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?”

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.  

Nines.

He came home in the dead of night, the sound of Velcro ripping and boots dropping and whispering in the dark not to touch them until he could clean the gray matter and the blood. And I thought nothing of the oddity of it all.

A pair of boots.

I searched everywhere for them. For weeks my mind raced frantically, desperate to find the black boots that were as much a symbol of the man as the badge he wore and the gun he carried. I called the ones who had done what I could not, polishing brass and pressing dress blues. I emptied boxes, only to repack them and empty them again. I searched cupboards and closets and car trunks, tears rushing down my face as I tore through what had been left behind. And then I sank into the soft, dark blue pile.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

In that moment when I realized he would walk forever in them, I lost my fight against the pain I had fought to control. For as long as I had known him, he had worn those boots. They rested, weary and strong, on the bottom shelf in our closet, beside utility belts, Kevlar vests and tidy stacks of inky cargo pants.

Molded to his imprint, they grew battered and weary over the years, evidence of the daily hazards that came with the career path he had chosen to tread. He chose resoling over new purchases, a decision of practicality, comfort and security that is an unspoken understanding amongst men and women of service and valor.

Losing his boots was as though I had lost a vital and very real link to the man who had walked into my life unexpectedly and left just as suddenly. His footprints are deeply imprinted on our lives, as are the footprints of any father to a child, any husband to a wife. He was so much more than a pair of boots, but the boots were symbolic of the man he was. Confident. Steady. Strong. Supportive. Loyal. And, each day, after he gave everything to a community that did not know him they carried him home to us.

Each Memorial Day I stare at the pictures – dusty and dirt-worn boots standing weary and proud at an inverted rifle’s base, empty helmet resting softly – and I think of the hundreds of thousands of men and women who wear boots every day for each of us.

I think of the ones sleeping restlessly in them behind cover, and the ones climbing hostile terrain worlds away. I think of the ones standing on street corners, and of the ones riding to the scene.

And I think of the price of a pair of boots.   

Bye, Bye Blues.

I want to roll around on it naked. 

That’s right. Naked.

Because I am that enraptured. And because if I don’t do it now, I will have missed my window of opportunity to truly know what it feels like to own a piece of living room furniture that is not stained and soiled with the remnants of the school day, traces of popcorn and the general wear and tear of life with two children. And as far as I’m concerned, I’ve earned the right to a moment of rolling around in microfiber ecstasy.

It’s been 12 years since a new couch entered our happy little home. And twelve years ago there was a husband but no kids, two mature dogs not yet joined by a third, and an entirely modern home of our own design. The cerulean blue microfiber sectional worked.  

And then life happened.

Two babies. A new dog. A career that went into light speed. A new, not-modern house. Suddenly sticky fruit chews and bowls of ice cream became habits of comfort in the comfort of the big blue couch. Little feet walked along the back and jumped from side to side. Dogs claimed their corners and wine stains left marks from the exhaustion of it all.

And then death happened.

The couch that had played a central role in the laughter and love that filled our lives became an unwelcome symbol of how much had changed. I watched as firemen I did not know sat beside my children and kept them calm as I fell apart, and as the thin blue line joined me on it. I sat on it numb and empty, holding his phone and watching from another place as my fingers dialed the numbers that would force me to say the words out loud.

And with every day and every night I grew to despise the blue couch that had been hard won and that had meant so much more.

Night after night I sat alone late in the night watching life continue on the other side of a computer screen while mine vanished into the big blue yonder. And while I struggled to breathe, the couch captured the traces of a life unhinged. Popcorn and crackers. Wrappers and Lego bricks. Princess shoes and water marks.

And wine stains from the exhaustion of it all.

I loathed it. But letting the couch go was like a marriage slowly unraveling, and I traveled the seven stages on it as I searched for what I wanted. And as my mind and body re-entered the world, I tested relationships with sectionals and sofas, chaise lounges and cozy chairs until I found it.

Solid and strong. Soft and welcoming. And the color of steel.

Just like the will of the naked woman rolling around on it.

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.