Stoking the Fire.

“Come on Mom, it’s not that hard.”

“Sweetheart, it totally is.”

“Mom … (whispering) … you are really good looking. I mean it. You really are. It’s not that hard.”

It’s come to this. My son, smelly and dripping wet courtesy of the rigorous hockey schedule that now consumes five days of our week, has become my wing man. And the man on the other side of the glass is in his crosshairs.

And my son has good taste. Very good taste.

“Sweetheart, this isn’t something I’m very good at.”

“What do you mean? Just go and ask him out. Like you did with Dad.”

With Dad. Except that I didn’t ask him. It was a standing joke between us that the only reason I got married was because he wouldn’t go away after invading my sweaty bubble at the gym on an early Sunday morning, and it was our standing joke that he was no good to me dead. But he did go away, and he is now very much dead. And has been for four very long years, the first two of which provided a seat front and center in Dante’s Inferno. And then the Ferryman, paid in tears and anger, let us cross back over to the land of the living.

And living includes dating. Which is like being tossed right back into the fire.

“What should I say?”

“Just ask … ‘Are you married?’ And if he says no, tell him you need a date.”

“Hmmmm. So what do men like?”

“They like girls like you, you know, ones that are in good shape. And they like when girls are fun. And pretty. Definitely pretty. Just think about Addie and what I like about her. That’s what men like.”

“What about clothes?”

“No dresses. Men don’t like dresses.”

“Jeans?”

“Jeans are good.”

“Can I wear my sandals?”

“Ooooh. That’s a hard one. Because men like girls like you that work out, so sneakers are good. But sandals are okay.”

“Makeup?”

“No makeup. Men don’t like makeup. Not good.”

“So, what do you think I should do?”

“Well, you need to go places where men are. But not really scrubby men. And not old ones. You need to go places where the ones, like, your age are. Like the grocery store.”

“The grocery store?”

“Yup. But are you ready for the most important part?”

“What is that?”

“This is really important. Are you listening? … Okay. When you are in the grocery store, just walk around and pick up your things. But don’t act like you want a date with them.”

“Maybe you should help me with this.”

“Mom, I’m sorry, but I can’t. I don’t have time. I’ve got hockey and basketball and school. You’re on your own for this.”

Yes. Yes, I am.

Now Seeking Something a Little Less Creepy.

This was not in the agreement.

And this, I am certain, is a brown recluse. Waiting.

I didn’t vow to clean to toilets, kill ominous-looking invertebrate, or purchase protective cups. I didn’t promise to fish soggy dead bunnies out of the pool, and I certainly didn’t guarantee that I would willingly send a live tarantula via catapault over the back wall. My job description did not include fixing bike tires, scheduling car maintenance or explaining why parts stick to other parts and why things get bigger and smaller at will.

Since the day that we moved into our house—a house not of my choosing in a neighborhood that I didn’t want—we have had a problem with undesirable things that creep and that crawl. In the first month, I watched an army of ants march its way through every room on the western side of our brand new house. It took a two-weeks-post-c-section meltdown for my husband to realize that I was not happy with I-can-do-it-myself efforts and that if he ever wanted to sleep in the master bedroom again he would start making calls to the very best pest control firms money could buy.

I airlifted my infant daughter from her soft blanket in the middle of the room when the first scorpion was found. Eleven nasty specimens of varying size, agility and attitude later, I informed my husband that if he didn’t find the source and go apocalyptic on it, we were moving.

The day that my 17-month-old son woke from a nap covered in 18 red pustules, I demanded that my husband tear apart the room. I didn’t care what it took, as long as the offender was eradicated in the quickest and most permanent manner imaginable. And that’s exactly what happened to the inky black spider plotting her next cherubic meal from the baseboard below his crib.

I wanted the head taken off of the king snake at the front door. Every centipede that entered our house experienced one hundred deaths by Swiffer. And if you looked like you might make a meal out of my plants, green paste was made. One dead husband and hundreds of scorpions later, I have moves Bruce Lee couldn’t match.

I am a fiercely independent and driven woman. But this is a man’s job and it has become top selection criteria in the “now accepting applicants for companionship” position listing. And at 5:30 in the morning on a day when I have just blasted raspberry smoothie across my kitchen and when I need to be at work ahead of schedule, I have neither the patience nor the good humor for the Swiffer jujitsu I’m displaying in my cream lace pencil skirt and peep toes.

“Mom, STOP! You’re going to ruin my jelly spider!!”

The Odd Life of Me.

“Why did he have to go away?”

Her little arms are wrapped around me, wet checks against my neck, and after a year of watching her race forward she suddenly feels small again. Walking silently beside us, I feel his little hand touch her back, a gesture both comforting and jarring to us all.

We have been here many times before. And we will be here again. But tonight it is a collision of senses, memories and milestones.

For weeks, our house has been a maelstrom of order and disorder. New classrooms and teachers and frantic schedules barely managed. Surgical procedures minor in scope yet emotionally draining for the memories resurfaced. Painful inquisitions about the moments that changed everything and tensions long simmering and expected bearing rotten fruit. Birthdays of note and notes of importance.

“He was so nice, and they loved him so much. Why did he have to go away?”

She is on the cusp of her seventh year, a celebration that will arrive in five days. For days excitement has mingled with reflection, wishes for presents combined with wishes for presence. She does not remember a birthday without a void, and each year her excitement mingles with frustration and sorrow.

But the past year has seen change for us all, and the sensitive girl in my arms has shown me strength and a capacity for love beyond imagination and understanding. She has struggled to understand and deflect the stinging barbs that children hurl with unerring accuracy. She has led us toward a future filled with new love and happiness, while the past is remembered in equal measure. She dances with abandon in ways I dream I could. She sheds her tears openly and without rebuke, secure in the knowledge that we will shelter her in the way I wish I could be sheltered. Watching her gentle hands lift an insect to flight, I watch as she is transfixed by the beauty of the world around us. A world we are too eager to let pass us by.

“Timothy Green was such a nice boy. Was the movie real?”

Was it real? It was real for the lessons that we learn about life, love, loss and longing and a family broken. It was real for the pettiness of others who do not understand, who are scared and who are envious of others. It was real for understanding that life comes with loss, and with loss comes renewal. And with renewal comes new life, love and laughter.

“Sweetheart, even if Timothy Green wasn’t a real person, he’s the kind of person we all should have in our lives and the kind of person we should all try be.”

“But his Mom and Dad were so sad when he went away. And his friend was sad. And I’m sad.”

“It’s okay to be sad. The more you love someone, the sadder you are when they have to go.”

“Can we go to New York?”

“Why?”

 
“I think that is where Timothy Green went.”

Shock and Awe.

“Describe the saddest you’ve ever been.”

“That would be when Dad died. When Mom told us the truth.”

The cold hard facts are this: four years after the bomb went off in our house these are the commonplace conversations of our dinner table. They are the sayings that come up unexpectedly in a blasé you-need-new-skates-my-mom-has-no-money-ask-your-dad-I-can’t-cause-he’s-dead kind of way in the hockey camp locker room. The did-you-know-my-Daddy-what’s-your-Daddy’s-name-it’s-Jim-but-he-died statements that jolt the solid stance of off-duty police officers at retail and movie-going destinations in a 50-mile radius of our home. The no-my-daughter-wasn’t-lying-to-your-daughter-about-the-whole-dead-Dad-thing explanations.

I shouldn’t feel this way.

But the four-foot-nothing-white-haired-temporary-nanny in my kitchen is practically apoplectic.

And I am laughing. And I simply cannot stop.

Every mother knows that nothing is sacred when it comes to a child’s view of life. And that the jiggle quotient of our body parts will be evaluated and broadcast to every living soul within earshot. But it is when you, through a series of unfortunate events, become a suddenly-single-by-death mother, that you truly appreciate your children’s ability to wage a campaign so unsettling that military analysts might consider their strategist potential.  

Because there’s nothing like death to ratchet the absurdity, irony, unfairness and laughability of life to a previously unfathomable level.

As a mother, I have fallen short in perfection but excelled in love and devotion. I have struggled to hold the pieces together, but I have shown them how to pick them up when they fall. I have failed to rise above pain, anger and frustration, but I have succeeded in teaching them not to shrink from weakness and sorrow.

Maybe it’s the $1,400 water heater I paid for on Friday. Or the avalanche of work and personal emails that has threatened to entomb me for nearly a year. Or the familial dramas that are exacerbated by loss. Or the stitches sitting squarely between me and comfort.

“Did you know you are shorter than my Mom? And my Mom is really short!”

Or maybe it’s just life. The shock and awe kind.

Class is Now in Session.

It is exactly that moment when summertime glee has disappeared into boredom and youthful exuberance is on the brink of over-excited hysteria. It is exactly that moment when parents around the globe give praise to gods of all sorts that it has finally here.

The first day of school has arrived. 

New backpacks have been loaded with pencils and books, binders and erasers, lunchboxes and bottled water and personal accoutrements of notable style. Mothers, with tears of joy and happiness gleaming unshed in their eyes, have tucked loving notes into pockets and on sandwich wrappers. Fathers have proudly clapped sons on backs and placed chaste kisses on the foreheads of their daughters. Flashes have popped in the global race to showcase cherubic and not-so-cherubic cheeks on Facebook. Feet shod in shoes momentarily unscuffed have marched off in that age-old first-day parade of crew necks and pleats and fringes and sequins and denim.

As children we measure our growth in digits and years, racing from playground to playground and wishing that youth will pass us by. We experience bullies and bosom buddies, friendships that span weeks and others that will span decades. We enter adulthood with the lessons of life forged in the fashion and social misadventures of our youth. But adulthood is simply a different playground where the stakes are higher, the wounds cut deeper and the risk of misstep is not as easily recoverable.

For years I watched from the sidelines, reluctant to engage and questioning if I had the desire and the energy to enter the melee. And then I stepped onto the playground and realized not much has changed.

The popular girls are still there, chattering in corners. The bullies are still making up for their own insecurities. Playground politics and social spheres are simply refinements of the original. Truth or dare has become an elevated game of pawns, and iPhones have advanced the game of telephone to lightning speed.

“Mom, there’s a boy in my class that looks kind of like a nerd.”

“And?”

“I won’t be mean to him. Like those kids were to me. That’s not nice.”

If only we remembered the lessons of our childhood.

Daddy Dearest.

When a single mom goes out on a date with somebody new
It always winds up feeling more like a job interview
My momma used to wonder if she'd ever meet someone
Who wouldn't find out about me and then turn around and run 

– “He Didn’t Have to Be”

“Daddy would like this song.”

Looking at her in the backseat, surrounded by fluffy friends and related accoutrements necessary for a night of mommy-and-me time, I wonder if she understands the lyrics she is listening to. The woman inside me knows that she does, and I am caught between wishing she didn’t and welcoming the wisdom that is beyond her years.

In the nearly four years that I have navigated the murky waters that widowhood ignominiously landed me in, I have learned much about the annual calendar. I have learned that milestones, holidays and nondescript days all carry equal weight on the scale of pain.

In the first year each day seared, some white hot and others blue flame. Each milestone and holiday a test of endurance and resolve. But the days in between, when the air felt like a moment in time past or familiar musculature crossed my line of sight in passing, were as painful for their anger and loneliness as the unwelcomeness of the holidays that shone a spotlight on our void. As time passed, the pain dulled and each holiday simply became unwelcome. But the Hallmark-ed weeks of anticipation ensure that the ones most jarring are prolonged. And for an entire week I have been subjected to questions, conversations, dreams and dreads of paternal importance.

What he looked like. Was it burritos or nachos? The sound of his voice. His favorite color. The games he played. Did he like football or hockey best? Where we met and where we got married. Did he ever get mad, or was he always laughing?

When will we have a new Daddy?

Listening to the words of the song, she does not know that years ago we listened to the same lyrics. And in a moment of thoughtfulness, we wondered how hard it would be to enter a family that you did not start. To embrace children not yours as your own. For children to embrace a father that was not theirs as their own. And in that moment we promised that if it ever came to pass, we would honor the other by accepting no less than someone who would love us as if we had always been theirs.

And it came to pass, and Father’s Day became as much a day of remembering as it has become a day of wondering. It is equal part tears and dreams, a day of wishing for what was and what could be.

“Mom, I made a wish in the fountain but it can’t come true. So I wish you can find us another Daddy that is the perfect one for us instead.”

“Any chance you saw a frog near that fountain?”

40 Days and 40 Nights.

And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. – Genesis 7:12

It is the witching hour, that moment when the house is more an uncomfortable tomb than it is a warm oasis.

Years have passed but the invisible minute hand still ticks time until exhaustion surpasses uncertainty and I drift into temporary oblivion. Night and I have come to an uneven truce, brokered over tears and wine and boredom and fear. The sound of his breathing in the dark has long since faded but the impact of its silence quietly reverberates in ways we feel but cannot see.

And for 40 nights I have listened. Waiting.

I have watched him for almost four years, watching as he processed and readjusted to a different world that was confusing and unfair and empty. I watched as he fought back tears with a little boy’s determination and confusion only for them to be shed years later in uncontrollable waves. I felt his arm encircle us, his mother and his sister, as he draped the heavy mantel of manhood on shoulders that were too young for its weight. I listened to his confusion and hurt, trying to ease his pain through my own confusion and hurt. And we regained our footing together, through tears and laughter and anger and words and silence.

Then without warning the gentle ebb and flow of our daily lives was disrupted, our carefully erected defenses cracked. And the boy that fought so hard to accept the loss of a father and wonders if another will someday accept him as his own, once again woke screaming in the night.

In the dark he came running, searching for comfort against the nightmares. Night after night, cries in the dark that woke us both while tears fell from our hearts like rain on the earth. And I wrapped my arms around the boy that is the image of the man, wiping the tears and pushing away things that come in the night.

Lovely boy, sleep well tonight.