Thin Blue Lines.

He was the kind of man who stood in front of you to protect you, beside you as a friend and behind you to be there to help and support you. 

Years after I read these words, handwritten ink stained with someone else’s tears, they still stir deep within me. Because I know them to be true of the man they honored. And because I have learned in so many ways that they are true of every man and woman standing in front of, beside and behind each one of us.

I see the depth of those words in the police officer that recognized a little boy’s need for friendship in place of a father lost. In the young man that sought to do good where good was needed, reminding me that honor and commitment are not defined by age and experience alone. In my children’s laughter as firefighters hang our wreath each holiday season and who, without question or judgment, erase obstacles that seem insurmountable in the moments when they are.

In the thin lines of blue and red that stand proud in heavy uniforms when others would wilt under the weight and the heat. In the men and women that move bravely forward when others would retreat. In the brotherhood that puts their heart, souls and lives on the line every day.

In the hundreds of men and women that wake early on a Saturday morning each fall—a field filled with pride and respect for the first responder community—to honor the memory of those that we have lost, those who have been left behind, and those that continue to stand strong where others would falter.

In the remarkable women—left behind because lingering illness changed their lives, because the pressure simply became too heavy a burden to bear, because tragedy strikes unexpectedly, and because their spouses did not come home from shift—who show us that loss is universal. In the smiles and laughter that remind us that the greatest tribute we can pay our fallen first responders is not only in remembering them, but in remembering the children that are the legacies they leave behind.  

In the 100 Club and what it stands for, and the men and women it stands behind.

Since its beginnings, the 100 Club of Arizona has provided support for more than 1,300 first responders and their families. In 2011 alone, 216 families were touched by its gentle hand. But what is remarkable about this quietly powerful organization is that its mission crosses the line to support first responders and their families in both line-of-duty and non-line-of-duty deaths, for injuries catastrophic and those that are not, and in times of illness and hardship. It is a network of support, from the writing of wills and financial counseling to volunteer opportunities and events and programs dedicated to building even stronger bonds between first responder families.

Like so many others who have come before me and those yet to come, I knew of the thin blue line and the 100 Club of Arizona and the bonds of pride, duty, friendship and compassion that bind the two together. And both were there from the very first moment that I needed them to keep me from falling and to help me as I once again stood on my own.

In the years since the 100 Club of Arizona quietly knocked on my door I have learned much about the resilience of the human spirit, and the quiet strength not only of the first responders but also of the families and friends that stand with them. And of my own strength.

As I watch with pride and respect as the thin blue line stands strong for others, I know that we will never be forgotten. They are simply standing in front of, beside and behind those who need them as we needed them. And standing quietly behind the heroes that silently touch our lives every day is the 100 Club of Arizona.

And it is our responsibility—our privilege—to stand behind them.

Teeter Note: September 15 is National Tell a Police Officer "Thank You" Day. This blog was written for the current issue of the 100 Club of Arizona's newsletter. You can learn more about the 100 Club of Arizona at www.100club.org. But in my opinion, first responders deserve our thanks each and every day. 

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!!”

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.

Okay. Afterall.

I watched a woman hand a flag to a man today.

Rows of blue standing silent and still in the morning sun, beads of sweat the only evidence of strain among the rank and file. The plaintive wail of the pipes disappearing into the air, tartan and flags snapped lightly. The crack of rifles thrice over. White gloved hands rising and falling in slow salute. Pain diluted and sharpened, the sound of silence washing over us in awkward waves of comfort.

And in the silence, her whisper thundered “Are you okay?” in my head as she walked me past a line of blue.

Am I? Am I okay?

In a few short months it will have been four years since she whispered to me, officer to grieving spouse, stranger to stranger, woman to woman. Four years since the rifles fired for him and my fingers welcomed the flag that was the last gift. Four years since a little boy asked why “that man was saying things about Daddy that made you cry” and a little girl screamed at the injustice of it all.

Four years of loss and renewal. Questions and answers. Resistance to change and rushing toward it. Memories not yet made, lost. Sleepless nights and comfortable slumber. Tears and laughter. Anger and adjustment. Four years after a moment that changed everything. They are the lost and found years.

A life lost and a new life found.

In four years we have processed trauma mentally and physically debilitating. We have embraced new friendships and watched others languish. We have found new passions and embraced new experiences. We’ve questioned the expected and chased the unexpected. We have challenged norms and demanded more.

The pipes still tear at my heart. The crack of rifles continues to pierce my soul. The line of blue remains uncomfortably comforting.

 

Because we’re more than okay.

Seeing Green.

My desk is stocked with green pens, the finest tip. Of all the art on my walls, it is the lush green stone cut lithograph that I prefer. When my parents eventually slide into that gentle good night, they are well aware that it is the expansive green stone cut on their wall that would ensure my fond remembrances, everlasting.

Of the features I awkwardly accept as my own, it is my eyes that I find most comfortable. Spring green in laughter. Dark forests in anger. The color of moss wet with sadness.

My birthstone is a gentle lime green, my dishes a set of pottery washed in the color of wet ferns. I am strong in the ivory skirt adorned with feathery leaves, adventurous in the tweed mini. In boarding school, I reveled in the forest green black watch kilt that swung far above the knees it was meant to reach.

One false move, and I’ll be covered in green ooze.

In 24 hours, the crystalline waters of my swimming pool have devolved into a cesspool of algae and stagnation. Koi would decline these waters, and at any moment I am expecting the Swamp Thing to emerge. And because I am “woman without able man,” it falls to me to … er … jump into the pool and find a solution to this fetid situation.

The thought of which has me feeling green and seeing red.

My home has reached a certain age where the bones are becoming brittle and the potential for hip replacements is increasingly likely. And in the past two weeks, I have seen green move from my hand to theirs as I’ve had to repair the air conditioner, the garage door and the irrigation system.

And now this. In the dead of summer. In the desert.

Which is why I am seeing green far beyond the algae-infested pool and the disappearing dollars. In the first chapter of my life, I never questioned why the house and the cars and the pool functioned without interruption. How bike tires were repaired, and sprinklers never stopped. And he never questioned why bedtimes were what they were, when bills were paid and why the work suitcase was in the hall again. Everything worked. Because we worked at it.

But since I have been left to fend for myself, the car has died, the pool is problematic, leaks linger on without stoppage and the garage full of tools has overwhelmed me with its lack of direction and purpose. Seemingly inconsequential needs have become insurmountable in frustration and, deep inside, the prideful and lonely part of me has accepted and struggled through uncharted territory, reluctant to ask for help and see inconvenience flash in eyes and mistrust in others.

While envy flashes in the green of mine.

The Devil Made Me Do It.

I expected ribbed horns curving viciously. Unfathomable inky pools rimmed in bloody red flesh, dark orbs that pierced through my soul. Fingernails like talons. A spaded tail snaking its way around unseen feet. A towering figure wrapped in deathly black robes and smoldering flames. 

I was wrong.

The devil is short and blonde. And if she makes me do one more ab-whittling set I am going bounce this Bosu off her perky ponytail.

Or I would, if I wasn’t fighting the collective urge of my abdominal musculature to seize in sweaty agony. 

Four years ago, I did not need a personal trainer. I had a husband. Who was perfectly fit and who cooked obscenely healthy meals so that we could then blissfully relax over crème de menthe drizzled bowls of ice cream and wedges of Brie. I wasn’t perfect, but I was perfectly happy with what I was. You could almost argue that it was a match made in health and fitness heaven.

(Actually, you could. We met at a gym.)

His hours of cycling and lifting bliss were matched by the miles of solitude in my running shoes, gifts of time we gave to each other that were as important and cherished as notes on the mirror and moments in the dark. As the years passed and our lives grew fuller we held sacred to those gifts and found a new gift in the miles we spent running silently side by side while two tiny heads rested on each other, lulled to sleep as wheels turned and the rhythm of our footsteps tread quietly into the night.

In the wreckage I lost my running shoes and my calm, gifts that he gave me each day and that vanished with him. Trapped in the house I craved an escape, only to struggle for air in the night in rare moments of silent fury interrupted by sirens racing by. And over time I listened as his footsteps faded and I ran to survive, and then to live.

But as my footsteps regained their stride and I once again disappeared into the dark night, something had changed.

The voice that challenged me to seek more was gone, and in its place the voice inside me wondered what more could be found. I ran into the raging silence of Dante’s inferno, seeking more and daring the fates and testing my limits and my strengths. And as I run into the dark with blind faith, this I know.

Hell hath no fury like my abs.

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?”