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.

Bedtime Stories.

I have broken my bed.

Right now those of you who bet the odds are questioning why it took so long to get to this point. If you have been a fierce advocate of my inner cougar, you’re secretly hoping for vindication. My mother is pretending she is uninterested in whether her only daughter will find happily ever after again, and you’re all waiting to hear what 50 shades of misadventure led to this little turn of events because, if there is anything we’ve all learned by now is that my life is nothing if not entertaining.

For you. Not necessarily for me.

Just so we’re all caught up, the lip has healed nicely. The doctor-prescribed vibrator to vanquish the unsightly scar tissue that required a visit to a not-to-be-named-lest-my-computer-contract-something-nefarious purveyor of such pleasantries, however, did not survive. Overuse, I assume. It’s not like I had plans for it afterwards but, just in case this whole dating thing doesn’t work out it, it would have come in handy. And for the record, it was never applied it to my lips in public.

But I digress.

For the past several years, I have methodically taken inventory. Of what I wanted and what I don’t and what stays and what goes. What is me and what was us. What is beyond salvation and what can be salvaged. What to do and what not to do. What to walk away from and what to walk toward. 

So one would think that the bed—the place where he died and where I slept unknowingly beside his lifeless body—would be first on the list of disposables.

But one would be wrong.

The bed is neither expensive, nor is it elaborate. Made from iron bands that gently curve, a single mattress sits above weakening wooden slats. For years, I have disappeared into its velvety winter layers and I’ve lain restless on its cool summer sheets. It gave me my children and it took away my husband. It swallowed my silent tears and embraced us in laughter. On a wooden platform that has weathered a lifetime.

With the mattress they took away its memories, leaving behind strong steely bands and weary wooden slats to be covered anew. A cold, empty platform covered with a warm, new foundation on which new memories will be formed. A shell to be filled. 

Just as soon as I figure out how to tighten the screws.  

'Til Death Us Do Part.

Though your dreams be tossed and blown
Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart

-Celtic Woman

I didn’t see her sitting there, dressed in her finery amongst our family and friends, twisting our lifelines between her fingers as we vowed to build a life together. I did not see how mine trailed from her fingers alone while his was caught short in her palm.

I saw white tulips and snowy irises and felt creamy chiffon and the sweet smell of orange blossoms wrap around me in the warm dusk of late April. I heard strings in the air and gentle laughter. I saw our children in his eyes and I heard our future in his voice.

I wonder if she wondered as she held our fate in her hands.

Did she see how it would end? Did she know he would slip away without warning, without reason? Did she hear the questions they ask, and the innocent things they say to strangers? Did she count the tears that dropped and the sleepless nights?

I wonder if she watched me.

Did she see what trailed from her fingers? Did she watch me standing there in white and see me standing in black, Pachelbel on the violin fading to the mournful cry of Amazing Grace. Did she see the flowers in my hand and the flowers resting on the ground each April?

Did she watch me wrap myself in quiet dignity while anger seethed inside? Did she see me alone in the dark counting the minutes until morning? Did she see the food untouched and phone calls unanswered?

Did she see that moment that escaped me, when the bruises and angry scars began to fade? When tear-stained cheeks dried and sleep returned in part. Did she hear my laughter rejoin theirs, and did she smile softly as she saw life return to a life interrupted?

I wonder as she broke his string and twisted mine—did she break and twist with them?

Did she see my steps grow stronger and bolder? Did she see me archive the pages of chapters written and watch as ink began to stain the pages yet to be written? Did she watch as I stumbled into choosing a life not yet lived? Did she smile as she watched us laugh and love and live while she held our lifelines in her palm?

I wonder.

Did she see me watching her defiantly and silently across the gravestones as I laid white tulips in the grass again?

Cavity Search.

“Why is it that when I come to see you, I always leave with a referral involving my body cavities?”

Staring up at the clinically white ceiling tiles as laughter bubbles up from below the flimsy paper precariously draped across my stirrup-ed knees, I now know how exposed the Coyote feels when he steps off the ledge. Except that today the Roadrunner is wielding a two-sided shoe horn.

And I am … um … not.

(And we all know that if I make any sudden moves on this uncomfortable little slab, whatever is in that glass of yours will be spraying out your nose and onto your keyboard while you read about it. So I am staying put to avoid telling you about the medical process that would be required to remove the shoe horn.)

This is déjà vu all over again. One year ago I was staring at the same clinically white ceiling tiles listening to a disembodied voice tell me that my intestinal tract needed a thorough review. The year before? Nurse Broomhilda promised that everything would bounce back after she let me out of her mashable torture chamber. And now this.

Another spelunking expedition. Inside me.

Listening to her talk about microscopes and tissue samples and sedation, panic wraps its familiar fist around my chest and I close my eyes against the fear rushing through my head in an angry roar I’ve known before.

I’ve hit the genetic jackpot, putting me on the fast-and-early track for highly undesirable procedures. The odds are not necessarily in my favor, but they aren’t against me either. But as the only factor in the parental equation, they are undeniable and unavoidable, and this one is a little less preventable and a little more exploratory. My children cannot afford parental stupidity, which is why I begrudgingly push aside my stubborn streak and cash in my doctor’s tickets to the not-so-fun house.

But it is not today and the roar vanishes into the hum of the fluorescent bulbs, and her voice returns.

“So, nothing can go in there for at least two weeks.”

I assume that includes marbles.