Ready, Set...

I know, I write so much sad stuff on here.

I won't apologize.  Here's why:

There is something most of you DON'T know.  

In writing this, I am opening up my shame. 

Almost three months ago, my father was arrested.  I cannot go into details, but he will be spending about two years in prison.   I have not seen or spoken to him since March.  

Eight months.  I lost a mother to cancer and a father to...himself, prison? stupidity?

Yes, I am now an orphan in many ways.  My nearest family is two hours away.

Each year on this day, I think about my life.  I stare at my hands, observe the lines, the creases, wonder where they will be next year.  Isn't life just a bunch of anticipatory acts?

We are always almost tomorrow, next year, I mean I think of the future far too often that sometimes I forget to live in the moment of this very second.

I got paid today.  Money was put into my bank account.  I got paid for something that I wrote. Sure it wasn't a lot of money, but I don't even care.

Before she died, my Mom told me that she was sad because she wouldn't see my success.  She told me that I am meant to write.  She understood it.  Even if I was a puzzle to her at times.

Writers are a strange bunch of people.  When people used to ask me what I want to do with my life, I never have been true to myself. I've always felt that I need to give an answer that makes sense to their query.  Because of my innate people pleasing drive, I haven't let myself be who I am.

Cannot remember the first story that I ever wrote.  But, I do remember being eighteen coming home after work and sitting at the computer in my old family room, the faux wooden panelling, the green of the woods coming through the windows, the way it smelled so balsamic in the afternoon sun.  I wrote my first story.  It was forty pages long.  I lost steam, I didn't know where it was going to go.  But in those moments sitting at that computer(and this is 1998 folks so you can just imagine the size of the computer.) I was so happy in the process of writing.  My mind was in another place.  I began to see the people I was writing about as real people with motivations beyond my own imagining.

I don't know what defines good stories vs. literature anymore.  I just know that when I read something and feel something, that's a good story.


Recurring dreams of giving birth happen to me all the time, I see my babies in my sleep.  These are not real babies, I know that now.  They are the gift of my imagination.  I am standing on a precipice waiting to take flight, I've just been too scared until now.

We take our pleasures where we may, I take mine in writing.  I disappear at times into my own mind, worlds I can create.  This year I learned something very important.

When writing I used to worry about what people would think about me through my writing.  Now, I just don't give a crap.  Love it? Fantastic. Hate it?  Brilliant. Think it is disgusting? Now we are getting somewhere.

Hiding isn't for me.  My writing is in a process right now, birthed from sadness and my own hopes.  Besides, even if I never get paid again...I will keep doing it.  Because like Stephen King says, "Why do you assume I have a choice?"

Tomorrow I enter my 35th year on the planet.

Orphan. Paid Author. Aunt.   I became all those in the past year...just can't help but wonder what this year will bring to my plate.

Once A Long Time Ago

One year ago today, I was running around trying to get everything together for a drive out to West Lafayette, Indiana.
How can I explain what has happened in a year?  I thought that maybe I would write about the trip to Indiana, but I am choosing not to dwell on that sadness.

This past weekend, I drove my sister and my nephew Crosby up to Albany to visit my Dad, Erik, Pam and my niece Beatrix.  Both babies are almost seven months old now, I watched them meet each other, now aware of life.  They'd met before but were too little to know it.
My Dad held them, realizing he had two grand-children, and we laughed and watched them sitting next to each other.  Their chubby baby knuckles, big heads and almost toothless grins...I laughed at the simplicity of being a baby.

I tried not to think.  Tried not to think about the person who was not there, could not be there.

I've been told that every great work of literature is about loss or love or both.   I know now that's because everything in life is about loss and or love.  They work in tandem at times, one following the other.  If you put your heart out there, it will eventually experience loss.

The love I feel for my niece and nephew is so great, I never knew I could love two people who are so new, so unknown to me.  Two little souls, who entered my world just as another left.
There is something so tragic in this, I don't quite know how to write or express it at all.  I see people posting things about their Mom's on Facebook, or their grandchildren and it's wonderful.  That love is wonderful, but at times it just reminds me of my own loss...

I think about Crosby and Beatrix, how they will never know this person who brought me  and their parents into this world.  How she will never tell them funny stories about their Mom and Dad as small children.  And I wonder, will they miss someone they've never met?

Maybe I love them more because she is gone. And I wish that I could just wrap them up and keep them in my pocket forever.

I don't want this to be sad, that's not where I am at right now.  There are just little fragments of sadness illuminating my days, because I'm starting to feel better.  Starting to accept things.

Friends, most of you who are my age, you've yet to experience so great a loss.  Some of you have, but someday you will.  Remember that there is no "right" way to grieve, we each have our own way to learn to live without someone.

Maybe that's not right, I am not learning to live without her, maybe I'm just still learning to live.


It's almost Spring again, I'm longing for the warmth and the flowers.  Maybe a soft rainfall, that first smell of Spring...because it's all about rebirth, a respite from this cold.

Hope.  Hope that each day the sun will come up again, that sorrow lessens over time, that there is love to be had in this world again.

Ch--ch-ch-CHANGE

I type into Google “2013 year of change.”

I return such entries as:

2013: A year of Change for you?

If you experienced dramatic success this year tell us…

2013 Is Year Zeroe for Climate Change

The victories of 2012 demand we double down in the fight against global warming.

2013 Was the Year of Women at the Box Office

Amy Chan: 2013 A Year to Change Your Karma

 I clicked on the last one and read “Be Open. Judgment can blind you from seeing the greatest beauty people.” And “Say yes to adventure.”

In a few weeks, I will wave goodbye to the most difficult year of my life.

I’ve been reading Catching Fire, the second book in the Hunger Games trilogy.  I’d read the first book and it got me thinking about some of the themes in the books, the theme of the quell and the reaping.

This past for me has been a deep reaping of change.  I am comforted to know that I am not the only one looking forward to 2014.  2013— the year of the snake, how apt that we shed the old skin and put on something new.

I’ve been thinking of how so many others I know have been experiencing great changes this past year, “I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered, I don’t have a friend who feels at ease…”  these words speak to me of the intensity that 2013 has brought for those I love. 

These difficult times we’ve been through and as they continue…I thought that maybe I would catalog them, but then I realized I don’t want to do that. 

I want to focus on the miracles of 2013.

I hold on to this belief that life will get better.  Many have lost parents, jobs, children; losses small and large, several friends have gone through divorces, grandparents have passed away, a friend recently released from incarceration, another with a very ill infant, all with struggles so real so deep.

In each one I see strength. The amazing human ability to perservere, to keep striving for something better, this hope we hold in our hearts is worth more cataloging than all the sorrows combined.

How in moments over the past few months, I will spontaneously break out in tears and spend twenty minutes or more in the bathroom at work.  Waiting until my sobs subside, or I stand at the sink washing a dish, tears drop down out of nowhere onto my hands.  I can now welcome these moments embrace them, and accept the fact I am more vulnerable now than I have ever been in my entire life. I know that I am not alone.

We’ve got this great ability to shoulder loss, to reach out and love each other.  

Because love is the only way to get through any real great loss in life. 

I think of my pets. And perhaps we could say that they don’t really love, but I don’t believe that.  Animals have a way of communicating on a primal level, they do not judge.  They are open to the beauty in all people.  I think that is the “inner beauty” not some outer thing that is going to crumble and fade.  I need to remind myself of this when I get so caught up on the outward nature of others.

Some are like me, they struggle with the details in search of a larger purpose in life, the ability to serve others (or at least make a difference in another’s life.) And if you’re me, the struggle to nurture my self without being completely self-absorbed or selfish.

I always have hated the question,”Where do you see yourself in five years.” Because I always wanted to say, “Well, I just want to see myself enjoying life.”  But that is the wrong answer because I got fired after giving that answer to someone.

Everyone has been telling me not to take on too much, to allow myself to grieve.  I am impatient.  That I have to get used to a “new normal”.

Join a gym?

Give to charity?

Have a baby?

Get married?

 I  wasn’t “normal” before taking care of Kate and watching her die, why should I be any more normal now?

 So I’ve given myself six self-absorbing months to search my own depths and see what lies within there.

More changes…

I’ve started acupuncture

Spin class for my rage of emotions

Meditations with Deepak Chopra

EFT(emotional freedom technique) with my essential oils

“I’m in the here and now and I’m meditating but still I’m suffering.  But that’s my problem.” –Van Morrison, Enlightenment.

I tell myself forgive, nuture your spirit, embrace the changes.

It is alright to suffer…because it is human and real and true.

Many is the time I’ve been mistaken and many times confused

yes and I’ve often felt forsaken and certainly misused

but I’m alright, I’m alright, I’m just weary to my bones

still you don’t expect to be bright and bon vivant so far away from home

so far away from home

and I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered

I don’t have a friend who feels at ease

I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered or driven to its’ knees

but it’s alright it’s alright for we’ve lived so well so long

still when I think of the road were traveling on

I wonder whats gone wrong

I cant help but wonder whats gone wrong

and I dreamed I was dying

I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly

and looking back down at me smiled reassuredly

and I dreamed I was flying

and high up above my eyes could clearly see

the statue of liberty sailing away to sea

and I dreamed I was flying

Oh we come on the ship they call the Mayflower

we come on the ship that sailed the moon

we come in the ages most uncertain hours and sing an American tune

And its’ alright it’s alright it’s alright

you can be forever blessed

still tomorrow’s gonna be another working day and I’m trying to get some rest

that’s all I’m trying to get some rest.

This Extraordinary Ordinary Life

Is there anything better than a sunny Saturday morning?  I’ve been reserving my Saturdays for writing.  My book will eventually be finished.  Yes.  I have been working on a book.  It’s going to take a bit to complete though…

This week was long, yesterday as I sat in a parking lot of traffic, rain pouring down, red brake lights stretched for miles, ambulances sirening down the highway, cars piled up, I dared not to look at the destruction.  I glimpsed the fragility of life.

How life is truly precious, each moment we take for granted or fail to realize how we are all just time away from the end. 

But of course if we always thought in those negative terms we would never be able to enjoy life for what it is, the good and the bad. 

The clogged sinks, the dark days, a baby’s laugh, paying bills, the love of family, the reeking garbage waiting to be take to a curb, a hug, a kiss, a nice juicy steak, laugh lines on faces, a fruity glass of wine after a long day of work, baking a lasagna, falling into bed, wrestling to wake up early… I revel in the ordinariness of every day life. 

I feel that there is a notion that happiness is found in money or things. Acquiring it, cataloging it, or spending it, showing off with it.  I see folks living glamorous lives, but all I can think is that here is something exceptional in the ordinary.  Domestic little things we are too busy to notice.  

When I was a nanny, I first began to notice little things in each day with the children I was caring for, little things that could be overlooked.  The way the baby would raise his eyebrows for breakfast, or that same sleepy time of day when I’d read the three year old stories until he fell asleep.  The nine hours we’d spend together, full moments so precious so full of seemingly nothing I can barely remember, but they are everything.

It was the same when I cared for a ninety-five year old lady with dementia.  Small nothings that were more meaningful than the hustle and bustle of wallstreet bankers, or business people scrounging for more dollars.  The humanity in these simple moments moved me in ways I can barely describe.  My Grandma told me of an old woman at a nursing home, and what she missed the most was getting her hands into soapy water and washing her dishes. 

There is an ordinary nature to death, while it is the most extraordinary thing that has ever happened to me.  I think of the extrordinary nature of addicts who are able to kick their addictions, to me that is a feat more intense than death.  Death is natural, it is the reverse of giving birth.

I’ve been considering my life in terms of, “before Kate died,” and “after Kate died.”

I could say, “ I am the same.” But that would be a lie. 

I’ve taken to calling her Kate, because I hated referring to her as “Mom” to all who came in the door, she wasn’t their Mom so to me that sounded weird. 

So, towards the end, Kate tried everything--healers, reiki, reflexology.  She wanted to hold onto life, to squeeze out every last drop of it that she could take like a thirsty person in a desert, ever the stubborn Taurus-bull that she was.  I would use my crystals to help balance her chakras, pulling in breath of each various color. 

When Kate had gotten her cellphone she had me set her ringtone to the song Imagine by John Lennon.  This was not ordinary. 

She told me how she once thought that song was sacrilegious, but when she heard it again, she actually thought it was beautiful and real.  How there could be no Heaven, no Hell…that was what God really imagined the world but because of sin we have a Hell and people doing terrible things to one another.   My belief that there is no Heaven or Hell only now, that Heaven or Hell is life right here on earth.

            We used to have long philosophical discussions like that, Kate and I, usually in the car because that was the only time she stayed in one place long enough to have a real conversation.

She told me how she missed when we were babies when she was home, cooking, reading stories, walking us in the stroller, comforting scraped knees, mopping floors, washing dishes.

I’d usually tell her that my worst nightmare was to be a housewife, doing all those things, relying on the income of another to take care of me.  She made fun of me this past year because while I was no mother, or housewife that is exactly what I did for several months.  Emptied dishwashers, vacuumed, cleaned toilets, cooked, nurtured animals, and took care of Kate, as a mother would her child.  

 So, what am I getting at?

Before my purgatory of pseudo-housewife phase, I constantly thought about how much I wanted to do with my life.  The degrees, the traveling(and I still want them) I thought for my life to matter I had to do something extraordinary.

 But now I know the ordinary, caring for a dying person, wiping their bottom, making a cup of tea, loving a baby, taking out the garbage, unclogging the tub, walking the dog, rubbing her feet, changing the lightbulbs, changing diapers…these are the extraordinary/ordinary feats of everyday living.  We take them for granted, we fail to see the beauty in washing a dish, or cooking a meal. 

But this is living.  It is precious, it is Heaven and I love it.

Here's a lil song that sums up my feelings just right....Fleet Foxes, Helplessness Blues...someday I'll be like the man on the screen.