Open Book

The Road Home

As soon as we turn down the wooded lane beneath the broad canopy of oaks and see, through the tunnel like opening at the end, the two story white house with the sweeping porch, I am overcome with a rush of deja vu.

"I've been here before," I say. "It's so...familiar."

We park along the short circular drive, right behind a bright yellow Ford pick up truck that has seen better days, and unfold ourselves from the car. My legs had begun to ache in protest at being confined for so long in the tight, cramped space beneath the dashboard. It feels good to stretch.

There are eleven steps leading up to the house, up to the wide expanse of porch that hugs the first story in a protective embrace while, at the same time, welcoming guests with the open arms of gracious rocking chairs and soft green ferns. The porch's ceiling is painted a pale sky blue, and the total effect is exactly as intended. A gentle netherland, neither fully outside, nor fully in; a place of its own.

__________

I remember kneeling at the table on the porch, coloring contentedly. I remember the red canvas Keds, the green gingham checked jumper, and the pull of the rubber band holding my ever present top knot in place, brown curly hair sprouting like a fountain from the crown of my head. I remember the coal barge gliding past, the resounding horn blaring hello in response to my furious waving from the top of the river bank. I remember tomatoes on the vine, red and ripe for the picking. I remember my grandpa's poodle, Tina, snoring in his lap as he rocked gently, back and forth, back and forth.

I remember my grandmother coming outside, the metallic slam of the kitchen's screen door announcing her. I remember her leaning over to kiss the top of Grandpa's head, earning a smile from him and a growl from his "other woman". I remember the taste of the Coke float, creamy vanilla ice cream melting in the soda pop, a frothy sugar high in a glass. I remember climbing up on the wrought iron couch and propping myself snugly up against Grandma's side, squeezing just so under the softest spot of her arm. I remember the scent of White Shoulders.

It always takes me home.

__________

The house seems eerily quiet; an instinctual defense against the stifling humidity. The slightest movement would only encourage the wet, weighted heat, forcing an unasked for lethargy. Better to beat the heat at its own game, choosing stillness, almost out of spite.

We sit in the rocking chairs closest to the broad carved railing, and add our own quietude to the cacophony of silence, waiting. I close my eyes, listening for a minute or two to the memories singing softly in my head. The screen door opens, and with my eyes closed, I can almost see my grandmother standing there, eyes twinkling, looking out.

"How about some nice lemonade?" Three tall, sweaty glasses appear out of my reverie, an oasis of sweet relief right before my eyes.

"Mmmm. Good stuff," he says, clinking his glass against hers in an expression of gratitude. "Not too sour, not too sweet, and ice cold. Just about perfect, I'd say."

She nods, smiling, and eases herself into the rocker directly across from me, settling into a smooth back and forth motion.

We sit a while, sipping lemonade, rocking in harmonic silence.

__________

I remember a Sunday drive to the old home place, a car ride that seemed to take three weeks getting there and three minutes coming back. I remember the open fields, as far as the eye could see, or at least to the foothills of the mountains draped like a scenic backdrop fit for a sweeping epic of a tale. I remember feeding a baby goat from a bottle, and his gripping the nipple so hard, it was everything I could do to keep my hold on it, keep him from running off, bottle and all dangling from his little goatee mouth.

I remember riding on the back of a tractor, scared half to death, but more afraid of not taking my turn and suffering the ridicule of my cousins. At least the boy cousins, and seeing as they outnumbered us girls six to two, it was a fear with some built in legitimacy attached. I remember picking rhubarb, sticky stalks I'd never seen or heard of before. I remember my first bite of strawberry-rhubarb pie, hot from the oven, washed down with the ice coldest glass of milk I'd ever tasted.

I remember hearty good-byes, all around.

I don't remember ever going back.

__________

"It was so nice of you kids to come out here to pay us a visit," she says, as we start to make motions toward taking our leave.

I smile. I haven't thought of myself as a "kid" in forever and a day, but from the perspective of 87 years on this earth, I suppose she's got it right.

"Thank you for having us," I say. "It's been a lovely day."

"Help me get myself up out of this fool chair, will you?"

I reach down, place one arm around her thin shoulders, one hand steadying her sharp elbow, and help her to her feet. She grabs me in a hug, and I catch the unmistakable scent of White Shoulders mixed with old age, a familial signature scent these days, clinging to her neck.

"I have a little something for you," she says, wagging a finger in my direction. "Don't go running off just yet."

I turn to look out over the fields. They seem smaller now, and overgrown. The mountains have moved in closer to the house, which has shrunken a bit with age itself. The barn looks weary, as if a strong glance might be enough to knock it over, and I see no sign of a tractor or a baby goat. Just an old hunting hound sleeping in the burrowed out ground beneath the massive hostas thriving at the base of the porch steps.

I hear the metallic slam of the front screen door and turn to face her.

"Here we are," she says, holding a small envelope in her tiny, world weary hands. "I hope you'll like these. I think they belong with you."

I open the envelope and slip out the photographs. A young woman with her whole sepia toned life ahead of her looks out at me from one of them, eyes twinkling, a sassy smile dancing on her lips, a hand on one hip that appears to be sashaying even in still life.

"See what she wrote there? On the back?"

I flip the picture over, and there, written in my grandmother's fancy flowing script are the words, "Don't get any wrong ideas, but aren't I the wild one?"

"You look just like her, you know."

Smiling through the lump in my throat, I nod.

Then I reach to hug her tight, once more.

For the road.

The one that always takes me home.

__________

* Reprised.  

We had ourselves a merry little Christmas.

'Tis a month until February, when all through DC,

Mom and Daddy are stirring, getting ready for me.

Dad set up a crib in the spare room with care,

With hopes that I'll sleep through the night when I'm there.

Ginger is nestled all snug in her bed,  

While visions of baby toys dance in her head.

And Mommy in her PJs and I in her tummy,

Have just settled down for some ice cream so yummy.

When all of a sudden, contractions start coming,

Daddy will call you - all frantic and humming.

Away to the closet you'll fly like a flash,

Pull out your suitcases, and pack your clothes stash.

The news of my imminent arrival on blast,

You'll push down the pedal and drive really fast.

When, what to my wondering eyes will appear,

But a hospital room and my family near.

More rapid than eagles, my family came,

And Mommy and Daddy greeted each one by name:

"Grandma Wanda! Uncle Scott! Grandma Waggs and Grandpa!

On Tucky! On Watson! Paw Paw and Maw Maw!"

With the sound of your voices, so lively and quick,

I'll know in a moment that this love will stick.

From the top of my head! To the sight of my feet!

You won't be able to stop gawking at me.

My eyes - how they'll twinkle! My dimples, how merry!

My cheeks like roses, my nose like a cherry!

My feet and my hands will be tiny and charming,

But the wail of my cry will sound quite alarming.

So as you enjoy this last Christmas of quiet,

Remember I'm coming and will be quite the riot!

But before that time comes, mark this off your list:

Book a room for your visit, on me, I insist!

This card holds one night at our local hotel,

I hope you can travel, it'd be really swell.

One last thing I must say before I bid adieu,

"Happy Christmas to all, and I can't wait to meet you!"

 

Nuffin.

He doesn't see me standing in the doorway, watching.

He sits on his knees in the middle of his bedroom floor, head bent intently over something I can't see completely, a red crayon gripped in his fist, a wily grin on his face.

Impish is the word that springs to immediately to mind.

"Whatcha doin', buddy?" I ask, as nonchalantly as possible.

"Nuffin," he says, two beats too quickly for comfort.

"It sure looks like you're busy doing something."

"Nope. Not nuffin, Mom." He stares at me, exasperation in his voice, and I can feel him willing me to be quiet now, to quit asking so many questions.

"Well, all righty then. I'm going downstairs for a while. Lunch soon, okay?"

"Um hmm," he responds absently, head down, hard at work again on nuffin.

________________________

We took long meandering walks through the neighborhood nearly every afternoon on our way to retrieve his big sister from elementary school, our schedule dictated by his habit of avoiding the shortest distance between two points at any cost. Every day was a new adventure, with unknown territories to explore and fascinating discoveries to be made.

More often than not, I would weigh ten pounds more on the trip home than I did starting out, pockets filled with a treasure trove of rocks, broken pieces of brick, and sticks. More than once, we were late greeting Jessi at the corner because we'd become engrossed in a line of marching ants or because he'd taken a liking to a comfortable looking rocking chair on a stranger's front porch. More than was probably proper, my oldest child would feel the need to scold us for our abhorrent behavior. She'd throw a tsk-ing look my way while stomping up the steps to a random house and grabbing her brother's hand, chiding, "Get down from there. You can't do that! You don't even know these people!"

I always felt a little bit chagrined at moments like those, when my daughter turned to parent me, the wayward child.

But not enough to put an end to his endless wide-eyed curiosity.

________________________

I worked during his nap time, squinting at the computer screen, trying to make the text fit into its allotted space. Designing ads. Writing articles. Engrossed in new layouts, or fonts, or artwork.

I'd hear the pitter patter of his tentative tiny footsteps padding through the kitchen and look up to the top of the stairs as he rounded the corner, knowing exactly where to find me. He'd stand there, sleep still weighing down the corners of his eyes, but grinning. Always with the grinning.

"Hi, buddy."

"Hi, Momma. Momma? Okay. Come on. You ready, Momma? Okay?" he'd say, squeezing the words out around the thumb planted squarely in his mouth. "Okay, Momma? Now! Come now! OKAY???"

"I'm almost finished," I'd mumble.

"MOOOOMMMMMMAAAA! Please? Come now! Okay, Momma?"

"Just a minute," I'd reply, knowing what would come next; I'd reply, because of what would come next.

"NO! NOW! MOMMA, GET OFF THE POOOOOTER!"

I shouldn't have laughed. But I couldn't help it. Every single day. For months.

________________________

Stirring Spaghetti-O's on the stove top, I try to act like I don't hear him slinking through the dining room. He peeps around the corner; I busy myself getting his Big Bird bowl out of the cabinet. His foot starts to tap, softly at first, then louder, louder, until I finally look over, acting surprised to see him there.

"Well, hey there! Ready for some lunch?"

That grin. It has the power to burst my heart with the purity of its expression across the expanse of his cheek-pinch worthy adorableness.

He leaps into the room, and thrusts a carefully folded piece of paper in my direction.

"What's this?"

"Nuffin. It's for you. I made it all myself," he says, beaming with pride.

I sit down, slowly and carefully unfolding the gift on the table in front of me.

There is a giant fuzzy blob of red, taking up nearly every inch of the page. It's a heart, and I know this only because his sister has been drawing them for weeks, making Valentine cards. Across the top, in the scant white space available, he's written 'MOMSCOTTMOM', all one word.

"You made this yourself?" I exclaim.

"Yes! All myself!" he nods, proud as proud can be.

"Wow! It's a beautiful heart!"

"It's yours. See? It has your name on it." He points for emphasis, to make sure I can't miss it.

"I love it. This is the best heart I've ever gotten," I say, securing it front and center on the refrigerator, where all great works of art go to show off. "You must have worked very hard to make this, especially for me."

He shrugs, still beaming, hands on hips in a super hero pose.

"It was nuffin."

________________________

Not true.

It was everything.

The little moments, compressed like so much carbon into memories, each one a shiny diamond with a glinting clarity all its own. The tiny pieces of the everyday, tucked away like treasures in the time capsule of my mind for safe keeping, for remembering.

All the nuffins, adding up to the very something that is the stuff of life, stored away in my heart, each one a warm, tender hug reaching for me from the past.

Sometimes, when I least expect it.

But usually, just when I need it most.

Father's Days

I was sitting in the passenger side with a 12-pack box of tacos in my lap when my brother called to tell me Dad was gone.

It was a few minutes past 11 pm on Sunday, June 5th, and my husband, sister-in-law and I had left the hospice ward at the  hospital in Lexington about a half hour before, headed to my mother's house for some sleep. After eleven long days spent huddled in my father's room, waiting, together, my mom decided she needed to spend the night with him. At the last minute, she asked my brother to stay with her, and he readily agreed. The five of us pulled out the sofa bed, rearranged the recliner, collected extra blankets and pillows, hugged our good-nights. I kissed Dad's damp, warm head and told him I loved him. "Sleep well, Daddy," I whispered in his ear. "Rest well. Please, rest."

It was a thirty minute drive back to Mom's. We had just pulled into the driveway when my cell phone rang.

And suddenly, after weeks, months, of hurry up and wait, it was over with one last breath.

_________________

It's been the impossible dream, writing about these last few months. Since my daughter's beautiful wedding in April a year ago, Dad's health - already precarious, at best - had been in a state of steady decline. At Christmas, he was able to sit at the dinner table with us, laughing, telling stories, centering the holiday scene. But within weeks, his body grew more fragile and his mind more feeble. The descent into a horrible, pitiful near bed-ridden state was rapid and complete by the end; a mere blink of an eye.

Those stories of his last months are not treasured memories, easily documented. Those stories will live on only in my head, and in the safe keeping of  my mother - easily a candidate for sainthood, were there such a thing in the Methodist religion - private and painful.

I feel so very lucky to have spent nearly two and a half weeks of his last month with him, helping my mother. He had a lot of lucid moments in between the delusional tales of unnecessary grandeur, and sharing those with him meant everything to me. He knew - knows - how much I love him; and there is zero doubt in my mind that I meant the world to him.

My mother was wearing down, physically and emotionally unable to maintain the 24/7 pace of caring for her husband that she'd been exercising for six solid years - her whole life, really - and just as she began to feel the overwhelming burden of watching her husband break, Hospice stepped in and took charge. They are the ones who made the decision to move him from his home onto the hospice ward of the hospital in Lexington, one Thursday morning in late May.

And this decision was a gift so great, on so many levels, there are no words that exist to describe it.

_________________

He was a big man, my father.

Yes, he was physically imposing, standing 6'4" and 200 lbs. in his prime. But that's not what I mean.

His spirit - that's what was larger than life.

The outpouring of love and well-wishes has been damn near grandiose. Mom has received hundreds of cards and letters. I received more than 250 Facebook comments, private messages and emails. The National Marfan Foundation has received thousands of dollars in donations in his honor.

His first memorial service, held in Frankfort, KY, where my folks have lived for some 28 years, was attended by more than 200 people. And his second memorial service, held in our hometown, where both my brother and I live, was attended by 300 more.

The services were perfect. The first was traditional and somber, by Mom's design. The second, held this past Saturday, was  an uplifting tribute, as organized by my brother and I.

He was interred in his church's bell tower and celebrated by all those who loved him on Father's Day weekend, which feels completely right to me. It feels like a final, glorious gift we were able to give him, and I am going to treasure the words, the hugs, the memories of the weekend for the rest of my life. And that I can walk by his final resting place, less than 2 blocks from my house, every day for the rest of my life and know he is here, watching over me, feels like a final, glorious gift from a beloved father to his eternally grateful daughter.

I am sure in the belief that he is, at long last, resting well.

_________________

Yesterday was Father's Day. Before heading out of town to go back to their lives, my daughter and son-in-law took my husband and I to lunch. As we were leaving the house for the restaurant, she handed her daddy a bright blue bag stuffed with yellow tissue paper and said, "Open your present before we go."

Inside the brightly colored package was proof that God exists and life does indeed go on.

Our baby is going to have a baby.

On Wednesday, they are having their first ultrasound, after which we will be free to share the news with the rest of our big, larger than life, wonderful family.

On Wednesday, Dad would have turned 72 years old.

Life, full circle.

And my heart pounds out a song of joy, in time to the magical rhythm of it all.

Full.

 There are an abundance of plump snowflakes dancing in the air outside, landing softly to top off the previous wonderland of white that had begun to go slushy and soft. It's beautiful out there; pretty enough, in fact, to lure me into bundling up and taking Jake for a walk just to be in it and of it for a little while.

Walking in it is one thing. But today my entire family has packed up their respective vehicles and are taunting the winter travel gods with their respective determinations to reach their respective destinations.

The son took off on a southbound journey last night, ultimately headed to the WVU bowl game, meeting up with friends in Raleigh, North Carolina, before traveling on to Orlando. The past few days, North Carolina has been inundated with snowy weather they are ill-prepared to deal with, typically speaking.

The daughter and son-in-law left late this morning, en route home to Washington, DC. The city and surrounding areas are, naturally, expecting an encore performance of last year's snowpocalypse, just in time for my precious cargo's drive.

The husband is making his way along the snow-covered, treacherous mountain back roads of West Virginia to some middle of nowhere jobsite, where he'll spend the balance of the week monitoring things while trying to stay warm.

As for me? Well, I'm curled up in one corner of the couch with my dog curled up in the other, still in my pajamas at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, computer in my lap, hot tea by my side, and remote at the ready, cozy and comfy, safe and sound, worrying and waiting for the various check in phone calls.

And just like that, the Christmas holiday week has arrived at an abrupt end.

But my, what a lovely week it was.

There was (and is) enough food to feed three families and still have plenty of leftovers to tide every last one of us over for the balance of 2010 and perhaps a little beyond. There was last minute shopping, wrapping and stocking stuffing into the wee hours of Christmas Eve. There were at least three movies, with the whole bunch of us piled into the living room, sharing blankets and wine, oohs and ahs and laughter. There were visits with my (recovering nicely) brother and his family. There was the Christmas Eve dinner and church service with Grandma. There were late sleepers, breakfast casserole and luscious pomegranate mimosas on Christmas morning. And, of course, there were the usual embarrassment of riches under the tree, for one and all.

But mostly, there was us, together, sharing each other's company with happiness and joy.

So while they may each be headed off on their separate journeys, back to the normalcies of their everyday lives, and I may be here, suddenly by myself in a big empty home, the love and the memories warm and sustain me.

My heart is full.

 

i carry your heart with me

I may have mentioned that my baby girl is getting married.

I may also have mentioned that this reality feels more like a surreality, although in a totally good way.

My heart is so full of excitement for her, and this entire experience is yet one more way having this amazing, wonderful, lovely, beautiful baby, now woman, in my life has allowed me to live at least part of my best life vicariously. The joy, the drama, the nervousness, the anticipation - nearly every emotion I am feeling is for her, through her, on her behalf.

I am so proud to call her my daughter. So incredibly lucky that she calls me Mom. So overwhelmed at the pure, true love that exists in our relationship.

Don't get me wrong. She thinks I am a total dork - justifiably - a good bit of the time. And she's not exactly perfect either, although truth be known, she's several steps closer to it than I will ever be. But none of that matters when all is said and done. What matters is that I love her with my whole entire heart, and know, with everything I am, she feels the same. I trust her, and respect her, and admire her.

And, it must be said, adore her from the top of her head to the tips of her toes.

My baby girl is getting married.

It's a beautiful thing.

________________________

The bachelorette party van took off today at noon, original destination New York City. Alas, the weather - the stupid, endless winter weather - scared them south and as of this writing, they are headed to Charlotte. They're young. They're immortal. They're best of friends. A good time will be had, of that there is no doubt.

Still, let's be honest. Charlotte is no New York City.

I wish I were with them. Instead, I'm drinking vodka and pomegranate juice in their honor and typing this post, while fielding an endless string texts from the road.

See? She loves me. :-)

__________________________

Planning her bridal shower brunch has been more fun than I can describe. I'm going with a garden theme. One of the quirks of my personality is to take an idea and beat the living hell out of it, in case you didn't know. In that spirit, this shower is no exception.

Giant cupcakes decorated like individual flowers will be displayed in small terracotta pots and do double duty as centerpieces. Watering cans and flower pots will act as vases and serving dishes. Potted herbs - favors for the guests - will adorn the buffets. The menu will be fresh and colorful in keeping with the theme, and even the game prizes have a flora and fauna feel.

No matter the weather the second weekend in March, a houseful of thirty women in Virginia will be garden partying like it's Spring.

_________________________

Praise be to the free software known as Windows Live Movie Maker. And also to a brand new printer equipped with a kick ass scanner. These tools have enabled me to create - direct and produce, if you will - a video montage of the lives and times of this happy couple that is absolutely - if I may say so myself - outstanding. Seriously. It's a work of art, complete with music and animation and, let's be honest again, two stellar subjects.

The video is a chronological trip through their lives. It starts with wedding pictures of the grandparents and parents and flows right into their lives, from babyhood to present day. I keep adding to it and tweaking it and then, naturally, with each change, I have to watch the entire thirty minute film from start to finish, just to be sure.

And to cry myself silly. Over and over again. On purpose.

It's like I said.

My baby girl is getting married.

And it's a beautiful thing.

Because I carry her heart with me.

I carry it in my heart.

Flight

It's cliche', of course it is, but my, how time flies.

This is especially true around Christmas. Three months ago, I was extolling the virtues of early holiday preparedness, and now, a mere nine days before the Really Big Show arrives, I'm feeling a bit of the panic onset that seems inevitable. Even though I'm ready. Even though.

______________

I went to Kentucky this past weekend to hang out with my folks. To give my mother some time off, some relief from her every waking moment reality. She spent her freedom wisely - dinner and a play with friends, a day of shopping and pampering and wandering without stealing glances at her watch. I know she enjoyed herself, and not only because she told me so, but because she glowed and smiled and sighed the undeniable tension right out of her tightly wound self before my very eyes.

It's a small thing, and certainly no sacrifice on my part to spend a couple of days with my dad, watching news and sports and country music videos, chatting about the past, ignoring the present and casually referencing the future that includes (maybe! hopefully!) a holiday trip to West Virginia for them and (delightfully!) a wedding for his first born granddaughter. 

So yes. It's a small thing. But it's a treasured gift in my mother's eyes, a fact I find equal parts the saddest thing I know and the most gratifying act of love I can offer.

______________

We took my mother-in-law to see the Moscow Ballet's performance of The Nutcracker. The tickets were a birthday present for her, purchased because she let it slip over Thanksgiving that she'd never seen it, not once in all her 84 years. I found that impossible to believe and harder still to accept, if only because it is one of my most favorite Christmastime traditions.

So...last Monday night, we collected her and her friend and proceeded to the show.

I suppose there is a reason she hasn't seen The Nutcracker in 84 years. Namely, her whispered admission to me just before the curtain went up that she harbors a long held aversion to seeing the boys dance and prance in their tights. I spent the rest of the performance wondering and worrying about my seat mates' enjoyment of the extravaganza unfolding on the stage. To my left, my oh-so-sweet husband, who accompanied we three women to an event he considered a mild form of punishment. To my right, my mother-in-law, with whose eyes I found myself judging every plié and pas de deux of the dancers.

Her first comment to me as the company took their bows? "Were you disappointed in any aspect of it at all?"

Which I can only translate as, "Bah humbug."

But, as always, she was gracious and profuse in her gratitude and at least pretended to be awed and delighted when all was said and done. Because she's well-mannered like that, if nothing else.

Bless her heart.

______________

On the night of her birthday, we were sitting at the dinner table conversing casually when I heard my husband say, "More Grandma's house is gone."

More Grandma's house would be my beloved grandmother's house, the one positioned directly across the river from our beautiful state capitol building. The one I spent half my life in growing up, celebrating birthdays and holidays, enjoying huge family gatherings and Sunday dinners, and passing quiet evenings curled up on the couch in the crook of my grandmother's arm. The one I ran through as if I owned the place, from the river bank to the make-believe fairy house under the branches of the massive old oak tree in the front yard. The one with the big kitchen, where I learned the secrets of perfect fried chicken and how to make a Snickerdoodle. The one I consider the family homestead, where a lifetime of memories were made.

I looked up from my plate.

"What? Gone? What do you mean, gone?"

My husband's eyes grew wide as he said, "I'm sorry...I thought you knew."

He thought I knew, I suppose, because one of our regular walking/biking routes takes us along the river by the capitol steps where we could gaze across at my grandmother's house, now owned by strangers. We watched as it seemed to fall into a state of disrepair and neglect, the gorgeous home devolving over the summer and fall into a seemingly unloved collection of bricks and stone and shingles.

But I didn't know. I hadn't seen the trucks and the workman as they systematically began to demolish the house my grandfather built, the house my family loved. Brick by brick, stone by stone, shingle by shingle, until...nothing. Until the house was gone.

The house is gone.

It's an empty lot, awaiting the arrival of new bricks and stones and shingles, ready to be built up into a new house for a new family to make their memories in, atop a piece of land haunted by our days gone by.

My grandmother's house is gone.

It's inconceivable.

Perhaps all the more so because I've yet to find the fortitude to go look for myself.

______________

So, yes. It's cliche', but time does fly. 

Disappears right before our very eyes, days slipping through the cracks and into the archives of life before we can even fully appreciate their existence, unless we're careful enough to save our memories of them in our hearts for safekeeping.

We gather together.

Thanksgiving is just a couple of weeks away, and already the mysterious, glorious, infuriating and wondrous stylings of our own special breed of family dynamics are on full display. It never ceases to amaze me how people so easily fall into their expected stereotypes in the days leading up to a major holiday. Sometimes I wish I had the wherewithal or wits about me to break from the "traditional" role everyone assumes I will assume.

Alas, it's easier wished for than achieved.

There is talk of my parents staying home for Thanksgiving, in Kentucky, by themselves, separated from the rest of us by miles and necessity.

My father is ailing. Granted, he's been ailing for years now, so perhaps that isn't the right descriptive. The more literal observation to make is that my father is failing. And until I just typed that sentence, this reality has been a thing known but not acknowledged. By me, at least.

It's the truth, though.

He's frail. He's depressed. He spends his every waking moment living inside the disquiet of his own head, reliving the past over and over and over again, feeling sorry for himself.

My father is failing. In mind, body and spirit. Fifteen major surgeries in twenty years will do that to a person. I know this, with the thinking portion of my brain.

I know this.

Why, then, is it so hard for my heart to forgive him for it?

Because that is also a truth. In my heart, I'm angry with him. For his failure to participate fully in his own recovery. For his willingness to let the weakness of his body overcome the strength of his will, his mind, his determination. For his too easy acquiescence and acceptance of those things he cannot control. For his inability to shake it off and join us in the here and now, in our excitement about the future.

It's beyond all reason, this frustration I am feeling when it comes to my father. Beyond all explanation or common sense. It tears me up inside, every single day. And still, I can't shake it. I look at him and listen to him and see a faint shell of the man I've spent forty-six years counting on to be a living, breathing guiding light in my life, and it pisses me off.

I tell myself I'm being unfair. That I'm being irrational, harsh, naive, uncaring, ungrateful, and selfish. I tell myself these things because they are true. I tell myself these things because if I don't? If I am unsuccessful in fending off this anger, deflecting this irritation? I will live to regret it. Long and hard.

And still.

I'm mad as hell.

I want him to fight. To be as angry as I am, not with himself, but with the illness ravaging his body. To fight against its victory over his heart and mind. To will himself to win. To live the words he's used his entire life to motivate and inspire legions of those around him.

I'm not sure I'm ready to reverse the roles in this relationship. To be *his* guiding light, helping him find his way wherever the path takes him, whatever path he chooses to take. I'm not sure I'm ready to be the fully realized woman he has spent his life encouraging me to be, full of wisdom and compassion, acceptance and grace, forgiveness and fortitude.

But really, given everything, what choice do I have?

Really, given everything he's given me, how can I deny him this?

Growing up is so damn hard to do.

I miss my daddy.

Something old, something new.

On Sunday morning, we packed up the car with chairs, a cooler full of beverages, my famous edamame bean salad, the Sunday paper and our tired selves for a three hour trip to Virginia. My future son-in-law's family invited us to their annual family reunion gathering at Douthat State Park, and since we'd never met any of them but will be joining forces come April, it seemed a good idea to attend.

I'm so glad we did.

His family is a lovely bunch of coconuts, much like our own, and I think the blended result is going to be a beautiful thing. It was especially fun to interact with the littlest, most adorable ones, each of whom bore strong genetic resemblance to my daughter's fiance', and to imagine what my forthcoming grand babies might look like.

Remember the days when my sweet little girl used to tell me she was never having babies, only monkeys? Well, her mind has evidently changed on this subject. A couple of weeks ago she mentioned having seven kids someday. SEVEN. KIDS. I cannot fathom the prospect, knowing her as I do, but at least there is hope of a happy medium somewhere between primates and the Waltons.

_____________________

It's going to be a very interesting year. Wedding planning via Google chat and late night phone calls is proving to be a challenge. Especially when you consider that I have zero experience in this realm, seeing as my own wedding was such a low-key affair. One day, my mother came home with a pretty white dress and a pair of high heels. Another day, my honey and I shopped for wedding bands - mine was $50, his $125. And finally, I showed up at the church to say, "I do." Pretty simple stuff, really.

My daughter's planned wedding is not quite as low-key.

As she likes to remind me, "I don't have an infant at home waiting for me to get on with it."

Yeah, well.

So ANYHOODLES...she's planning a little throw down for 200 of her closest friends with an outdoor setting for the ceremony itself. There are 14 bridesmaids and groomsmen (seven of each), a caterer trying to accommodate her vegan wishes, and pretty strong odds for the possibility of an April shower in the Blue Ridge Mountains. There are flowers to plan, a photographer to book, music to consider, invitations to ready. There are a million details within the details and the tightrope between champagne tastes and beer budget to be mindful of in the process.

Books, magazines and websites are all fine and dandy. Until they start BLOWING YOUR MIND WITH A THOUSAND NEW DETAILS.

Unsolicited advice from friends and family is always helpful. Until, you know, IT IS MOST POSITIVELY NOT.

I'm trying to plan a trip down Charlottesville way soon, so we can spend a couple of days eyeball to eyeball, making lists and assigning tasks, crafting flow charts and drafting prayer chains just to help us get through it all without forgetting something important.

Like securing an officiant, say.

And here's another fun little detail: the big day is only 229 days away.

Seven months.

Thirty-three WEEKS.

Two hundred and TWENTY-NINE DAYS.

I'M IN OVER MY HEAD HOURS.

I need a drink.

Wait - drinks! Alcohol! Wine! A "custom" cocktail (whatever the hell that is)! Bartenders!

More details!

Wheee!

Anybody out there have a magic wand handy? 'Cause I'm thinkin' a little *wave* of it in my direction might be the only thing to save me from myself over here.

She's alive! And well! With pictures!

Wow.

I have a blog!

Who knew!?!

I've missed this place. But I've been a little busy getting all settled in to our new home, sweet home.

So until I can collect my thoughts about this whole...process, let's call it...would you like to see some pictures?

This is the foyer, featuring fireplace #1 of 5. Yes, it's stupid crazy that a house has five fireplaces. Yes, I love them, every last one.

This is the staircase and deacon's bench that greets your eyes when you first enter the house. This is also the view that made my heart stop before I'd even crossed the threshold for the first time.

The staircase. I have no words to adequately describe how much I love this staircase. See the stained glass atop the long windows there? There are four of those puppies.

This is half of the kitchen. The exposed brick, open shelving and copper are what sent my husband's heart lurching during that first walk through. It's an amazing space, although it is in need of a complete overhaul of cabinets (really horrid, honest, and don't get me started on the countertop and appliances).

The other half of the kitchen. There is a back staircase up to the second floor. That rolltop desk in the corner is where I'm sitting as I write this up.

Now you see how I've been spending all my time of late. This is a lot of house. There were a metric ton of boxes to move in, unpack, distribute and organize. 

And I got a job.

And I have a significant volunteer gig.

And?

I have seen at least one person I "used to know" every single day since we've been back.

It's been a wild ride. It's been wonderful to be home.

And it feels pretty good to back in this little piece of my heart, too.

Over the river and through the woods.

We are  - we were - five generations, the women in my family, deftly spanning the cliches from the generation gap to Gen X to generation The Gap. Our lives have covered a cumulative 223 years of overlapping perspective and insight into the world and our family's dynamic within it. I sit squarely in the middle, the third generation of this bunch, which is an interesting space to fill, perspective wise. There is a story in there somewhere.

___________________________________________

My grandmother was a woman before her time. She was a working mother, before the term existed, in the early 1930s. She and my grandfather each came from meager beginnings, but together they built a successful restaurant business that became a city institution. The Diner was, in fact, two railroad dining cars, custom crafted and shipped to town from New York City. Location being everything, the establishment was an instant hit, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner in the heart of a bustling downtown for more than fifty years.

Between managing the wait staff, greeting customers, and ordering produce, Grandma raised four children - four popular and active children. The family's home was a social club, with Grandma acting as hostess during the evenings and caretaker during the days. There was a constant flow of people in and out - neighbors, business acquaintances, family and friends.

I often wonder how she managed all of it. The restaurant business can be lucrative, but it is also a needy master. The work is hard, the hours long. Raising four kids would be difficult enough. Compounded by the social whirlwind that constantly surrounded them, it would be overwhelming, even to me, even in this day and time. My grandma not only pulled it off, though, she did so with aplomb.

___________________________________________

The picture in my mind of my grandma in those days closely resembles the many black and white photographs I've thumbed through numerous times. She was, and remains, a strikingly beautiful woman. She had a regal air, an easy glamour about her. One of my favorite pictures shows her in mid-laugh, head thrown back, salt and pepper hair perfectly framing her face. In one hand, she's holding a cigarette, in the other a highball glass, which, I'm sure, was filled with vodka and tonic. She's wearing a dress with a full skirt (I always imagine it as bright royal blue and silky to the touch), and stylish high heels. The picture always grabs and holds my attention, and I find myself wishing I could have known her then.

My mother was her youngest child, so by the time I did meet her, Grandma no longer worked actively in the family business. Instead, she spent her time at home tending to her growing extended family. She accepted the title of matriarch as if she'd been born to inherit it. Her four now grown children all lived close by, and her ten grandchildren were her purpose.

Her home was the heart of our family life. It didn't take a holiday to make an occasion. On any given day of the week, you could open the front door to squeals from the cousins or hugs from the aunts and uncles. But holidays were the most special days of all, the house bursting at the seams with loved ones, music, laughter and food. The food - dishes and platters and bowls and tureens - is a whole story unto itself. Suffice to say, I'm from a family of cooks; the aromas of frying chicken, baking pies, and simmering stews evoke powerfully vivid memories in my mind to this day.

I spent the night with my grandma often, staying up until the wee hours, with her conspiratorially telling me grown up jokes and stories about my mom. She'd fix me root beer floats at midnight. She'd sit with me and watch scary movies on TV. She'd let me rummage through her jewelry drawer, trying everything on, and would make such a fuss when I pulled out the necklace crafted from paperclips and contact paper that I'd made her with my own two pudgy little hands. Though there were ten of us grandkids, I always felt singled out for her affections, believing I was her favorite one of all. Of course, I now realize that this was Grandma's greatest talent; there were nine others who believed exactly the same.

___________________________________________

We didn't know last Thanksgiving would be her last with us.

At the end, she still knew us, but just barely, and even this much was a blessing. But she would forget, too, sometimes thinking of us as little ones, begging for a spot on her knee. She used to love to sit and talk about days gone by, but would have trouble telling you what she had for breakfast. As time passed, she would lie immobile in a bed, shutting her eyes tight against the world, closed off from it, as if it had become unrecognizable and therefore too painful to inhabit. Every now and then, she'd look at me, and I would imagine that I saw a moment of understanding in her eyes, a feeling that, somewhere in there, she knew what is happening to her, but had reached an uneasy peace with it.

And then I'd think that what I was seeing was what I wished to be true, because the alternative was just so sad to contemplate.

Whenever I visited, I'd leave with a parting gift of intensely felt wistfulness that took its good, sweet time fading away.

I miss my grandma.

___________________________________________

There was a small dip in the road, and every time the car traveled over it at slow motion suburban speeds, my stomach would dip right in time with it. I came to associate the accompanying flutter in my tummy with arriving at my grandparent's house. A quick release of butterflies, flapping their wings with a mix of nervous excitement and trilling anticipation, settling into a satisfied stillness as the car finally shifted into park.

Scrambling out of the back seat, I would run up the sweeping sidewalk that curved in a gentle arc across the rolling lawn, connecting the driveway to the front porch. There was a crack in the concrete that created a bit of a tripping hazard, and although my grandmother said, "that darned crack - we need to get that fixed!" every single time someone - anyone - came up the walkway, it never did get fixed. It never did trip anybody, either, come to think of it. All the warnings... "be careful! look out for that darned crack!"... must have worked.

I can see her opening the screen door, stepping out onto the stone front porch, arms thrown wide, her eyes shining and her mouth turned up in a smile that made me know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she was tickled pink to see me. She would scoop me up in a big hug saying, "Give me some sugar, sugar!" and then proceed to plant red lipstick kisses all over my face while I squirmed in pretend protest, my giggles giving me away.

___________________________________________

Some pieces in my own memory are sketchy at best. The scenery and surroundings faded charcoal drawings, the people and events blurred into watery obscurity.

But others, like a visit to my grandmother's house, are seared into my memory in vivid Technicolor richness, where even the faintest brush stroke of detail stands out, stronger for the test of time, real and lifelike. As if the merest thought of the six leather padded chairs positioned around her oval dining room table, with it's floor to ceiling view of the flowering magnolia in the front yard, were instilled with the power to transport me there directly, across the expanse of time between then and now, in the briefest blink of an eye.

I never want to lose that gift.

It's the most precious thing I own.

The Circle

My father's parents were married nearly ten years before they resigned themselves to the fact they would never have children of their own and began exploring the adoption process. Two months later, my grandmother discovered she was pregnant. Two years after my dad's arrival, he was joined by a baby sister.

Parental love can be a ferocious thing in any circumstance, but I'm inclined to believe that when a couple is convinced they have been on the receiving end of a miracle, that fierceness can take on an otherworldly dimension.

Both of my paternal grandparents came from nothing and struggled their whole lives just to make ends meet. Dad moved twelve times during his childhood; he attended eight different elementary schools by the time he hit sixth grade. But he was born with gifts. He was an academic stand out and athletic superstar.

My grandfather saw a glimmer of 'special' in my dad from a very early age and he pushed him, beyond every limit, to succeed. He demanded perfection. He expected it. And my dad delivered, out of respect, sure; but out of fear, too. The pressure to excel, to be his father's dreams come true, was an enormous weight for a child to bear.

My grandmother, for lack of a better way of stating it, worshipped the ground my father walked on and treated him accordingly. She gave him everything she had to give, believed him to be the perfect child. My aunt will tell you he was a spoiled god. My dad will tell you this unblinking adoration came with its own set of associated pressures.

When my dad graduated with the college degree he earned on a full athletic scholarship, he had several job offers from which to choose. The day he brought home his first real paycheck and showed it to his dad, my grandfather cried. The amount on that first check was more than my grandfather earned in six months.
_________________________

My mother is the youngest of four children born to a lifetime alcoholic and his master enabler wife. My grandfather was a docile drunk, which I guess was a relative blessing. He was benign and harmless. The worst behavioral manifestation of his disease was his propensity to be inordinately affectionate.

"Who loves you, baby? Do you love me? You do? I love you more than the world. To the moon and back. You know that right? Tell your old Grandpa you know how much he loves you."

At this point, Grandma would start scolding him like a child and banish him to bed. He'd go peacefully, sleep it off, and then wake up to do the whole thing over again. The alcohol eventually reciprocated by killing him in the slowest, most agonizing way possible, proving beyond any doubt that the longtime love affair had been decidedly one-sided.

The oldest of Mom's two brothers married three times and fathered three children before finally coming out and admitting he was gay. It was no big surprise to any of us. The only sad thing about it was that he'd lived nearly fifty years of his life hiding from himself. He is an alcoholic and is slowly killing himself, too, like father, like son. Her other brother was killed in an alcohol related car accident on Thanksgiving day in 1976, leaving behind four young boys of his own. My aunt, Mom's older sister, has been in a poisonous marriage for over forty-five years. What she sees as love, we all see as toxic interdependency. They are both alcoholics. So are their two children.
_______________________

Somehow, my dad was able to distill the best things from both of his parents and use them to his advantage. He was able, from a very young age, to understand why my grandfather imposed such pressure on him and to use it as a motivating force rather than wilt beneath its fiery glare. Instead of becoming self-absorbed and arrogant, he was able to take the genuine goodness and purity of my grandmother's blind love for him and carry the seeds of it in his heart to spread around outside himself.

Somehow, my mom was able to step outside of her family history. She made a conscious decision to take all of the best things from it - the love, the openness, the laughter, the goodness - and put the rest of it on a shelf where it could be acknowledged, but left behind. She was able to resist the temptation to carry on the cycle of damage. More than that, I think. She willed her own life experience to be something less tragic.

Somehow, these two people from separate but equally dysfunctional backgrounds met and fell in love.

Somehow, these two people drew strength from each other's hard earned wisdom. 

Somehow, these two people held true to their respective determination through every challenge life tossed in their path.

Somehow, I am proof that a defective circle can be purposely broken into pieces and redrawn in bold strokes of possibility.

Somehow, I intend to make sure these well learned lessons are never taken for granted.

Nothing Doing

This has been a weekend full of doing nothing, and nothing doing has been doing sweet nothings for my psyche. In between naps and reading and glancing up at the television whenever there is an outbreak of cheers or jeers from the crowd, there have been momentary bursts of short-lived come-to-life-ness.

Basically, the perfect lazy weekend.

Made all the more perfect by virtue of helping my youngest child and source of every last gray hair on my head relocate into a place of his own.

Granted, my help has come primarily in the form of directing traffic. Although I've also done my share of boxing up old silverware, glassware, dinnerware, and the few thread bares from the linen closet.

It's still a little surreal, in a happy making way. Seeing his room empty of furniture and devoid of piles of dirty laundry. Waking up to find my clean kitchen still clean. Knowing that the next time I sanitize his bathroom will be the last time I have to do it in a rented HazMat suit.

We're making a family trip to the local Big Box Discount store this evening for rations and supplies. He needs a shower curtain, and since he took ours, we need a new iron and ironing board. There will be a filling of the empty kitchen cupboards and the pretense of stocking up on cleaning supplies. There will be buckets of money spent on unnecessary "must haves" and a couple of hours of cleaning, sorting and puttering around his new space. Mostly by me, I'm sure. Even so, I'm looking forward to the excursion, and the chance to help him make his new place feel a little more like home.

It's been a long time coming for my man-child, this branching out into the grown up world. And I suffer no delusions about it being cost-free and easy, in the short or long term. But it is a step in a good and positive direction, and for that I do suffer illusions of awakening inner peace and latent pride.

Besides, you know, his place is less than a mile from here.

Which is close enough for him to stop by this morning on his way to work, just to grab a banana.

So there's that.

Life Imitating Art

I was loading the dishwasher when the phone rang.

J: Hello?

Mom: Jen? Hey! I need your input.

J: On?

Mom: Well...I was at the funeral home today making some arrangements.

J: (drops pot in sink) Wha??

Mom: You know we both want to be cremated. I'm just trying to get things in order so we don't have to worry about it later.

J: Mom, if you're gone, you won't be worrying about anything. And you shouldn't scare a person like that, all out of the blue. But okay. Yes. You want to be cremated.

Mom: Yes! And well, don't you think it's nice of me to want to make the arrangements now? I don't want you to be dealing with this stuff in your time of constant sorrow.

J: Okay, okay. Yes, it's very sweet of you. Um. Thank you?

Mom: Well, anyway...oh! They've got the nicest food selection and everything. You won't have to lift a finger. And I'm getting a great price planning it for both of us at the same time.

J: You mean, a "two-fer" kind of thing?

Mom: Yes! Isn't that wonderful! Anyway...stop laughing and listen...oh! Another thing! If you want to see us before...you know...you have 24 hours to get here. It's the law. So you'll have to hurry. But you won't have to worry! That's a fair trade, don't you think?

J: Um...

Mom: JENNIFER DEA STOP LAUGHING! Listen, here's the thing. The reason I called. They have these really nice urns and such, but I don't know. They didn't really appeal to me. And what would you do with me in an urn, stuff me in the attic somewhere?

J: Mother. Seriously. My stomach hurts. Stop it.

Mom: Okay. So we talked about it and he had some really super ideas. Just terrific! I'm so excited...

J: Really? Excited? I can't hardly wait...

Mom: Here's the question. Ready?

J: Shoot.

Mom: Would you like us as a birdbath?

J: Wha??

Mom: Or you could get us as a sundial! Wouldn't that be neat?

J: ...

Mom: You could put it in your garden and every now and then you could yell out the window, "Hey Dad! What time is it?"

October sky.

This is my favorite month. I love the shortening days, the crisping air, the changing leaves. I even love to say its name, the way it rolls off my tongue, all rotund and capricious: October.

I've brewed a cup of tea, Yogi's Breathe Deep blend, and take in the aroma of the billowing steam that floats off its surface. It calms me. Soothes me on this early fall day, so full of literal open windows and figurative open doors, so full of the unknowns that lie between the maybes and the mights.

The race at Talladega is playing out on the TV screen, muted, the roaring of the metal machines replaced by the sounds of the neighbor kid's squeals and lawn mowers.

I put the earphones on and press 'play'. Some of the stories are as familiar to me as the man telling them.

When I was a kid, I went to five different elementary schools in six years.

But some take me by surprise.

I remember my first day of school, first grade. We'd just moved into a new neighborhood and I didn't know anybody yet. Both my parents worked, of course, and I would usually walk to school. But on this day, my first, they drove me to school and dropped me off. Dad shook my hand and told me to learn a lot. Mom squeezed my shoulders and told me to be polite. I was a nervous wreck, and watching them drive off ... well, I can remember the sinking feeling like it was yesterday. I walked toward the school, and there on the playground was a group of kids jumping rope. You know how they do? With one kid on one end, another on the other, turning the rope over and over while kids run through it?

Well, I pulled myself together and walked right over to them, looking to make some new friends. Turns out, I should've been looking to see where I was going, instead, because next thing I knew - BAM! That rope hit me square in the face. And hard! Man, did it hurt. It hurt so bad, I started crying like a baby, and those kids, they started laughing at me. I was so mortified, I ran all the way home and stayed in my bed until my parents got home. I told them I was never going back there, ever, no matter what. I'm sure Mom gave me the sympathy I was looking for, but Dad, well...he'd have none of it. "Life is tough, son," he said. "Seems like that was the lesson for today. There will be a new one to be learned tomorrow, and you'll be there to learn it."

The next day, they got me up and we got ready as if nothing had ever happened. We ate breakfast and got in the car and pulled up to the front of the school building, about four blocks away. As I got out of the car, Dad shook my hand and told me to learn a lot. Mom fussed over my hair and told me to be good. I turned and walked up the stairs to the playground, so nervous I was almost sick.

It was years later, at my high school graduation, when I found out that my dad had driven around the block, parked the car, and walked back toward the school to watch. "I saw you go up to that playground and walk right up to those kids jumping rope. It took you a few minutes, but you did it. When I saw you get in line to take your turn, laughing with the rest of them, I knew my boy was going to be just fine. You've been making the very best out of every tough situation you've found yourself faced with since. And I couldn't be prouder."

Dad's voice catches a little and the tape whirrs. I push stop and take the earphones out, glancing at the stack of miniature cassettes perched on the table beside me.

My tea is no longer hot, but that's okay. I sip it anyway.

It still tastes good, if a little bittersweet.

Six Degrees of Separation

Joe Biden. It's a solid pick.

I'm pretty sure I've never mentioned it here, but a relative of mine is a United States Senator. Said Senator's wife was pregnant with her youngest at the same time I was pregnant with mine. We have pictures of us together - two bloated, ready-to-pop brunettes linking arms with our two charming men, one geologist, and one (at the time) a sitting member of the US House of Representatives. Said Senator is a long-time very close friend of Joe Biden.

We used to see them a couple of times a year. Granted, these days our visits usually take place with me on the sofa and him on CSPAN, but sitll...how many degrees of separation are there now between me and our future president?

Me.

The husband.

The related US Senator.

Secret Service security detail.

The presumptive Vice President.

Barack Obama.

Six.

Six somewhat broad degrees of barrier filled separation between me and (potentially) the White House.

Not for nothin', but how flippin' cool is *that*?

The tale of the tape(s).

Leading up to his retirement, my dad went through a period of mental hand wringing over how he would spend his time. His physical limitations would mean that long dreamed of golden years spent on the golf course or traveling the country with my mother would not be very likely. This, in his mind, meant that the end of his life without work to occupy his days equated to the end of his life, period.

He's very emotional these days, my dad. Very self-absorbed in his health issues and his past, very self-pitying and easily depressed. The one thing that seems to make him happiest, that takes him out of himself, is reliving memories of yesterday.

We try to tell him that he's got a lot of years left to make new memories. We try to tell him that life does not end when retirement begins. But it's a tough mental state to navigate, much less bridge, when someone is filled with negative self-determination.

So, as a gift for his retirement, I bought him two books designed to help him draw out his full head of memories and document his life story. They are crammed with interesting questions, each one building on the last. And a couple of weeks ago, my mother bought him a small hand held tape recorder.

Suffice to say, he has been a very busy man lately, much to his own amazement. He told me last night that he has filled three two-sided tapes with stories, recollections and anecdotes, many long forgotten, many never told before, many bringing up details that surprise even him. And, it should be noted, there has been the addition of a spring in his voice during recent phone calls, much missed in recent months and wonderful to hear.

Now I have my work cut out for me. Because I am the designated transcriber of these tales on tape, which include verbal directorial notes from the "author" interspersed with the stories. He calls me almost every time he finishes a question's response, reliving the memory yet again across the distance via telephone, so that by the time we are finished with this project, I will have heard, read or typed the stories so many times, they will be permanently, indelibly ingrained in my own memory bank.

He's enjoying himself immensely. He is embarking on this "work" as a mission to give his grandchildren a sort of legacy, by virtue of an intricately detailed "Where I'm From"; a gift from the heart: his to theirs. In fact, he's using my oldest, his firstborn granddaughter, as his muse, often addressing his tales directly to her, which lend them an even deeper layer of intimacy.

I was informed that the first batch of tapes have been duly dispatched and that I can expect them in my mailbox any day now. I was advised that I am to take full creative license with his ramblings, editing them to imbue them with creativity and a sense of flow. I have been put on notice that this is a project full of high expectations and meaning.

I feel the pressure.

But I'm thrilled beyond words - his or my own - to be entrusted with the task.

Jennifer

Grandma

Sunday was my grandmother's birthday. I spent most of the day scanning and cropping a collection of photographs, chronicling her life.

I was born exactly forty-six years and two days after her, and rumor has it, I take after her in every way.

I remember one particular year when I was no more than five or six, sitting around my grandparents' huge dining room table, the entire family gathered in her honor. I pushed my way through the cousins to squeeze in as close to her as I could.

"There you are. I was just thinking about you. You know, the year you were born was my best birthday ever."

I argued with her. "Nuh-uh, Grandma. I didn't get here in time for your birthday."

"Oh, but I knew you were on your way, sweetness, and that was the nicest gift of all."

That conversation has stayed with me all these years. It could have happened yesterday, as vivid as it is. I even remember how important and special it made me feel. Grandmas are good at that, yes they are. At least mine is. Was.

But then, I've always been one lucky girl.

Happy birthday, Grandma. I wish I could hug your neck today.

I wish that lots of days, come to think of it.

Sunday was my grandmother's birthday. I spent most of the day scanning and cropping a collection of photographs, chronicling her life.

I was born exactly forty-six years and two days after her, and rumor has it, I take after her in every way.

I remember one particular year when I was no more than five or six, sitting around my grandparents' huge dining room table, the entire family gathered in her honor. I pushed my way through the cousins to squeeze in as close to her as I could.

"There you are. I was just thinking about you. You know, the year you were born was my best birthday ever."

I argued with her. "Nuh-uh, Grandma. I didn't get here in time for your birthday."

"Oh, but I knew you were on your way, sweetness, and that was the nicest gift of all."

That conversation has stayed with me all these years. It could have happened yesterday, as vivid as it is. I even remember how important and special it made me feel. Grandmas are good at that, yes they are. At least mine is. Was.

But then, I've always been one lucky girl.

Happy birthday, Grandma. I wish I could hug your neck today.

I wish that lots of days, come to think of it.

Distilled

My dad is a road man.

Or was, I guess, officially, now that his retirement celebration has passed and his days behind a desk, in front of a legislator or knee deep in research are no more.

But no. Really, the absence of those things in his daily life will never change the basic fact.

My dad is a road man.

Has been for most of his adult life, and will be in the minds of others in the industry for generations to come.

If this wasn't evident before, the events of this past weekend left no doubt. The video tributes. The medal of distinction. The plaques and framed honors from every corner. The distances traveled to be part of the moment. The speeches. The gamut of emotions, from humor to wistfulness, from happiness at celebrating a career well played to the sadness that can accompany a long good-bye. The people, all 350 or so of them.

He's a star in his field and a hero to his peers, internationally renowned and universally admired. The words "mentor" and "integrity" and "stature" and "character" were repeated over and over again. The words "distinguished" and "pioneer" and "leader", too.

When the speeches given by those he's worked closest with over the years lauding his eventful and illustrious career ended, my brother was introduced. None of us knew it, but this had been planned well in advance. As he rose to speak, before he ever said a single word, a lump formed in my throat. As he came off the stage, after speaking with a grace and eloquence that took my breath away, he bent to shake our father's hand while tears flowed freely down my cheeks. It was the most moving and memorable moment imaginable, and a touching tribute I know Dad will forever cherish.

The entire event was everything we could have wished for him, and then some.

My dad used to tell me that his own father, on more than one occasion, gave him a piece of advice he never forgot and never took lightly. "Whatever you do in this world, make sure to leave the road ahead a little easier for those who follow you." It seemed a prescient choice of words from a man who couldn't have known the path his son's life would take.

My dad is a road man, alright. But that description has little to do with the spectacular highways, or the bridges, or the groundbreaking transportation legislation he's been responsible for in the course of his vocational travels.

It has everything to do with the grace and the dignity, the wisdom and the integrity he has used to navigate the journey that is his life through its many twists and turns.

Because of him, the road ahead is a little easier for all of us who find ourselves lucky enough to follow behind.

And I have to believe that somewhere up there, my grandpa is looking down on his son - my father - with a heart brimming with pride, safe in the knowledge that his words were heeded in most spectacular fashion.

'M' is for so many things...

This is a tough one. Don't know where to start describing Mom. She's in a league of her own, simply stated.

She's physically petite, an eyelash shy of five foot tall. She's emotionally larger than life; her spirit permeates all of us and her devotion is the backbone of our entire family unit. She loves with such passion that it is sometimes overwhelming. And I would be remiss if I didn't disclose that her mouth...no, her voice...is her most pronounced feature.

I don't know if it is fair to say that she is most content to be "the woman behind...". She loves to be center stage and is cunningly expert at securing this position on the face of any situation. On the other hand, her defining trait is her ability to encourage, push, drive, counsel, nudge, and yes, even sometimes guilt, those she loves into exceeding their every potential. She is unabashedly proud, deserved or not, of each and every one of us and makes damn sure that the world around her knows that they should be blown away by our very excellence.

She is a nurturer, a care taker, and a source of strength. She feels everything with magnification and she wears her heart on her sleeve.

This is my mother...

I'm 18 and a freshman in college. I've been hell on my mother through my high school years, busted for smoking, partying, skipping class and keeping dubious company. We've battled, cried, fought, accused, made up and started all over again more times than one could count in a three year span.

I show up on her doorstep on a Thursday night in January, when I should have been three hours away, safely ensconced in my dorm room. I see the surprise on her face as she hollowly scolds me for coming home so soon after the Christmas break. Boyfriend (and future Hubby) says, "We need to talk to you guys." Without another word, she retreats to the basement to get my Dad. What seems an interminable time later, they both come upstairs and sit with us in the living room. We (Hubby-to-be, actually) announce awkwardly that we are, unintentionally, pregnant. While I know her heart is breaking, my Mom looks straight at me and asks, "What do you want to do? What can we do for you?"

I've never loved or admired my mother more than in that one moment. From the second we decided we would do "the right thing", her support never wavered. Her advice never failed us. Her determination to turn the unexpected into a blessing in disguise is what placed my marriage on solid footing from the start.

This is my mother...

After a rough ride through my teen years together, we both acknowledge freely that we are each other's best friend. We talk several times a week and we get together as often as we can. She can drive me crazy, just as I'm sure I can return the favor for her. She's incapable of holding anything back, even if it's critical, or a painful truth. But she is equally incapable of being anything less that giving, thoughtful, caring, kind, and present, one hundred percent of the way. The overriding definition of my Mom, and I do not use this cliche lightly, is that she is the Real Deal. She is always and forever herself, Katy bar the door, love her or leave her, what you see is what you get. She blows me away with her energy and her truth.

There only a few places I can go when I feel all alone in the world. One of them is into my mother's arms. It's one of the only places I know that I am loved unconditionally, pure and true.

When I finally do grow up, I will consider myself successful beyond measure if I can manage to become half the woman my mother is today. She's an inspiration. She's a strong and beautiful soul. She's nothing short of one of the most incredible gifts in my life.

I love you, Mom. To the moon and back, and then some.

Happy Mother's Day.

Tough Love

"Are you laughing?"

"No, no, no...well, yes. A little. But not at you, darlin', I promise."

"I fail to see the humor."

"I know. But surely you remember?"

"Remember what?"

"Jennifer Dea."

"Oh gaaawwwd, Mother. First of all, that is so much ancient history and has taken on the air of mythology by now. Second of all, this is totally different."

"Yes, it is different. You were worse. You should count your blessings."

*sigh*

"Let me tell you a little story. Once upon a time, there was a seventeen year-old high school senior living in my house. She was loved and adored by everyone who knew her. They thought she was the sweetest, smartest, most polite young lady. Half the time I barely recognized the girl they thought they knew so well, because in our house? Hoo boy, the fun never stopped, did it? In fact, the good times came so fast and furious, I seem to recall her being grounded an average of every other weekend her last year of high school."

"Yeah, but..."

"Like the time we came home early from a weekend away and caught you sneaking in the basement. At five in the morning. What was your defense again? Let me think...oh yes! You were out 'walking the dog'. That's right. How could I forget such a classic?"

"You still aren't sure. I could've been."

"And then, was it the very next week? They all run together in a big blur. It wasn't too long after, at any rate. You were grounded, in your room with that music blasting and the door locked. Two of your sweet girlfriends came over to help you study for a test. Apparently, the test question involved some sort of experiment as to how much vodka and cranberry juice one teenage girl could drink in one sitting before getting caught throwing it all up out her second story bedroom window. I'll give you this much: the outside of our house was never cleaner than when you scrubbed it down that afternoon."

*audible groans* Inaudible thoughts: 'These are just the stories she knows. What she will never know won't kill her.'

"Poor Donna. No wonder she was your favorite teacher. I always thought it was because she was my girlfriend. Or because you loved English. Little did I know. I'll never, as long as I live, forget when she let it slip that you spent nearly every seventh period in the gym scrimmaging with the boy's basketball team. Or in the outfield during baseball batting practice, shagging balls for the team. Or borrowing random cars from people to run your own personal shuttle service to take your friends home, or to work, or wherever."

"Yeah, well, she knew exactly where I was. She trusted me."

"Too bad I didn't. When I got upset with her for letting this go on all year long without informing me, she said, 'Judie, the girl could be teaching this class. She's bored in here, and she does the work. She's my best student.' Who never saw fit to show up for class. What. Ever. And then! How could I forget?! Then, trying to defend herself, Donna went on to inform me that your first period psychology teacher was scared of you! The poor woman gave you A's for not attending. How pathetic is that?"

"Well, see? There's a big difference. Scott is not a scholar, by any stretch of the imagination."

"That's not the point, and you know it. Don't revert to old, bad form, Miss Argumentative. All this reminiscing is really reminding me what a pain in my backside you were. Talk about stress."

"This conversation is eerily similar to all those times I'd call you after a fight, and you'd defend your son-in-law over me."

"Well? I was right then, too, wasn't I?"

*rolls eyes in general direction of the phone*

"I heard that. Don't roll your eyes at me. Another one! You surely remember The Stand."

"No."

"Yes, you do. I do. The great 'Potential' speech. I am allowed to utter the 'P' word now, right? The speech. Another classically irrational moment. 'I hate that word! I never want to hear it again! I'll NEVER use that disgusting, nasty word on my kids, if I ever have them, I SWEAR ON EVERYTHING I KNOW!!' Scarlett O'Hara would have been proud. You stood up on your ever present soapbox and took on 'He Who Could Never Do Any Wrong In His Daughter's Eyes'. I was never more shocked in my life. Shocked the stress and fret right out of me for a day or two, in fact, as I recall."

"Enough already. I get your point."

"Then there was the smoking. And the time your dad ran into you in the bar at the Marriott. Oh, and remember when I gave Roger (a neighbor who conveniently happened to be our town's Chief of Police) a list of your known associates and it upset him enough that he made a personal visit to warn you to stay away from them? Such *good* friends you had for a while there. Where are they now, anyway? Jail?"

"Good god. I was a mess."

"Yes you were, bless your peaked little head."

"Have I ever apologized, by the way?"

"A million times over, in a million different ways. Not the least of which is by giving us two of the most perfectly wonderful grand babies ever created. Scott, included. I can't say I'm glad we went through the things we did with you back then, but look at you now. Look at us now. I wonder sometimes if we could have gotten here without going there."

"So, what, then? I just wait it out and pray for the best?"

"Yes. And when you start to have doubts, take a good, long look in the mirror."

"Why? To remember what an ass I was so I won't kill him with my bare hands?"

"No, darlin'. To remember what a strong and beautiful woman you turned out to be. You will survive. And so will he."

A mother's work.

It really is never done, is it?

Just because.

Sitting on the floor, surrounded by cars of every shape and size, he resembled a miniature puppeteer, master of a world of his own creation.

"The red one goes here and the Bobby car comes up behind him and BAM!" And just like that, the red one is flipped end over end, settling forlornly in a sort of no-man's land, while the Bobby car is paraded in sweeping circles following the convenient pattern woven into the living room rug, serenaded by an atonal victory hum.

This would go on for hours. Cars ramming into each other, then changing course and politely moving out of the way, only to hunt down their former hunters in game of cat and mouse on wheels. The chases were brief and intermittent, the captures and crashes spectacular. Only one was spared incident, only one parked in the spot of honor, part observer, part overlord, part charge guard, part accident never to happen.

The firetruck.

Four times bigger than the rest of the fleet, and solid. Bright red with a working ladder and a silver clanging bell.

I asked him once.

"How come the fire engine never gets to play?"

He looked at me as if I'd asked him, all of three years old, why the earth rotated on its axis in an orbit around the sun. Then he sighed, turned his attention back to the work at hand, and dismissed me.

"Because, Mommy."

And, you know? I totally got it.

Sometimes the only real reason for a thing is just because.

____________________________

These silly moments come flooding back at the oddest time lately. I can be cleaning up after dinner, or working on a project at work, and out of the blue, a memory strikes, taking me by surprise, filling me with a wistfulness that colors the rest of my day.

____________________________

"When I'm twelve, how old will you be?"

"Let's see, I'll be thirty-seven when you are twelve."

He thinks this is hilarious, and his wide-eyed giggle makes me smile.

"When I'm firty-seven, how old will you be?"

"Well," I answer, stalling for time to do the math, "let's think. When you are thirty-seven, I'll be sixty-two."

Hearing this number, he can barely contain himself.

"Sixty-two!?!" He is incredulous, and it comes out a cross between a squeal and guffaw.

Several seconds later, he settles down, and looks my way, a glint in his eye. I know what's coming, and work the calculation furiously in my head before he asks.

"When I'm sixty-two, how old will you be?"

"When you are sixty-two? I don't know. I'll be A LOT!"

"No! Tell me!"

"Okay. Let me see. When you are sixty-two, I'll be...eighty-seven."

His eyes grow wide, but he doesn't laugh, looking to me for some sort of sign.

"Eighty-seven," I say, and shake my head, a little sadly. "Then I'll be very, very old."

He crawls up on my lap and lays his head against my chest.

"That's awight, Mommy."

And suddenly he seems much wiser and more wary than his five years might allow.

____________________________

I have no idea what triggers them, or why they've suddenly come to occupy so many of my thoughts. They aren't the Kodak memories deliberately tucked away for safe keeping, the ones that are common threads of family lore, recalled often, when expected. They're the briefest, nearly disposable times. Simple conversations or random snippets of a growth spurt, forgotten soon after they happened.

Except, not really.

____________________________

"I need to speak with you if you have a minute."

His teacher had stopped me in the hall, and the words she chose caused me to brace myself, involuntarily.

"Something happened today, and I think you should know about it."

I was prepared for the worst, a half-defensive apology already forming in my brain, a response to an as yet unstated charge.

I wasn't prepared for what she said next, and when she did say it, I had no ready reply.

"So, did you have a good day?"

"Yeah."

"I hear you made a new friend."

"Yeah."

"His name is Allen? Tell me about him."

I asked. But I already knew that Allen was the new kid in school. The new boy with cerebral palsy, who walked funny and talked funny and had cried in class nearly every day of his first week there.

Until this day, when he made a new friend.

One who sat with him on the playground and who traded cookies with him at lunch and who walked with him to the library, side by side, step by slow and painstaking step.

"He's just a kid at school. He's cool.I like him."

I reached over and hugged my baby, my boy, and I must have squeezed a little too hard, a little too long for his comfort.

"Jeez, Mom. What was that for?"

"Just because," I might have said, if I could have found my voice.

____________________________

I don't know where they come from, but I'm glad they come.

And so I write them down, to remember them in earnest.

Just because.

Sealed with a kiss.

"What is it you're wantin' to do again?" He gave the slender tape recorder I'd placed on the arm of his chair a suspicious once over.

"Nothing painful. Have a conversation. Try to get you to tell me one or two of those stories of yours. Shouldn't be too hard, should it?"

"What in the world would anyone want to know about me? I'm just Jesse Lawrence from Ripley. Nothing so special about me worth puttin' on any "E"-lectronic devices, now is there?"

I smiled, shaking my head. "I beg to differ. To hear you tell it on a good day, there's plenty of "special" about you."

He smiled back, settling into the recliner while his guard poodle Tina settled into his lap. "Okay, then."

We sat there for a few minutes, the pause filled with the soft whirring of the recorder positioned between us. I wasn't quite sure how to start, now that I'd gotten him to agree to my proposition.

"Tell me about your mother."

It was the only thing I could think of at the time, and as soon as the words crossed my lips I wanted to kick myself. It sounded so ... Freudian.

But it worked. Like a quick squirt of WD40 on a too tight hinge.

"There's a story for you. Mama. You know, she never did learn to read. Raised eleven of us and had to deal with my daddy on top of that. Worked her fingers to the bone from dawn to dusk, doing everything the hard way. The only way, back then. But nope. Never did learn to read.

She used to sign her name with a big 'X'. She was pretty proud of that 'X', straight and neat. Took her near as long to mark a paper with that as it does for me to sign my name.

She wasn't educated too much in the book sense herself, but boy, she was a smart cookie. And when it came to us kids? The book learnin' was number one. No way she was lettin' her young 'uns go through life without knowing how to read, and to write, and to work figures. There was no slacking for us when it came to our school work.

No slacking for us about anything, now that I'm thinkin' about it. She was a tough woman, my mama. Had to be, I reckon. I mean, look at the times she was livin' in. Wasn't all that long ago, I guess, but it was a different world back then. No iceboxes, or indoor plumbing. No telephones. We lived on the farm, out in the middle of nowhere. Wasn't an easy thing, getting to a store, or church, or wherever, I guess.

Mama cooked all day long, it seemed like sometimes. Morning to night, filling up the table with enough food to keep thirteen people fed so they could work hard as they needed to, to get the job done.

She sewed most of our clothes, too. By hand. And still managed to do her fair share of farmin' chores. She was somethin' else, now that I think back on it. How she did it, I'll never know.

One thing is, by the time I came along, and Beulah and Walter, too, the older kids were quite a good bit older. We three were the extras, almost a second family, in a way. Some of the older kids were gone by the time I remember much about them at that age. In the military. Married. Moved on. The others helped with us, but seems we had pretty much free run to raise ourselves by the time we got there. Mama was already an old woman by then, lived a hard, long life. She was hard woman.

I don't mean that in any mean way, you understand. She wasn't one for makin' a big fuss about lovin' on us. Not many hugs and kisses, and boy, heaven itself help you if you run to her crybabyin'. But she loved us, and we knew it. Every last one of us did.

Did you know she used to cut stories out of the newspaper, whenever I was mentioned in them? About the Diner, or whatever in town. She couldn't read them, of course, but someone must have pointed them out to her, because she had a whole drawer full of them saved up.

I remember one time, she sent me a card with one of the advertisements from the Diner folded up inside. I knew it was from her, because right there on the clipping, beside my picture, she'd put a big, neat 'X'. Card was blank, except for that. I've still got it around here somewhere."

He trailed off, and drifted off, lost, I guess, in a wash of memories. The recorder whirred on with its soft, scratchy filler noise. I felt twelve years old again, unsure of what to say next.

"Grandpa?"

"Um-hmm?"

"You know what? When I send cards to you, I always sign them with an 'X', too. And 'O's'. For kisses and hugs."

"That's true. You do."

"Maybe your mama was sending you her kisses with that 'X' beside your picture. Stored up, from all that time before."

Another pause.

More whirring.

"Jennifer Dea? That sounds just about right to me. It surely does."

---------------------------------

I hear rustling, me pushing up from my seat. I hear myself lean over.

I hear the big kiss I planted on his left cheek.

Then I hear a click, and the whirring falls silent.

On the sunny side of the street.

I had what some might call the happy misfortune of being born into an uncynical life. It was nothing I did, personally, mind you. Purely the work of fate, juxtaposing my timely arrival against the untimely demise of some who, had they lived to be part of it, would have surely been forces capable of shaping my life, of molding me in their cynical image, out of love, for my own good, the better to see the world, my dear.

This is all occurring to me now, specifically, because of research. Family research, being undertaken at the insistence of my father, who has a retirement date in sight and is looking for his next vocation. He seems to have found it, and it seems to include me and vast amounts of my time, as his unrecruited, but nevertheless drafted, able-bodied right hand.

He is writing a book.

Slight reality check: he is dictating tales, and directing traffic, and forwarding mass amounts of never ending information in my direction. I, apparently, am writing a book.

I am writing something, anyway.

I may have mentioned it here a time or thirty, or then again it may never have made its way into a post, because the very thought at various moments can both fill me with pride and gall me with its own brand of cynicism, but my father has asked me to write his obituary. Not recently. Well, yes, recently. Often. But it first began when I was only fourteen, young, immortal, stupid, and arrogant enough to take the request as a sign of his admiration for my talents.

As the years have passed, the request evolved from demand to assumption, and has been repeated in a myriad of settings, in a myriad of states of mind, in a myriad of timbres: light and silly, somber and morose, drunken and sentimental. The salient point being, the request has never died a slow and agonizing death, who's epitaph and farewell I'd be thrilled to write. The request has, instead, become fact through repetition, a family given. An "understood". A "my will be done", bequeathed from father to adoring daughter.

And so, it's there, always. Sitting casually in the corners of our conversations, tucked in between the pages of the old high school and college yearbooks filled with stories of his storied youth, another link in the chain strengthening the already steely bond between a little girl, all grown up, and her first love and constant hero.

And now, he's writing a book.

I can't decide yet whether it is the story of his life or, more simply, just the story of life. I get the feeling they are one and the same.

Time will tell.

Blips

During an appointment with the vet yesterday to update her shots, Maggie was exhibiting signs of what I believed to be her every six-weekish hairball ordeal. These ordeals, which involve much palpitating of the tummy area with a side of brief retching while stubbornly refusing to actually cough up anything, have been commonplace, albeit not very frequent, events in her catterly life. To the doctor's trained eye, however, they had nothing to do with hairball expulsion and everything to do with breathing.

Three hundred dollars worth of x-rays, blood tests, and prescriptions later, I find myself the mother of an asthmatic cat.

Whoever heard of an asthmatic cat?

Not me, that's for sure. And yet, I have one.

Me and cats and nursing regimens, we're *likethis*.

Apparently.

The good news is that the news is not bad, not in a dire sort of way. She got a shot of steroids (quick, alert CONGRESS!), and came home with prednisone pills, cut in little quarter pieces, some for now, some in case of future "attacks". She'll be fine.

But still.

An asthmatic cat.

Go figure.

_____________________________

In other medical news, my father enjoyed a ride in an ambulance yesterday morning. While at the office, he stood (which is an ordeal in its own right, requiring the right chair with sturdy enough arms to aid in his propelling himself to an upright position) to get a book from a high shelf, then lowered himself back down in his seat, feeling a not-quite-right hitch. Reaching around to his backside, his hand fell upon a lump nearly the size of a baseball and his immediate thought was that his hip replacement had come out of socket. Even though this wasn't a completely rational thought, as there was no pain and had that happened, there would, indeed, be vast amounts of pain, he panicked. As would most people.

He's a very large man, tall-wise. My mother is a very small woman, tall-wise. The only option to get him down the narrow stairwell of the old train depot that houses his office was to call 911. It took three burly men to lower him down the stairs, using aforementioned sturdy chair as their carrier, and to then relocate him to a stretcher for the ride to the hospital.

As it turned out, it's just a muscle spasm. X-rays showed the hip to be in beautiful condition, not a thing to worry about there, thank heaven. The spasm is being treated with muscle relaxers (pill number 23 in his daily regimen?) and ice packs. He was home by mid-afternoon and I spoke with him just as my parents were about to sit down to dinner last night.

My mother didn't call me until then, you see. Which was either very wise on her part, lest I commence to panicking myself, or very loathsome on her part, in which case my berating her for such untimely  notification was just and pure.

She also made her plans to take care of Grandma's business in West Virginia on the precise dates she KNEW I would be out of town and unavailable to come to Kentucky to spell her for a few days. As it stands, she's leaving my dad home alone for at least one night and my brother will go to spend a few days with him the next morning.

In which case, from my perspective, my berating* of her was just and pure regardless.

*sigh*

Parents.

Your kids grow to some fateful point just beyond your grasp, and there they are, growing older and lying in wait to take the youngsters place in the worry rooms of your heart.

My fondest hope is that one day I can pay the favor forward and weigh heavy like a stone of responsibility upon the life of my own youngest child.

Assuming, at least, that my oldest will be close by.

Very close by.

Like, maybe in the next room, even.

__________________________

*I didn't really berate her, you know. Just pouted enough to make her feel bad. Because I have that power. I inherited it from her.

This, that, and another thing or two.

Maybe it's because I don't normally watch award shows, but I thought the Grammys last night was incredible. I was viewing it from the perspective of what it might be like to be there live, given that my brother and sister-in-law *were* there live. Seen from that point of view, the eclectic line up was a once in a lifetime sort of gig. I've yet to hear from the glamor duo regarding their experience, but I'm sure I will, soon, and knowing my brother, at great detailed length.

The only things I do know about their trip to Los Angeles so far: they rented a Sebring convertible to tool around in for $20 a day, had an amazing lunch at Spago on Saturday, and for reasons known only to them, called us as they were on their own personal little "OJ Trial" tour, trying to get us to look up Nicole Brown Simpson's address. Had I taken the call, I would have declined impolitely, citing poor taste. My husband, on the other hand, is a total sucker and spent fifteen minutes trying to aid and abet them.

______________________________

I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, shaking and feeling sick to my stomach. Because I had a dream of awful and epic proportions, one that seemed as real as the sun in the sky, in vivid, graphic imagery. I dreamed that my brother's plane crashed somewhere over St. Louis on their way home. And I dreamed that I learned about it because he called me on his cell phone to tell me some obscure piece of information and subsequently shot streaming video of the plane going down out his window, as it happened.

It was horrific.

It took me an hour to settle down and get back to sleep.

I don't think I'll ever tell them about this dream.

______________________________

We're trying to work out a time for me to travel to Kentucky to stay with my dad while Mom goes to West Virginia to tend to business left behind by my grandmother. Like the reading of the will. Like the cleaning out of the house. Like the planning for repairs and maintenance to ready the property for sale.

It will be a bittersweet endeavor for my mother, but I do believe all of the surviving siblings are finally ready to let go and move on. The past two or three years with my grandma have been such a purgatorious time (and I know it's probably not a word, but it's exactly the right word, nevertheless.) Everything has been held in limbo. They didn't want to spend too much money on the house, because they were trying to plan for paying for her long term care. They didn't want to sell the house, because they just couldn't part with it as long as she was living. They didn't want to empty the house, because as long as they were holding on to it, they might as well use it as the place to stay on the various trips back and forth.

Now they've got their work cut out for them, and I don't envy what they're facing.

______________________________

My daughter called on Saturday morning en route to a spend the afternoon at Luray Caverns with friends, sounding light of heart and high of spirit. It was good to hear the lilting laughter in her voice again after so many months of being wary of answering the phone only to hear her pitiful sorrows. She's happy. Loves her new job, the commute isn't so bad, is making many new friends, is captain of a kick-ass kickball team for the winter season, has been hanging out with her ex as friends occasionally, and will be voting for Obama in the Virginia primary tomorrow.

Yes, I just threw that last bit in there for gratuitous effect.

Because, you know.

I can.

______________________________

Tonight's the big night for my boys. They are headed to Charlotte for the Lakers vs. Bobcats match up. Both are excited, each for their own reasons, and my husband splurged on great seats, just because. They'll leave here around one this afternoon and plan to drive back after the game, meaning they'll get home around 1 a.m. tonight.

Meaning, an evening to myself in the comfort of my own home.

Everybody say, "Hey-ya!"

Letting a few smile inducing pictures speak thirteen words for me this rainy, dreary Thursday.

Click collage to view a new photo album, should you be so inclined.

Sugar and spice.

My daughter called last night. It was well after midnight when the phone trilled, and I had a sinking feeling in my bones even before I answered it. When I finally did lift the receiver, all I could hear from the other end were her heart breaking tears, with an occasional salient word making its way through. "We...broke...up," she sobbed.

And the first clear thought that sprang to mind was, "Here we go again."

The guilt was instantaneous and lingers still, but the thought was borne from an honest weary defensiveness against this year long barrage of deep despair she's been living through, and I've been witnessing, from a helpless vantage point of several hundred miles away.

I feel for her, to my core, I honestly do. And I know she comes to me for support, not for a good shoulder shaking "snap out of it!" But at the same time, I am filled with frustration with this weak, hopeless, submissive person she's allowed herself to become. Frustration in not being able to do anything beyond listen and talk and listen some more. Frustration in not understanding where this level of intense insecurity came from, and how it was permitted to grow to such alarming breadth.

This boy she's been with since March...what can I say. I've never seen the attraction, and I've listened to her complain a million times about his willful thoughtlessness, his dismissive attitude, his superiority complex, his intellectual snobbery, all of which boils down to narcissistic selfishness when properly distilled.

She knows it. We know it.

She's known it.

But I think, even as she knew it, he served a purpose. He filled a gap and was a human connection while she suffered through her identity crisis earlier this summer. Between the time she quit her job and finally found a new one, he was a months long fix-it project for her. A distraction.

My theory is this: that she blew a fuse last night and set off the implosion of their relationship was symbolic of her severing the final ties that still existed between the life she's been miserable living this past year and the new future she's carving out for herself with a new job, a return to the place she thinks of as home, and old friends. It's the ribbon cutting ceremony designating out with the old past and in with the new future with all the possibilities implied therein.

She's not quite seeing the metaphor for herself just yet, although I think she might someday.

We've chatted on and off all day. At one point, as she began to wallow around in the sea of regrets both real and perceived she is harboring about this past year, I stopped her. I told her we all had regrets. We all made stupid choices and bad decisions and wished we'd done one thing or another differently at some point in our lives. I told her that these are the things that build our character, and build our body of life's experience, from which we learn and change and grow. From which we step forward into new days and new times and new mistakes and new experiences, and then start all over again.

I told her that she needed to start seeking validation from within, and quit laying ownership of her happiness at the feet of external influences.

I told her that life is a journey, not a destination, and that it is these times, these trials, these moments of self-doubt that enlighten us, and that make the path worth traveling in the end.

I told her I knew this to be fact, gleaned from my own experiences, not so altogether different than hers.

I told her that I realized now that for all the regrets of my youth, the older I got, the less I would change what had been, even if I could.

I told her that I'd finally reached a point where choosing happiness had become my first resort, not an afterthought, and that she'd get there, too.

I told her that after years of wondering if it really was attainable, I'd reached a place of peace and contentment and satisfaction in my life.

"In fact," I told her, "my life would be damn near perfect if my kids weren't such fucking wrecks."

...

She laughed.

Or at least she smiled a little.

I could hear it through the phone.

And when we hung up, I had to smile a little, too.

Because you know?

It'd almost be funny if it wasn't so true.

Snapshots

The four of us were sitting around my grandmother's dining room table engrossed in conversation while my nearly three year-old daughter filled a blank notebook with colored pictures and nonsensical scribbles.

"Jessi, who is that?" my mother asked, pointing in my direction.

"Mommy."

"That's right! And who am I?"

"Grandma."

"Right again! And who is that?" this time turning the tip of her finger toward my own grandmother.

Scarcely missing a beat, my little girl cocked her head to the left and pronounced, "That's More Grandma."

For the first three-fourths of her life, she was known by many names: Lyda Mae, Mother, Grandma. But for the last quarter century, she was known by only one.

She will always and forever be More Grandma.

__________________________________

At the funeral home on Friday evening, there weren't many tears shed. Instead, there was a lot of storytelling and reminiscing, a lot of catching up with old friends and family. And there was laughter, a good bit of it, which came as no surprise to any of us.

The minister who performed the funeral on Saturday afternoon did a spectacular job of capturing More Grandma's essence and of celebrating her ninety-one years on this earth. Even then, in the middle of the service, there was laughter, drawn out of the attendees by various recollections of a life long and well-lived.

He kept coming back to a single word: rejoice. He said he heard it in the voices of her children as they sat with him to plan this day. He said he saw it in the faces of her grandchildren and great grandchildren, who'd come from far and wide to honor their cherished memories. And he said he witnessed it in the multitude of photographs that rotated on the screen behind him, a wide smile evident on the face of the woman we'd gathered to remember in every single shot.

Rejoice, he said to us. It's how she lived her life.

Rejoice, he said to us. It's how she would want you to carry her with you through the rest of your own.

It felt right. It felt peaceful. It felt a fitting good-bye to this woman who not only centered our family, but who cemented it through years of casual, spontaneous get-togethers and well-planned celebrations for every milestone, large or small.

__________________________________

At the cemetery, we trudged up the wet, muddy hill to her burial site and to my right, not twenty-five steps away, I could see the tombstone marking the graves of my paternal grandparents. I had somehow forgotten that they were so close together, and in that moment I had the realization that I have no more grandparents left.

After the brief service on the hillside overlooking the city of Charleston, we were each handed a single flower stem. My brother and I made our way to our other grandparents' resting place and laid a pink rose atop the granite marker.

It was the only time I cried all weekend.

__________________________________

It occurred to me at some point along the way from the cemetery to the big house on the river that this would be, in all likelihood, our last visit to More Grandma's house. Once there, seeing the house filled with aunts and uncles, the cousins, the family friends, a flood of memories of came pouring back to me, brilliant flashes of moments when this house breathed with life of its own, and when its very heartbeat flitted throughout humming the tune to Hello, Dolly!, or refilling empty plates, or grabbing up a child to snuggle while whispering a reassuring "I love you, sugar."

Just before leaving, I felt an urgent need to capture this coda in photographs. For one, I corralled all of the cousins who were present into the marble foyer. Between the cutting up and the doubling over, it took my husband six tries to get a decent shot. When he finally did, my oldest cousin took the camera from him and said, "Okay, now, ya'll get out of the way. Let's get a picture of all the cousins who couldn't make it."

And now, there is a picture on my digital camera of the empty entrance way of my grandparents' home.

I think it's my favorite shot of the weekend. When I look at it, I can hear the eruption of laughter over Tim's shoulder as the flash went off.

__________________________________

We hugged and kissed good-bye, a process that took at least thirty minutes. We exchanged email addresses and phone numbers, and promised to stay in touch.

My cousin Tim stood by the front door, and in a rare moment of quiet said, "You know what she's hearing right now, don't you?"

We were thinking: she hears the laughter. The love. Maybe she even hears the faint wistfulness of our missing her.

But no, that wasn't it at all.

"She's getting an earful of, 'Nobody knows what a turtle knows but a turtle.'"

I could see her in my mind, quizzing Grandpa about the time he'd spent without her, and I could see the glint in his teasing eyes as he gave her his standard reply.

And then, when I closed my eyes just so, I could see her toss back her lovely head with a lilting laugh, pinch his cheek and say, "I love you, sugar."

In Winter

There are few things as desolate and bleak as the view of an aging valley town through the prism of the toll winter takes on the surrounding mountains. In any other season, the sheer magnificence of the scenic vistas steers a casual observer's senses away from the chipped paint on the clapboard houses and the detritus of lives lived tucked away from the rest of the world. But in winter, between snowfalls, when the trees are stark and the skies tend toward constant grayness, the hollows are laid bare to every traveler along the four lane highway that cuts its wide curving swath alongside the town's more narrow one, and everything is exposed.

In winter, even the white church steeple reaching for the clouds takes on a dejected, sagging profile, the single spire faded to dingy hues of dirty white, pointing a scolding "you are here" arrow toward the piles of rusted junk piled inartfully at random intervals, the lines of sheets flapping in the traffic's breeze, and the empty, forlorn front porches.

In winter, sometimes thick wood fire smoke curling from a chimney is the only sign of life.

I like to believe that I am allowed to cast such a harsh, critical eye on this place, and on these people, because I belong there, with them. I am of them, and by them, and therefore have earned an entitlement, have had instilled within me a requirement, to bear witness to the flaws, to examine the scars and the skeletons up close. To explain them to the greater world that exists beyond the mountains, outside of their close and restrictive confines. I grant myself permission to be filled with a certain disgusted bitterness toward attitudes of indifference and apathy.

But that permission comes with a price that involves losing bits of myself in the process.

Bits of empathy, bits of the romance for the past afforded by distance, bits of patience.

More costly still, I pay the painful price of losing the entitlement of belonging by stepping willfully outside of it, and judging.

But even so, I am loathe to stop, unwilling to step wholly back inside.

Even so, the price I pay feels necessary if change is ever going to come.

The Twelve Days of Christmas

It's been beautiful today, so I decided to go down to a favorite local shopping spot where I could wander aimlessly in and out of the sunshine.

I'm so glad I did, because while there, inspiration struck in a very big way.

This year, my mother is hosting a blow out Christmas at her place. We've got three additional family members joining us for parts of the holiday, courtesy of my brother's recent wedding, and all told, there could be as many as 12-15 of us in her home for the better part of the week.

One of the first stores I wandered into was a stationery shop. One of the first things I saw there was a gorgeous box of Christmas cards featuring an etching of a partridge in a pear tree.

And that's when lightening struck.

Starting the weekend after Thanksgiving, I'll be sending Mom twelve packages, each one containing a little something to help make this year's holiday festive and special. She'll be getting a gift via the postman every couple of days right up until we all arrive and the celebrating begins.

The mailings will include:

1. 1.  a partridge in a pear tree - in the form of the box of cards I found today, complete with stamps
2. 2.  a fun holiday apron and a seasonal cookbook (she, like me, collects cookbooks)
3. 3.  a box of twenty "crackers" for the Christmas Eve dinner table
4. 4.  six ornament frames containing pics of her six grandkids
5. 5.  two holiday themed CD's by Diana Krall and James Taylor
6. 6.   a 1000 piece Christmas jigsaw puzzle (it's a long time family tradition)
7. 7.  hot chocolate mix, candy canes and miniature marshmallows
8. 8.  six paintable mugs for the kids (ages 7 to 25) to decorate and USE while there
9. 9.  a lovely book to help remind her to take a break once in a while and remember the reason for the season
10. 10.  two movies (the Grinch and the Classic) the whole family can enjoy
11. 11.  a box of Christmas themed conversation starters to scatter around (I ordered a box for Thanksgiving and saw the Christmas ones, which I'll order on November 10thish)
12. 12.  a centerpiece for the dinner table, to be delivered the Friday before the holiday.

I am looking forward to this little exercise more than I can say. The act of carrying it out alone - the wrapping, the mailing, the note writing every couple of days - will be like a steady month long intravenous drip of Christmas spirit.

And oh by the way?

I think Mom is going to love it, too.

I love my family.

Seriously. Every single thing about them, from their charming charms to their idiotic idiosyncrasies. From their warmth and wit to their warts and wiles. From the tippy tops of their peaked heads to the hairs on their chinny chin chins. I adore them. Unabashedly, unapologetically, and unconditionally.

There are times getting together with them feels like a Herculean task, moving mountains to get from here to there, arranging and re-arranging schedules to accommodate all concerned, and sometimes the whole idea of it exhausts me before the it of it even begins. But once the logistics and practicalities are dealt with and the reality of being in their company comes to pass, all is forgiven and forgotten.

My brother is so damned happy, the mile wide smile he wore this weekend almost made my face hurt. He's a happier-than-most kind of guy under normal circumstances, but this wedding - or more accurately, this woman - has taken him to a higher plane, one I can only wish that everyone I love will attain at some point in their lives. The two of them together in the same room generated enough wattage to light up the night sky; all the beaming going on was almost blinding.

His babies, my niece and nephew, showed me something this weekend, too. Even at their young ages, and despite how fast everything turned upside down and round and round in their lives this past year, they spent the weekend not only sharing in the love, but spreading it, too.

My niece - holy moly. She's only ten, but she already has the performing bug and the stage presence to go with it. As a little girl, she was gangly and gawkly, always tall for her age with a pile of Shirley Temple curls on her head and a crooked little backward smile on her face. Today, she's grown into all of those awkward attributes and is a breathtaking beauty, walking and talking with her head held high, with a graceful confidence that can't be taught.

My nephew - he was the worry. At seven, he's acted out more than a few times, marking his territory as the youngest and most unwilling of their newly formed family unit. But on the day, when nerves were thin and hearts were fragile, his true colors showed through it all. I know it's been hard on him; he's very much a momma's boy and his feelings have been wrapped up in so many things a boy his age shouldn't have to count among their worries. But in the end, the overriding joy and happiness that permeated the festivities won out and found an outlet in his busy rambunctiousness, too.

I think it's going to be okay. I think they're going to be okay. And when the time comes - as it inevitably will - that stress and emotion get the best of them, the strength they take from each other will see them through.

My parents. Bless their hearts. The weekend was so good for them, it was plain to see. My mother let loose and was the belle of the ball. My father shared his fears with me and was relieved of many of them in doing so. They feed off of the energy, not just from their own children - my brother and me - but from their children's children and their extended family and the friends who have stood with them, beside them, for so many years. All it takes is us - all of us - joined in heart and soul and spirit, and I can see them grow visibly renewed, as if by magic.

And it is magic, really, this family of mine, with these deep and sustaining ties that root us to each other, while allowing us to grow into our own selves, straight and true.

But always, always, better together.

No matter the weather.

Which happened to be spectacularly glorious this weekend, for the record.

Nobody told me there'd be days like these.

Being a mom is the most challenging thing I've ever undertaken in my life. It can be among the most rewarding things, too, but days like yesterday have the power to make me want to crawl into a hole and beg forgiveness from the powers that be for ever thinking I had what it takes to do this job the way it needs to be done.

My baby girl is having a difficult time, to state the case mildly.

We invited her ex-boyfriend (and still best friend) to join us for dinner last night, at Jessi's favorite restaurant. A lovely time was being had by all, when suddenly, out of nowhere, the waterworks began and my lovely daughter's battered soul was splayed across the table, a bundle of raw nerves and hopelessness. The crying/consoling, sobbing/scolding, defensiveness/advising cycle went on for five hours. FIVE HOURS. She clearly needed to get it out of her system, and I'm grateful beyond all words that I was able to be there for her while she did. But at the same time, as the drama intensified the more she rambled, there was clearly no good way to end it.

My daughter's ex...god bless him. I used to refer to him as my future-son-in-law and he still holds a significant place within my heart of hearts. I'm not sure what I would have done without him last night, and when I asked him at one point if he needed to be somewhere else, he responded by saying, "I think I was meant to be right here, right now."

I could've kissed him.

We finally got her calmed down. We tried to tell her that all of the insecurities she was beating herself up with were really not giant monsters, but rather were opportunities. She was in no condition to want to hear talk of optimism, much less listen to it. But we kept at it, kept telling her it was okay for her to feel scared, angry, confused, irate, wronged, worried. Kept telling her that all of those feelings were valid and legitimate, but that all of those feelings weren't everything. That there was - IS - so much more to go along with them, to balance them out. Excitement, open doors, the chance to follow her dreams and find her way, at her own pace, in her own time.

It was an emotionally draining and physically exhausting evening. This morning, I feel a little on the unnerved and unfinished side of things, as if there is something I need to do for her, but haven't done. Something I can't even fully identify, and therefore can't do if I wanted to. Hugging her good-bye as she got in her car to head home was gut wrenching.

I hope the venting and release of so much emotion last night served some positive purpose. I hope she feels lighter for having let some of it go, for having no doubt that people love her, and care for her, and will be here for her, no matter what.

I hope she has a slightly different view of her world today than she did yesterday, and I hope that view will start to fill her with enthusiasm and the ability to acknowledge that she truly is about to embark on the rest of her life, and that this journey is infused with possibility.

I hope those things.

But I can't know them.

And that tears at me, just enough to hurt like hell.

Being a Mom.

It's not just a job title.

It's a character defining, perspective altering, heart owning way of life.

Then again, sometimes it's just a big gooey pile of indescribable mess; all you can do is grab the paper towels and do your damdest to clean it up, hoping against hope that it won't leave a stain.

Mean People Suck

They just do.

I wish I could discern what purpose their ilk serve in the greater Ecosystem beyond providing the suckage factor, but so far, no reasonable one has made itself evident.

My daughter is twenty-five. A grown woman, living on her own in another state, working, paying bills, saving for a retirement decades away. But there are still days - like this one - when she's my little girl, her feelings mortally wounded, and all I can think about is running to her rescue, to slay the dragons under her bed. Or in this case, in her office.

When she took this job and relocated to Charlottesville, the only people she knew were her co-workers. That has changed, of course, over the years. But in the beginning, all she knew to do was to be herself: friendly, open, trusting, and just this side of naive. She believed those co-workers to be her friends, as true and blue as any other. She believed this even after having it disproved time and time again by virtue of their behaviors, their cattiness, their public back stabbing. She tried to believe these were isolated moments, even when I could see things differently from an objective distance, even when I tried to caution her otherwise.

As the realization (slowly, slowly) dawned on her, and the truth couldn't hide behind its fakery anymore, she began to lose faith. She took everything personally, straight to heart, just like she's done since she was born, and she's been paying for it ever since.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: women working with other women is a nightmare on the best days. On the worst ones, it's calamitous.

Without saying much more, because it isn't my story to tell, and because if I keep typing, things are likely to get venomous, let me say at least this much: those bitches who have taken away my baby girl's faith in human beings better watch their backs. Because my baby girl may be too sweet and forgiving for her own good, but her mama is a whole different story.

Her mama is mean people, when the situation calls.

And we all know mean people suck.

But they also know how to destroy their own kind.

I'm just sayin'.

Love Always

Forty-five years ago today, my parents were wed in the stone chapel of our family church. I've been privy to moments of the ceremony and the celebration captured in grainy black and white. My mother, radiant, young, and happy. My father, tall, smiling, and proud. They made a beautiful couple then, physical opposites attracted to one another through common family values and shared dreams.

They make a beautiful couple now, two wholly separate personalities who have learned to balance each other's flaws against each other's strengths. Two incredibly gifted people who bring out the best in the other with an ease that is only earned through time and experience, for better and for worse. And in my parent's case, it must be said, through patience and genuine affection, in sickness and in health.

My parents have been a touchstone, my whole life long. Individually, the love and lessons they've brought to bear on this journey of mine have been unique to their own experiences. From my mother, I've learned the art of nurture, the value of a sense of humor, the importance of standing strong behind, and beside, the ones you love the most. From my father I've learned humility, the value of hard work, the importance of trusting in doing the right thing.

But from my parents as a couple, I've been blessed with so much more. I've learned by example what it means to love someone so completely that there truly isn't any mountain high enough. I've learned what it means to compromise and never feel like it's a losing proposition. I've learned that in those moments when love is not enough, determination and hard work can be. And I've learned that two people who've been married forty-five years - with all that entails - can argue about the volume of the television set one minute and kiss like newlyweds the next. 

My parent's marriage has set the standard for me. Theirs is the relationship I hope to emulate. Theirs is a love I hope to continue to reap and sow in my own heart of hearts for all the days of my own wedded life. Theirs is the foundation on which my own family stands strong.

Happy Anniversary, to the two heroes of my life. To pilfer words from another, their wedding was quite a long time ago, but the celebration continues to this day.

Here's to keeping the party going for many more days and years to come.

Of the very definition, epiphanies and pedicures (just to see if I can work it in somehow*).

We can probably all agree that Albert Einstein was a wise man who uttered his share of wise words. While the theory of relativity is certainly important, I happen to believe that one of his finest contributions to the world was providing us with the very definition of insanity: doing the same things over and over again, expecting different results. Succinct. Brilliant. True. Impactful, even life changing, when taken to heart.

This relationship we have with our son is a perfect example. We go 'round and 'round the same Mulberry bush, time and time again, priming ourselves for a different outcome with every circular trip. We know better. Somewhere inside, we surely do. We know the tactics we've tried for the past however many years have never failed to yield the same disastrous outcome. We see it with our own four eyes. We feel it in our myriad bones. We live it with all the breaths we take.

And what do we do?

We stare down that damned Mulberry bush and start 'round it again, thinking...this time. This time we'll end up somewhere other than right back where we started. Out of a belief that we'd prove, ultimately, to be the exceptions who proved the rule? Out of habit, most likely. Out of a warped sense of determination. Out of a perspective that's been long skewed by frustration, fear and fallibility.

Yesterday evening, I decided to get a pedicure*. This is totally off point and irrelevant, except to say that this morning I have the feeling of being on solid footing - complete with newly polished shiny toes. I've taken a step off the well worn path of futility and the view from even this short distance away from the norm has been expansive enough to invite epiphany.

Mr. Dustbury himself posted a bit on his blog yesterday that gave me...well, I started to say pause, but that's inaccurate. It gave me a shove, is more like it. And when I dug into the layers of links, what I found proceeded to slap me upside the head and scream, "do you recognize this, you moron? Does this SPEAK TO YOU?"

Being the honest upstanding human that I am, I had to reply, "Yes. YES IT DOES, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!"

And then I read something else. A sort of follow up, I'm guessing, to a comment left here the other day by my blogging doppleganger (you know who you are). The comment, and the other words, moved me to a realization. It moved me to reorder the puzzle pieces I'd been trying to force into position and let them fall where they were meant to. The picture that showed itself as a result was just what I needed to see, just when I needed to see it.

I spent time today on the phone with an incredibly helpful man. This man, a true professional, helped me re-draw the map from here to there. And you know what? It avoids that stinkin' Mulberry bush in its altogether. This new path is fraught with change and will require some getting used to, but there are no forks of indecision or detours to get lost in along the way. It's a relatively straight line from "A" to "Sanity".

It's a plan.

A workable one. And more importantly, I believe, a sell-able one. 

Today is shaping up to be a very good, a very hopeful day. By tomorrow, if we're that magic combination of lucky and smart, we could find ourselves taking the right steps in a wholly different direction, ultimately standing knee deep in that too unfamiliar territory known as progress.

Maybe even toward some semblance of Sanity, defined.

And that would be a welcome change, indeed.

______________

* Ha! :-)

Push comes to shove.

There are things about my life I'd change in the blink of an eye, given half a chance. There are more things that I'd tweak just a hair, and even a couple I'd delete altogether. But there is one thing, about someone else's life, that I'm killing myself to try to change, even though the very idea I'll succeed is the stuff of the grandest tragedies, centuries old.

Scott. I love this child. With all my heart. Thing is? I don't like him a whole lot these days and nothing brings more grief to bear for this mother of children than having to admit this about one of them.

The lies. The senseless, meaningless, easily exposed lies that accomplish nothing good. The degradation of trust. The dearth of credibility. The constant erosion of the value of a blood borne relationship.

I think he tries. At least, I think HE THINKS he tries. And that's almost the saddest part of the whole sordid saga. He's lied to himself so many times, he believes his own fantastical myths.

Where will it end? When? Ever? Never? You'll not get a prediction out of me on this, I'm afraid. I've lost all faith in my own instincts. Lost all ability to hope against hope, and gained well-honed skill at raging against the machine in its place.

There's a line in the sand about to be drawn. Behind door number one is Option A: follow these rules, fulfill these things, see this counselor, this many times, and stay at home, with us. Behind door number two? The great big world of on your own; be well, good luck, and call us sometime.

The deep, abiding sadness in the core of my soul, his bonus prize.

It's useless to keep wailing, "How did we get here? This is not my beautiful son. This is not our beautiful life."

Still, it's all that comes to mind.

Over and over and over again.

Maybe it's time to stop lying to myself.

Oak trees, block parties and the Senior Olympic Games.

There is an oak tree marking the turn up Locust Hill Drive. I've watched it grow from sapling to elder statesman over the past twenty-four years or so that I've been making this trip. This weekend, it occurred to me that I have a collection of trees marking special spots along the winding road of my life's journey. The gnarled magnolia in my grandparent's front yard, holding court over their driveway. The stand of spindly Virginia pines, upside down exclamation points towering along the border of the first home we owned over the $100,000 mark. The perfectly proportioned pear tree, purchased as a wedding gift/house warming present for my brother and his new bride.

I don't know why I never noticed this before, but this weekend I noticed it enough to pluck a ten-inch long bright green oak leaf off the tree at the turn to my parent's home. It's tucked in between the pages of my book as I type this and I have grand plans for repurposing it as an artistic statement once I get home.

------------------------

Dad is still frail; startlingly so, as always, when so much time evaporates between seeing him with my own eyes. That said, within a few hours I had to admit he was actually looking stronger and more sure of himself than our last visit. He's standing taller, he's striding more than shuffling, he's opting to wear his contacts over his Coke bottle glasses for longer and longer periods of time. This one change, the last one, does wonders for both how weak or strong he is perceived, and how fragile or confident he feels.

He's been working with a personal trainer twice a week since early May, and progress is apparent already. I got to meet her on Friday morning, watching as she put him through his paces, watching as he pushed himself to impress me, and believe me when I say, impressed I was. She's so good with him. So good for him. She's got him on a routine of about twelve exercises, a very normal routine, modified for his abilities. Seated ab crunches and leg raises. Balancing poses. Bicep curls and butterflies. He's doing it on his own the days she doesn't come, faithfully tracking every detail from how many, to what weight, to blood pressure and heart rate. Granted, he's using one-, two-, and three-pound weights, but that will change. Improvement is showing itself in small, tiny, but definitely discernible increments. Already.

He has two goals: one is to be able to push himself up out of a chair smoothly and walk - not shuffle - across the room at his upcoming 50th high school reunion at the end of July. The other? To play golf again. An ambitious but stalwart goal, because it's the only love of his life inaccessible to him at the moment. It's been...two years maybe? He misses it with a trembly forlornness that could quite nearly break the hardest of hearts.

I think he'll get there. He'll get frustrated and impatient along the way, but I think he'll get there. Because he wants it, and the deeper he gets into this thing, the more his athlete's warrior mindset will come back to him, pushing him to achieve the victory over what he's set his sights to conquer.

My only regret is that he didn't start this whole program sooner. We tried to cajole him, to encourage him, but he just wasn't ready. And in the intervening months - years - his scar tissue has hardened, his involuntary tensing against his own body's natural inclinations, and his intensely felt sense of unsureness about taking steps, overdoing it - how much could his traumatized body endure? - filled him with an incapacitating inability to try. So, regrets. I have a few. But in the end? Given this new attitude? Too few to mention, as the song goes.

------------------------

Saturday night's big surprise was a pot luck block party for the Locust Hill Neighbors. Let me tell you, it was an honor and a privilege to bear witness to such an event. These folks that surround my folks are what are known as good people. And my mother? Well, Mom is Queen of the Road, and the friendships she's forged there with couples both older and much, much younger were a pleasure to observe. The women think she hung the moon. The men adore her, and that's somewhat restrained. They LOVE her. Dearly, clearly. It rained Saturday afternoon (while I napped and Mom emulated the Barefoot Contessa in her kitchen), but by four the sun was shining. By six, when the party started, the evening was eighteen types of beautiful, from the orange and blue painted twilight sky to the bright green fairways surrounding us.

I can't even express what relief I felt at witnessing these relationships in person. I mean, I'd known she had good neighbors, good friends. But I hadn't really KNOWN. Until I saw them line up to sit a spell with dad, ensconced like king of the (Locust) Hill in a comfy chair on the patio. Until I saw them laugh at my mother's stories, and until I heard them regale me with stories of their own, about her. I felt a palpable release of something. Something close to the tense, long distance holding of one's breath, a habit so ingrained, I forget I do it until release comes. Release has been found only in far betweens of late, of long late, but this weekend, I think release was a little deeper and a little more sincere than ever before.

Milk may do a body good, but reassurance performs miracles for the more intangible bits.

------------------------

It happens that the Senior Olympic Games are being held in Louisville this weekend and beyond. It happens that I'm flying out of Louisville. It happens that my dad's first cousin Jimmy (making him my first cousin once removed, and his son my second cousin, and I could go on to surprising lengths in describing this genetic ladder of relativity, but I won't. Because I like you.) is playing on a team in the 3-on-3 basketball competition, in the 70+ bracket. It also happens that one of the girls my dad coached in high school, one of his absolute favorites, was competing in the 50+ women's bracket of the same even. It happens that both Jimmy and Linda were scheduled to play today at 11:45 a.m., on courts nearly side by side.

Do you see where this is going?

We decided yesterday evening to head on down to Louisville early today, take in a couple basketball games featuring players we had stake in cheering for, have some lunch, and drop me off at the airport at the end of it all.

The irony here is that Dad was always the superstar. Still "almost famous" in some quarters of West Virginia for his basketball prowess. Jimmy was never much of an athlete. He was more of the studious, serious type. But now, years have done their thing and the tables are turned. Jimmy is the athlete, celebrated in some circles, at the very least in ours!, and Dad is on the sidelines, serious and thoughtful, cheering louder than anybody else, spouses included. It's almost poetic, although it makes me a tiny bit sad for stupid, selfish reasons.

What a terrific day it was, though. Serious business, these Senior Olympic athletes are amazing human beings and singular founts of inspiration, every last one of them. The event schedule runs from archery to cycling, from table tennis to badminton, from volley ball to road racing, and then...of course...basketball. Three on three, half court, round robin format. Competitive as all hell, and I was itching to get back out on a court myself after about ten minutes of taking in the action.

Dad's girl - Linda - got hurt, popping out a knee. But not before blocking out with full butt and elbows, like "Coach taught me", to nab at least eight rebounds, and not before sinking a three pointer that made my dad almost squeal like a girl, he was so excited.

And then? Jimmy's team, 3-0 before we arrived, played a tough one against a rough and tumble team, falling fourteen points behind early in the first half. But with three seconds left on the game clock, Jimmy sank a three pointer of his own, and the game was tied. My dad? Well, he was beaming from ear to ear, and maybe even wider than that. Jimmy's gang lost by two in overtime. We didn't bring them much luck. But we brought them much love and shared a long, laugh filled lunch, and I think that might have been just as good as luck, all the way around.

Maybe better, come to think of it.

------------------------

I'm sitting in an airport lounge, killing an hour or two until my plane boards, watching people. Watching people who are intimately watchable. Writable, even, were I so inclined. Three young girls headed to Army boot camp, nervously avoiding attaching themselves to each other, when in truth they probably need each other now as much as they ever will again, whether they know it or not. A grandpa is talking on his invisible headset, making little toddler sounds into the air, oblivious to the stares of the angry young man sulking in the chair near him, trying to read a well-worn paperback. I wish I could see its cover; I'm going to imagine that its Kafka. Or maybe Jack Kerouac. There's a young blonde, a little on the heavy side, chasing a two year-old named Evan around in ever larger sweeping circles. He's giggling, she's smiling, if panting a bit, and the audience that deigns to acknowledge them are encouraging the show to go on. I have a feeling she'll be dropping that baby weight in short enough order.

There is a man, indeterminate age, wearing a brown suit with a yellow button down shirt, opened at the collar. I see a tie sticking out of the outer pocket of the briefcase at his feet. He looks exhausted, all the moreso against the bleak and dreary backdrop of the shiny wet tarmac and dense gray skies visible through the window behind him. I stop this incessant typing occasionally to stare at him, which is rude, my mother taught me so, but finding I can't help myself. I try to read him, hear his story, but nothing obvious comes to mind, and so instead, I hear my own story, reading him into it, one chapter at a time. It's a terribly addictive habit.

I'm sitting in an airport lounge, sipping a beer I don't want, pounding on this laptop keyboard, spilling a million words out into the internet to say one or two very simple things. It's not out of boredom, though. It's out of attempts to satisfy an insistent need to capture these precious moments in big broad strokes, as lush and green as a ten-inch oak leaf I can tuck inside the pages of my mind for safekeeping.

And who knows. I may devise some grand plan to repurpose its bits and pieces, its beating heart breathing life into some as yet undefined artistic statement.

Once I get home.

The Way We Were

My earliest memories tend to play in my mind like grainy film. Bits of a scene from a long ago Christmas morning, me pushing a beautiful red headed baby doll around our tiny apartment living room in her bright, shiny stroller, top knot on my head and grin on my face. A moment on Grandma's back porch, me tucked on her lap taking everything in, while the grown ups tell stories and laughter fills the air. An Easter Sunday on the vast expanse of the capitol lawn, my special fancy hat falling to the ground as my dad chases me around the gnarled old oak trees. A sunny August day at the park, my brand new, vivid pink baby brother looking on from my mother's arms as I scoot willy nilly down the metal slide.

I see these moments in time as if they happened only yesterday, and yet I know that I only remember them with such clarity because they are, in fact, captured on pieces of now fragile film, 8mm home movies screened a million and one times, blurring the lines between what I honestly remember in the tender recesses and what I only recall because the images of their happenings are burned into the fabric of my mind, courtesy of a reel to reel projector.

But does it matter, really?

Does it make the memories any less valid because I've seen them replayed, over and over and over again, frame after frame of the story of my life - of our lives - scrolling across the basement wall of my childhood home?

My first steps, taken on the sidewalk of my parent's apartment complex, Mom wearing an apron tied around her waist, Dad in his white button down shirt and skinny tie, just home from work. A trip to Myrtle Beach, my three year-old eyes wide with trepidation, dipping tiny, fearful toes into the frothy surf. My other Grandma, the sad one, who lived with us and who loved me to the moon and back; I see her telling me, mouthing the words silently as she gently smooths my tangle of curls with a soft white brush, blue flowers painted on its handle.

Our first house, and my parent's excited smiles, waving to the camera and pointing to the front door, dad finally lifting my mother in his arms and carrying her over the threshold. A birthday cake with glowing candles being served to my smiling, blinking blond brother perched in his highchair while his big sister - me - pouts hideously in the background. Duke, our Great Dane, big enough to be my own little pony, standing guard alongside my every move in the front yard, patiently enduring my tiny hands stroking and grabbing at him with clumsy affection.

My grandfather, nose red from drinking, Santa hat perched akimbo on his bald head, singing 'Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head' in perfect tone as my uncle tickles the ivories. A tiny brown dress, with embroidered smocking, black patent leather Mary Janes and a Brady Bunch lunchbox: the perfect ensemble for a nervous little girl's first day of school. A backyard full of cousins, aunts and uncles, in a heated game of touch football on a chilly Thanksgiving afternoon, me given the role of Littlest Cheerleader, alternately clapping my hands and being chased off the playing field.

I consider these moments, these pieces of time, minutes of specific days that might have been lost forever if not caught on tape, and think of them fondly, as if I truly do remember them, as they happened. And even if they aren't memories in the truest sense, my recall of them is instantaneous, their very existence counted gratefully among my greatest treasures.

Bits of film. Golden toned happy times. Scenes from a life, filled with family and love.

Memories, of the forever kind, playing over and over and over again in the theater of my heart.

I've Got Mail

15 May 2007

Dear Mom & Dad -

For some reason the departures are very low the next few days. Every day since I have been here at  least ten people have departed per day. The total departures for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday is only four. The list is not out for Friday, but I'm hoping to be on it. On Monday a friend of mine went home and he got here the day before I did. Hopefully I will be speaking with you, telling you I am coming home before you get this letter. If not, I was just letting you know that the departures have been slow. On Thursday I will have been in here for two weeks.

I got your package with the magazines and thank you very much. I hope to be home for Dad's birthday. I can't imagine that it would be another twelve days in here. I am so excited to be coming home. This certainly has been a wake up call and all I can think about is getting into college and doing positive things with my life and making you proud of me. I also just want to be proud of myself.

I am gaining a lot of weight in here because all we do is sit on couches. We are not allowed to work out at all. They feed us well and I try to eat as much as I can because we eat only three times a day, something I am not used to.

We don't get much news, except through our mail or other people's mail. I heard the Mayweather -DeLaHoya fight was a close decision. I wish I could have seen it. They are saying it was a great fight. When I heard the decision, I thought there might be a rematch. Last I heard, in Dad's letter, Bonds had hit number 744. The reaction to him breaking it should be very interesting. I am excited and hope he shatters it. (Ed. note: Huge bone of contention and ongoing family debate; he thinks Barry has been oh so wronged. The rest  of us think like...well, like the rest of the world outside of San Francisco. But gotta give him this: he has stood his ground without falter.)

I appreciate the support in your letters even though I know how disappointed you must be. I look forward to coming home and getting back to my life. It seems like a different world in here. It is a completely different style of living and I don't know what I was thinking when there is so much I could be doing at home in the civilian world. Probably the hardest thing to cope with and the most disappointing thing is if I had stayed in my classes, I may be on my way  home for the summer from Western right about now. I will never get the past seven months of my life that I have wasted back but I intend to make up for them in every way possible.

I love you both very much and I can't wait to see your faces.

_________________________

Truth is, I can't wait to see his face, either.

And I just got the call I've been waiting for all morning, telling me the details of his trip home. As it turns out, they put him on a plane instead of a bus.

Seems he'll be home in time for dinner!

Mama Mia

The weekend was a fabulous affair, all the way around.

For starters, there was the hugging of the daughter's neck, which makes any day a great day. But that's not all there was. Oh, no, indeedy. There was much, much more fabulousness in the offing for the weekend that was.

_____________________________

The bed & breakfast was a dream.

Literally, a dream.

As in I'd been to the place before, in my dreams.

I've dreamed that exact home in that exact spot, with those exact expansive mountain views and that exact same expansive granite counter top in that exact same expansive gourmet kitchen. I've dreamed it right down to the trail in the woods that led to a babbling river. I've dreamed it right up to the exposed beams in the cathedral ceilings.

I've even dreamed the cuddling on the porch in a cushy lounge watching a thunderstorm roll in just at the cedar tops, luminous and loud, big, bold and beautiful.

The place was amazing, and if I had a million dollars or four, I'd buy it right out from under the exquisitely lovely couple who own it now. As it is, I offered myself up as an indentured servant for the price of boarding privileges. To no avail, but I offered.

An offer that's still on the table, for the record.

_____________________________

The birthday girl opted for dinner at the Melting Pot. We ate fondue and shared a couple of bottles of wine and had a wonderful evening, even if it did include three out of four of us making ourselves sick on various goodies dipped in melted chocolate mixed with crunchy peanut butter.

On Mother's Day, we walked around the downtown mall, took in the special John Lennon exhibition, and grilled the new boyfriend mercilessly (again) (and again). Jessi bought us a gelato (ohmygod and I swear - starting today, I am never eating again), and gave me a silly card with two tickets to the show Mama Mia enclosed (squee!!).

Generally, we had a very nice time, just hanging out together.

By the time we took our leave, we all were feeling good, I think. Relaxed. Content. Peaceful.

The weekend did its job, and then some.

_____________________________

There was a letter waiting for us when we got home. It read, in part:

Dear Mom & Dad -

I am writing this letter to tell you the whole story. I spent three days in boot camp. It started to drive me crazy...This is not the way I want to spend my life. I am sorry to have put you through the last five months that I was in DEP and all the preparation there was for me leaving. Now I'm going to be back in the house, back to square one. I hope you can believe me, even though you have heard it a hundred times, that I am ready to take positive steps in my life.

I have been doing nothing but brainstorming, trying to think of ways to turn my life in the positive direction and make you guys proud of me for once. I have fucked up everything I tried to do in the past few years, except maybe my most recent job. That I am sorry for, and I now realize how much pain you have gone through on my behalf.

I want a degree. You have heard me say that a lot and I want to make it a reality instead of talking about it all the time. If you are willing to take another chance on me and send me to school, I will do my best to make you proud. I am taking this Navy experience as a slap in the face and I believe it will prove to be a blessing in disguise. This experience has opened up my eyes and made me realize: why would I ever want to lock myself away from the people who care about me and who I care about for a couple of benefits four years down the road?

I left everything I've ever known and it drove me to depression. Not to say I can't handle change, but coming here felt like it would if everyone I knew died and I moved somewhere else and started over. That thought ate at me until I started believing that it was what had really happened. I said boot camp would be the first days of my new life. Then I realized: why the hell do I need a new life? I joined the Navy to run from my problems rather than deal with them.

These were the thoughts that ran through my mind over and over again and when I expressed these feelings to the psychiatrist, I believe she gave me an opt out by diagnosing me as depressed. I believe she gave me a new chance to get my life right.

I wish this was the conversation we had on the phone or even the first letter I sent you. I am very sorry and I love you guys very much.

I'm not sure who actually wrote the letter, but it was signed: Love, Scott.

Do you suppose?

_____________________________

Anyway.

Maybe you had to be there all along.

Maybe I'm grotesquely naive.

But this?

In total?

For a million simplistically complex reasons?

Best Mother's Day weekend ever.

Everything Nice

My first born is 25 years old today. She is, in a million ways, my touchstone; the child who reminds me that somewhere, somehow, I managed to do something right in this parenting thing. I miss her presence, the sugar AND the spice, every single day.

I should have put that brick on her head when she was seven, like I threatened to do a thousand and seventeen times.

Which reminds me to impart a bit of birthday wisdom: Follow through is everything.

______________________________________

1982:  You made your grand entrance into this world. The place hasn't been quite the same since. Come to think of it, neither have I.

1983:  We moved you to Morgantown, WV, so your daddy could finish his degree. In this milestone year, you attended your first of many WVU Mountaineer football tailgate parties.

1984:  Your mom and dad snuck away for a long weekend at the beach, leaving you in Grandma's care. Grandma thought it would be special to cut your hair like Mary Lou Retton's as a "surprise" welcome home gift. Seeing as it took nearly two years for you to have any hair on your head at all, the cuteness factor was nowhere close to being enough to spare said Grandma the wrath of your father. Dark days, indeed.

1985:  Thanks to your grandmas, plural, you owned more footwear than Imelda Marcos, including every style and color jellie sandal ever made. You will be will six years old before I ever spend a penny on shoes for your sweet little feet.

1986:  We take you to Florida to visit family and spend two days at Disney World. Your most vivid and lasting memory? Skinning your knee on the ferry boat leaving the theme park on our final day there.

1987:  On your first day of kindergarten, you read a book to the class. When I walked to meet you after school, you told me I was embarrassing. Stunned, I asked, "Why would you say that?" Your response made perfect sense to me, even then. "Because all the other moms are old." I still love you for it.

1988:  When your baby brother was 3 days old, you asked me if you could take him to show-and-tell for the last day of school. "I promise I'll bring him right back," you whispered. I almost let you.

1989:  A lifeguard at our neighborhood pool told us you had a 'natural aptitude' for the water. At your pleading, we signed you up for a year-round, competitive program. Just to see what it was all about. Turned out, it was about $800,000,000 and 345,231,352,098 hours in the end.

1990:  We threw you a huge surprise party at a local fast food joint, where the theme of the day was your favorite musical group. The New Kids on the Block were the bane of our existence as your parents. But you *loved* them. What else could we do but get you a 'Hang Tough' cake served on NKOTB plates, a Joey McIntyre pillowcase, the 'Hang Tough' cassette to play in your new NKOTB tape player, and a wrist watch adorned with the mugs of the not-so-fab-five? It was our moral duty, our parental obligation, to spend money on all possible merchandise in support of the prefabricated boy band of the day.

1991:  Your best friend broke your heart this year. Over what, I can't remember. But that she did, I'll never forget. You forgave her pretty quickly. I don't think I ever will.

1992:  You discovered MTV. The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Boyz to Men. Mariah. Sir Mix-a-Lot. 'Achy Breaky Heart'. I discovered you were tone deaf. Didn't stop you from performing your heart out, though. Then again, didn't stop Billy Ray Cyrus, either.

1993:  You went on your first whitewater rafting expedition. I spent the weekend a bundle of raw nerves. I cried when you returned. Unscathed, but with an adrenaline addiction that can never be entirely rehabilitated, or so it would seem.

1994:  We moved to Virginia, just in time for your first year of middle school. You were a nervous wreck on day one of class, no big surprise. By day three, however, there were two additional pre-pubescent girls practically living in our house. They may still be there, for all I know.

1995:  At yet more pre-football game festivities in the Mountaineer stadium parking lot, your dad catches you sitting in the car. Are you trying to stay warm? Napping? No. Of course not. You, dear heart, are doing homework. On a Saturday morning, with a party going on around you. This might be sad, if it weren't quintessential Jessi.

1996:  You expand your list of 'Foods I Will Consume' beyond chicken nuggets, hot dogs, french fries, pizza and cheeseburgers, to now include peel-and-eat shrimp. But only because you had them at a friend's house. Had I offered it to you and dared suggest you actually try a bite, it would still be food non-grata.

1997:  You spent the better part of the middle of this year exhausted. Small wonder. You contracted mono, and it went undetected for almost two months as you continued to swim - two hours, twice a day. It took its toll on your body, but you were most upset about the loss of performance. Undaunted, in the end, you eventually worked yourself all the way back, and then some.

1998:  You traveled to Hawaii for a week with your grandparents and your uncle, and had the time of your life. Your grandparents still talk about the other hotel guest's utter fascination and awe over your discipline in swimming 8,320,503 laps a day. To hear them tell it, crowds gathered every morning, just to watch. To hear you tell it, it was a mortifying experience. But the rest of the trip soothed your humiliation rather nicely, I'm guessing.

1999:  In the course of a casual conversation, we were advised that you never, as in NOT EVER, liked the New Kids on the Block. (See 1990). That you, in fact, hated them, and only listened to them to accommodate your friends. There is no way I could have been so egregiously wrong about such a thing; I lived it. Your present day unwavering insistence to the contrary is what is known as "revisionist history". Look it up.

2000:  You graduated from high school, we moved to North Carolina, and you left for college. All in the space of four of the most exciting, stressful, emotional months of our lives. We - okay, I - never thought we'd get through it. I remember watching your dad pull the rented van loaded with your belongings out of the driveway as you waved to me from the front seat like you used to do when you were a wee little thing. At least I managed the good grace to wait until you'd turned the corner before falling to my knees in full body wracking sobs.

2001:  This is the last year of your swimming career. The time investment, demands of college, and personality conflicts with your coach cause you to decide to quit your college team. Turned out to be the first of many grown up, intelligent, and well-thought out decisions you'd make while exploring your freedom and charting your path.

2002:  You started dating my future-son-in-law. Way distant future - yeah, I get it - but still. He's a member of the family now, whatever happens.

2003:  I am informed - in wholly unsolicited commentary - that you do not want to have children. Moreover, that you are leaning towards adopting monkeys instead. I, in turn, inform you that I will consider monkey-sitting my grandmonkeys, but that there will be no changing of monkey diapers on my watch.

2004:  Graduation, with honors. Then the first "real" job, and the subsequent move to Charlottesville, which, I admit, surprised me a little. But these were just two more decisions made with your own special brand of thoughtful intelligence, reasoned and sure. You took the first steps down the path leading to the rest of your life with grace, and dignity, and a new found confidence that was a joy to behold.

2005:  You settled into your job like a rock star, earning a major promotion less than a year into the thing. Charlottesville quickly became "home" to you; your life there is interesting and full. You introduce me to my grandkitty, and trust me when I say that my relief is palpable. (See 2003). You are an incredibly happy young woman. It shows.

2006: This is the year you broke up with your long time boyfriend (my future son-in-law), because you just wanted to be you for a little while, and my respect for your mature instinct only grew deeper. Especially because the two of you remain incredibly close, with no animosity to speak of, and I'm awed by how you managed to pull that off. Relationships are the theme this year: work, friends, family. You took some hard knocks, but got right back up, dusting yourself off, and starting all over again. I worry, but not because I really need to. I worry, because it's what I do. You will be fine. You are fine. You grow more fine by the hour.

2007:  You instant message, or call, or email me every day. You travel. You jump out of airplanes. You have an an investment portfolio, for crying out loud. You are determined to experience everything life has to offer. You have 'a plan'. You have energy to burn, and the world at your doorstep, full of places to go, things to do, people to see.

And you have the most astonishingly beautiful soul I've ever known.

You are my light, my pride, my joy, my heart.

I have no idea what your future might hold, but I do know that whatever you dare to dream, you'll dare to achieve. I'm just grateful to be along for the ride. It's been the thrill of a lifetime.

I love you to the moon, and all the way back again.

Happy twenty-fifth, sweetness.

Exhale

The waiting is over. The prodigal one phoned home last night, and our racing hearts have slowed to normal rhythms by virtue of the calming touch of a little bit of knowledge. It's the not knowing that will kill you, every time. The knowing is altogether different. Because with the knowing, with the bridge between the unknown and the known, reality is real again, not feared or imagined and re-imagined, but real.

He is coming home because the psychiatrist conducting his mental health evaluation on day three of processing judged him depressed and recommended he be sent home. This is not something he is proud of, and while he clearly feels he made a mistake in signing up for enlistment, he also, clearly, feels humbled and a bit chagrined by the way things shook out.

During the course of the conversation last night, with his dad on one extension and me on the other, it was as if we were talking to a different person. Or maybe not a different person, exactly, so much as an older, more mature version of the existing person who is our son. We both agree that we've never heard such humility in his voice as we did last night. We also heard him owning up to mistakes, acknowledging - for the first time, with any sincerity - that he doesn't have all, or maybe even any, of the answers himself.

Before the phone call, the one thing that was eating us alive was the thought that the Navy was something he really and truly wanted for himself, and that quite possibly, he had eliminated it as an option by thinking he could outsmart the government. We leaped to the conclusion that he had likely failed a more extensive drug screen upon arrival, thus eliminating any branch of military service as an possibility for his life. This - to our great relief - turned out to be a false assumption. And this - having our worst assumption proven false - made any news that came after it good news, somehow.

To be completely honest, the real reason for him being sent home is not only more palatable, but also more ... acceptable? I can live with it. His dad can live with it. With some measure of empathy, some measure of hope that it was a hard knock lesson learned, some reason to believe it might serve as an impetus for positive change going forward.

And I know we keep coming back to that hope, that we keep clinging to faith that this latest disappointment or trouble or failure will be the one that makes the difference. But I also know we always will keep coming back to it, as many times as we have to, as many times as life's discretion will allow us to. Because it's what we have.

Hope. Faith. Trust. Love.

All twisted and bent, perhaps.

But never broken.

After

Nobody died.

The world hasn't ended. The sun still hangs high in the sky, the stars still sparkle and shine in the dark of night.

I still need bread and milk and coffee and cat food from the store. There are still two loads of laundry to do and dinner to think about, at some point.

Nobody died.

Rather, somebody lived, and in the process screwed up royally. For himself most of all, but most certainly for others, too, unfortunately, like it or not.

It's inconvenient. It's worrisome. It's stressful. It's disconcerting and alarming. It's disruptive. It's exhausting. It's a monumental mess. It's heartbreakingly painful and mind blowingly surreal and makes me madder than hell.

But nobody died.

Life will go on.

I'm hard pressed to define how just now, but I know in the very fiber of the part of me that knows things, it will.

Life will go on, and we'll go with it, and eventually he'll grow up, and figure it out, and become someone with skin he can be comfortable in, become someone who can stand on his own two feet, by choice or by necessity, whichever way it has to be.

Life will go on.

The sun will still hang in the sky, the stars will still sparkle and shine in the dark of night.

I'll run to the store for bread and milk and coffee and cat food. I'll put away two loads of freshly done laundry, and tend to dinner simmering on the stove.

And I'll watch the man I love, with his sagging shoulders and big brown devastated eyes and and an unfamiliar posture, one that doesn't suit him, signalling defeat. I'll watch him closely, as long as it takes, for signs of life, going on.

Life will go on.

That's what it does.

Day after day after day.

The Call

"Hi, Mom. I'm coming home."

...

...

This morning, I was at my desk, smiling at an instant message my husband sent me about how we should spend the coming weekend. Our first as official card carrying empty nesters.

Beach? Mountains? Golf? Home? I'm wide open.

I hadn't gotten around to replying yet when my phone rang. Assuming it was my husband, taking up the dilemma of a free-as-birds weekend voice to voice, I eagerly reached over to answer it.

What everyone has always told you is true.

Assumptions are a terrible, terrible thing.

His voice was so low, I could barely hear him.

"Hi, Mom. I'm coming home."

It took a minute for it to register that a) it was my son on the phone, and b) he wasn't supposed to be calling again for two weeks or so, and c) he's coming where?

My heart double clutched in my chest, and all my breath left me as if I'd been punched in the gut by balled and incredibly angry fists.

"Hi. What? Wait. What?"

"I'm coming home. I made a terrible mistake."

"What did you do? Are you in trouble? What?"

He first assured me he was not in trouble. Which, oddly enough, didn't really assure me. His voice cracked off and on as he tried to explain to me about being in separation, and the whole process taking three weeks or so, and how he didn't know how often if at all he would be able to call.

In a near stupor, I asked if he was okay. He said he was. I asked if this were a final sort of thing, if he was absolutely sure. He said it was, that he was sorry to be such a disappointment, that he had made a mistake. I asked why. I asked if he was 1000% sure. I asked if he were okay, again.

I asked why. Again.

He apologized, voice crumbling, again.

He said he had to go.

I told him that I loved him.

Then the line went dead.

...

Do you want to know what I thought? Right then? Sitting at my desk with a dead silent handset help up against my ear?

I thought, without hesitation, "I didn't even get the chance to miss him enough to clean his room yet."

Hand to God.

First thought.

Right before the first wave of nausea hit.

...

He's been there four days. From what we understand, week one is mostly processing and acclimation. The tough stuff doesn't even really begin until week two.

He's been there FOUR DAYS.

...

We met at home for lunch, his father and I, both in a state of shock. Both rambling. Both staggered. We called his recruiter and every number we could locate at Great Lakes. We learned a little. Separation could come about for a myriad of reasons: a failed drug test, a code of conduct breach, a recruit's break down, a health issue.

The process could take up to three weeks, during which he'll be segregated from the recruits in training, spending his long, lonely, boring days doing nothing much. There will be a hearing to determine whether or not he'll be discharged, and in what manner. It's possible he'll be able to go back to training at that point, although after missing so much, I imagine that might be hellish. If that doesn't happen, he'll be sent home, when the Navy is good and ready to get around to it.

At this point, we have no clue about the specifics of his case. He's eighteen and nobody will talk specifics. The details need to come from him. The things he said to me on the phone lead me to believe he cracked, just gave up, but at this point, who knows. It could be something far more heinous.

In the interim, until we get to speak to him again - and who knows when that will be - all we can do is imagine the worst and wait. For news. For information. For something.

...

You'd think we would have prepared for just such an eventuality. And we did, to a degree. We discussed the possibility - the probability - that this whole Navy experiment might have been a farce. A 'wag the dog' exercise designed to distract us for a few months, cutting him breaks, giving him a modicum of peace knowing he had "a plan". Knowing there was a future and a goal and a real LIFE up ahead, if we could just have a little bit of patience.

You would think my skin would be thick by now. That I would have developed some sort of immunity to the battering blows delivered time and time again, with intention or without. You might even think I'd get over believing these things have anything to do with me at all.

I'm not sure I'll ever get to a place where I can take in the flailings of my children's lives as if I were a mere bystander, observing from afar.

I know for sure I'll not get to that place anytime soon where my youngest is concerned. Not because I want to smother mother him. Not because I have some sick need for him to never grow up. But rather because he refuses to, and his life is so totally out of control, so totally out of even his own grasp, I feel trapped by a warped "do the right thing" syndrome that renders me incapable of folding my arms and letting him drop where he stands, hard into the bottomless pit of steaming nothingness designed by his own hand.

There is no crystal ball. He may suck it up and go back, and if you believe that will happen, let's chat about my bridge in London. He may be home in less than a month. A wasted month, in the midst of what has been, for all intents and purposes, a wasted year.

And then what?

Now what?

Observations From an Empty Nest, Day One.

We parted ways with Jessi in the parking lot at closing time, and got home from King's Dominion in the wee hours of Saturday night. All three of us slept late Sunday morning, although in truth, I'm not sure I ever really slept much. Not deep, restful sleep, anyway.

We thought we would be saying our good-byes at four o'clock. That's when he was expected at the recruiting office, to sign in and head over to the hotel. We found out at three o'clock that he was actually free to leave for the evening after getting his room assignment, as long as we had him back by ten. We picked up a friend of his and went out to eat, then back to the house to shoot some pool and chill out.

It was very quiet for those unexpected hours. Things had been said already, and delayed good-byes were stuck in our throats, making normal conversation more than a little bit difficult. The worst part, though, was the ride back to the hotel in a car so full of stillness, so thick with tense anxiety, breathing was nearly impossible.

Driving away, still feeling his tall body folded in my arms, still feeling his "I love you too" whisper against my cheek, I sobbed. For the duration of the twenty minute drive home. For the first hour and a half once we finally got home, without him. For the first fifteen minutes of laying myself down to sleep, right up until my body and my brain gave into the sheer exhaustion of the whole experience.

Then I slept like a baby.

We were told that he would be woken up at 4 a.m. to go to the airport. We were told that he would get one call, upon arrival at Great Lakes, to let us know he'd made it. We were told he'd call my cell phone, to make sure he'd reach somebody.

At 5:15 p.m. yesterday evening, my cell phone finally rang. "Hey," he said. Just like always. "Hey," I replied, just like every other day. "I'm getting ready to get on the plane. I'll call you when we get there."

Turns out, he and the three other local recruits spent the day in Raleigh, doing God knows what. Turns out, I had more time to wait. Turns out, I had seven more hours to wait, to be precise.

At 12:40 in the morning, the phone by my bed rang, screaming its shrillness into the dark room, scaring me awake. I grabbed for it and heard him say, "We're here. I have two minutes. We're here."

He won't get to call again for at least two weeks. I won't know his address until the Navy is good and ready to send it my way. Armed with that information, that phone call was the shortest two minutes of my life. I imagine it was the shortest two minutes of the longest day of his life thus far, as well.

But he's there. Safe and sound. Well, safe. Let's not go overboard. So to speak. He's safe. And he's doing a good thing. For himself. For us. For his country. He's doing a good thing that may have come about through all the wrong reasons, but that will end up - God willing - bearing all the right results.

He's there. He's not here, but he's there, on the doorstep leading out into the rest of his life.

If it didn't hurt so much, I'm sure it would feel good. Maybe by the time I get to talk to him again, it will feel good.

Maybe if I start to mourn too much, to pine too much, I can get to work on the vast grossness currently hidden behind his closed bedroom door and gain a...oh, for argument's sake, let's call it an "altered" perspective.

Just last night, cleaning the kitchen after dinner as always, a thought occurred to me.

When I get home from work this evening?

The kitchen?

WILL STILL BE CLEAN.

For the first time in fifteen years or so.

Altered perspective.

Take it where you find it, you know?

Hi, Sweetness -

Do you miss me yet?

You haven't even been gone for a full day, and already the house feels empty and strange without your presence in it. As I write this, I imagine you are in the air, or maybe still at the airport, starting the first day of the rest of your life. And as much as I'm going to miss having you around, knowing you're nearby, where I can yell at you, or call you to dinner, or argue with you, or - and mostly - hug your neck whenever I want to, I can't help but feel so very excited for you and the amazing journey ahead.

So many possibilities. Challenges, adventures, opportunities. Options. Pushing yourself to your outer limits and then beyond, expanding your horizons in the process. What an amazing moment in the right here, right now of your young life thus far. My greatest hope for you today is that you will let yourself make the choice to take the absolute fullest advantage of all those experiences open to you now. That you will make the most of this chance to be the best that you can be, not just for today, but for all the many tomorrows to come.

You've been gone for less than twenty-four hours, and my heart and my mind have been a swirl of emotion, just as I'm sure yours have been. The adrenalin rush of nervous excitement. The sickening thickness of anxiety. Fear of the unknown. Sadness at the now gaping hole once filled with the physicality of a much loved person. Joy in the luck of second chances, and pride in the fortitude to grab that chance with both hands, eyes wide open.

So many things.

But first and foremost, love.

That's the one that makes the rest possible. The one that got us through the darkest moments, and the one that shone like a beacon of light at the end of a seemingly endless tunnel. The one that will allow my heart to grow lighter, eventually, as it swells with unstoppable waves of pride.

The one that will carry you through, that will push you just when you think you can't. The one that will envelope you in courage and comfort just when you need it most.

The one that reminds you.

You are not alone.

Not then. Not now. Not ever.

Be good, Scott, and be well.

And call your mother. Often.

She loves you, you know.

Maybe more than you know.

With her whole entire heart.

A year ago, and far away.

A comment was made the other day that stated I was no longer the same person I was a year ago. I thought about this long and hard, chewed on its significance, the truth or consequence within its perceptiveness. It was oddly difficult to decide how the observation made me feel.

So I re-read some old posts, written a year ago to the month. Like this one:

He could be, he should be, ascending to such great heights, scaling massively mighty peaks affording breathtaking views of a sweeping landscape dotted with possibility.

Instead, with no shortage of deliberate intent, he has clawed his way to a precarious hold on the edge of a cliff, where the only sight to behold is one seen by staring straight down into an abyss, vast with nothingness.

I don't know what to do with that.

Or how to outrun its truth.

So I push through the days with white knuckled determination, and free-fall through the nights, letting my own tenuous grip slip dreamily away.

Then I decided that the observation makes me feel grateful, even as I am more convinced than ever that I am much the same person today as I was then, only colored by the sepia toned passage of time, formed by the virtue, by the grace, by the wonder of evolution. A state of change that was only possible when the dire ugliness I saw reflected back at me began to show itself as mirror imagery, and realization hit.

He wasn't the only one with growing up to do.

Back then, anyway.

But now, it's his turn, and there is one certain, undeniable difference between who I was and who I am on my way to becoming.

Today, unlike yesterday, there is hope in my quiver again, renewed and full throated, in finally believing that he will succeed.

There is awareness, wide-eyed and open minded, in finally believing that doing it on his own terms, in his own sweet time, is exactly the way it should go.

There is peace, serene and full of grace, in finally believing that the love between us, mother and son, is strong enough to survive the process, come what may.

In the interim, life goes on, taking us along on the journey howsoever it sees fit.

And that?

Well, these days, that's just all right with me.

Sláinte!

A St. Pat's tradition, this is, brought to you since 2004. Green beer for everyone!

______________________________________________________

I've mentioned before that I am Irish, and it's true to a large percentage. But like millions the world over, the fact of the matter is that I'm 100% mongrel.

When my son was born in 1988, I got a sudden urge to understand how the whole lot of us got here. Where we came from, exactly. There were no secrets on my mother's side of the family. Both grandparents were, at the time, alive and of sound mind. The extended families were close and in regular contact, either in person or through the proverbial grapevine. I knew great uncles and third cousins once removed and even kissing cousins. The family skeletons from this branch of the family tree were never hidden in closets; they joined us around the dinner table and danced a jig in the living room.

But on my father's side, the story was altogether different.

My grandfather died on my dad's birthday, one week before my parents were married. Dad's mother - my beloved grandma - lived with us until her death in 1969, when I was only six. His sister, the aunt whose husband recently passed away, and my four cousins lived out of state, although we were always close. An aunt and uncle from his mother's side and their three grown children were the only members of this side of the family that lived nearby. The rest of my father's history was a mystery. Little talked about, little known, dispersed across country and long out of touch.

In 1988 computers were around, of course. We even had a Mac back then, for the purposes of my magazine publishing venture. But email and easy Internet access were not prevalent or readily available. At least not to me. When I decided to begin digging into my roots, it was a labor of love. Labor being the operative word. I started by asking questions, getting names and snippets of information from my dad and my aunt. I spent hours in the records rooms of various courthouses and libraries, poring over microfiche and dusty ledger books.

The fire in me was stoked by the tiniest of successes. I grew more excited and encouraged with every fortunate stumble onto a piece of relevant information: a birth date, a census report, a marriage certificate, an obituary. Then one day, having managed to trace my dad's family back four generations - through Lucien, Devilla, Prairie, Equilla and Mary Jane - I reached a dead end. It seems there is a family tradition on my father's side of bearing children out of wedlock. Seeing as I perpetuated this tradition myself, I'll refrain from comment except to say that when you can't find the father, the genealogy trail tends to run a bit cold.

I sat down and wrote dozens of letters to "found" family members, identifying and introducing myself, stopping just shy of begging for information. The effort paid off.

In a really big way.

One of my letters got circulated to an unknown-to-us third cousin of Dad's named Wayne in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, and lo, did the floodgates open. Seems that Wayne, whom I'd failed to unearth somehow in my own digging, had been working on the same endeavor for more than a decade. Out of the blue, a hefty package came to me. In it was a very detailed family tree, dating back to 1277 in County Galway, Ireland. "Sir Richard Blake, a knight in one of the 14 tribes of Galway, is thought to be the progenitor of all the BLAKE descendants."

It would be wild understatement to say that I was blown away.

I spent hours absorbing the history he provided, beside myself with excitement when it became clear that his research was traced through the same links as mine, to a brother of my grandfather. Wayne provided me with names and addresses of living relatives, many of whom my father recalled hearing about; some that he even remembered, but had not seen for more than 40 years. I wrote to all of them, enclosing pictures, and explaining my mission.

I got literally dozens of letters in return. One from a long lost cousin in Michigan, writing that although his family had lost touch with my dad's, they had followed both his athletic and professional careers. He sent clippings of my dad, and photos of the two of them together as kids on vacation. A relative in California sent - in what can only be described as a leap of blind faith - a box full of photographs and letters. Included was a tintype of my great grandmother, a stern looking, angular woman who could be my father in drag.

On Father's Day, in 1989, I presented Dad with a leather bound portfolio containing all of the information I'd collected. Letters from rediscovered relatives, pictures, and an excessively detailed family tree, complete with narratives based on newly discovered family stories I'd learned. We took a long weekend trip shortly thereafter to visit Wayne in Greenbrier County, and to thank him for what he'd done. We toured familial landmarks, visited gravesites, and shared more stories. We spent three days reveling in the good fortune - the fabled Irish luck? - that brought us all together, full circle. Wayne and his mother were gracious and generous; they were as genuinely touched by the turn of events as we were. In fact, he and my father still exchange notes and Christmas cards, as do several of the now newly reconnected family members.

It was an intensely rewarding yearlong journey, giving me a real family and a real history that I can pass on to my kids and their kids and on down the line, adding to it our own stories as we go. The emotional impact of the entire experience goes far beyond any mere words I could conjure up to describe it.

So today, St. Patrick's Day, I honor my Irish heritage and offer up a toast in honor of Sir Richard of Galway, who started it all ~

Wherever you go and whatever you do,
May the luck of the Irish
be there with you.
'Sláinte!'

The Sound of the Soft Shoe Dropping

She's been the shining light, the good one who has it all together. She's been the happy place within the recent family dynamic, the calm within her brother's firestorm of anything but. She's the one we speak about with puffed out chests and twinkling eyes, struggling to keep the boastful arrogance out of the words of pride that tumble out at the least instigation.

She called me last night, well past my bedtime, sobbing into my ear, well into the late hours of the night. She's miserable, and as is typical, misery builds on misery, swelling a single drop into a pounding rain, overwhelming as it batters, drowning our defenses.

It's been building for a while, but the dam has finally broken.

She's miserable.

And I'm helpless, in a city many miles away. I can't hold her, or hug her, or stroke her hair as she sobs into my shoulder. I can't shake her, or talk sense into her eye to eye, or walk with her, to prove the path she's on is just a temporary diversion, not an ending destination.

All I can do is listen intently as it pours out of her in unintelligible sobs, translating as I go, heeding signals and signs. All I can do is respond in measured tones, aural comfort food doled out by the earful. All I can do is feel her pain, when all I want to do is bear it for her.

All I can do is worry.