Happy is a Hard Word

“There is a woman here and she can’t stop smiling about you.” So began my session with a medium called Jane, and a spirit that I hoped was my Mother. 

The first thing my Mom told Jane, oddly, was that I was an old soul. 

I searched my memory, had she used that term with me? It was the first of countless times in the one hour reading (my first ever) that I would comb my memories to find validity in something I so dearly wanted to believe. I briefly glanced up at my cork board to the poem my mother had written about me, not wanting to appear that I wasn’t fully present, this was a zoom meeting after all. The poem, found months after she died, was tucked away in a book she hoped I would read. When pulled from my bookcase, it fell open, presenting me with a priceless gift. Also a message from beyond, but an undeniable artifact; my mother’s beautiful penmanship, her tender words: “Sharon, Gentle soul, Love filled heart, Beautiful child…” 

An old soul made older In the three years since losing her. Grief dogged me, finding me again at this moment longing to connect to her. 

You don’t blend in, but you aren’t supposed to. The conversation moved from what I understood to be my Mom’s words, sometimes prefaced with “she says…” and sometimes a summarization of what my Mom was trying to communicate. I had spent most of my life feeling as if I was just outside of the circle, not blending in. So yes. Don’t you worry about that, the same words she had repeated throughout life as I expressed my concern. The right people will see you. I tear up. 

Before sitting down to this meeting, I conferred on the wisdom of it with my sister. She too was living with the heartbreak of a mother gone too soon. Am I crazy? Should I try this? “Go for it. Mom always wanted to talk to a medium. I bet you will reach her.” 

So here I was, nervous, sweaty and feeling like I must do this in secret. Even from myself. 

Jane continues now with a description of my mother. She was a teacher? Yes. She created a program that helped many people be better teachers? Yes. She impacted many lives. Also yes. She was a mentor for many. Yes, all of this is true but also no secret. If you googled my Mom you would find this information. If you saw the memorial posts on her facebook page you would be moved to tears by how she inspired others. Has Jane the medium done this research? I didn’t ask. I hoped not. Your Mom thanks you and your siblings for teaching her how to be a good mom. A memory of a memory bubbles up in me. “When you were little Sharon you were trying to tell me something, you were so earnest and I was busy with this or that, and finally you shouted Mommy! and stomped your little foot. It stopped me in my tracks. I looked at you and realized I must listen, I must take the time to hear you. You taught me that when you were only three years old.”

Your mom knew how to reach people. Yes. Especially me.

Most of our initial conversation feels like a proof of concept. She was this, she did this, and the like. I patiently nod through this information, waiting for exchanges that feel more like conversation.  

Why have you stopped writing? I pause. This was unexpected, direct. Jane asks me, have you stopped writing? I answer, feeling somehow exposed. Yes, I have. The clipped words coming from my mouth fall short of what I want to say, but with this question I begin to feel seen. She says the last thing you wrote was about her. Was it? Yes, it was a way to process her choices as she navigated the end of her life. But I can’t say that. I say only yes. Losing her was so hard, I was devastated, and angry, and at times what she did or said was impossible for me to understand. When I wrote about it, it drained the words from me. And I stopped writing. She says start again. She says it’s not like you to give up. Get back to work. 

At this I start to cry. I cry because no one else has noticed that I stopped writing. And she noticed. I cry because I haven’t written anything in almost three years. Then she says, you should laugh more so I can see your beautiful smile. I pause, I laugh, don’t I? Grief is a companion of mine, and though its voice gets quieter with time, it remains. Do I laugh less? She says show them who you are. Who? Show who? She doesn’t say. 

There is someone with your Mom, she has salt and pepper hair and she calls your mom a name that sounds like buh. I didn’t tell Jane that my mom’s name was Barbara. Barbara Jean. Barb. I say her name out loud for the first time in a long time. Barbara. I say it and it feels like it has weight, and meaning and I remember it is one of my favorite names. I flip through my mental rolodex of women who have died who fit the description of her companion. I respond tentatively, afraid that my input is what is driving this narrative. Could it be her Grandmother? Yes. She was there to help her cross over. 

Cross over. I slide into another memory. Hospital room lights, my mom now rarely stirring. Time winding down. The world feeling so strange and out of control. Longing for her to wake up even once more, we play a recording of her favorite song. It only takes a few bars of the music for her to open her eyes. She looks around confusedly and I get the distinct feeling that we have interrupted her on her way to somewhere else, that we have selfishly tapped her on the shoulder when we should have let her keep walking. I feel like it was the wrong thing to do. 

She tells me that they spend a lot of time together. They pal around. 

And then it is the medium talking, but with information I have rarely shared. You weren’t supposed to be there. Be where, I ask. At the hospital. You weren’t there at the end. My cheeks burn hot. This is true, I couldn’t bring myself to watch my mother die. In the not-even-three-days that my mother spent in the hospital her face altered so much that I couldn’t bear it. Drawn and empty, almost unrecognizable. So difficult to look at, even now in my memories. More tears, and now the medium lets me in on a little known secret, “most people don’t want their families watching so closely as they die. It just makes it more difficult for them to let go.” I feel relieved-ish. 

Now I ask a question. My words come out sounding unsure, but I don’t know who I am asking, the medium or my mother. Has she seen Ella? Seen how far she has come? Your mom is showing me equations. Math, science. Is Ella a scientist? She couldn’t know this, how could she know this? Yes. Ella desires to be a doctor, or a scientist. No need to worry about her, she has a goal in mind and she will achieve it. You also have a son? I do. Your mom describes him as reserved. He is. And handsome. And stylish! I laugh at that because he is. She wishes she could still squish his face. I pause. I see her, years ago saying “let me squish your face” to him, and kissing his soft cheeks. He is five or six and she has not yet been diagnosed with cancer. I had forgotten that. I have forgotten so much of the time before Ovarian Cancer. 

My hour is closing. Are you happy? I mean is she happy?

Happy is a hard word. She feels she had more to do, that she left too soon. That she wishes she had more time. I believed this to hold the most truth of anything we said. But this is where we say goodbye. Not me and my mom, but me and the medium. That was a relief, I couldn’t wrap my head around the alternative. Not another goodbye.  

The next morning I wake up with a palpable feeling of loss. 

In the days after, my thoughts about the reading become hazy. I felt less confident about all of it, what I heard, what she said, what I believed. I feel shy to talk about it, and pressed to demonstrate its validity.  

I casually bring it up with my kids: “I think if it helps you grieve, then yes, I support that. But for me, no.” These words from my very analytical yet compassionate seventeen year old daughter as I stumbled through asking would you ever, or do you happen to think that you could talk to someone who had died? 

I admitted to having already spoken to the medium when I talked to my son. I felt compelled to preface my confession with a statement: going on the assumption that I believe this…I mean I want to believe this so badly…but let’s just go with I believe this… 

Mom, he interrupted, I would do the same thing. I would try to talk to you, too. 

It is in those words that I hear an echo of a conversation I had before with my own beloved mother, my heart swells and I am grateful. And I go on. 

Mom, did you know you were dying?

Mom, did you know you were dying? 

I ask this question to the air. To my mom. To myself. 

Did you know you were dying? 

The doctor said you did. They said you knew, had known for months. 

My mom passed away five months ago. She had been living with Ovarian Cancer. But she hadn’t. She had been dying from it. 

The living with part - well that was what I believed. And what she told me. Not just me - what she told everyone. And it was what I wanted to believe. I couldn’t face the idea of my mother, so much a part of my life, dying. I couldn’t even grasp what that meant. How is someone who has always been there - just not there? It felt like too much to consider. It still does. 

As a family we rarely spoke of mom not beating cancer. She wouldn’t, she wanted only to “be positive” and to “think positively.” Talking about dying was not either of those things. We didn’t know how to talk about death, we had been mercifully shielded from it, our only loss was our grandfather, and we were young and not expected to know how to process loss. We had always looked to mom to teach us how to interact emotionally with the world, she was the touchstone, the heart of the family. And she wouldn’t talk about it. So we didn’t. 

We talked only of how great she was doing, how strong of a fighter she was, how she was God’s miracle for making it as far as she had. And then we talked about anything, and everything else.

Only once early on in her war with ovarian cancer, deep in battle with chemo coursing through her veins, did I pluck up the courage to ask her. 

“Are you scared Mom?…Because I am.”

“No.”

“But...”

“Sharon, I’ve taught you everything I needed to teach you.”

And that was all she said. She wouldn’t, or couldn’t say any more. Except maybe “Now, let’s change the subject!”

Years later - I had all but forgotten the doctor’s assessment that 85% of women diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer at stage 3c died within 5 years. Instead I only saw my mother living, and in her words, being positive. Sure, she logged many hours on her couch, a victim of her feet numb with chemo driven nerve damage, but she was never idle. She was crocheting a blanket for a new baby, she was grading homework for her online classes, she was FaceTiming one of her six grandchildren. She had beaten breast cancer twenty years before, she was doing great. She wasn’t dying. 

But she was. She just wouldn’t, or couldn’t say. 

For the six months before she died, my mother had been battling persistent and terrible stomach pain. It would strike her after eating, and it was so painful it would cause her to take to her bed, a difficult concession for her. The recommended course of action - gallbladder removal surgery. Certain this would help, she underwent another painful operation, and difficult recovery. When I spoke to her post-op, she was her normal, cheerful, positive self. Happy it was over, excited for the promised but elusive pain relief. It never arrived.

That summer, my mom visited each of her children - in what now appears to be a goodbye tour. At each stop she explained her discomfort by saying that her stomach had not yet adjusted to her gallbladder removal surgery, and just needed more time. She lost weight, but confirmed she would be feeling better soon, and that she believed she may be able to reverse this course. She told us that she was experiencing gastritis. She told us that it was likely diverticulitis. It was a bowel obstruction. No, it was stomach paralysis. Being in the care of many GI doctors, and definitive about each different diagnosis, we fretfully, hopefully believed her, each time praying the cause of her pain would be proven not to be cancer. In a conversation with her where I expressed concern she stated, “I have had this stomach problem for two years and every CT scan I have had has shown nothing related to cancer in my stomach so don’t go down that road.” 

As we each saw the changes in her, my siblings and I conferred over phone lines and through frantic text messages: She can’t be taking in enough calories - what is she actually eating? Why isn’t she getting better? What is going on? Worries that her cancer had progressed crept in at the edges of our conversation, wanting to be acknowledged. 

Early September arrived, and with crippling stomach pain my mother was admitted to the hospital for further observation. Three days later, she died. Cancer, the true source of her stomach struggles, had done its worst. It had mutated and taken over her body. Having eaten very little for the last few months, she had no strength to fight, and no treatment options left to her. She also had no more reason to convince everyone she was okay. So she stopped trying, and then she died. We had only a precious few hours before the morphine worked its magic, detaching her from the terrible pain, physically and emotionally, and from the hospital, and from all of us. For me, and when I looked around – everyone else, that time was largely spent in a stunned, overwhelming, painfully slow, zombie-like absorption of what was happening. 

When I initially arrived at the hospital,  I believed – I hoped, I was just visiting for a few days with her until she was on the mend and resting at home. I wanted to surprise her, and as I entered her hospital room I tried to make her laugh saying “Did you call for a nurse?” My mom was awake, sitting up, and as always, so happy to see me. She had a scary looking tube pulling some scary looking stuff out of her stomach. She told me to ignore it. After kissing her hello on her cheek, I sat with her and held her hand. We chatted about this and that, my kids, the start of school, all of the normal things we always shared. She had yet to feel relief from the pain in her stomach, despite the promise of medicine. I determinedly hunted a nurse down and requested speedy delivery of pain relief. 

It was my last hour of time with her that was innocent of grief.

In the days after she died, like a detective searching for fingerprints, I looked for evidence of her knowing. A note in a notebook with a list of to do’s 1. Checking acct, 2. Credit cards, 3. Car loan, 4. Gram’s acct. No description, but signs of a need to tidy up before it was too late. A book of letters to her grandkids purchased a decade ago, but written only in the last few months. I even called her oncologist, and pointedly asked, did she know?

Just weeks before my kids and I visited my parent’s house in Williamsburg, Virginia. Sadly, it was just for a day. Traffic heading back to NoVA, and to-do’s required we arrive early and leave early. That day my mom and dad gave me my birthday gift, six weeks early. When I asked why she brushed off the question and urged me to open it. Looking back, I remember thinking that my mom seemed overly happy to see me that day. I wonder if she wanted one more birthday with me, one more time to see me happy and free from the sadness she knew would soon become my constant companion. 

When I think of my beloved mother, I thank God that she died knowing how much I loved her, how special she was to me, how I aspired to be the mom that she modeled. That alone was such a gift. She was so special, so full of love and light and magic, so rare. She saw the best in me. She believed I could do or be anything, and she wanted to be a part of my joy, my pain, all of it. In turn I was my most authentic self with her, as honest as I could be. And I loved that space. 

So how could she keep this terrible secret from me? 

It is only lately understood, if not answered. Time, rest, tears and a slow acceptance have given me the courage to ask this question of myself: Could I tell my own children if I knew I had to leave them forever? How could I face such a frightening prospect? When I see their innocent faces, their comfort in knowing I am there, in believing that I will always be there, how could I face taking that away from them? How could I cloak their remaining time with me in so much sadness? Just the thought of that unsettles me – I love them utterly and completely, just as my mom loved me. Instead, I think I would choose to preserve that time, – time with me alive, and us together, and life as we knew it with all of it’s small but wonderful details. 

Mom, did you know you were dying? 

It’s ok if you did, I think I understand. You kept your peace for me, for each of us, – and traded it for time. 

The last day in August that I spent with my mom was an early and lasting birthday gift - we did what we always loved to do together, we grabbed a coffee and strolled around Target, browsing and chatting, as if we had all the time in the world. 

Feb 20, 2020

Grief

Grief. Everyone has an opinion on what it looks like, how it should feel. In the five months since my mother has died, I have been consumed by it. 

Here is my grief story. 

I witnessed grief rise up from my Mother’s hospice bed, conscripted to walk beside her husband, her children, her grandchildren. I saw grief shift to fit the form of each of us, our needs so individual. I watched grief change the faces, the postures, the hearts of my family, as we all went home and tried to live without our Mom. 

In my life I can only compare the bond I share with grief to the time I spent with my newborn babies. Always with me, day and night, and if I wasn’t holding them or feeding them, I was attending to them in some other way. Grief feels similar to that. It demands my attention, and it is uncompromising. Grief pays no mind to anything else, and it shouldn’t. There is nothing that compares to the job that it must fulfill. It will not be set aside, for if it is it will only grow in its authority. The loss of another human – especially a parent, has seismic implications, and grief is the guardian of that loss. It is a shapeshifter, unapologetically changing from one moment to the next, without warning. For me, it is my steady companion. It gives me license, it grants permission, it insists, – without consideration of time or place - that I do what I must do to process this loss: sob, rage, sleep, or just sit in my car and cry until there are no more tears, or until this giant hole in my heart covers over with scar tissue.

Sometimes grief is an ethereal shadow of my Mom, walking with me, letting me know she sees how I am hurting, quietly helping me become accustomed to her absence. She brushes by my cheek in a burst of wind. She sings to me through my ear buds, encouraging my tears to run and giving me much needed space in my lungs to take a full breath. Sometimes grief is a reflection of myself. I see her in the windows of the stores as I walk by - she looks like me, but changed. She looks so tired, and demands much sleep. Some days I try to run away from her, when the pain is too raw. Faster and faster I add miles per hour to the treadmill, but she knowingly, patiently waits outside the door to join me as I walk home, matching my tired steps. She forces me to face this unbelievable loss, to look closely at who I am now, so much older in just a short time. She challenges me to consider who I want to be. Sometimes grief is another person, showing me kindness, leaving me vulnerable and awash with gratitude, and in a puddle of tears. 

I am at once exhausted by it, thankful for it, resentful of it, but also terrified to be without it. Who knows what life is like when grief has faded into everyday, when it decides I am ready to live without its presence? Will I be ready? Will it have seasoned me? Showed me how to live with the spirit of my Mom without seeing the loss of her?

My soul is too tired to consider that right now. But I suspect grief will force me to, in its own unrelenting way. 

Hi Mom

Mom,

I haven't talked to you in three weeks and one day. That's the longest ever. It's so long, and yet it will only get longer.

I think about you all day long. Mostly, I am incredulous that you are gone. I honestly just can't believe it. How could you be gone? You've always been here, how could you have just gone? I spend a lot of my time thinking about that. About how I can't be sure I can reasonably be expected to live the rest of my life without you. It feels grossly unfair, and very heavy on my heart.

The last 19 days have been very hard for everyone. There is this colossal hole in our family. Nobody really knows what to do. We just keep scratching our heads and wondering how things have changed so much in such a short time. And we go about our days with some part of us missing.

For me every emotion is amplified. That makes it harder to do anything, everything. I feel like an open wound.

I have a cold. I am exhausted. I cry a lot. Everyone has kind words for me, and I am grateful, but I still feel terrible.

What would you say to me if we could talk this over?

Me: I miss you Mom, I miss you terribly.
You: I know honey. It's okay to miss me.
Me: I feel like you left so quick.
You: I did! Once they told me I could go, I couldn't wait!
Me: But...
You: No buts! You, my darling, know how much I love you. Your siblings, and your dad know how much I love them. It was time for me to shed this broken body and transcend to a new life. It was time for me to become a celestial being, your own star, your own angel. It was time for me to walk with Jesus. My time on earth was over.
Me: But I wasn't ready!
You: That's okay. You still have me! I am still with you! I put my heart and soul into you every day that I was blessed to be your mom. I cherished every moment, every hug and kiss, every tear I wiped away, all of it. You and your siblings are my life's work! You are my legacy! You are my miracles.
Me: I miss you. I don't know if I said everything! I don't know if I gave you enough hugs, enough credit, enough love!
You: How could you doubt?! Your love for me, and the love of your siblings, and your dad, that was what lit the path I walked as I left that hospital room. And as I looked back I knew I had settled all my accounts - each one of you knew how much I loved you - and I knew how you loved me. We cherished each other, you know that! I know you know that!
Me: I know.
You: So now you have to accept, and that is hard to do, that my love for you has gone from a physical expression to one that is in the air around you, in the sun's rays warming your face, in the embrace of your siblings, in the love of your dad. It's there any time you need it - you just have to allow for that change. And once you do, you will feel the full expression of my love. One without any limitations! Imagine that! I know this is so so hard. My darling, I know you miss me. Our lives have been knitted together since before you were born - of course this is hard! A transition like this takes time, and patience, and tears, and it changes everything. I know you can't touch me, or hug me, but we have shared a thousand hugs at least, and those will sustain you, I promise. Have faith, and I promise you will feel me.
Me: I feel so very sad Mom.
You: I know honey, I know. This is not easy.
Me: I love you
You: I love you too! I always have, I always will. Listen for my voice - it is one of love and self acceptance. It is one of kindness and courage. It is one of softness and light.
Me: I will try.
You: I know honey, I know.

An exercise in futility

I’m certain that the feeling of distress that envelops me as I sit here in the dentist’s chair has less to do with the dental work - which by the way I loathe, and more to do with the concept of futility. 

Today I am having a crown replaced. Dentist: We’ve found decay under one of your existing crowns. Me: Great. So the initial trauma of the crown is now compounded by crown part two. Oh, also, a cavity. The ineffectuality, the time given to repetition and routine, is that what causes me to bristle? The cumulative minutes, hours, days of time spent in brushing, flossing, rinsing, all leading up to this most recent episode of dental futility. I know myself well enough that the need of a re-crowning can’t be the only thing bothering me about this, my reaction is too intense. I decide to take this time while I am captive in this chair to try to understand. In the mean time, I instruct my tongue to stay far away from what remains of my tooth. Any accidental bump makes me slightly nauseous, as I consider what it must look like without it’s protective crown. 

A little over a year ago my 86 year old Grandmother lost her front tooth. It dropped out of her mouth, and I envision her catching it in her cupped hand, her long fingers closing around it as she gasped in horror. This was a front tooth, not to be taken lightly. She didn’t, she was so upset she didn’t leave her house until she could be seen at the dentist. Like a sentinel surrendering his post, with that loss my Grandmother became wholly vulnerable to aging. She reacted as I am sure anyone would in that kind of trauma, with an all out assault against time. And in doing so she replaced ALL of her teeth – with big, bright white shiny choppers. 

It follows that when you are fighting for the very idea of yourself that you will do anything you can to dig in and hold on. I try to look upon my Grandmother’s decision, which I found both upsetting and unsettling, with a kind eye. I am only beginning to have an understanding of what it means to have your youthfulness leave you. Leave you, abandon you, betray you, whichever, depends on my mood and the day (mid forties are just around the corner). I believe the choice to have an entirely new set of teeth attached to her head was both painful and humbling, not to mention very expensive, and sadly I don’t think there was any going back once the process had started. In the fight against aging – despite arming herself with a shiny new smile, she remains on the losing side. Her teeth look ill fitting, her speech is affected, and somehow her face has changed. It looks, well it looks like someone has stolen her real face. 

My Grandmother was a beauty for most of her life. I have the gallery wall in my house to prove it. She was a stunner at sixteen, a pinup girl in real life, frolicking on the sandy beaches of Lake Ontario. The photos I lovingly rescued from exhausted old picture albums came with scalloped edges and black and white glimpses into a another time. I treasure them, but I wonder if they make this process of letting go of youth and beauty even harder for her. She held on to her enchanting looks long after her contemporaries. It is perhaps her greatest achievement, as hers was not a mind for education, and she was raised in a time and place and culture and family that didn’t value her for much besides her looks. That makes this surrender even more poignant - no matter her late age. 

Your crown is ready! My dentist chimes, as she lowers the chair back down and prepares to attach it to what used to be a very nice tooth. Now, to everyone else, the change is invisible. But I know.

In spite of the pulling and continued requests to tap tap tap my teeth together, I begin to grasp what has affected me so. In two short hours this process has restored my tooth, and thereby some earlier rendition of me. Is this how my Grandmother felt? That with the help of those pearly whites she was able to be some younger version of herself? The drive to appear younger is not new, by any means. But lately something inside of me, or outside of me, or both, is trying to convince me that younger is better, and that is new. Analytically I understand that idea to be a fallacy, but emotionally it is harder to dismiss. Today a two hour process to a new tooth. Last week, a suggestion of fillers to plump up my cheeks in an effort to alleviate the dark circles under my eyes. A trick here, an add on there, all to mask the way we are aging. But besides being a temporary balm, it remains, ah, there it is – an exercise in futility. 

I am as old as I am, just like my Grandmother is. We can’t go back, and likely we wouldn’t really want to. We have hard earned crows feet and smile lines, bodies softened from having babies, wisdom showing on the tops of our hands, and more, so much more. I comfort myself with the knowledge that age is the great equalizer. We are all aging, even those in their twenties, there is no getting around that.  

Now, off to the gym. 

We’ve moved! Or, oh dear, what have we done?!

My family has relocated from lovely, tranquil, quiet (okay I concede to sometimes too quiet) Williamsburg to quite busy, quite rigorous Northern Virginia. It’s a big change, which now appears to be the understatement of the century.

We arrived one week and two days ago. And it’s been a challenge. TO SAY THE LEAST.

Shit keeps breaking. Like seriously. Example: yesterday afternoon as I walked across the basement I felt a drop of water hit my head. What? I looked up to see the ceiling yellowed with water, the retro salon light (I don’t know they are these ugly long lights that look like they are from a pool hall) above me filled with water. Hmmm. Electricity + Water = Bad in my limited scientific experience. Currently we sit without water waiting for the plumber. Waiting and waiting. For like almost four hours now. Hey, take your time buddy.

But seriously, what the hell?! We just bought this house, and in the space of a week my husband is feeling some serious buyer's remorse.

Maybe I am too, I just don’t want to join the fray in saying it. Like if I do, this choice to move up here, might not have been the right one. Anyway I don’t like to say those things out loud, even if I am the only one who stays quiet about it. Also, that would ruin my longstanding role as peacemaker, soother, placater, roof holder upper.

So along with a rainy ceiling we have a list of challenges. Ah where to start?

1. Locks that were installed in the maybe 1940s. Me: locksmith see these lovely antique locks, can we replace them with something that will not cause an anxiety attack when I try to open the door? Locksmith: Sorry lady, they stopped making those like fifty years ago. To be brutally honest you need to replace the entire door, or doors actually as there are like five of them. Me: hahahahah fuck you
2. More water! Rainstorm this time. Fills the window wells. Then they cry and lots of water, I guess they are just the tears of this fucking house that find their way, conveniently, if I do say so, to the drain in the middle of the utility room. Huh, that’s funny. One of them is actually coming in right behind an outlet. See above equation.
3. Bathrooms. Ok this one is a first world problem, I get that. But since I live in the first world, it’s relevant. The sinks are for PEOPLE WITHOUT PRODUCT.  They are not for haircentric people, which I OBVIOUSLY AM. Or even regular people who need to have space for things like toothbrushes and toothpaste. I know, I know, I saw the sinks before we bought the house. I am certain they have shrunk since closing.
4. No curtains. Maybe never any curtains. So yes, everyone sees everything. Since we have like 1000 windows it might take me reentering the workplace to cover the cost.
5. Rapunzel. Our darling girl Ella, in the throes of puberty has ascended the third floor and very rarely is seen down here with us, well, more normal, less aggressive, less moody individuals. I have this odd vision of her as a caterpillar who is up there, in the trees, maybe in her chrysalis, waiting and planning and biding her time before her big reveal. I think this and then recall SHE IS ONLY TWELVE, WE ARE JUST GETTING STARTED. Then I cry a little bit, as she is driving me to drink.
6. The outlet behind the bed. It looks, when I wedge my head between the headboard and the wall, to be dead center, just out of my reach from either side. I try to move the bed. Sorry it weighs 5000 lbs. Why oh why didn’t I plug in the surge protector while the movers were here? I had one! Damnit! So I am, for the foreseeable future destined to plug my phone in seventeen feet from my side of the bed. No more Candy Crush Soda Pop or Audible to lull me to sleep at night as I try to NOT THINK ABOUT THIS LIST.
7. The couch. So beautiful, so comfortable. So doesn’t fit in this house. So doesn’t fit down the steps to the basement. Ninety six inches long and I am pretty sure it cost like 96 hundred thousand dollars. Since move in day it sits quietly in the sunroom, taking up the entire space. And now I resent it and what it represents. Which I guess is a foray into Craigslist, which is seriously inconvenient.
8. Riding bikes. Today I took my first bike ride at 7:15. I rode to see the danger level that Ella would encounter should she ride her bike to her new middle school. She is, as is Holden, within one mile of school, and qualifies as a WALKER. You see, they haven’t met her, or they would DISQUALIFY her. That bike ride down this busy road? They have to be kidding. Shawn says fight the transportation office. At this point I will fight anybody. Holden’s school, though the bike ride is only 6 minutes and relatively easy hardly the level of busyness we can expect in September. :ugh: In his quest to be more grown up he leads the way as we ride to his school and back, and then again, and one more time. And then with Shawn. Also he cries when we say we are too busy to go again. Yes, cries, like real tears and everything. Lots of them.

I haven’t been to the gym yet, but I didn’t list that. And I am sure that is making me crazy, too.

Oh, the other house, the the one in quiet, easy to access Williamsburg, the one with so many easy to access outlets, and large sinks, it waits for a sale, and we watch with baited breath, and try not to think of the stress that will accompany two mortgages, in addition to the stress of the above letters a - h.

Transition. Just take it slow, easy, one day at a time. That’s what mothers and other smart people say to me. Why is that so difficult? Why is it making all of us so irritable and frustrated. Why is it taking the glow off of an experience that should be exciting and fun?

Oh who knows. The plumbers just got here.

Maybe things are looking up?

Fingers crossed.

Knock knock

It is not often in life that we are given the gift of a second chance in life. 

I get that sounds dramatic. I like a little drama. Not too much, but a little bit. 

For the last seven months I have been considering that statement. Some of those days it was overwhelming. Paralyzing, even. And I shut it down, refusing to hear it, look at it, think about it. 

But as time goes on, and I heal from my old life - a terrible work life that bled into all other life forms - my choices - good or bad, good and bad, I feel less afraid of the second chance. Less. 

I am tentatively curious. What could this mean? What could it mean to everything? Too much...what could it mean to today? Tomorrow?

My husband waits and watches to see what I do. 

I wait to see when I will shrug off the remaining guilt, the paralysis of the last five years. 

He says it's time to let it go. Stop being so introspective already and let it go. 

Let go of shitty and stuck. Because you're not. 

Let go of things that bound you to a life that is no longer yours. 

Ghosts of fear, anger, resentment, hate, yes, hate. In the last year I spent a lot of time with that word - a terrible tasting word, on my tongue. It infected my other words, and settled in my mouth like a toothache, but one unable be brushed or flossed or hell, drilled out of your mouth. I know, I tried. 

Time is the only salve, and God knows, it takes its time. 

More than losing - losing? my business. Lose. Walk away. Give away. Trade away. Escape. 

Which is it? 

Depends on the day. Or hour. Minute. Moment. I have needed time to heal from that too, and I've been taking it. I've been given it. Give and take give and take. 

When I used to sit in Wendy's office, (my beloved therapist of my early twenties) perched in some tall office building on 57th St, I had this concept of myself as being special. I felt it. It was magical, hard to explain but very real. 

As my situation worsened, that idea went away. But the memory of it did not. 

And lately I think - is it coming back? Or what is that - some twinge of something good and hopeful. Words and ideas knock knock knocking to be let out out of my introspective brain, out of my on-the-mend broken heart. Could I/it be coming back? I hope but I can't dwell on what it could mean. 

Not yet. 

For now I blow on the embers and pray for fire. 

Tiempo y espacio. My go to reflection from my recent trip to Spain. 

Also it sounds better in Spanish - more dramatic. 

Time and space. Luxuries not afforded to many. I get that. 

I also know that without them I wouldn't be healing. 

And I am. 

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I am who I am.

I write that reality. 

And when I fail, I fail spectacularly.