Abigail Carter's Blog, page 8

F*&^% You Universe!

Warning: The following is a negative rant. Read at your own risk.

NB: We are all entitled to have bad moments and despite all the great stuff that happens in our lives, the crappy stuff can still knock us sideways. This is one of those moments.

[image error]It’s hard not to think sometimes that life is out to get us. I’ve had so many conversations trying to convince O that her life is not “unlucky,” though I can certainly understand why she would think that: her dad’s death, knee surgery, tragic dog death, unrequited crushes, school struggles, not being accepted to the college of dreams and then last night, just as she’s about to be a hero and fling a ball into a net, another knee gives way.

Other kids become Varsity stars, effortlessly achieve 4.0 GPAs and get into the colleges of their dreams. I’ve run out of platitudes and advice. I sound like a broken record. “It will get better, I promise.” “If you think you are unlucky, you will be unlucky.” “The universe…” Whatever. Frankly, I’m sick of the Universe and its crappy lessons. It breaks my heart to see her so unhappy.

I spent the night worrying about the ridiculously high deductible, her mental health, my mental health and that spring break, her prom, and graduation might all being spent on crutches. We argued this morning over crutches and braces and how much she hates her life.

I don’t have a solution other than to grit my teeth and get through it, whatever comes. She doesn’t either. But it will be messy and stressful and horrible.

C’mon Universe, throw us a bone here.

This concludes today’s breakdown. Regular programming will resume with the next post.

Remember the Moon – Prologue

I thought I’d try a little experiment and post the first little bit of my fictional book.

Cat’s Eyes

[image error]I literally fell for my wife in Pompeii on a hot Italian September day, 1991. My eyes on my guidebook, I strode along blithely, sweat dripping down my forehead. Not seeing her crouched in the middle of the shimmering, hot road, I toppled over her hunched form. Lethargic tourists, their cameras slung around their necks like giant, all-seeing necklaces, limped past trying not to make eye contact. I cursed and rubbed my knee. She was mortified, stammering her words of apology as she stood. I was surprised she spoke English and reached up to take hold of her outstretched hand, noticing its softness as she pulled me up with surprising strength. I stood shakily, looking into her eyes, which were a greenish yellow, like an olive, but flecked with light brown and blue and with a dark purple ring around the iris. I might have overlooked them under different circumstances, but she was looking directly at me. They were eyes filled with concern. They were familiar eyes.

“Sarah?” I hadn’t seen her for ten years. The last time I’d seen Sarah Willis was August 15, 1981, the day my father died. She’d been my fourteen-year old crush, an infatuation both light with innocence and marred by tragedy. I’d spent many summers at Sarah’s cottage, swimming in the lake, bunking in the boat house, playing crazy eights on rainy days. She was two years older, an eternity to a sixteen year-old girl who was in love with Marcus Pellegrino, one of her cottage friends from down the road. At eighteen, he trumped me with his fully matured biceps, deep baritone and Italian-Irish confidence. The last I’d heard of Sarah, she was living with Marc in a tiny apartment in Toronto while she studied Fine Art at the Ontario College of Art and he worked as an account executive for some big Toronto ad agency.

Meeting here in an ancient, city-sized graveyard seemed impossibly ironic, as if death followed us here and arranged for this serendipitous chance meeting. Sarah looked good. A little older without the baby fat, and her hips had filled out nicely. To me in that moment, she was as sexy as it got.  She wore a tight tank top over low-slung utility shorts cinched with a wide leather belt, a brass star for a buckle.

“Jay? My god! What are you doing here?”

I still clutched her hand as she spoke my name.

“I could ask you the same thing. What the hell were you doing down there?”

She gave me a sideways glance, looking coyishly sexy.

“I was feeling the ruts in the street. I know it’s weird. But I find them amazing.” I glanced down. Two parallel grooves – the distance between them presumably a standard cart wheel width – were deeply etched into the stone. The two lines wavered down the block until they seemed to meet far in the distance.

“Those ruts were formed by ancient carts driving along this street thousands of years ago, and yet here they still are, as though a cart had just driven along this road yesterday,” she said as she looked down at them, shaking her head in amazement. I could tell she wanted to touch them again.

I smiled. Sarah’s fascination with such a myopic detail was typical of her artistic obsession with details and textures. I remembered her at the cottage, always picking up stones and shells, rubbing them in her hand, passing them to me to feel. But here in Pompeii, there was something more to it. As if by touching those ruts, she could transport herself back to another time and relive what had happened there. It was hard to deny one’s mortality in a place that remained frozen in death – the grisly aftermath of a volcano’s wrath, scant reminders of once-busy lives, instantly ended.

“Are you just traveling in Italy for the summer?” I asked. I was on an open-ended post college backpacking trip, trying to avoid being a grown-up and find a real job.

“I came to Italy a year ago. I got accepted to this artists’ commune at a monastery near Rome.”

“Sounds interesting.”

“Yeah, it has been. More or less.” Sarah’s face clouded over.

“What? Has something happened?”

“Well, you remember Marcus?

“Yes. I remember him.” I hoped my voice sounded neutral.

“I’ve been living with him for the last three years in Toronto. When I got this fellowship, he thought it would be an adventure to come with me. Of course I was thrilled. I didn’t want to leave him. I wasn’t even going to come to Italy because of him. We were going to get married. Well, we talked about it… Anyway, he gave up his job in Toronto. He thought he might be able to get a job in Rome, but he didn’t speak Italian. He took language classes, but then he found a motley group of Italian musicians to play with in a band. And he found some cute Texan singer…” Sarah shook her head as if trying to shake away the memory. “It hasn’t ended well. He left two weeks ago. With her.”

“I’m sorry, that must be tough.”

“Yeah, but I’ve been doing some amazing painting. All that angst I guess,” Sarah smiled.

“I’m really sorry, Sarah.”

“No you’re not.”

“I’m sorry to see you in pain, but I’m not sorry about Marc, that’s true. I always thought he was an arrogant prick.”

“I know. You have a weird history with him. With your dad and everything.”

“You could say that, yeah.”

“But he’s a good guy. Really. He’s passionate and smart and…” Sarah began to cry.

“I’m sorry Sarah. I really am.” I patted her shoulder. Sarah wiped away a tear and gave me a shy smile.

“Enough about me, what are you doing here Jay?”

“Just bumming around Europe, I guess.”

“I heard you went to Dal. How was that?”

“OK I guess. Got a degree in Poly Sci. Typical. Have no idea what I’m going to do with it. I’m thinking about going to business school. What about you? I heard you went to OCA.”

“Yeah, I graduated a couple of years ago.”

“That’s great Sarah. What kind of art do you do?”

“I guess I’m a painter. And an installation artist. I’ve even had a show at a tiny gallery in Toronto.”

“Congratulations. I’d love to see your stuff.”

“Thanks. Yeah, you’ll have to come to a show.”

We both looked down and watched a drip of blood snake down my shin from a cut on my knee, threatening to seep into my one pair of clean sport socks.

“Do you need a Band-Aid or something?”

I smiled at her concern. “Nah, I’m fine,” I said, brushing ancient volcanic dust from my shorts.  Sarah squirted my wound with water from her water bottle, causing a dusty, bloody mess to run onto my sock and shoe.

“It’s OK. I’m fine. Really.”

“I’m just trying to help.” I’d forgotten her alluring pout, a tiny puckered rosebud. “I feel terrible I made you fall!”

“So ruts in the road, eh?” I put my hand out for her water bottle, which she handed me and I took a swig.

“I know, it’s dumb.” She squatted down to run her fingers over them once more. “They are proof of what was, Jay, a reminder of another world. And look at these.” She reached over to point out a small, sparkly, inch-square tile embedded in the stone. “They’re called ‘cats eyes.’ They reflect the moon’s light, guiding travelers at night. Funny how it took the rest of the world so much time to rediscover that technology!” She stood up, grinning.

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“Oh, how I love Pompeii!” Her eyes flashed an excitement I remembered from when we were kids, becoming a deeper shade of green with contagious passion. I was drawn into them.

“I could hang out here every day for a year.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said, my mouth strangely dry. I tore myself away from her eyes and crouched to pick my guidebook off the ground and shove it into my backpack. She blew a thick curl of reddish hair that had escaped her ponytail off her face. I noticed a few faint freckles across her nose. I had never noticed before that she possessed the same intriguing coloring of many of the people I admired in the region around Amalfi and Positano – that same deep shade of auburn hair, a complexion that turned coppery in the sun and those green eyes. I remembered her dad Peter had the same coloring and now faintly recalled him talking of his Italian ancestry. It hadn’t meant anything then.

“Have you seen any of the castings of some of the people who died that day?” She asked.

I nodded, grim-faced. They had spooked me. Bodies contorted, captured in their moment of death, trying to ward off the tons of ash that was about to bury them.

“They have some amazing mosaics and frescoes in one of the villas just down the road,” she said, sensing my discomfort. “I was just heading there now. Would you like to join me?”

Uncovering Buried Treasure – Radiant flooring from 1946

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The evidence

I’ve been re-reading Betty MacDonald’s book Onions in the Stew, her book about her house on Vashon, a house that I now, serendipitously, own. I’m hoping to uncover the mystery of the radiant kitchen floors. I was told when I bought the house that the floors in the kitchen and dining room – part of an addition built by Betty – were radiant heated. After moving in, it was clear why. Even on the hottest Vashon day in the middle of August (75 degrees in the sun), the kitchen stays a frigid 55 degrees. The floor itself, about 45 degrees. Foot coverings are imperative and dogs beg to always be on laps. Betty’s description of the house when she first saw it, long before she had the addition built, belies her innocence to the house and to Vashon. The kitchen she describes was eventually hoisted by crane (positioned on a barge at the beach, 200 feet below the house) up and over the main house to become the guest cabin in order to make room for the addition she would build.

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View of house taken from guest house balcony

The house, built of hewn fir timbers, was snuggled on the lap of the plump green hillside.   The roof was hand-split cedar shakes, each shake at least an inch thick.   The rain and the salt air had turned it all a soft pewter color.   The kitchen, which was small, had knotty pine walls with a bricked-in electric stove and a trash burner across one corner. Against the windows which looked at Puget Sound and Mount Rainier over an enormous window box filled with pink geraniums, was a Flemish blue drop-leaf table and four stools.   The drainboard and insides of the cupboards were the same Flemish blue.   The floor was pine planks put down with wooden pegs and calked.   The living room, which opened from the kitchen by a swinging pine half-door, was about forty feet long, had the same plank floors (four by twelves), an enormous stone fireplace that went up two stories, a small rustic stairway leading to a balcony from which opened three small knotty pine bedrooms and a bath.   At the south end of the balcony was the master bedroom.   It had a beamed ceiling, pine walls and a fireplace with a copper hood.   In all the rooms were hand-braided rugs and lovely pine furniture made by the doctor.   There were two patios, one off the kitchen, one in the angle of the ell formed by the master-bedroom wing and the living room. They were made of rounds of cedar with flowering moss in between. Around the south patio was a rockery filled with heather.   Above it on a knoll was a gnarled old apple tree.   The ground under the apple tree was carpeted with blue ajuga and yellow tulips.   Across the front of the house and available to the living room by French doors was a rustic porch overlooking the water and the sandy beach and facing Mount Rainier.

MacDonald, Betty Bard (2012-07-02). The Onions in the Stew

I can’t imagine that radiant heated floors were a common amenity in 1946, but if you read any of Betty’s books, you will know the woman was always cold. Perhaps she was the innovator of such cutting edge technology. I’m sure using terra cotta tiles on the floors made sense at the time, knowing they would always be warm, but I wonder if she ever thought about how cold they might feel if the heating system failed to work, as it has, as far as I can tell, from about 1962 onwards.

A few years ago, I had a guy take a look at some pipes that protrude out of a stone wall behind the fridge to see if they might be the origin of the heat for the floors. After “pressure testing” the pipes, he said that the floors were inoperable, probably because in those days they were galvanized steel, which by now had surely corroded from the inside, clogging themselves with a gooey mess. I brought my old slippers from home, a floppy dog bed and called it a day.

For the past year, I have watched and helped Jim (yes, he has a name and has given me permission to use it) install radiant floor piping in his basement. I have happily secured plastic ties to the bright red “pex” tubing, ensuring that it doesn’t come away from the mesh when concrete is poured on top of it. Along one wall, each neatly lined up red tube is fed into the mothership, making the back wall of his basement look like the control panel of a nuclear power plant. I have placed my hand in the dust of the finished cement floor marveling that it feels like a stone that’s been basking in the sun all day. Dreams of such sunny tiles in my Vashon kitchen didn’t seem so impossible anymore.

Thus is should be no surprise that Jim has embraced Vashon and has taken up the cause of the radiant floors. I am learning how tenacious he can be when on a mission. He loaded the car with a 100lb giant vacuum-cleaner-like contraption whose only saving grace was wheels. His latest organizational innovation of “bins” were filled with tools and tubing and bits of copper pipe, electrical tape and wire cutters. Trips were made into town for missing items (namely flashlight, which you might assume would be imperative equipment in an old house on an island). He later lamented that he remembered everything but a change of clothes which became necessary after chasing a river otter under the house, but that’s a story for another post.

Soon the fridge was in the middle of the kitchen and we were walking around garbage pails and recycling bins and under a ladder that jutted into the ceiling of the mud room. Ancient thermostats that were assumed to have once controlled the heat for the floors were taken apart and their guts littered the kitchen counter. Dangerous looking wires poked out from the walls. The enormous vacuum-y thing barred the front door and was capable of ear splitting whines as it forced its compressed air into a long wiggly orange tube attached to the pipes in the wall. New copper fittings were cut and greased and soldered. Gauges and more copper tubing were attached to the mysterious pipes behind the fridge. Discoveries were made:

An unnoticed ancient red metal dial was discovered under the sink under the little bathroom. When turned, water came rushing out a cut off pipe in the ceiling above my head as I stood under the trap door in the mud room. I rained indoors on my head. Tap has been capped off before some four year old comes along to try it out.
There is a giant tank in the attic above the mudroom that the house must have been built around. Assumption is that it was some kind of water heater or converter. No pipes from it into the floor could be seen.
Pipes behind fridge didn’t appear to go into the floor, but up into the ceiling above the mud room, once connected to the now cut off pipe and leading to the heat converter.
Extensive searching which included impaling kitchen cabinets, hunting the exterior of the house for pipes, opening the trap door of the old coal bin, and pulling out every large appliance from the wall, revealed that not one pipe could be found that might be the origin of the so-called galvanized steel pipe that was rumored to be embedded in the floor.
The ancient thermostats were still connected to live electricity and emitted enough electricity to power a significant electrical heater or perhaps heated floors, but no connection to the floors could be found. They have since been decommissioned so as not to set the house on fire which seemed appropriate after 50 odd years of being in this condition. Judging by the gunk found inside them, the house was once home to some copious cigarette smokers (of which Betty was one).
Chloe is a maniac for a flashlight and with very little effort it’s possible to make her spin in circles until she’s drunk with dizziness.

Chloe meets Flashlight

Later, after the river-otter adventure, Jim stood barefoot on the cold floor wearing a towel and my old bathrobe, looking up into the trap door with a beer in his hand as I assembled a lasagna. Soon only the towel and bare feet could be seen standing at the top of the ladder, the rest of him disappearing into the attic.

At the conclusion of the weekend, he said, “You know, if it wasn’t for her daughters mentioning in your copy of “Nancy and Plum” that they finally had warm enough feet that they went barefoot in the winter, I would say that the radiant floors were non-existant.”

I have skimmed Onions in the Stew now several times. How nice with a Kindle version that I was able to search on “floors.” There is no mention of the radiant floors at all. I called the woman from whose family I bought the house and she only knew that the thermostats in the dining room and the kitchen were supposed to have controlled the floor’s heat. I have been in touch with Betty’s nephew who had no memory of the floors but who put me in touch with the original realtor of the house, who I still need to contact along with my older neighbor on the beach and whoever else I can think of that might know anything about the now mythical radiant floors.

The hunt for The Holy Grail continues.

 

Daisies for Valentine’s

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Olivia’s first daisies, Valentine’s Day, 1997

There is always so much hand-wringing and drama on Valentine’s Day. All the V-Day grinches who lament the Hallmark holiday, who want to beat it into submission, so as not to face their own losses or fears. People seem to set such high expectations on Valentine’s Day, and if they are not celebrated in a way they deem worthy, the day is a loss, a heartbreak, a disappointment.

Growing up, my parents always gave us little token gifts on Valentine’s Day – a bag of pistachios, fruit leather (pre-fruit roll-up days), cinnamon hearts. I loved these little gifts. I’m not sure if it was their simplicity or the fact that it was nice to know that although we were kids, our parents still thought of us on Valentine’s Day.

When Arron came into my life, he began the tradition of the single red rose, though one year, he gave both Olivia and I big bunches of daisies, which became the flower that symbolized him after he died. I loved the tiny gestures and would be thrilled and content if they were all there was.

After Arron died, I kept up the tradition with our kids,. A cup cake, cute t-shirt, a dinner out. I threw my attention on them in those difficult years when Valentine’s Days seemed to mock the single, and more particularly, the bereaved. The simple gestures were not overwhelming ones, the way Christmas ones seemed to be, and so giving became that much more pleasurable. I wasn’t expected to give Valentines to the mailman or the kids’ teachers, though I could have. The pressure was off.

Valentine’s Day became a day where I celebrated all I was grateful for still having – healthy, happy kids, wonderful friends, a family who loved me. I tried to make it a point not to focus on what I had lost.

This year, I have even more to be grateful for. I still shake my head in awe that love has found me, and this year the simple gestures remain intact. I will be making a special dinner that may or may not include kids. I will be giving something hand-made, all the while feeling so thankful. The poor man will receive a tsunami of love and sweetness, he won’t know what hit him.

So often we set ourselves up on Valentine’s Day, wallowing in the loneliness it seems to foster, the expectation that something nice should happen to us, be done for us, be given to us. When in fact, if we can release those expectations and see V-day as simply a day of giving love, we might all spare ourselves all that angst.

So go on. No more wallowing. Give yourself a hug. Give someone you love a hug and maybe go and get a few cinnamon hearts or some daisies or a cupcake and show someone how much you care about them.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

The “Yup, I’m Here and I’m Not Going Anywhere” Smirk

[image error]One year ago today I met you for the first time – lunch on a sunny February afternoon. The restaurant was inside a trendy “arcade” type mall, all rough hewn timbers and grass fed meat counters. At the back of the building, lined by a wall of tall warehouse windows, the restaurant nestled, whitewashed with white linen table cloths. You sat on a bench outside waiting for me. Your blonde hair was tousled, and you were dressed in what I now know was your finest – a dark purple shirt with some sort of pattern, jeans and dress shoes. You had that same smirk as the Match.com photo, the one that somehow captures the essence of you, the “Yup, I’m here and I’m not going anywhere” smirk that always makes me smile. The one word that came to me when I saw you was “adorable.” You will probably hate knowing that.

My immediate impression was that you were young. Too young for me. I already knew this of course, but in person you seemed like a teenager. But as we talked, I saw that deeply intelligent man inside your teenaged veneer. You probably didn’t notice that I watched your hands. They were rough and scarred and the fingernails were non-existent. I admired those hands. “This is a man who works hard and works passionately,” I thought. I could tell the passionate part by all the scabs. You would say the scars and scabs had more to do with lack of skill than your passion, but I disagree. You are a passionate man. We enjoyed our lunch and neither of us wanted it to end so we continued our date at a coffee shop, filling in each other about our lives. When it was time to leave, you climbed on the Gold Wing motorcycle that your father willed to you as a sort of joke, and I laughed as you drove away looking like a little boy on your dad’s huge bike.

I assumed you would find my life of teenagers and houses and writing one of little interest. I assumed as a younger man going on a date with an older woman, that you just wanted sex. (Haha!) That had been my experience with younger men. But this was not the case with you. Well maybe it was a little, but I’m not going there. OK, maybe I will later…

Our second date of sushi and a suspect Spider Roll, we talked through our differences. You said I was “refined” and “classy,” qualities I sensed made you uncomfortable. I assured you that I was more than those things, but I understood.  You suggested we be friends. I agreed. I can’t tell you if I was disappointed or just resigned to the idea.

On our walk a few weeks later, we talked of the firefighter-9/11 widow irony. You later told me you thought you were telling me “full speed ahead” as far as our relationship went, where I thought you were reiterating that you just wanted to remain friends. Again, I understood your desire to be friends. And I could see that we would become friends, no matter what.

That day on the slopes with C, as he mimicked you when you shoved your poles under your leg on the way up on the chairlift and followed your over every jump, something in me expanded and all I wanted was to hold your gloved hand in mine. You were on your best behaviour in front of C, but I still thought it was just friends you wanted. For the first time, I was a little sad about this. I was surprised when you crashed landed at my feet at the end of the day, even then not realizing you were flirting with me.

Only later that night when you clutched my bare foot in your hand did I finally get it.

A whole year has gone by and despite a broken knee and the death of a wonderful dog, you have stood solidly beside me. You have set the slow and steady pace with your “Yup I’m here and I’m not going anywhere” smirk. You have come into our family quietly and without fanfare and have managed to guide us with your wisdom, your uncanny connection to your inner 13-year old and shown us such happiness that I had given up hope was ever again possible. I hope we have shown it to you as well.

I look forward to another year, many years of adventures with you beside me holding my foot, wearing your “Yup I’m here and I’m not going anywhere” smirk.

I love you.

Three… Two… One… Launch!

[image error]It’s been a week of accomplishment. We have finished college applications! Never would I have imagined a process so wrought with anxiety and confusion and angst. And yet, despite the tears, the avoidance, the nagging, it brought us together. At least, once we got over the “you didn’t go to college here, so you don’t know anything about applying to colleges here.” I couldn’t argue with her. There was a steep learning curve for me. What did all those SAT scores mean? Why did some schools quote their SAT requirements out of 800 and others out of 2400? Did all colleges have supplemental essay requirements? (almost all). What is a Common Application? You mean we’re supposed to actually VISIT colleges? In Canada, these are all somewhat foreign concepts. At least they were when I applied to “University.” In Canada, it’s not even called “College.”

Many essays needed to be written. I learned the beauty of Google Docs where we could both be in a document making changes at the same time. I could type a question and watch as she added the answer to her essay. Through this whole process, we each gained a new-found respect for each other. I learned more about my daughter through those essays than in any conversation I’d ever had with her. She learned my value as an editor (and hopefully something a little more profound).

Now it’s a waiting game. It’s strange to think she won’t be here next year and yet I am so excited for her to be moving into such a new and formative time of her life. I remember when she was a little girl, trying to imagine what she would be like as a big girl and now I wonder what she will become as an adult. A “launch” seems like a pretty good metaphor.

My other launch this week has been Writer.ly, the website business I co-founded with a writing friend, Kelsye. Writer.ly is an online marketplace for writers where they can post jobs and then receive bids from the editors, book designers, website builders and anyone else they might need to get their work published. It’s been eight months incubating, so to have it launch feels like a pretty big deal. Kelsye and I spend the weekend obsessed watching the site as the number of people creating profiles grew, the same way new mothers watch their infants eyelashes grow.

I hope you will spread the word about Writer.ly to any writers, editors, illustrators, designers or anyone else you know that might be involved in the publishing industry.

Exciting times!

Post Widowism

[image error]Growing up with an architect for a dad, I heard a lot about Postmodernism. It was often a term that was applied to his work, though I don’t think he thought too much of it. To be honest, I don’t think I ever really grasped what it meant. So, by virtue of a handy Wiki search, here is a definition:

Postmodernism is largely a reaction to scientific or objective efforts to explain reality. Postmodernism tends to be defined either as the period after modernism or as a ‘condition’ whereby established values are rapidly eroded by new technological advances and a general apprehension of what the future will bring.

In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually. Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles, knowing always that the outcome of one’s own experience will necessarily be fallible and relative, rather than certain and universal.

Postmodernism is “post” because it is denies the existence of any ultimate principles, and it lacks the optimism of there being a scientific, philosophical, or religious truth which will explain everything for everybody – a characterisitic of the so-called “modern” mind.

Last night I had the pleasure of going back to my memoir class (the one I took before I wrote the book, and that launched me well and truly into becoming a writer) and talked about how I came to be a published author. The teacher and my friend, Theo introduced me as a “Post Widow.” I laughed at the term’s perfection. And now, with that definition, it’s almost eerie how apt it is when applied to widowhood – “A general apprehension of what the future will bring… A (new) reality based on one’s individual interpretation of (an old) reality…”

So, the erosion process of widowhood has placed me into yet a new reality – The Post Widow(er).

I’m not sure what that means, exactly, but here are a few potential signs that you are a Post Widow(er):

You only have one box of tissues on the entire first floor of your house.
You wear sun glasses because it’s actually sunny outside.
You smile when you see an expression in one of your children that is the exact same expression your loved one used to make.
You realize that when you become a grouch at Christmas, it’s not because of the grief, its because you were always a grouch at Christmas.
In a relationship you are not compelled to regale your partner with all the amazing stuff your dead loved one used to do.
You’ve put away the wedding photo.
You are amazed (and weirdly guilty) that you actually feel lucky to have been widowed.

And you thought this was going to be a serious post.

 

Grinch or Grief Elf?

[image error]You’d think I’d know better, but “the season” still arrives with an emotional wallop, even after all these years. It used to be easy to blame it on that sly little grief elf, but really, eleven years on, that excuse is a little worn out. It’s like coming in for a bouncy landing after a long period of smooth skies. When did that wheel fall off?

I plan, I cook, I fill stockings, I buy presents, I do all the stuff, just as I always did. But it’s a wind-up doll who does those things. And then I wake up on the 24th grumpy, annoyed, out of sorts. I play Christmas music to ward it off. I drink too much wine. Family arrives and bump bump bump, the wheels come off and I find myself face down in the muck one more time.

I thought being in a happy relationship, having great kids who are healthy, doing stuff I’m proud of would be my saviour.

Maybe this time of year is just emotional for everyone, regardless of grief, crappy pasts, sad news stories.

But oh, it was so nice to have that little grief monster to blame. So clean. So easy.

Because now I have to face the fact that maybe I’m just a Grinch, waiting for the minute my heart doesn’t feel quite so tight. The hole remains, which is both a comfort and a curse.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays all. May all your hearts grow three sizes today.

 

 

 

Whose Life is This Again?

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Morning Breakfast, San Francisco, 2012

Poor neglected blog. Between becoming the co-founder of a start-up (Writer.ly), helping Olivia with college applications, finishing my novel, cavorting with a firefighter, raising a puppy and keeping a 13-year old in a rainbow array of Vans, the blog has slid somewhat in priority.

Some catch-up:

Last week, I traveled to San Francisco with my Writer.ly co-founder Kelsye to meet with some investors and to attend yet another pitch contest. Kelsye and I found ourselves in a strange Motel, that looked like it was stuck in another era, one where long, pastel colored cars should be parked smugly in the parking lot. The water went off mid-shower as we were getting ready for our pitch, the toilet seat fell off and there was no phone in the room to call down to the front desk, but it was somehow perfect. We ate astonishingly wonderful breakfasts in the trendy Cow Hollow neighborhood and laughed as we slurped $1 oysters, admiring our shoestring decadence.

We weaved our way downtown on a bus, passing a dragon dance in the middle of a sidewalk at mid-day in Chinatown, determining it a good omen, sipped pumpkin chai in a coffee shop as we met with an investor, and later sat in chairs that looked to be made of airplane wings in a trendy work-loft space where we arranged ourselves in front of our foam core signage and talked about Writer.ly in excited tones for an hour and a half hoping for enough of the coveted pseudo million dollar bills to be selected for a four minute pitch. Our millions didn’t add up and so Kelsye did a one minute pitch, not enough to convince investors of the brilliance of our idea. At eleven that night, we sat in our respective beds trying to interpret the unearthly Skype gurgles being emitted all the way from India as we tried to resolve yet more issues on the site we are desperately close to launching.

The following day, after our last meeting, Kelsye and I sat in an Italian restaurant sipping from white mugs waiting for J who was coming to whisk me away to Napa for the weekend. He came dashing across the street, blonde hair tousled, a light coloured blazer over a black turtleneck, looking so boyish and grown-up at once, it made me laugh. We fought traffic all the way to Napa and later found ourselves in a hushed theatre listening to a line of men in black suits harmonize Christmas carols. Actors retold the WW1 story in a series of quotes from soldiers reminiscences of how a lone German soldier walked into no man’s land and sang Silent Night one Christmas eve in 1914. Their rendition of the song was so haunting that I was flung back to Christmas Eve of 2001, singing the same song to a 2-year-old Carter as I watched the moonlight against the snow outside the window and wept heartbroken tears.

As I listened to the chorus of men, I wept silent tears that I let drop to my lap and held the hand of the man beside me who I hoped didn’t notice. I was annoyed by the intrusion of memory, and yet remembered and marveled that woman, a woman I couldn’t imagine being now, who somehow sang that song to her son, despite being so broken.

Home intruded the next morning, followed by a pang of guilt when I texted my sweet senior and discovered that despite my constant reminders and texts, a standardized test, needed for college entry had been missed for a second time. I tried not to recriminate myself. Learning to be responsible for one’s own actions (or inactions) as the case may be was part of growing up. She can’t rely on Meemoo forever.

The rest of weekend was spent sipping extraordinary wines, hearing tales of J’s family as told by his uncle and aunt who charmed with their excited approach to life; listening to a constant stream of christmas music that remains in my head and has surprisingly put me in more of a Christmas mood than I am willing to admit; bouncing through the Victorian mansion built by one of the Beringer brothers, enthralled by crown moldings and stained glass windows and hand carved fireplaces the way only an architect’s daughter can be.

I laughed, charmed by my boy-man’s backward wiggle on a tiny, improbable ice rink in Napa as I taught him how to skate backwards and spin. I shivered when he took my hand on the plane home, sighing as I seem to do often these days when I realize I am living life in a constant state of awe, a life I never in a million years could have imagined.

Living Gratitude

On this day of thanks, I can think of nothing better to say than to offer the words of my favorite poet, who lives gratitude without even trying.

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Moon dancing on Vashon

When

When it’s over, it’s over, and we don’t know

any of us, what happens then.

So I try not to miss anything.

I think, my whole life, I have never missed

the full moon

or the slipper of its coming back.

Or a kiss.

Well, yes, especially a kiss.

– Mary Oliver, Swan