When we met
the sky lit on fire
with the sparks of a million past lives
a million future stars
and a future for our hearts
that we didn’t know was coming
we just pointed up at the sky
the beat in our hearts strumming and we marvelled at what was happening above
had no idea that love
was lurking behind those flames
that fate
was just waiting for the smoke to clear
waiting for the flames to finish burning up what was previously here
Once all that was left was the remnants of a life burned
once all that was left were those things that are meaningful and must be earned
Once all that was left was debris that needed strong hands to clear
ash that needed to be swept up
one heart waiting for another to show no fear
walls to drop, no longer needing to be kept up
Once all that was left was the work of daily kindness
the myth of love and all it’s blindness
the truth of maintenance
the truth of ‘day to day’
the truth.
remained.
Your green eyes
mine.
fast forward
rewind.
relax
the grind.
a choice
every day.
a choice
I’m daily glad to make.
a faith
that you cannot break.
Between the morning alarm clocks, the dirty socks, the daily job, the long hours, the hot showers, the breakfast on the run, the quick kiss before you hit the door, the afternoon phone call where we say the same thing that we did the day before – “Hey just calling to say Hi”
The drive.
The diapers, the car seats, the dog is out of dog treats, the packing diaper bags, the Hashtag #parentswag.
the exhausted dinners trying to think of something fun for a 3 year old to do while feeding the baby and what is on that on the dog? Glue?
glazed look, stirring the pot, I look over, you still look hot.
I bet my face doesn’t say it though cause the baby’s crying and
….well, you know,
bedtime is just around the corner, we are out of formula and bread, and one of us needs to tuck our babies into bed.
Cinderella meets her prince again every night during bedtime stories before we turn out the light
and I think about when I was cinderella writing my prince love poems in my bedroom late at night, wondering if you were the one, imagining a day when our lives might intertwine, my single days done.
I look at the life we have built and I watch that love we started with
multiply all around us.
Like waves that want to drown us,
Like steel ties that want to bound us
together.
forever.
Our oldest kisses her brother, the baby kisses the dog.
And I don’t have time to write you love poems late at night in my bedroom anymore.
Instead.
#Iblog
Making new friends when you’re 13 is inevitable. Expected. We’re all awkward and alone and looking for that common bond that will soon make someone our ‘BFF’ and so we find them. In English class or at the lunch table. At a party or in gym. There is strength in numbers in middle school and you can’t go it alone between pep rallies, history exams and Friday night parties where the parents aren’t going to be there. So, you team up and between braces and school lunch, science goggles and that cute boy in Science class – you become friends. Even Best Friends with someone. Maybe several people. At 31, making friends is not so easy. It’s not like you’re sitting next to someone every day in History class anymore. And, once you know who you are, you’re quicker to judge whether or not you have anything in common with someone else. Quicker to rule new people as acquaintances, never really opening up and actually becoming friends. But, in comparing times when a girl needs a good bunch of girlfriends going through similar things in life – early adolescence and early Motherhood probably rate pretty close to one another as times when ‘going it alone’ is just not a good idea.
It sounds like a bad joke, but this is the way it happened. Three guys that all went to high school together all get three girls pregnant. None of them planned pregnancies and within 6 months of one another, they will all be parents to beautiful, lucky, little girls and I would form a bond with a group of girls, women in fact, that 10 years ago I would have thought would be impossible. Not because I have a tough time making friends or that any of them do, but the dynamics are just unheard of. They all know each other. They all went to high school together. They are cute and fun and full of attitude and party ideas – themed party ideas. Who does that? They do that. They love to have fun, have drinks and talk about their sex lives. They are bold and brave and love concerts and music and getting together with their friends. And I met them as the lone pregnant outsider dating a guy they all kindof hated for his high school chauvinism. Older than them by at least 7 years you wouldn’t think this type of friendship ever even begins. But, it does. And through the past 5 years, I have evolved and watched them evolve into their careers and relationships, houses and partners, into their roles as wives and Mothers and into my life as some of my best friends. I have seen them grow into themselves as adults from young 20 something girls and have been impressed with their talents, their patience, their motivation, their ethics, their ability to balance work and life and kids and husbands, their tolerance for each other’s differences, their kindness, their humor, their ‘yes-I’ll-own-it’ bitchiness when the shoe fits, their heartfelt ability to tell each other the truth without being rude, their honesty when things irritate them, their ability to throw a good party, their ability to join a good party, the way they show up for one another always and their willingness to welcome in a girl from outside their group who 4 years ago, sat rubbing my pregnant belly, unsure how I was going to make it through Motherhood on my own without girlfriends to share these new, scary things in my life with. To ask the questions you don’t want to ask your doctor or to talk through the frustrations you have with your husband and need some good advice from people who know you, but aren’t related to you or celebrate with for the amazing things that happen like the first time they poop in the potty or their first tooth or we got engaged or that first day of preschool or I just turned 25, 27, 35!!! I have been impressed by this group of girls and feel eternally grateful to have them in my life when I have needed it most and while it’s clear that had we met many years earlier we just couldn’t have been friends because when I was 17 they were all 10 and that would have just been weird – I count them today as some of my Besties. At 35.
It all started with a picture I took of myself on a cell phone. I was planning on sending one of those sexy ‘sleepy’ photos to my fiancé. I had just woken up in the middle of the night and was out of town on a work trip and wanted him to know I missed him. I snapped the photo. The flash was too bright at 2am. I squinted and looked at the result. Dear Lord – that looks just like my Mother (so NOT sexy!) I will not be sending THAT photo anywhere. Delete!!!
In the weeks, months and couple of years that have followed since that dreadful moment, I have observed that me and all my friends as well are all seriously looking like our Mom’s. It is during dinner with one of my best friends that I have known since we were 8 years old that this dawns on me yet again. And, I think how beautiful my friend is and realize that I never even noticed that she looked like her Mom let alone that she looks JUST like her Mom. I also realize that I never noticed how beautiful her Mom was. I never imagined our Mother’s to be so ‘young’ when they were our age. They were such “Mom’s” already. They lived in dinner time and bath time and ‘finish your homework’ and fold the laundry land. I occasionally saw them go out with their husbands, but never with their girlfriends and they seemed to put their children in front of everything in their life. Of course, the kids at the time being us, we didn’t complain, but it’s bizarre to me now to realize how little my Mom did for herself.
Through the blessing of Facebook, I see regular updates on my friends and their lives. Pictures of family Christmases and summer vacations. Sometimes, I do a double take wondering if their Mom came along on the trip. Oh, no? That’s just my best friend from grade school who looks just like a 35 year old woman with three kids? A little rounding of the face, graying of our 30-something hair, a little extra ‘chin’ and crow’s feet and well, there you have it! Your Mom was once beautiful and you are now just as beautiful as she with the lines and wear and tear one earns in life if we’re lucky enough to make it to the time in life where age starts to show up on your face, grace your skin, color your hair.
I am so amazed that this all happened so quickly – those years from 18 to 35 went so fast! It’s like I blinked for a moment too long or I slept through it or something. One minute, I was 23 reading poetry at a filthy downtown bar, drinking captain and cokes and the next minute I was pregnant with my second child enjoying a trip to the store by myself and calling it ‘an afternoon out.’
It has taken a couple of years, but today, there is nothing in me that regrets a single moment, a single wrinkle, a single grey hair or a single image of me that looks like my Mother. Over the years, I have lost friends to too many tragedies, feared my own potential ‘ending’ with enough seriousness to strongly consider that reality and seen young lives cut short too many times to be anything other than grateful that I have AT LEAST made it to that stage where I look like my Mom. And I realize that I look like the young version of her. I hope, with fingers crossed, holding breath and making pinky swears that me and all my childhood friends have the chance to see each other looking like the older versions of our Mothers someday. And, to have the wisdom that our Mom’s all have these days. I’m sure it will feel like we just blinked.
We break bread
We drink wine
We share blood and history that only families can.
More than 15 years have passed since we last saw each other
Our grandmother watches from across the room in a photo framed and beautiful.
Sepia toned by time, not photo shop.
She smiles from behind her ukulele as her grand daughters – her only grand daughters – share life, share their children, share pain and triumphs, stories of marriage and divorce, love and loss, lasagna and tiramisu. And wine.
The comfort felt with family, the similarities across miles, the family resemblance is remarkable.
Nature and nurture are one and the same here.
Our teacher mothers, our absent fathers, our independent spirits, our sensitive hearts, our two older brothers, our blonde hair, our green eyes.
Your son looks like my uncle.
Your daughter looks like my Grandmother.
My daughter looks….well, kinda like you.
I sleep better that night than I have for months.
I answered questions, I asked new ones.
Anxiety replaced with calm, connection, legacy, love.
In my slumber, I heard the sounds of my Grandmother’s piano, smelled her cigarettes and her perfume.
In my sleep, I truly heard the meaning in her silence for the first time. The torture in her past. The judgment always present. The woman she was expected to be in direct contrast with the woman she wanted to be; the woman she was. In her silence, I saw her sadness, her helplessness. She was a victim. Of life, of circumstance, of men, of the era in which she was born, of her own outlook on life.
In my dreams, I held my Grandma’s hand and showed her what had become of the journey she started out on so many years ago. What became of her lineage, her legacy. What had become of the two grand daughters she could have never imagined 100 years before when her own journey was just beginning. Seeing them intertwined and connected, overlapping and in tact, beautiful and strong and secure and providing for their own families, my Grandmother took a sip of wine, patted my hand and she smiled.
Hearing the word, “Cancer” when you have an eight month old daughter gives you plenty to think about. Big things like, “What kind of legacy do I leave behind if the doctor’s can’t get rid of it?” Little things like, “Who will show my daughter how to do her hair? How to shave her legs?” With each new thought, a flood of emotion comes with it. I greived with the sense of genuine loss for the possibility there would be days I might miss and the realization that I would be literally, physically heartbroken in a way I had never understood before to miss those moments, those phases, those rites of passage in her life. Then, the bigger realization that I would be heartbroken – for her. The unfairness of that possible reality strikes at the core of my being and in a sense makes me feel cheated out of some of the most wonderful days and times of my life. But, more than that makes me angry for the way that she would be cheated.
I think to my own Mother and who I would be without her to raise me. It’s impossible to remove the woman I relied on for life from the life I have today. I have a normal, some-what contentious relationship with my Mother today as a 30 something woman and she in her 60’s. I am grateful for her, appreciative of her restrictions on the choices I wanted to make in my adolescent life, irritated with her constant need to provide guidance in my adult life, but generally just thankful to have her around regardless of any unwanted advice or opinions that come with it. I’ve come to understand that is just her ‘being my Mom.’ But, imagining my early years, the years where there are no memories just vague sensations, abstract feelings, basic understandings of the world as I came to understand it – imagining those years without a Mommy, without MY Mommy is unimaginable, gut wrenching, unmistakably wrong. I realize in these moments of reflection that I was not ‘hers’ near as much as she was ‘mine.’
I hold my daughter as we get ready for bed. She is nestled tightly between my arm and my chest. She looks up at me and her eyes trace my face. She appears to be taking note of my eyebrows. She points at the mole on my forehead, she looks at my lips as I sing to her. “Twinkle, Twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are…” I wonder about the star that is her. Love passes between the two of us so thick, so steeped in innate connection, awash in the natural, noverbal communication that only exists between a Mother and her baby that it almost seems to be visible, palpable as it appears to fill her entire bedroom and I begin to cry. Who would make my daughter feel loved like this if I am not around? The short answer is, “Nobody.” It’s a harsh truth, but it’s the truth. Nobody loves you like your Mom. There will be others that love her, sure. And, others that make her feel special and provide for her an example to follow. There will be others to teach her basic things like her alphabet and her numbers. How to do her hair and even how to shave her legs. But, there will never be anyone who smells like me. Who holds her hand just so. Who instinctively knows the difference between her hunger cry, her fake cry and her ‘that really hurt’ cry. It is then that I realized, “Mother” is not a name, it’s not a person, it’s not a relationship, it’s not a belief system or a philosophy. It’s not a question nor an answer. Mother is a feeling. It is comfort personified. It is the definition of peace. It is not unlike the feeling you have on Christmas Eve sitting on the couch late at night with the Christmas tree lights on and the rest of the lights in the house off, listening to Silent Night. As this thought hits me and I grapple with that reality, I come to terms with the fact that I too am Addie’s more than she is mine. And, she deserves to have her Mom hold her tight and tuck her in and be there when she is sick and read her thoughts and know her eyes and her hands and her toes and her belly button and her ‘that really hurt’ cry and I’ll be damned if she’s not going to have it. It was then, that I decided as far as words and feelings go “Cancer” was not near as strong as “Mother.” And I would be betting on the latter.
Tonight, my 16 month old daughter and I argued over bath time and having her follow simple instructions in order to complete this task in under 2 hours. Mothering is challenging and frustrating at times. Then, in her brand new ‘dora the explorer’ nightgown mothering is heart swelling and my mind drifts to… ‘oh how I love that little spit fire.’ I wonder if she reads my thoughts, wonder if she knows that my love for her runs so deep that no bath time argument could even sligthly dim it. I sure never understood that about my own Mother before I met Addilyn. I look at her soft, wet curls fresh out of the bath and her smooth, pale skin and I kiss her good night trying to imagine a day where she understands how much a Mother loves their child. It’s too much of a stretch. I can’t even imagine her making it through bath time and teeth brushing without an ‘episode’. Maybe I can’t imagine anything because all my creativity has been put into how I can get bath and bed completed with as few ‘no’s’ as possible.
Some say, she is like her Mommy. I say, she is all her own and watching her assert who she is, is miraculous and enfuriating. My own karma coming back to me. May she too someday understand Motherhood and karma.
It began in the fall. A minor complaint, nothing really, but my deductible’s been met and so I decide to check on the ‘catch’ in my voice that’s been there for a couple months now.
The axis of my world began tilting off course and the gravitational pull of the moon seemed to somehow increase and speed up the pace with which we rotate around the sun.
And so it began.
Name? W——-, Birth date? 1/12/79
Ultrasound, nodule, lymph node.
“Have you had a cold recently?”
“No.”
I know.
It’s Halloween. This is creepy.
My daughter is going to be a lady bug. It’s beautiful out. She’s asleep that night before the porch lights even come on.
Name? W——-, Birth date? 1/12/79
Biopsy, FNA, needle in throat, Russian surgeon, kind nurse, swollen lymph nodes confirmed.
Addie’s First Birthday, Elmo cake, toys and presents, she is spoiled already. Love, presents and cake, Joy. Proud Mommy and Daddy clean the red frosting off of her and kiss the frosting off of her forehead. Happy Birthday Little Bug.
Phone call, the kind nurse, “Suspicious” result, tears, Kleenex, denial.
Thanksgiving is tomorrow. I am only 32. Doesn’t that mean this impossible? It is still beautiful out.
Turkey, Mashed potatoes, corn, stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberries, family, My Mom. Addie loves them all. So do we.
Name? W——-, Birth date? 1/12/79
My fiance’ holds my hand, the Russian surgeon holds his clipboard, he has a serious face, statistics, 50/50, no longer in a ‘gray’ area, surgery scheduled, the c word. Fuck.
First snow, Christmas lights, holiday traffic, ice skating with my daughter and my fiance’, he begins taking more pictures of us, I can only hope these are unnecessary while I smile for the camera. Google searches, cancer staging, fertility after thyroid removal, I want more babies, Christmas shopping, Tears, Kleenex, denial. Tell my Mom, pretend it won’t be cancer, probably nothing, I don’t want to see her cry, just get it out of me.
Name? W——-, Birth date? 1/12/79
Just a little pinch, 3 vials of blood, silent night, 3AM awake, thinking and can’t sleep, scared, google searches, surgery risks, death, permanent hoarseness, church, prayer, it’s still beautiful out, take Addie for a walk, go to work, make dinner, do the laundry, take a bath, text my brothers, I can’t let them hear the fear in my voice, sunset, wine, breathe, life.
Surgery is tomorrow.
Nothing to eat or drink after midnight, use strange smelling soap, my hair is like straw, hold on to my baby, hold on to my man, hold on to my Mom. Tears, Kleenex, denial.
Name? W——-, Birth date? 1/12/79
Hospital gown, just a little poke, ouch, failed IV attempt, my arm puffs up, just a little poke, success, I’m hooked up.
Name? W——-, Birth date? 1/12/79
Heart monitor, previous surgeries?, medications?, family history?, surgeon arrives, I tell him to do a good job, I’m getting married in October and I’ve already bought my dress, he promises to take good care of me. Time to say goodbye to the people I love most in this world. Cold room, bright lights, nurse says “You’ve got the A team,” my breathing slows, an oxygen mask covers my face…
I’m awake. My throat is dry. I open my mouth, my voice works! “It was cancer wasn’t it?” “Yes, papilary carcinoma.” It’s been just under 4 hours. I think to my fiance’ and how worried he’s probably been. Sitting, waiting, knowing with each passing minute that cancer was the probable result. I feel good. My voice feels strong. I want to see my family. Two hours in the recovery room waiting for a room to open up. December is a busy month the nurse tells me. Everyone trying to get in before their deductible’s flip over. Ugh. I’m one of them I guess. Finally, a room. My family is here. They’re the best people in the world. You should meet them. Incision is ugly, bruised, stitched, but doesn’t hurt too bad.
Name? W——-, Birth date? 1/12/79, another blood draw, calcium levels to be checked, too low, a pill, some bubble gum tasting liquid. A long night ahead. Nurses are busy, two people called in. Call button means someone comes in 25 minutes later. I could feel my throat swelling and thought I was going to choke. I don’t want morphine. Just Tylenol with hydro codone will do just fine. Ibuprofin would be even better. They have to call someone to see if I can have that. In and out of consciousness, finally time to go. Minus my thyroid gland, plus three new medications that I’ll need to take daily from now on. Forever.
Home, my dog, she missed me, my daughter, I can’t hold her yet, she doesn’t understand and tosses her body around without regard for the incision on my throat. She points and learns the word “Owie,” I cry. I wish she didn’t have to know these kinds of things happen.
Thank God it’s winter. I’ll wear turtle necks. This is the warmest winter on record I think. It’s December 14th and 45 degrees. Still. For the first time ever I’m hoping it will get colder.
Life has been ’tilt-o-whirl-like’ lately with it’s shrieking, good fun followed by its scary turns where your stomach drops out and you’re sure the shrieking won’t return. But it does. So, to celebrate it all (and in celebration of my birthday!) this blog begins. Someday, I hope it embarrasses my daughter. And, then some day when she’s a little bit older, I hope it makes her a little bit proud.
Life and Death and Everything In Between 