6/16/16

Today's date, and also the date 100 years ago, when my Nana was born. I think of her every June, and of her pearl birthstone, which she would send me every year for my own birthday. It was the perfect birthstone for her. Not the showiest, flashiest gem, but a subtle gleam, the reflective result of grit under duress.

My Nana did not have an Ozzie and Harriet marriage, and she learned to be an entirely independent woman when such things were still largely unheard of. She lived on her own with two daughters, worked in a school cafeteria, and went to college alongside my own mom and all the other kids twenty+ years her junior.  

I wish I knew more about her younger years, but my Nana was a stoic woman. She had experienced her share of personal pain, but primarily chose to sequester her feelings behind clamped jaw, at least where we grandkids were involved. She grew up through tough times, the child of Russian Jewish immigrants by way of Ellis Island. Perhaps that's why I never heard discussion of the Depression from her. Maybe it was child's play in comparison with the conditions from which they came. 

She wasn't a wealthy woman, but a handful of treasures survive her memory- paintings that she began making in her retired years, the smell of the leather wallets and gloves she would bring for us from Gloversville, New York, and the Gebachte cookies, made from a recipe older than she was, from egg and oil dough, damson plum and apricot jams, and cinnamon sugar. She would package up these rolled cookies in sheets of wax paper and send them in the mail to us, wherever we were, for special occasions. (Thankfully the recipe survived her passing with the foresight of the Edelstein cousins, who insisted she make a batch with them watching so they could write it all down!) 

One of my favorite memories occurred on one of her last visits. I listened with dropped jaw as Nana told us about her solo cross-country trip from Maryland to California. (How had we never heard about this before?!) My parents were moving here with the three of us all under the age of 6, and she offered to drive the family station wagon for them as we flew. Said it was something she had always wanted to do, and at 65, all by herself, she did it. (Sadly, I inherited NONE of her sense of direction!) I keep this memory in my pocket whenever I want to talk myself into doing something largely less brave than that, by myself.

Ross and I have been plugging away at his permit driving hours, and in addition to the rules of the road, I am attempting to flesh out other helpful habits of responsibility. In the spirit of such things, we have discussed having one place where he always puts his keys and his wallet so he can always find them. But of course, Ross can't find his wallet to put it there!! So, last night I thought, "I know! I'll have him drive us to Target so he can pick out a new wallet and get this ritual underway." I had planned on making him use his allowance to pay for it, since he lost the last one.  But standing in the check-out line it dawned on me what today is. Of COURSE! 

"Ross, you're in luck. My Nana wants you to have this wallet for her birthday." 

By now, he is used to hearing crazy things like this out of my mouth (as are the rest of you!) Frankly, he didn't care what the reason was, so long as it meant he got to keep his allowance. And frankly, I don't care if it actually happened or if it was just a figment of my imagination, but I felt Nana's satisfied endorsement of the arrangement. 

Happy 100 years since your birth, Nana! Perhaps we'll make some jelly cookies in your honor. 

In Tempo

Today, life sent me this poem. Maybe it was in honor of my late grandfather's 100th birthday. Or of my grandmother's passing, also sharing this date. Anyhow, I had seen this poem before.

It is one that my dad wrote, many years ago, while listening to Barber's Adagio for Strings, on an airplane. As he struggled to contemplate his existence, and his place in all other existence.

It had resurfaced a few years ago, when he was ill and contemplating the end to his existence, or at least the existence he knew.

I have been reading The Road, by Cormack McCarthy, and the story of a man and his boy clinging tenuously to the last morsels of post-apocalyptic survival on a destroyed earth is enough to make anyone contemplate the true nature of existence at its core. 

So, today I sat, stubbornly banging my head against questions that leave me at an impasse. Answerable only with other questions that seem to have no answers. And then a distant, but significant voice from the past manifested, as if on cue, and strategically plunked these familiar words before my eyes.

In Tempo Adagio
by Alan Miller

Subtle, rich harmonic changes;
their lyrical form framing the view
of tortuous, ribboned paths, etched
along the mountainous divide

which keenly separates
chaos from order
virtue from abandon
treachery from expedience;
one gentle step on the other side of which
brings the quivering, raw, vulnerable beat to a halt.

Images appear deliberately; stop-time irony
as the fleeting shadow of wings inquisitively
searches every incline, crevasse and flood plain
for meaning, and finding none, moves on.

I walk on that path, straddling comfort and anguish,
sometimes thoughtlessly and urgently
like the searching darting shadow;
sometimes almost motionlessly, 
as the perspective onto which the reckless vision is cast,
in tempo adagio
as I sift through collective treasures
of memories and aspirations.

Passing awarely through thick layers
of turbulence and obscurity,
I reach the defined edge of light,
bordered by the melodic tones
and the deepening blueness of the final breadth of our world.

Cast above the clouds, I stare awkwardly
at the gift bestowed upon me.
The last chord finds me
suspended, at peace, outstretched,
leaning towards enlightened times.

And the quandary became a little more clear. The answers have always been there. It is the questioner that continually changes.

In Tempo Adagio
by Lauren Valantine

The portal is wide open tonight, 
like the stretched light of a full moon,
fleeting illumination on the elusive.

Life and death in perpetual motion,
through the orbit of day following night.

Communications encrypted, drawn out
repeated as needed
to make their meanings whole.

First round, a revelation
Second, new understanding of the very same
Third, time steeped with the experience of past tense, of after. Of before.

Messengers weaving, leaping
through a convolution of time and minds.
The answers in tempo adagio.

X-Files Submission #2

Since the day she died, my grandmother has communicated with me through jewelry. While I have become increasingly comfortable sharing such confidences without the concern of how nutso they sound, I do have what I consider a decent amount of loose evidence to back up this assertion.

My grandmother was the youngest of 9 children, and the only girl. She then gave birth to two sons, one of whom had me, and then four boys. So, in the span of about 60 years, our particular branch on the family tree had my grandma and me.

Grandma Leona’s father was a jeweler. I don’t know the specific details of his work or history, and these may be beyond retrieval. But I do know that Grandma Lee loved her jewelry. And as she particularly appreciated monograms, and we shared the same initials (LM), and the same birthstone (diamonds) and as I was the only girl for quite some time, I was in line to inherit a decent chunk of shiny, sparkly things that wouldn’t be mistaken for anybody else’s. Lucky for me, I have always been quite an avid fan of anything sparkly enough to get my attention, so this arrangement did not hurt my feelings at all.

Around the time of my 13^th birthday, Papa and Grandma were in town for a visit. We were sitting in the snack bar of either Gemco or Target (I forget when it changed from one to the other), and my grandmother began talking to me about the significance of this age. About how, in the Jewish faith, (had our part of the family remained faithfully Jewish), I would have had a Bat Mitzvah to usher me from childhood into adulthood. And as an impromptu back-up ceremony, my grandma reached into her proper leather purse, pulled out a small gold and diamond ring wrapped in a tissue, and handed it to me. She said that it had been her own mother’s and I was now to wear it and take care of it as the responsibilities of womanhood were upon me. This awkwardly timed coronation was slightly overwhelming, since I kind of embarrassed by the “W” word, and had expected little else that day besides a soft pretzel and a blue raspberry Icee.  But I have never forgotten the exchange, and for the better part of 30 years, I have never taken that ring off my greatly responsible finger.

---

My brother Geoff and I were at Denny’s when we got the call that Grandma had passed away. We cried, and got our food to go, and paid the bill. And then we packed our suitcases and flew across the country to gather in mournful reunion with the rest of our extended family. Thus began a new rite of passage, as we learned the customs, both formal and just plain human nature, of laying a loved one to final rest. My eyes were locked on Aunt Joni’s every move that week. She knew what to say to comfort my heartbroken, bereaved Papa, who was without his wife for the first time in more than fifty years. She knew what needed to be done, who needed to be called, who needed to be consoled, who needed to be fed. In the Jewish faith, as with so many others, feeding and mourning seem to go hand in hand, as if to remind ourselves- We Eat, Therefore We (still) Are.  So, off to the store I trotted with Aunt Joni, to load up on food for the mourning masses. And as I was putting the nova lox on the check-out belt, I felt a sharp surprising pinch. I turned my hand over and saw that the bottom of my ring must have caught on something (what? I have no idea) and snapped. This was enough of a catalyst to allow my already edgy emotions to cloudburst into tears. As I sobbed with the wretched sorrow that of ALL things, THIS- my Grandma’s special ring- would pick such an inopportune time to break, my aunt exclaimed,” You know what this means, don’t you?? When someone dies and something they gave you breaks, it means that they’re with you!! That’s Grandma! She’s here!”  Aunt Joni taught me another memorable lesson that day. Sometimes, things we perceive as sorrows are actually something altogether different than we imagine. 

---

Several years and two children later, we were planning a trip to Florida so the boys could visit Great-Papa on our way to Disneyworld. Our departure was about a month out, and I was troubled that I couldn’t find my special ring. I had taken it off while pregnant with Grant, and hidden it very carefully in one of the “very careful hiding spots”. Apparently, I had hidden it TOO carefully, as all the typical spots had been checked and re-checked, with no luck.

It was a Saturday night, and with two children under the age of five, staying up until our eyes couldn’t stay open was about as wild and crazy as we got. On this particular night, my eyes were open long after John’s as I mulled over where on earth my ring could have gone. I missed it. It represented my Grandma, and I particularly wanted to be wearing it when we visited my Papa. And worse, I couldn’t think of ANY other possibility than one of the few trusted and appreciated people that worked in our home might have taken it. I hated this thought, as it seemed like a betrayal to even mentally accuse either one of them! Or- as John would probably mock if he were awake- maybe the door had been left unlocked and someone had come in, made a beeline for my Grandma’s special ring, and left, taking only that. Who knows? Anyways, my conscience liked that theory better.

So, as I mulled this problem over and over, I considered looking up the pawnshops in our area. Wouldn’t that be where someone would take a valuable ring to get money quickly? Maybe it was sitting somewhere within blocks of our house. Perhaps I would check them on Monday. My Papa and Grandma were of a generation that loved to give savings bonds as gifts, and my next thought went to the idea that if I couldn’t find the actual ring, maybe I could find something very similar on eBay. I spent hours combing through the many listings for anything that resembled my unique, Art Deco ring from the 1930’s. As my options dwindled and I realized how late it was, one last thought occurred to me. I supposed I could have the same ring re-created, if I could remember what it looked like. I wore it for so long. Could I? At that moment, a very clear picture of it flashed in my mind, and I grabbed a piece of paper to doodle a quick rendering. And then, the reality of how late it was forced me to put the subject (and myself) to bed for the night. Those boys would be relentlessly awake in precious few hours.

They were, indeed, up with the sun, and between the lack of sleep and the constant needs-on-parade, I utterly forgot all about my midnight search and anything to do with it. Sunday and then Monday came and went without a thought. The boys were screeching around the backyard as our sliding door opened when John came home from work that Monday evening. He was taking a large sip of Diet Coke out of his trademark Big Gulp cup, when I saw the sun glimmer against something gold on the tip of his pinky finger. I squinted in disbelief and asked him what was on his hand. After what seemed like an eternity to swallow one sip, he finally said, “Oh, weren’t you looking for this a while back? I have a headache and it fell out from behind the sinus pills in the very corner of the medicine cabinet."

I ran inside, with my mouth in the proverbial agape position, and grabbed the drawing I had sketched out just two nights prior. With a swarm of incoherent exclamations and gestures, I pointed back and forth between what I had drawn from memory and the actual object, materialized and in the flesh, right back on my hand, where it would NEVER leave again. (Like, EVER!!) They were so alike, even down to the size, it was unreal.

---

A few years later, my dad had married a woman so uncannily like my Grandma (in looks, in personality, in intelligence) that none of us were quite sure what to think about such a thing. Of course, with my father being readily compared to Dr. Frazier Crane, there was already a humorous episode that mirrored our situation. Their circumstances, the way they met, it was almost as if Grandma was pointing her finger from her perch, moving this woman around like an extended chess piece. My eyebrows wrinkled as I noticed every move with great clarity, but life experiences hadn’t yet given me the full confidence to trust what I instinctively “knew”.  

One day, she was explaining to us how she INSISTED that my dad continue to wear his wedding ring from his second wife on his right hand. She said that at first he was uncomfortable with the idea, but when she threatened to wear it herself if he didn’t, he put it back on. Her logic was that it was a beautiful ring, and that beautiful jewelry shouldn’t just sit around collecting dust in a box. Wear it, or why even own it?? This was possibly the most perplexing tangent with my Grandmother to date, and I mentioned that my mom had given me a ring with her engagement diamond from my dad in it. The ring was rather large, and not something I would wear every day, so it sat in our lockbox and didn’t get worn. She had inspired me to consider what to do with it.

I received an e-mail that night, that I was to get the ring out of the lockbox, that she and my dad were going to make it into a necklace for my birthday and Mother’s Day, so figure out a design and get it to her ASAP. There was no arguing with his wife when she had made up her mind,(and of the many ensuing arguments we DID have, this wouldn’t have been one of them!) so I jotted out a little notion of what I thought it might look like and handed it over. When she gave me the little box on Mother’s Day, once again, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was BEAUTIFUL. And she had dismantled an old cocktail ring of her own mother’s to surround my parents’ stone with a sea of tiny, sparking diamonds. No big deal, she said. She hated that ring and would never wear it the way it was. The entire scenario was so uncharacteristic of my prior experiences with his wife, and so suspiciously sanctioned by my channeling  grandmother it was as if I was watching a movie of it. I recall whispering a little “Thanks, Grandma” .…. My gratitude was to the Universe through all its forms and manifestations that day.

---

It was three in the afternoon as we pulled into the driveway after school. I instructed the boys to go straight to the bathroom and then get changed for karate. As I walked towards our bedroom, I noticed the wind was blowing the curtain through an open sliding door that had been decidedly locked when I left. In mid-sentence, I barked orders for them to walk straight back to the front door, NOW NOW NOW. I’m serious, get out NOW. I remember grabbing the phone from the kitchen on my way out the front door and calmly calling 911 in a fog, as I watched a man come into vision, wearing  a dark jacket and pants despite the early summer heat, and walk right down the sidewalk in front of our house.  “I think the man who was in our house just walked right by me.” I said, loudly and calmly, as if from another mouth, another mind. They instructed me not to follow him and to get as far away from the house as the phone would allow. I watched him as he walked away.

Later, I would learn, he had walked away with my very own wedding ring, along with every last monogrammed diamond L of my Grandma’s jewelry. Irreplaceable. I cried. I raged. I drew out every last piece I could remember in reliable detail. I filed police reports. And then, I learned a new lesson.

I let it all go. The desperate attachment I had fostered under lock and key for so many years, to a tangible, wearable history of my connection to the past simply disappeared. It vaporized and instead of the empty loss I always dreaded, I felt strangely freed. And Glenda the Good Witch waved her magic wand over my head to remind me that it was never the Ruby Red Slippers in the first place. The power had been in me all along.

The two pieces I was wearing were all I had left. I cherish my remaining great-grandmother’s ring, given to me by my grandmother on the day I became a woman in the Target/Gemco snack shop, but I  no longer cling to its existence. And, by some otherworldly orchestration from beyond, the symbolic beginning to my parents’ own union was safely around my neck while my children were safely at my side.

---

I hesitate to put the next part of this story to paper, but it is a necessary, humbling requirement of the whole, and one I feel an involuntary compulsion to tell. Anyone who has navigated the duration of decades together should have no  trouble relating to my testimony, and anyone who hasn’t, probably wouldn’t understand regardless.  People are complicated animals, made up of matter and energy and dynamics we think we can wrangle into controllable forms of harmonious civilization. And just as one person can perceive the snapping of a ring as heartbreak while someone right next to her perceives it as magic, there are times, sometimes important ones, when our vision threatens to change the story in irreparable ways.

We are showered with seemingly trite advice at our wedding and baby showers, that is completely un-relatable at the time. And just like the sets of china or pacifier straps that come wrapped in pretty paper, some of that advice sits in closets gathering dust for years, while other advice proves indispensible in a desperate way when you least expect it. You hear about life having its ups and downs, about falling in and out of love a thousand times over the years. And that means exactly nothing. Until you’re faced with the reality of what that looks like. What it feels like. The anger and guilt and confusion and inability to see clearly, to know what to do, to fathom how it could possibly ever get better.  Like the running advice you hear about hitting the wall. Or childbirth. You try to imagine it and there is no such thing UNTIL. YOU. HIT. THE. WALL. Until you experience a never- before -unlocked sequence of cause and effect that is involuntary and doesn’t involve you, even though it involves every cell, every nerve, every fiber of you. Until you experience the times that make you grasp that we are mere borrowers of these bodies, of these lives. We create such significant chronologies with our time, and then we understand, maybe a few times if we are lucky, how not attached we are to any of it.

This realization, these moments of detachment, can be jarring to the very foundation of your existence in ways that make a mockery of the sense you thought you had. They can make you question everything you think you know, and how you think you know it. Nobody has found a way yet to quite adequately word that on a Hallmark wedding card.

And so, one October evening, as my brother and his wife were waiting for me to get ready, I was in the bathroom of my hotel room, staring past myself in the mirror. It wasn’t a conscious thought, it wasn’t an intentional one. But it was one I had thought before, in the angry, convoluted haze of deep depression, in the foggy, groggy, middle of some endless cycle of night and day nursing my beloved babies. In the deeply buried patterns of mistrust and fear that were etched from life’s experiences. I glazed over, looked through myself and thought, “Fuck it. I’m done.” I don’t care what happens. To any of it.

I saw something slightly shift in the mirror, heard the faintest little “tink” of something hitting porcelain, and watched my parents’ engagement diamond slide down the sink in slow motion, stopping about an inch away from going right down the drain. And I heard one word, somewhere in my head, that said all of it. 

PRICELESS.  

Both my hand and my head reached out and snatched up my Grandma’s warning before it was too late. Repairing my necklace took a lot less time and agony and patience and love to fix than repairing what was broken within me, what was on its way to breaking within us. But I have learned that certain attachments are deceptive and fleeting, while others are as infinite as the connection between our lives here and what is to come. Figuring out which ones to hold tight to and which ones to release is one of the most important lessons we will ever learn.

TWENTY YEARS

We were BABIES, sure of our maturity and ready to take on the rest of our lives together, having absolutely no idea what that meant, what it entailed.

We had no money, ate ramen with our roommates and scraped every dime from our entry level (or lower) jobs to make my pink, puffy, fluffy wedding dreams come true. Let's be honest. John would have happily been married by a bum in front of city hall and gotten bacon dogs from the street vendor. But he patiently put up with my Modern Bride Magazine-inspired visions, served up on silver trays to little girls with champagne tastes and Pabst Blue Ribbon budgets.  I got by with a LOT of help from my friends. They understood the dream. And some of them understood the strange tissue box and toilet paper roll contraption that would stuff just the right amount of potpourri (I'm gagging as I write this) into pink netting. All that crazy minutiae, so essential at the time, to create the PERFECT MEMORY to look back on.

We had finally arrived at the Weekend of Truth, all ducks precariously in a row, to the best of our abilities. All favors called in from every kind- hearted friend we knew-friends arranging flowers, decorating, opening up their homes to out of town guests. The rehearsal sprinted past, along with the dinner, prepared in a borrowed kitchen by more kind friends.

It was time for me to say goodbye to John for the night, knowing that I wouldn’t see him again until I was walking down the aisle. I remember very little else about the entire wedding. But I can picture the living room, the dim hue of the lamp, the chair that John was sitting in. He was my safety. My comfort. The reason we were doing all of this crazy stuff. And as we said our tearful, reluctant goodnight, I had perfectly ironic realization. Absolutely every detail we had worked so hard on – Two years of saving, a lifetime of dreamy planning, innumerable friends lending hands and feet, not one bit of it mattered. Right then and there, it all melted away. The only important thing about our wedding day would be that we were marrying each other.  It was with that epiphany that I realized, we had just become husband and wife. On our own, in the living room of a friend’s house, saying goodnight. The next day’s wedding would be merely a celebration of what we already knew, what we already had committed.

That indelible memory of our true union has traveled with me through our two decades together. It has reminded me at some of the more stressful, trying moments that the details we get so caught up in can change in an instant, can mean nothing. It has been, on more than one occasion, the glue that helped us survive. Don’t get me wrong. We have had more than our share of great fortune and happiness and love in this life so far. But the true meaning of “for better or worse” can only be comprehended when you are experiencing “for worse.”

For our generation, this whole long- term commitment is more the exception than the rule anymore. Who do we have to pattern ourselves after? For us, I believe what makes us push far beyond our individual comfort zones,  is our children. I want them to see the reality of relationships from all angles. To know that the fairy tale version we are offered at the movies is not reality.  To know that the term "unconditional love" that everybody so glibly tosses does us all a disservice. That love requires plenty of conditions to flourish and strengthen and survive. I want them to know that growing apart doesn’t automatically mean it’s over. To know that you might hit a breaking point  along the way that seems insurmountable. To know that fixing the broken parts can require lots and lots of work, maddening work. But it IS possible. Their dad and I are living, breathing proof of the stubbornness and determination and discomfort, and the decisions and compromises and years of learning HOW that any long- term relationship requires. That love requires.

We were mere babies, with no clue what we were doing. Now we have raised babies, grown into seasoned adults (YES, Grant, we’re OLD!!!) who work to set the best examples we can for our boys, as they reach ever closer to adulthood. We have made it together this far. My dreams of love and marriage have long since dropped their illusions of rosy, pink perfection. Twenty years of reality, of humility mean we know better. We HAVE better. We may never truly know what we’re doing, may not ever get it exactly right. But since the very beginning, we have learned that the important parts have a way of rising to the surface. In this blurry cliché of whizzing life, what else could possibly matter?? 

SWEET CHILD OF MINE

It was somewhere in the midnight hours between the last night of my father’s dwindling life and the day he died. I was sitting outside on a bench at the Towne Centre, listening to live music trailing through the doors of a building that had been an integral part of our childhood celebrations- birthdays, soccer parties, a haven for safe, teenage fun.

Hours earlier, we had determined that my dad’s body was giving us the signs. He was ready to go. We switched him from Palliative Care to Hospice, identical in care except for the remote hopefulness that the former held onto. Hospice was a word we had waited with uncertainty to hear. What would it mean? What would it be like? How long would it last? The word came with the understanding that no further sustenance would be offered to keep my dad’s body alive, only  the humane grace that medicine could provide. So, now it became a waiting game, with no clear winner.

We made a collective decision that the next day would be a celebration of all the things my dad loved. But that night, that last night of my father’s life, I had a strong compulsion to fly. I had to be young. I had to be free. To dance and stay up too late and thumb my nose at the stuffy sorrow of it all.  

The restaurant of our childhood had become a concert lounge, still a haven to the same generation of crazy 80’s teenagers, only a few decades older. The music raging from the stage was a playlist of favorites from our era. As we listened to songs that marked our youthful existence, waves of euphoric, unapologetic defiance crashed into waves of suffocating grief.

I wandered outside to escape the sensory overload and found myself in front of an old familiar fountain, my friends next to me. In the confusion of sorrow and tears, someone (I don’t even remember who, it could have been me) suggested we throw pennies into the fountain and make a wish. We dug out three pennies and I heard two splashes. My eyes were closed, fingers clutching the penny, waiting for my wish to materialize. It was at that moment, as I realized I had no idea what to wish for, that the song started. A song I had heard a million times since I was a teenager, possibly in that very spot, but had never really HEARD before.

Sweet Child of Mine.

What is the statistical probability that a song could be written decades prior, somehow played as if on cue, and then have such significant lyrics that never made sense until that moment? I couldn’t begin to tell you, but as they belted out the most existential question known to man, I knew my dad was with me. He was scared. He was genuinely asking me.

Where do we go? Where do we go now?

They sang and I sobbed. I kissed the penny, told my dad I loved him, and threw it in the fountain. Splash.

That one moment in time would have been enough. But my Jazzy MD of a dad was never one for understatement. In the months, and now years to come, I would hear the live version of this song, played from the beginning as I walked past the doorway of a bar on a busy street.  Sung by a cover band when I took my mom away for a Mother’s Day weekend and had been soaking in the significance of our time together. On the radio at precisely the same moment, in precisely the same spot of Victoria Avenue where I had heard it before. And so many other times, when I truly needed it, that I have lost count.

My dad died that Sunday, June 26^th, after a night of escaping the confines of his convalescence with his daughter, and a full day of being celebrated and surrounded by his entire family. Where do we go now? I wouldn’t profess to know the answer. Heck, I’m not even sure of where we ARE anymore! But any fears or doubts I might have had before that night have been put to rest. It doesn’t matter. And my guess is, it is closer than we think. My dad may not be here in the form that we knew him before, but he repeatedly proves to me in showy, over the top ways that he most certainly is still here. 

 

 

Mid Night

Ripest summer peaches in an assembly line on the chopping block. My knife slicing to the rhythm of a soothing, silent beat. The surrounding quiet is friendly, familiar, just listening. Its lack of input allows my cells and senses to realign themselves. Absorbs the waves of discord that exit my brain.

This middle of the night is mine.

It is free from the careening rush of requests that lurch and lunge at me during every waking hour.. To the casual observer, these interactions might seem quite pedestrian. Quite unimportant. An obvious component of being a parent, of being a functioning person. But they don’t see what’s going on behind my eyes. That my mind is climbing, climbing, chugging along- and each interruption lobs itself at my train of thought, derailing it from its track.

The dog, the doorbell, the lists and lists of silly little things. MOM, can I have a Coke? MOM, when can we go to New York again? MOM, after we finish this can we go to the mall, movies, park, bowling alley, batting cages? MOM, can you buy me new shoes, new bat, new game, new toys, new everything? MOM, will you play ping pong with me? Sit with me? Play with me? Me me me?? Why can’t they understand that each insistent, innocent question is an assault on the precarious order in my mind?

I can already hear your clucking warning. Yes, it will be over all too quickly and I will long for these days. It already is. I already do. But as their days are racing along, they are taking my days with them. And soon, I will blink and look up and wave goodbye-to them and to my youth- and I will wonder, what the hell was it I was trying to get done, again??

In the middle of the night, I am anything I want to be. I am nobody, to no one.

I have time to think. My mind is on the verge of all the answers. I don’t know them, but I know they are there. I also know it doesn’t matter if I figure them out, because the answers exist independent of my understanding. Of anybody’s. Sometimes it’s kind of lonely. I have to be all by myself to be myself. But it’s also healing. It’s right. It taps into the part of me, the part of all of us, that is already everything and nothing at all.

In the middle of the night, I am in charge.

My knife and my thoughts have stamina. They are supreme athletes, conditioned and poised for the long race. They will work tirelessly and efficiently towards the triumph of the finish line, the finished product. Nothing is too difficult, too complicated, too much effort. Nothing is too unimportant, too unnecessary, too frivolous, too expendable.

In the middle of the night, I don’t come in last place.

As my hand reaches for the last peach in line, I feel a wistful sense of accomplishment. The task comes to a close and takes my sense of purpose with it. Grudgingly, my eyes and my mind know that it is time. That, in a blink, the dawn will bring with it a new list of mundane demands for me to get behind.

HERE AND HEREAFTER

I have nothing to attribute the stories to (in which to attribute? Nope. Too formal.) that I am about to share. No hidden agenda, no expectation that the experiences have any significance past the witness I bear. For me, they are not solid evidence of some particular doctrine. I can’t tell you why, and frankly, in my mind- if it’s all the same to you- you can’t tell me why, either. Because, in all fairness, my guess would be every bit as good as yours, and vice versa. You may feel free to call your convictions “beliefs” or “faith” and I will understand. But for me, I find comfort in the notion that these occurrences happen, in whatever relative consciousness or perception I assume I possess, simply because they just “do.” 

And maybe my mind has the ability to weave these meanings together from the threads of memory, from leftover pieces of information, affection, energy- all earmarked in the person’s name. To create significance out of what others choose to call coincidence. Who knows? (Your guess or mine?)

So, enough preface. I will get to it: Whenever someone dies that I am close to, I feel like the conversation with them continues. Like a vague, nagging thought about them turns into a phrase, or an observation of exactly what they want me to know. In particular, this seems to apply to close relatives, although it has happened with friends who have died unexpectedly, or parents of close friends.

The night my Grandpa died (although I was unaware that he had died), I was sitting next to John in a giant arena after the theatre performance that had brought us together. We were holding hands, high with the excitement of new love. This was not something I could have verbalized at the time, (more of a looking back and understanding what it is that I understood) but at one point, I sensed my grandpa there with us, even said (somewhere in my mind to somewhere in his mind) “Here he is, Grandpa. This is the one.” Like I somehow introduced them. Got his approval. My mom waited until the next day to give me the news because she didn’t want to ruin all our hard work by making me sad. That was when it made sense. When I “knew” he really had been there, after all.  Visiting us in California, like he never had been able to when he was alive.

Things were slightly different when my Grandma died, because a good deal of our energy was focused on helping my Papa through the agony of losing his lifelong companion. I learned a lot about the social and communal aspects of death. How to help. What to say. What to do. How to lose someone, but also how to console the living.

After the funeral, I accompanied my aunt to the grocery store to get more supplies for the house full of guests and mourners. As we loaded items onto the belt, the ring my Grandma had given me on my 13^th birthday- that had been her mother’s, that I had worn ever since- got caught (I’m not even sure on what) and snapped at the base. I burst into tears, relieved that the pinch of the metal gave me an excuse. My heart was broken that such a special heirloom had to choose THIS particular moment to break. My aunt just looked at me and smiled. “ You know, that’s actually very special. They say that when someone dies, if something that they gave you breaks, it means that they are here with you.”

My Nana died during a bitter frozen winter in Upstate New York. She had been single and alone in her apartment for 26 years. The whole family was there for her funeral, but from the minute I crossed the threshold into her apartment, I knew in no uncertain terms exactly what she wanted. We had only one week to orchestrate the disassembly of her belongings- into boxes, to friends, to donation, to the post office- and that was exactly what we were to do.In frozen 2 degree weather, we huddled together at her graveside stunned silent by the new education of how cold could permeate layers of jacket like they weren’t even there. As the Rabbi began speaking, a chilling wind whipped up, and I felt my Nana pass through us. Lamenting things undone, unsaid. She couldn’t rest with dignity until her affairs were all settled.

As we combed through dishes, drawers, personal belongings, my brother found an old bag of cassette tapes. And (coincidentally??) he also found an old tape player. In my haste to complete the daunting task, I probably would have thrown them away. But as we took clothes off of hangers, pictures off of walls, my brother pushed play. And we listened to my Nana’s voice, young and clear, audio journaling her solo drive across the country-from New York to Riverside- to visit our family. She described each day’s drive, the people she met along the way, the landmarks she had always wanted to see. And the excitement (and exhaustion) grew as she neared her destination. Her voice a notch higher in Arizona, then filled with anticipation as she crossed the threshold into California. And as an unfathomable finale, she shouted into the tape recorder with excitement as she spotted our house. The car door opened, and the screams of our childhood selves shattered the room. Celebrating her arrival. “You’re HERE!! YOU’RE HERE!!!” She was there and we were here and it was then and now all at once.

My Papa couldn’t understand what was taking him so long to die. Once Grandma was gone, he engraved his own headstone next to hers and visited it regularly. The only nagging detail keeping them apart was the blank spot after the dash that would one day separate his birth from his death. It took ten years of Papa impatiently waiting to be with Grandma again. When he died, I felt sad for the obvious reasons, but also because it was the first time I just didn’t feel a thing. No energy at all. No trace. Gone. We packed up his belongings- he wasn’t there. Went to the temple services- still nothing. Like he finally got his dying wish, and never looked back.

But then we got to the graveside. In a Jewish funeral, they lower the coffin into the ground, and every person takes a turn returning the loved one to the earth- scooping a shovel of dirt into the grave, but holding the shovel upside down as a symbol of regret for the action. My Papa had thrown himself, wailing, onto my Grandma’s coffin when it was her turn to be lowered, and I expected to feel similarly solemn about the experience the second time around. To my surprise, it was quite the opposite. As soon his coffin hit its long awaited resting spot, I felt a burst of happiness that spun high into the air. My grandparents together again, twirling in a spirited dance of joy! I had to suppress a giggle, and assumed it was the inappropriate reaction that nervousness sometimes brings. But my brother Geoff caught my eye, and he asked me (out loud, in actual verbal language) if I had felt that. We laughed together, in knowing celebration.

It took me my entire life- and especially the three years of illness leading up to the end of my dad’s life- to become strong enough to handle losing him. The night my father died, I was sitting at his side, holding his hand.  Our whole family surrounded him, and our breathing was his breathing. We were one in the way that ancient texts describe everyone being connected. And my dad was carried along through our current of love.  I don’t know how and I don’t know why, and I don’t know if it really happened or if I imagined it, but I felt him travel through me on his way out. And it was every emotion you could imagine, all at once. Of course sadness, and a touch of fear, but also support and encouragement, and exhilaration, and a surprising component of outright joyousness. Of freedom and light and movement and color and sound and transformation. From where to where? I don’t know.

In his final breath, his final descent, I felt the cool tingle of his energy as it left through my fingers. And we all knew he was gone.

Gone isn’t the right word, though. Not here? Not him? Not in his body?

It took a little time to settle into whatever form of consciousness (for lack of a better term) he took on, or perhaps returned to, in death.  Like those crazy Magic Eye posters we all used to stare at- not sure what we were trying to look for, how it would appear- I had to blur my realistic focus and recognize that what I was seeing had to be perceived in a different way than I was used to.

The colors, same as the ones I had seen when he died, were the easiest for me to comprehend. I know what I have seen before, and I know what I haven’t. These colors seemed to be more than one thing at a time, and never stopped changing. They were not the static forms of energy we are accustom to calling a table, or a vase of flowers. Closer to the notion of a sunset.

I “heard” him telling me things. Insistent things. Omniscient things. Not in words, exactly. More like I had thought the words, but they weren’t mine. Like there is a big story and a lot of answers and he wanted to share them with me, but we suddenly had a language gap. Or perhaps there isn’t language to explain what we have tried, in every configuration, to manifest.

The most surprising sensation I experienced was physical, and lasted for days, if not weeks, after his death. My upper body felt the queasy, non-specific uneasiness you feel when your finger accidentally gets in-between the plug and the socket and you get zapped. I attributed it to the unfamiliar level of grief, or to being tense, (or perhaps the absence of being tense) until one day, the sensation was so pervasive that I actually mentioned it out loud to someone. “It is odd. I don’t feel it in my head or neck, or lower arms, just right around my upper arms and back. Almost like I could draw a line around me… almost like a………hug.”

There are too many stories to fit them all here. Songs, influences, reparations, phrases that I hear until I have to say, “OK, OK, already!” and repeat the message out loud, so he knows I heard. And over time, the sharpness, the rawness of our connection has mellowed. Sort of like a song you have heard so many times, you feel like you almost can’t hear it anymore.  

I can tell you that from my experience, what is “here” and what is “there” has become a whole lot more interesting. I try to listen the best I can. I want to get the whole story. But, similar to the bits that are lost in translation when a book written in one language is told in another, there are pieces missing. Subtle nuances that change the entire meaning. Ones that can’t quite be replaced.

It has been nearly two years since my dad died, and on what would have been his 69^th birthday, I find myself thinking about him. Reminiscing. It still feels like an odd dream, like I haven’t talked to him in a while and owe him a phone call. Like he’s perfectly content sitting in a comfortable chair overlooking the view, pouring over his medical and law journals, or blissed-out , following his fingers on the piano. He’s busy somewhere living his life and we are busy living ours. Which is largely true, for the most part. Only his forwarding address is to parts unknown. At least for now, I suppose.

How strange it is, typing into the night and then sending my thoughts into the stratosphere. It’s a one-way ticket. I never know where they land. I wonder if you’re skeptical. Searching for tangible explanations, excuses. Or you might have a perfectly good answer for why these things happen. Or maybe you really couldn’t care less either way. But if you have read this far, then perhaps you ponder the bigger meaning, the deeper connection. If so, then maybe sharing my experience will at least give you some form of peace, fill in a few pieces of the puzzle you are trying to solve. (Or you may just get a good chuckle at the latest confirmation that I am a whack job!!) At the very least, I hope you will find some comfort in the thought that there is comfort to be found. Why? How? I will leave those questions and their answers up to you. 

FIRE AND RAIN

Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone…..

The circles are spiraling again.

A few days ago, I drifted past posts of various sorts, chuckling here, commenting there, when I came across a picture of two sisters, whose lives intersected with ours a few times throughout our childhoods.  My eye stopped, as I considered the history, the significance of seeing these two friends as adults. They had been through challenging times, as so many of us had, and it was gratifying to know that somewhere, out in real life, they still existed, even if my only contact was in this glowing box in front of me.  

My mind wandered to a specific memory of Lisa, a few years older than Wendy and myself, who I became closer friends with through our involvement in theater. One year, when Lisa was a senior, we were in a play together, and we both happened to have extremely dramatic roles that talked about dying, involving many tears. I specifically recalled Lisa’s performance- a scene recalling the death of her sibling as he sat with his girlfriend, carbon monoxide filling the car and killing them both. The end of the scene shattered her numbness, left her sobbing and screaming in a fit that broke your heart. I made sure I was in the audience watching every single time she gave that performance. And for some reason, that was what I was thinking of the other night, when I saw this picture of these girls.

An introductory piece of music was chosen to set the tone for each monologue or scene. Before Lisa’s scene, the obvious choice for a lead-in was Fire and Rain, by James Taylor. My mind trailed through that song when I saw their picture, as well.

So many years ago, Lisa sat preparing herself for exactly this situation. This loss. And perhaps the tears that wracked her body then, were tears she was unknowingly crying for now.

But I always thought that I’d see you again……

Nearly 30 years later, I still can’t hear that song without thinking of Lisa. And now, whenever I hear it, I will forever also think of Wendy.

Impartial Observations of Life

One of my dad’s favorite Buddhist sayings when we were growing up (for which we gave him no end of shit) was “Be…an impartial observer…of life.” While I would never have admitted it at the time, those words and the idea of them gave me a fair amount of comfort over the years. As I have become a parent, they have been an essential tool in keeping what little sanity I have left. Back up and look at the situation from outside of whatever “self” you think you are.

So, on the eve of sending our beloved boy into the big, wide world without us, I’m going to give it a try. I’m backing up. Way up. Or maybe I’m looking closer. Hard to tell. Either way, I am attempting to be an impartial observer. Of life.

How do you detach yourself from something you feel is your entire self? Well, for starters, I will look at the part of Ross that is an elemental organism, comprised of skin and bones, of organs and blood and tissue. Of matter. Of particles and cells and molecules and atoms. Mysteriously held together by the cosmic instructions that decide such matters.

I can also impartially observe the physics (what I understand of them, anyways) of Bernoulli’s Principle, the laws that were mastered and revolutionized our capacity to transport these particles at wildly-unheard of speeds to other parts of the globe. Here, my mind might wander to consider the cause and effect that these discoveries may create in the long run- our clunky, clumsy human interferences with natural systems that move too slow slow slow for our impatient minds- ever wanting to see the fruition of every effort, to make it easier, faster, more efficient, more convenient. Like the candy bar that was sent through Wonkavision, wondering what particles we are decimating in the process, and if those were really necessary in the first place. (The chocolate still tastes the same!!)

I can impartially observe the intense magnetic attachment my heart and soul feel for these collections of DNA that traveled through my own, a part of me in the same sense that I am a part of everything else. I can muse at nature’s mandate that I consider these cells my divine responsibility to safely deliver back to the world from which they already belonged, of which they were born to begin with.

The closer and closer I look at the pointillist portrait of a million tiny bursts of color-the rainbow of boy that is created from their energy- I find it hard to distinguish where he ends and the life around him begins. The same scene mirrored from a vantage point in outer space, observing our seemingly monumental existence as the microscopic specks we really are.

When I am an impartial observer, I can comprehend that it is just my perception that makes me feel like I am sending my very life farther away than I can reach, farther away than my illusion of control can keep safe. Techinically, I am merely giving a magnetized collection of matter a ride to the airport.

And I find comfort in the notion that, while it may feel like my own cells are going to fall apart at any moment, the laws of nature (barring any unforeseen opposing forces) can be counted on to hold them together. 

Surprise

You know those smiles you feel pulling from the tips of your toes all the way to your ears? The kind that ripple in and out through the following days- regardless of what ensuing chaos has taken their place- mellowing frustrations and resurfacing thoughts of the circumstance that brought them? I have one of those smiles right now. I just had one of the most priceless experiences (and, yes, I’m gonna be patting myself on the back for a long time for thinking this one up!!)

Our life is so jam packed with life-enriching activities, intended to help the boys grow up to be learned, well-rounded adults one day, that we sometimes can’t even fit in the time to celebrate when they have arrived. Ross’s 13^th birthday was quickly approaching, and unlike the past 12 years, I did not have a clue what we would do to commemorate it. No ticker- tape parade, no theme destination, and for the first time in his existence, no big, wacky cake from mom. We talked about a few ideas, and of course, his trip to Europe is more present than any kid needs to mark the passage from childhood to early adulthood. But something was missing. The older the boys get, the fewer opportunities we will have to be a part of their festivities. Soon, they will be looking forward to spending their time with friends and love interests, and their own families, and we will hope they are inviting us. And that is as it should be. But that time is not yet here, and I intend to wring every last hurrah out of the time we have left.

As I looked at our calendar and realized (somewhat tongue and cheek) that the only time we might have for a party would be at the crack of dawn or at midnight, it soon dawned on me that it really wasn’t too far off from the truth. Then, a thought occurred to me. Remember those kidnap breakfasts people used to do back in high school and college?? Where you barged into your friends’ rooms, dragged them out of bed in their pajamas with their messy hair and their unwashed faces and shoved them into your packed car to go to Denny’s?? Well, THAT’S what we would do for our too big to be little, but too little to be big Ross and a carload or two of his friends. (Well, 9 friends to be exact, as that is exactly how many seatbelts John and I have between the two of us! High school kidnapping bandits might ignore seatbelts, but as long as we are still capable of orchestrating their safety, some rules will be followed!!)So, I quickly notified parents, who agreed not to tell their boys, gathered bandanas and sunglasses as disguises, and devised a plan of attack!

On Party Day, before the sun rose, John, Sky and I yanked the covers off of Grant and told him he was part of a big surprise.  He half-opened his groggy eyes, looked around and mumbled, “I AM??? Is it a new dog??” John said, “Nope, that’s the old dog.”

We threw on our kidnapping disguises and ran to wake up Ross. He was a good sport from the moment his eyes opened, and put on shoes with his pajama pants, having no idea what or where was next. When we arrived at the first friend’s house in the pitch dark, Ross was hesitant to leave the car and said he was scared. I assumed he meant scared to wake up his friend. He said, “No, I don’t want anybody to think I’m a gang member, since I’m wearing this red bandanna on my face.” My darling little gang member, in his pajama bottoms and messy hair, with the blinking “It’s my birthday” button. So literal, so responsible, even woken out of a dead sleep and on an adventure, led by his own two parents.

As the tentative first few kidnaps got under way and the kids started picking up the momentum and adrenaline of being in on the surprise, the novelty kicked in. The back seat of my car became increasingly full and animated. The excitement hit these boys, and they dropped their guards- laughing and joking and being themselves, assuming their roles in the group, utterly adorable in their lanky, loopy, awkwardness and Peter Brady cracking voices. Some “Mother Henning” the other boys in the group to hurry up or get their seatbelts on, others tempering their bigger , louder ideas because it was early, or because they were young enough to not be full blown in their precociousness.

I was a fly on the wall, the car driving itself in their eyes, as they noticed only each other. A rare opportunity to observe the group dynamic- to hear and see and soak them in, without them really noticing I was there. To absorb their state of being like the colors of a sunset, precious and fleeting, connecting day to night, and changing before my very eyes.

We got to the restaurant- empty, except for a few early risers- and were ushered into the adjoining room. The boys all sat at one long table, with balloons and mayhem, and we adults shuffled off to sit by ourselves in the dimly lit back of the room so they could have their semi-independent fun. We instructed them to order whatever they wanted. Cokes for breakfast? Sure! The full order of chocolate chip pancakes with whipped cream? Of course!! They had survived a kidnapping, they earned it!

We collapsed into our chairs, exhaustion quickly replacing the adrenaline, keenly aware of the differences in our age and energy level from the frenetic hum that buzzed around the big table. Perhaps it was how dimly lit our side of the room was, but our separation acted as a sort of license for them to forget we existed, and we observed as if watching a fascinating experiment behind one- way glass.  In shock, I wondered…. who WERE these people we just awoke from dead sleeps and loaded into our cars?! I thought I knew them, but they all appeared like caricatures of their former and future selves. Completely familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.  After all the secret planning and hiding and orchestrating, I realized- the surprise was actually on us!

They resembled an illuminated portrait of The Last Supper- fitting, in a strange way, as they transformed into adults and left their childhood selves behind. And I just couldn’t get over the history in each one of them. Like they each contained a reel tape of themselves that wound all the way back from the round, bouncy little kindergarteners where their introductions began, and paused at these gruff, scruffy, goofy man- children, all jokes and awkward limbs, cracking voices belying the babies within. You could almost fast-forward their tapes if you looked carefully- watched their underlying mannerisms, watched the way they interacted with each other, what they ordered, how they spoke to the waitress- who they might be when they finally shed the skin of their younger selves and hardened up from the experience and responsibility of adulthood.

As soon as it had begun, it was over. Returning the boys to their rightful owners was a more subdued affair- their bellies full, the sleepiness kicking back in. Each boy trailed off with polite good-byes, a twinkle in their smiles acknowledging the recognition of their shared experience. 

After dropping off the last kid, Ross mused about how it took longer to pick everyone up and take them home than to have breakfast-but how that was kind of the fun part.Then, my big/ little thirteen year old boy leaned his sleepy head against the seat. And in the same voice I have heard since he was able to speak, with the same ageless smile, he said, “Mommy……. I’m happy.” And at that moment, there wasn’t a single thing on this earth that could have made me happier.