I remember feeling startled. I remember him quickly coming up to me, pressing himself up against me, and kissing me. I remember pushing him off and feeling overwhelmed.

I don't know if he pushed the emergency release button or I did. I remember walking off the elevator and feeling angry with this boy. I remember walking out of the elevator when the doors opened. I hadn't thought about this event in many years, but now that I've been remembering for a couple hours in order to write this blog post, I seem to recall him saying, "You don't know what you're missing."

As an adult, I don't look at this event as having any major lasting impact on my life. I don't think it scarred me. I wonder if maybe the boy was just as stupid as I was and thinking this was the way you were supposed to "make a move on a girl." It certainly wasn't a situation in which someone with power or authority over me used that power for nefarious purposes.

I never told my parents about this experience. I don't really remember a reason why I didn't tell them, but I wonder if I didn't tell them because I suspected they would keep me from going out again alone if they knew this had happened. I wondered if I would essentially be "punished" because of this boy being too fresh or whatever word you want to use to describe what he did.

As a mom, I'm spending an awful lot of time instructing my sons in what is appropriate and not appropriate with other people. Drilling it into their heads that when someone says no or stop, they mean absolutely, positively NO and STOP. Informing them that if they are giving you mixed signals, you probably need to be with someone who communicates better.

I think we've spent so much time warning girls that we haven't spent enough time helping our boys learn to navigate what is appropriate and how a girl might read stopping the elevator emergency button and pushing yourself against her. Our girls end up being punished, being denied experiences and opportunities, because we are so terrified of what boys may do to them.

Papaw's house (how we left it, and how it looks now)

Yesterday I saw my cousin's post on FB about Papaw's house, which my MIL and her brother sold in the spring.

Papaw had lived in it for something like 50 years, and to say it was dated is an understatement. But it was Papaw's house and we loved it, even if the carpet contained 80% of the dust on the planet and there were grease stains in every corner of the kitchen.

G requested that my MIL take photos of the rooms before it sold so we could remember it forever, and while I often roll my eyes at his insistence on documenting everything including the most mundane, I am glad now that we have photos of what it looked like just 6 months ago.

My cousin's post showed the house after renovations. It is now on the market, and it looks amazing! I almost can't believe it is the same house.

I showed the kids, and even G, who wants things to stay exactly the way they are until the end of time, was happily surprised by how wonderful it looks.

As we come up on the one year anniversary of Papaw's death, I have been thinking about him a lot and feeling a little down, but seeing these photos made me smile and feel excited. I even asked D if we could sell our house and buy Papaw's, but we'd be losing many square inches of sanity space.

Life is all about loss and rebirth, and Papaw's house is a good example of how life carries on.

This is Papaw's living room and eating area as we left it. 

This is how it looks after renovations and staged for sale.

This is Papaw's bathroom as we left it.

And after renovations.

Papaw's attic BEFORE.

Papaw's attic NOW

Papaw had a sunporch right outside the eating area.

Now it is an all-season sunroom with a pass-through to the kitchen area. 

Papaw's kitchen

The new and improved kitchen 

(you can see the pass-through in this top photo to the sunroom).

The eulogy I was most honored to give

In 2010, I wrote a post on my blog about Papaw Chester.  It was, in its own way, a love letter to him.  

Now that might sound a little strange, considering I’m an outlaw in the family and don’t have the stores of memories that De and J, Dn, Dw, Dv and B have.  I only really knew the Papaw aged 72-91.

But I was, and still am, amazed when people are adults and have living grandparents.  My grandparents were all deceased by the time I was 18 so it was the most awesome thing to have a Papaw and be old enough to know how cool that actually is.  

There are many things I think of when I think of Papaw Chester, but one of the first is Cheese Nips.  He always kept a box of them close to his blue chair in the living room, and G and M, even if they’d eaten a 10-course meal prior to visiting Papaw, would ask for some.

Papaw Chester always shared his Cheese Nips.  He also talked up their low sugar content.   It is no great wonder that he lived a robust 91….almost 92…..years between low sugar Cheese Nips and regular sips of apple cider vinegar.  He was a man who knew the value of taking care of something for a long, long time.  

Dv says, “My first memories of Papaw are sitting on his living room floor with B playing with the same old toys that had belonged to Dn and Dw because he kept EVERYTHING. 

Those toys that Papaw kept around the house were a lot like him.  They were worn around the edges, perhaps, but still functional and still fun to spend time with.  The pull-toy dog with the frayed ears comes to mind.  M remembers playing with the old Fisher Price red barn and the cars.  And that dusty, raggedy Garfield stuffed cat that sat on the back of the couch.

Dw says some of her best memories are when she and Dn, T and De used to camp with Papaw and Mamaw.  She says, “I remember catching my first fish with Papaw in his john boat. He was so patient while fishing and with me and Dn fishing, too.”   Mll says fishing is what comes to mind when she thinks of Papaw——his fishing hat and his rod rack in the living room and his “Wishin I was Fishin” t-shirt that I suspect he probably wore holes in.  

Dn remembers Papaw and Mamaw coming over to the house in the spring and summer to work in the back garden.  He says, “It seemed like they were over there every night gardening.”  Dw says she watched and learned about gardening by watching Papaw.  

I don’t think any one of us can think about Papaw without remembering him around dirt or plants.  During the late summer of 2007, Papaw came to our house and helped me plant some flowers in my backyard.  I was very pregnant with G and very much in the nesting stage.  I think back to Papaw at 82 and me with my belly sticking out to kingdom come digging around in the flower beds to get it all in the ground.  I’m sure we made quite a picture.  

Dn says, “Anytime you needed something fixed, you’d call Papaw and he could pretty well fix it.”  He showed Dn how to drill into mortar and helped him install lattice under the deck at our first house.  I don’t think any of us will ever know exactly how many times he fixed the concrete on De's driveway.  

Dv remembers fun times at Papaw’s house when she was a kid.  She says “Sleepovers at his house were something we looked forward too- he ALWAYS gave us what we call "papaw size" servings of desert after dinner.”  

Clearly, that hadn’t changed by the time I entered the family, and we had our regular dinners at Papaw’s house.  He made brownies or chocolate cake or pineapple upside down cake or strawberry cake, and sometimes it felt like he made ALL those desserts and expected us to eat “Papaw size” slices of each.  (I always found it remarkable the look he’d give anyone else in the family if they tried to give HIM a Papaw size piece of anything.)

Dv remembers how when we had meals at Papaw’s home he always tried to accommodate everyone’s preferences, and no matter how our family grew, he always made more room at the table.  

M says when he thinks of Papaw he thinks about ice cream sandwiches.  In addition to Cheese Nips, G and M could pretty well count on Papaw offering them a frozen treat when they visited.

Funny how we’ve circled back to food and Papaw.  

When N thinks of Papaw, she thinks of going up into his attic to pilfer through his closets.  She would dress up in old heels and fur coats that belonged to Mamaw Mll and parade back down so Papaw could see her fashion show.  I think any of us who ventured upstairs at any point can’t get that ginormous owl lamp out of our heads. 

We will all remember the smell of his wood burning stove in the winter and the warmth of his home, especially the excessive warmth of his home on Christmas Eve’s when we were packed to the gills and sitting on top of each other and wishing we had worn short sleeves.  

When Dv thinks back to those childhood sleepovers, she says, “Papaw would pull out the fold out bed for Mamaw and we would help her put the sheets on.  He never let us watch what we wanted, so usually it meant falling to sleep to an episode of Heehaw.  He didn't say much, but when he spoke, you took it all in. He never raised his voice, but when he had something to say everyone listened.  He left us with many lessons reflective of his approach to life. He taught us that people should talk less and listen more. I know that he had lots of opinions, but we didn't often hear them.”

Papaw seemed to be really good, at least in the years I knew him, at accepting his family warts and all.  “They just can’t help it,” was a phrase I know he said about probably most of us at any given time.  I suspect his wisdom helped him know the difference between what any of us could change and couldn’t change.  

Like he never got angry when G said stuff like “Why don’t you have any teeth, Papaw?”  Either he couldn’t hear G or he just simply thought it was funny, even if the rest of us were maybe a little mortified that it was rude.  

Papaw never forgot his kids’, grandkids’ or great-grandkids’ birthdays.  Dv says, “Every year I would get a card with a puppy or a kitten on the front of it. On the inside was always $30 and a simple message  'Love you, Papaw.' After I was in my twenties, I remember telling my dad that Papaw didn't have to do that for me anymore and he told me that Papaw still gave him a card with $30 in it for his birthday every year.  He was sweet like that, always thinking of his family.”

After seeing some photos of Papaw with his great-grandkids on Facebook this week, a friend of mine remarked, “The love in his expression (with his great-grandkids) is heartwarming.”  Dv says, “ I loved seeing how his eyes would light up when my kids would sit in his lap.”  There are few things as wonderful as seeing the look of absolute joy on Papaw’s face whenever he had a great-grandchild in his arms.  

I think Papaw must have changed a lot as he got older.  Dv says, “As a child he always seemed so serious. He wasn't the cuddly type but he was always kind, and we knew he loved us without hugs and kisses.”  I think something about having great grandkids around made him increasingly welcome hugs and cuddles.  

Whenever any of us would leave Papaw and offer a hug, Papaw would follow up with a hand squeeze.  A little extra touch to take with us on the road.  For me, it was sometimes followed up with a “Bye, girl.”  G says when he thinks of Papaw he thinks about fun and love and giving him hugs.  

Papaw did many amazing things….from serving in World War II to building his own home….but I think he’d be pretty darned pleased to be remembered for fun and love and hugs.  If anyone asked in that Papaw way if his life was “any count” we could answer with an absolute yes.  

A return to a childhood memory

The family just returned from spending a few days at a state park about two hours from our home.

As a kid, I remember my parents taking me and my younger brother to this state park and inn.  Actually, what I mostly recall from this childhood trip was the cool indoor/outdoor swimming pool. A glass wall separated the sections, and you had to swim underneath it to get from the inside to the out.

My kids in the cool indoor/outdoor pool. 

They thought it was awesome, too!

My mom tells me that we went in the warmer months, but there was a freak cold front, so we spent the entire time in the one pair of jeans and one jacket we had all brought "just in case."

The other memory I have of this trip is watching my parents and brother ride in a small boat into one of the caves.  I was scared and refused to go, so I stood on the water's edge by myself.

Hmmmm, I wonder where my middle child gets his stubbornness?

I planned this short trip almost immediately after we returned home in June from our exhausting trip to Orlando, FL.  That trip wasn't much fun considering the heat, tiredness, D's back spasms and the sprinkler ordeal in which we had to move out of our condo.  It was memorable but definitely not enjoyable.

Low-tech fun:

Casting fishing lines to try to hook plastic fish.

Guests throw coins onto the historical homes' beds which are used for upkeep. 

The kids thought this was hilarious. 

Helping the kids make friendship bracelets.

Views of the Pioneer Village and trails.

This short fall weekend felt relaxing.  It helped that we had no cell phone service (which some people actually complained about on tripadvisor.com.  The whole point of going to the woods is to live deliberately, people!)  Being off-the-grid is awesome.  It also helped that the weather these two days was perfect.

We hiked a lot, and the kids didn't whine.  M said his legs were tired, but G didn't complain at all, which is a bonafide miracle.  We saw two caves.  We visited the pioneer village.  We picnicked our lunches both days.  We visited the nature learning center two times (the second time at the request of G).

The Stagecoach Trail.  

M's legs were tired, so I played pack mule for a few minutes. 

We ate breakfast and dinner together at the inn.

I felt like we connected as a family, which feels like a much better memory than running ourselves ragged all over Disney and Universal, trying to pack in as much "fun" as we could to justify spending $100 per person.  Our entry fee into the state park was $9.

I totally love it that the kids enjoyed doing such simple things.

I'd say we most certainly got 100 times that much enjoyment out of it.

An unexpected tribute

Every morning I check Facebook while I wait for N to drag her sleepy self downstairs and "officially" begin our day.

This morning, I read news that a friend from college died in a fall.  I thought it was a joke at first, or that it was about someone else.  But it isn't a joke, and it isn't about someone else.

I feel like I've been hit in the gut.

On the way driving N and our neighbor to school, the horrible pop channel that the kids like was playing the Charlie Puth song, "When I See You Again," a song I would, under normal circumstances, ignore and abhor.  And even though it is smaltzy, I started to tear up.

DS and I were not close.  We never hung out.  I don't know his wife or parents.  I think he is a year or so older than me, but I'm not entirely sure.  I have no real reason to feel so saddened by the news of his passing.

And yet, I do.

I debated whether to post any kind of tribute to him on Facebook and tag him, for his family and friends to read.  But I felt compelled, and I feel compelled to write this.

Isn't that the power of someone remarkable, that I don't really know him, and yet he made such an impact on me, on my memories of my undergraduate college experience, that I feel deeply saddened to know he has left this Earth?

Isn't that what any of us would hope our child to be and do in this life....to be so memorable in their kindness and gentleness that the small world in which they lived is devastated to hear of their tragic, accidental death?

Being an egotist (or at least fearful of being an egotist), I have asked myself whether this feeling of sadness is really all.about.me.  Has it rocked me because it has reminded me of my own mortality?  Has it knocked me for a loop because it has reminded me of how fragile my own life, and my husband's life, and my children's lives are?

Well, yes.  Of course.  Every death does that, I think.  Reminds us in a way we can forget in our normal goings-on.

But there are lots of people I know who might have passed suddenly that I wouldn't feel so sucker punched about.

DS was human, was fallible, was fragile, was sometimes mean or hurtful as we all are.  I never witnessed these, but all of us have our not-so-great traits.  But what I knew, and what I keep reading others say, is that he was helpful and quiet and friendly and all kinds of qualities that made anyone who knew him feel like he understood them.  He made me feel like I wasn't as weird or as alone as I might have felt (and, Lord knows, I felt weird and alone in the midst of college angst).

That is a tremendous way to be in life, and so a tremendous loss is felt.  

I'm still alive

You might think this post is about surviving yesterday and today with my children since the school district did, in fact, cancel school because it is cold.  We're weather pussies here, I tell you.
No, this post is about watching Pearl Jam: 20, a documentary by Cameron Crowe on "the" band that was my soundtrack for 4 years of undergrad.  The band I saw in concert and for which I skipped Shakespeare...the ONLY class I ever skipped in college.

I was, and continue to be, so completely bad-ass.

Watching this film as a 40-year-old, as a mother of 3, as I walked on the treadmill and then lifted weights, was a bit surreal.  When I was highly into the band, they seemed so much older than me, so far removed yet with an anger, a dissatisfaction that I could taste because that same anger, insecurity, dissatisfaction was what I ate and drank as well.

I don't know if it was shared overgrown teenage angst, the rut of late teens and most of one's twenties that makes people so lost, or if it was a cultural response to the politics and economics of the time.  But as I was watching the snippets of Andy Rooney complaining about the nonsense of "these kids being so angry.....and about what?," I didn't find myself agreeing with him, which is sorta what I expected.

The members of Pearl Jam are now middle-aged dudes with kids, and I am a middle-aged woman with kids.  Perhaps we need to be as old as Andy Rooney was when he launched that diatribe to get what he was saying?  Or perhaps it is a generational thing?  Maybe my entire generation, though mature now and with some wisdom, is still dissatisfied?  Though we've settled into ourselves and lives and our roles within those lives, perhaps there will always be a part of us that is inherently unhappy with the way things are with the world and within ourselves?

Or is it an artistic thing?  I have always been a writer, though on my itty-bitty scale of life, and not on the world stage at LARGE as Pearl Jam was and is.  Artists of various kinds often tend to be unhappy, morose, serious, deep, whatever.

And yet, watching the documentary, I felt a pulse of understanding of this aging experience.  The words do not mean to me now what they meant 20 years ago, but I can still feel what I felt then as I listened.  I remember what they meant.  I remember that vast lostness that surrounded me.  There is a part of my soul that remains stuck in it.

Am I not feeling it as intensely because I'm blessedly medicated or because I'm older?  Or both?

At 40, I'm past so much of that angst, but there is still the longing, the questioning, the existential turmoil that pinches me, keeps me churning, although at a much less hectic pace than it once did.  

Is something wrong, she said.

Well, of course, there is.

You're still alive, she said.

Oh, and do I deserve to be?

Is that the question?

And, if so, if so,

Who answers?

Who answers?

I, oh, I'm still alive.

Night crawler Christmas

I don't remember too many of my childhood Christmases, but one that does stand out in my mind is what I refer to as "Night Crawler Christmas."

I don't know how old I was, probably 9 or 10.  I don't know what I received as Christmas gifts.  I don't even really remember that it rained a lot that year.

What I do remember is my dad, my younger brother and I walking the streets of our neighborhood with buckets in hand, picking up some of the thousands of worms that sought relief from the over-saturated ground by crawling onto the roads.

The neighborhood in which we lived didn't have curbs as we do in our neighborhood now.  Drainage wasn't as engineered so the worms didn't have to do as much work to get to the pavement.  The roadways were absolutely covered with worms.

I don't remember what we did with the worms, whether dad saved them for future fishing excursions or if we dumped them in the grass once we had finished trolling the neighborhood.  But I can clearly see us meandering the empty streets, my brother and I excited with every wiggler we delicately lifted from the concrete.

As a mom, I worry that my children will remember every little thing I do or they experience, specifically all the things I fuck up in my job as mother.  The times I yell and am not especially nice.

So memories like this are soothing in that they are a nice reminder of how much I don't recall of my childhood.  I don't remember all the times my parents lost their tempers with me or did things that I thought were completely unjust and mean (although now I understand those decisions were likely completely reasonable and justified).   I don't remember every unpleasant experience that life threw at my childhood self.

My memories of childhood are dim, feathery shadows with the occasional clear outline of true remembrance, like the night crawler Christmas.  I remember the oddities of my childhood experience, the unusual, the unplanned.

Probably most people's memories work like this, or perhaps this is one of the blessings of the OCD brain.

20 years (or stupid things I did when I was 19)

If there is one quality I have in spades (besides neuroticism) it is tendency to reflect on everything for far more time than is warranted.

This fall I will turn 40, so I am reflecting on my life with even greater fervor than I did when I was 18 or 27 or 34.

I will return to teaching on a part-time basis in September so I am reflecting on what I did in the classroom eons ago and what I can bring to my students to help them engage in classic literature and improve their writing.

This month also marks 20 years since I went to England, Ireland and Wales for a 10-week study trip drunken escapade, so I am reflecting on that experience just for sh*ts and giggles.

I did many stupid things as a teenager and young adult but this trip was perhaps the grand poobah of stupid (and memorable).  It has made for fun stories over the years, but it is also the source of  a cloud of embarrassment that has lingered over my head like dirt that follows Pig-Pen wherever he dances.

To make a long story short, when I got to England, where the drinking age was blessedly 18, I sent a Dear John letter to my boyfriend at home and hooked up with a guy on the trip with whom I had shared an American Literature class (and who was dating a girl who was also on the trip with us).  And by hooked up I mean we got engaged.  For four weeks.  And then got unengaged.  Once we returned home I think we hung out once and then he didn't speak to me again, and that hurt tremendously.  (Maybe almost as much as getting a Dear John letter in the mail.)

I don't regret any of this happening.  I deserved the bad karma I got, and I am pleased that I have stayed in civil contact with both of these men via social media.  But to this day I feel embarrassed about my behavior in these relationships.

As a middle-aged woman with three children and 15 years of marriage under my belt, I can look at these relationships as short-lived, tempestuous love affairs that didn't mean much.  But they did mean much since after 20 years I am still thinking about them and feeling a little lousy for behaving as a naive, thoughtless perfectly normal 19-year-old.

This trip, a nearly 3-month jaunt, gave me many wonderful things:

• an abiding love for Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles.  

• an awesome concert story about being in Dublin at a Peter Gabriel concert, where Sinead O'Connor also performed and Bono and the Edge were 20 feet from us in the audience.  

• a fond memory of my first and only time smoking marijuana on one of the Aran Islands and then wandering around stoned on the craggy landscape with two platonic guy friends with whom I also had American Literature class. 

• the wonderful recollection of wandering the moors on a windy evening at twilight somewhere in England before returning to the hostel for the night.

• the experience of musseling at the shore and a better appreciation for Molly Malone.  

• an understanding that if I drink too much Guinness (or, let's be honest, any Guinness) I'm gonna start itching for a fight.  

This last bullet could lead me into the tale of my "2nd biggest grand poobah of stupid" which happened 2 weeks after I turned 21, but I shall save that story for another day. 

Ten years

Ten years ago, D and I had recently returned from a trip to Italy and Greece.

Ten years ago, D and I had recently purchased our second home, the one we are still in today.

Ten years ago, my parents sold my childhood home and moved into more spacious place.

Ten years ago, my baby brother got married.

Ten years ago, D and I still weren't sure if we wanted kids or not.

I was on my planning period when Michelle R, the French teacher across the hall, came into my room and told me a plane had just crashed into one of the World Trade Center buildings.  I turned on the tv and stood transfixed.  I don't remember the timeline of what I saw next on the tv.  

I picked up the phone and called D.  His company happened to work on an airline system.  He told me there was an unaccounted for plane.  It was scary to know that something else devastating was going to happen.  This was the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania.

Like everyone, I watched television nonstop, and I cried nonstop, hearing the stories of survivors, of family members who received phone calls from their loved ones.  At the time I used to listen to Bob & Tom in the mornings on my way to work.  There is a new world order when Bob & Tom and Chick McGee are somber.

Days or maybe a couple weeks after the plans crashed and the buildings collapsed, D and I were taking a walk through our neighborhood.  I remember it was cool, well into autumn.  We were talking about family, and while I don't remember the specifics, I always think of that walk as the time when he and I decided that we did want to start a family after our 5-year "childless period of fun."

September 11 made me realize that I did want a family of my own.

Ten years later, I am so thankful for D and my 3 children.
My family is the phoenix that rose from those ashes.  

Laundry room project, Take 1

Today I began stripping wallpaper from the laundry room, which made me think of my childhood.

When I was a kid, my parents and my uncle jointly owned some property in the southend of the city---a house and a small apartment building.  I remember spending what seemed like oodles of time watching my parents paint walls when tenants would move out of the apartments and cut grass.

The house they purchased was in serious disrepair---as in there was a giant hole in the floor on the 2nd level which my brother and I were forever instructed to, "Stay away from."  As if we had any desire to break both legs plummeting onto the wood flooring below.  And whomever had owned the house had never, ever removed wallpaper before putting new wallpaper on top.  I can't scrape wallpaper and be anywhere near white vinegar without remembering helping my parents pull like 7 layers off.

There was exposed electrical wires everywhere on top of everything else, which made rubbing rags soaked with white vinegar and water a dicey activity.

It was with these memories floating through my head that I began one of my 2011 goals:  the laundry room redo.

We have lived in this house almost 10 years, and I put the wallpaper up shortly after closing.   Aside from being tired of it, it is just too cute for my personal taste.  Ten years ago I was a wee babe of 27--a person changes a whole heck of a lot in a decade, and choice of wallpaper is no exception.

I have slowly made practical/efficiency changes to the room--the bench, the shoe cubbies, the cabinets.  But now it is time for an aesthetic change.

This is the wallpaper, which is on one wall, and the border goes around the room.  It is country/cutesy and has to go.

This is the flooring.  Um, those 2 designs do not mesh well.  And it only took me almost 10 years to realize it.  I had thought about replacing the flooring, but that seemed an awful lot of expense.  

Blissed out or exquisite calm

I guess because hubby has a cold (again) and the past 2 nights M has slept in bed with us pretty much all night due to barking seal cough and G threw a temper tantrum before leaving Mamaw's house after our Thanksgiving celebration.....maybe this is why I started thinking about occasions in my life when I have felt either blissed out or insanely serene.

Because as thankful as I am for my life and everyone in it, sometimes the day-to-day drudgery requires one to harken back to the biggest moments of greatness or calmness or joy or love that one has felt.

For certain I can't pull all of them out of my brain at one time, but there are some that consistently stand out.  Tonight I remembered standing on top of a hill in Wales when I was 19.  It was nearing dark, and it was extremely windy.  I don't know if I was alone or with someone, but seeing the clouds move and the sun set, the rolling hills....it was just amazing.

Another was in 8th grade when my class put on a Good Friday play.  I was the "set director," I guess, and I recall standing in the balcony at the back of church watching the part where Jesus is nailed to the cross.  We had a big wooden cross and one of the Roman soldier actors used a mallet against the wood.  The whack-whack-whack echoed in the church, and I felt startled.  It was overwhelming to me, and perhaps the only time I ever actually felt a god-like presence within a church building.

Of course the instantaneous flooding of love and tears when each of my children were born stands out in my head.  That is a feeling I wish I could turn on and off like a faucet.  Sometimes when I'm dealing with tantrum #467 since breakfast (and it is only snack-time), I would like to feel flooded with love so I don't knock someone's head off.

At the time I didn't feel particularly blissed out, although the memory of this does it for me now---walking through Sorrento Italy as well as the Isle of Capri with D.  I just remember little blips of the narrow streets as we walked and walked, and it brings a smile to my face.

I think because I am guilty of over-reflecting....chewing on stuff for way longer than necessary and then blogging about it....I tend to always be pretty cognizant of the little "big" things for which I should be thankful---health, a family, a home, food in my fridge, being educated. etc.

Sometimes it is nice to be thankful for those "once in a lifetime" experiences and the feelings that went with them.

A history lesson about me

Going through all those boxes of childhood stuff in the basement helped jog my memory of what I was like and things I did as a kid.

1. I tried out for and participated in my school talent shows from grades 1-8.  It kinda blows my mind that I had the nerve to try out when I was only 6 years old.  I danced to Blondie's "The Tide is High."  In 2nd grade, I danced and lip-synced to Manhattan Transfer's "The Boy From New York City" with a 1st grade boy.  He was the NYC "boy," and I kinda danced around him.  We won that year...solely based on cuteness because talent was nil.   I think most every year after that I danced to something by Duran Duran.

2. In 1st and 2nd grade, I played Star Wars on the playground with two boys, Mark and Greg.  Mark was my "boyfriend."  He was Luke.  Greg was Chewbaca, I think.  I was Leia.  Mark's birthday was the first party I ever attended.  He had a place-setting for me right next to him.  We played some kind of game where we had to balance a potato on our shoe.  I remember I won and his mom took a picture of me in my rockin' fake leather boots with the potato on my toe.

3. When I was in 3rd grade we were instructed to do all the math problems at the back of our math book.  I don't know how long we were given to accomplish this, but I didn't do any of them.  I hated math from the moment this was assigned, and I hated math even more when I had to stay in from recess for weeks and weeks to do the math problems at the back of the book.  I distinctly remember my mom sitting at the dining room table with me as I cried and cried over the horror of doing that math.

4. When I was in 4th grade I got a retainer to keep me from sucking my thumb.  It was a medieval torture device with prongs sticking down from the roof, basically making a metal gate so that I couldn't put my thumb into my mouth.  It took awhile for me to be able to speak properly with it.  After I saw the orthodontist, I remember my teacher asking me to read aloud in class.  I had to read something about the hemispheres.  I lost a tremendous amount of saliva trying to pronounce that word multiple times for the reading.

5. In 5th grade I got into a "fist fight" of sorts with a classmate.  She and I had an on-again/off-again relationship.  One year we'd be friends, and the next year we'd hate each other.  Fifth grade was apparently an "off" year.  My mom had made me a winter coat made of a white fur like material.  What I remember is my on/off friend dragging it on the gym floor.  I seem to recall walking over to her and popping her in the face.  It got ugly after that, and Mr. S had to intervene.  (I'm Facebook friends with this woman now so she can set me straight if my memory is off.)

6. In 6th grade a classmate got pregnant by an 18-year-old guy.  My introduction to the "real world." I remember our teacher wrote "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" on the board, which was also my introduction to that word and what it meant.

7. In 7th grade I was perhaps the most hated kid in junior high.  To this day I still don't know why.  That sucked.

8.  In 8th grade I was hell-bound on seeking revenge on the assholes who made my 7th grade year a living hell.  So I became a cheerleader and got straight As and won the Principal's Award, which is like the Oscar of my former school.  It might have felt better to give 'em all black eyes, but just rubbing their faces in my awesomeness was pretty good too.

9. In 9th grade I started at an all-girls Catholic school downtown.  It was my first experience with black girls.  I am ashamed to admit that my initial thought was, "How will I ever be able to tell them apart?"  That first day of school they all looked the same to me.  This is part of the reason I am pro-public schools.  Diversity is a good thing and really shouldn't just begin when one becomes a teenager.

10. In 10th grade I began dating BM, my high school sweetheart whom I fortunately did not marry.  He was (and is) a good guy, but I'm just not the type of person who could have married my high school boyfriend.  I guess this is where being inherently "boy-crazy" is a good thing----check out the other fish in the sea.  He and I dated for the remainder of my high school career.  We dated for my first semester of college, but once I got a taste of being around guys all day long, I was over it.

11. In 11th grade I was voted Junior Class President.  I had run for class president in 9th and 10th grades but no dice.  Junior year meant planning a prom.  I almost didn't get to attend prom because I had strep throat.  I missed my ring ceremony due to strep.

12. During spring break of my senior year of high school, my friend Kelly and I went to.......Cincinnati, OH for a couple days.  Somehow you don't get the screams and catcalls when lifting your shirt at the art museum and zoo as you do in Fort Lauderdale.  It was fun but even then I knew this was terribly lame.

Other things I remember in no particular order----
* Coming home from elementary school and eating a snack at the kitchen table with my mom every day.  Telling her about the events of the day.  This is part of the reason I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom.

* Dressing up as hookers one year for Halloween with JP, DD and MBP.

* Making mud pies in the backyard with my brother.  When he went into the house to get something, I put mud into his Spiderman house slippers.

* Peeing under/behind the wiegela bush in the back of the yard.  (I mean we had indoor plumbing....I guess it was just for the thrill of peeing outside.)

* Swinging on the swingset in the backyard singing Buffy Sainte-Marie's, "I'm Gonna Be a Country Girl Again."

* Laying in the back of the car listening to Eric Carmen's, "All By Myself," and brooding.

*Dancing in the basement with my mom to various Johnny Mathis songs.  She did her sewing down there and would listen to his LPs.  She and I would waltz around to various tunes.