Peace in Brain, Goodwill Toward Self

I can't tell you how many first sentences I have written and deleted in the past couple days. "So here's the thing," I'd start, then be unable to put the thing into words.

Other times I'd try skipping the pointless preamble and just say it, but then would be irritated by the unpoetic obviousness: the well-duh-ness of it.

Then I'd think that I didn't really want to publish anything that might bum people out right before Christmas ANYWAY, so maybe I'll just go do something else until a different, funnier topic occurred to me. And yes, the Star Wars snowflakes were Exhibit A of "doing something else", along with baking. So much baking. I don't even particularly love baking, but I did it anyway. Batch after batch of cookies, until I finally up and ran out of sugar yesterday. 

So it's either finally sit down and post something or vaccuum. 

We're hosting Christmas this year, for the first time ever. This is not the thing, of course, because I'm happy to do it. We bought this particular house with holiday hosting in mind -- albeit that was waaaay back before we went and filled every bedroom with wall-to-wall children and reached a toy-and-baby-gear occupancy level that also is approaching deadly stadium crush levels. I knew my mom wouldn't be able to host Christmas much longer so I figured we could step up and take over at some point. 

That point is now. You know, because my dad's dead.

Aaaand: Pall. Cast. 

And also, I know, right? Holidays are hard after you lose someone! Especially the first holiday! Because that person won't be there and they were an important part of the emotional fabric of that holiday and so the reality of your loss gets to punch you in the chest a little bit more than usual. My goodness, Amy, that's quite an astute observation there. Has science been notified of your shocking findings?

My children are beside themselves with excitement. Presents! Santa! Cookies! Nana and aunts and uncles and COUSINS TO PLAY WITH!  Despite family-wide agreements to not go overboard with the presents, the floor-to-almost-ceiling stack of Amazon boxes in my bedroom suggest that we all pretty much failed spectacularly at not overcompensating and buying our feelings or anything. I'm actually massively relieved that the only traveling expected of us is a couple trips to the train station, and am super excited about Christmas morning and Christmas dinner and omg, the toy parking garage we bought for Ezra is going to MELT HIS FACE OFF. 

And it's Ike's first Christmas! Probably the last "first Christmas" we'll have with a baby. I bought them all ridiculous coordinating Christmas pajamas and I'm going to let them all eat cookies all damn day and watch A Christmas Story 14 times in a row while building Lego sets and it will all be so wonderful, I just know it. 

And yet, oh. I just wish he was here too. 

MOAR BIRTHDAYS

(In Which I Strive To Not Talk About Sad Things During Another Post For The American Cancer Society)

I was looking through stacks of old photos in hopes of finding some inspiration for this entry, something that would FINALLY maybe focus more on the "birthdays" part of ACS' More Birthdays campaign and less about, you know, the "cancer" thing. 

I'm not sure if I found inspiration, exactly, but I definitely found a theme.

And that theme would be: Cake, Pinafores and Unfortunate Bangs.

Oh, I'm kidding. But not about the cake part.

Aaaaaand maybe not so much about the bangs thing, either.

Sometimes I feel guilty about how few photos I manage to ever actually print out. About 99% of my children's childhoods remain solidly in virtual form only (albeit with a robust and slightly paranoid web of backups going on under the hood). There's something nice about sifting through yellowed stacks of photos, never knowing what awkward, poorly lit memory you'll hit on next.

Then again: No timestamps. Perhaps these photos were once labeled in an album, but are now floating loose and out of order, so I have no idea how old I am in the above photo. Five? If I had to guess, based on the handmade dress, which I think I remember from a preschool class photo. My obsession with Snow White burned fast and bright throughout my entire childhood (#1 reason: SHE WASN'T BLOND) and I don't know why the Smurfs seem to be there too. Except to shame the me of 2011 who "accidentally" and "maliciously" deleted my six-year-old's Season Pass to the Smurfs on the TiVo because HOLY GOD THAT SHOW IS ANNOYING AND TERRIBLE.

This photo pretty much sums up every birthday party ever: The "good china" set out at my insistence (including the cups and saucers, from which we would drink our juice). The cardboard crown. The "Happy Birthday" crepe paper that my mom bought exactly one roll of and used for a full 18 years of birthdays, as it unfurled like the loaves and fishes. At least one birthday present infuriatingly wrapped in Christmas paper. Sparse attendance thanks to it being so close to Christmas, save for my friend Laura, who was and always will be prettier than me. 

And my dad, right off to the side, because the birthday girl demoted him from his usual seat at the head of the table. 

Here I acquiesced to paper plates and cups, but please note the fancy candlesticks and cake stand. This makes it okay.

(Birthday crepe paper? Check. Hung upside down? Double check. Laura, looking just like Snow White so much it killed me a little inside? Still and to this day, people. STILL AND TO THIS DAY.)

A rare non-cake-related birthday shot. In fact, the only one I found. My crown says "6" on it so I'm Noah's age here. I think my teacher made me that crown, and I would  like someone to please tell me what the hell happened to my Tomy Fashion Plates set. OH GOD THOSE WERE SO AWESOME. 

Also awesome: Those pants. Purple jersey knit, high-waisted, with a belt. I think there were pleats involved. Definitely tapered ankles that I stuffed into multiple pairs of slouch socks. There is actually a companion photo to this one of me holding that outfit up on Christmas morning, already super excited at the prospect of wearing such a mature-looking ensemble at my birthday party instead of a handmade dress and pinafore. 

Like this one. I wish I still had that dress. I wish I still had all of those people.

My dad, my aunt Betty, my "uncle" Jack who my aunt always insisted was just her good friend but of course we all know better now, like we now know better than that giant ashtray full of cigarette butts right on the table, holy shit. 

I am four years old here. I know because this one is labeled. 

My dad was the one who labeled it.

 

 

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to print out some photos. 

This post is sponsored by the American Cancer Society's More Birthdays campaign.

 

 

In Absentia

I was planning to write some kind of tribute. Something happy. Nostalgic and sentimental. I felt confident I could scan some photos, talk about the good times, tell a funny story or two, anything but more cancer talk. Anything but loss, death, grief, because no. It is his birthday. 

But instead the words are jumbled up inside, trapped within a knotty ball of discomfort somewhere above my heart and below my throat, but the idea of untangling it all seems more likely to result in heaving sobs instead of an eloquently written tribute. 

I just. It hurts so hard. I miss him so much. I want him back. 

I want to send him an Amazon gift certificate and talk to him on the phone. I want to hear about the yellow cake with chocolate frosting, his favorite. I want to visit him this weekend and cook for him or treat him to carryout from a restaurant and apologize for how loud the kids are being and for never knowing what to get him for his birthday besides another lame Amazon gift certificate. 

Because that's what I got him for his last birthday, and the birthday before his last birthday, before "his last birthday" meant something else. 

And yet...no. It wasn't his last birthday, because today is his birthday. And it will be his birthday next November 15th and the November 15th after that. 

Today will always be his birthday. 

Happy birthday, Dad. 

Thank you to the American Cancer Society for sponsoring this post, this day, as part the wonderful, dear-to-my-heart More Birthdays campaign.

Blood Around the Edges

Jason is at a software conference in California all week, and apparently can see Disneyland from his hotel. My mom is in town to help me out with the kids, or at least that's the idea: Please come and save me from my own purposeful decision to have this many children, ay yi fucking yi.

Today is (was? would have been? no, let's stick with is) my parents' wedding anniversary. 

I'm glad she's here. She says she's glad she's here, too. She had flowers and a card delivered to his grave this morning, though. 

Her grief is...still intense. Raw and fresh and liable to bubble over at any second. The kind of grief that can make people uncomfortable because it's just so real and there. 

And then there's me. I'm fine! And good. What's for lunch? I should go to the store. We need cat food. 

Jason says I keep hitting the snooze button on my grief. On grieving. Which I suppose is true, like I keep expecting there to be a time when I can pencil in a good cry and some Deep Thoughts between 11 and 1 next Thursday but oh, crap. I have that call with the people at the place. Then I have pick Ezra up from school and get Noah at the bus and Ike has a doctor's appointment and there's some free time on Saturday but I think I'll schedule a haircut instead. 

I could probably convince you -- and myself -- that I have simply opted to immerse myself in life instead. Life! Which goes on, blah dee blee, and my father would not want me to be sad and weepy at the expense of reveling in my pile of adorable, hilarious children. That happened, and that's all there is to it. The best way through it is through, at full speed, on a train, that's been turbo-boosted with rockets. 

But then: My mom mails me copies of some old photos she's found of him. To add to the huge stack of assorted pictures and yearbooks and newspaper clippings I promised to scan for her ages ago, but have not yet touched. I stare at his face and feel my eyes getting hot. I quickly slap the paper face down on the counter, then cover it up with some catalogs. Then I snap at one of the kids, for absolutely no reason at all. Stop that. Whatever it is you're doing, just stop. 

And then: We're out at lunch, some casual place with a big flatscreen TV up above the bar. We're in a booth across the room but I'm staring at the TV anyway, watching some PSA-type commercial in horror, knowing I should look away, look away, look away...

OH GOD STOP IT NO NO WHAT THE HELL. (<--Click at your eyeballs' own risk.)

I finally manage to look away, but only because I need to turn my face towards the wall while I attempt to get my sobs back under control. I blame postpartum hormones and try to laugh at myself. Jason tries to tell me it's okay but I cut him off and ask him about the state of my mascara.

And then: Father of the Bride comes on TV. Jason and I watch it for the dozenth time for no real reason. I make fun of it a lot, because I have no patience for extravagant weddings and never fail to side with Steve Martin over his poor little spoiled brat daughter who falls asleep reading tips for a BUDGET WEDDING, THE HORROR, SEE WHAT YOU'VE DRIVEN HER TO? SHE'S THINKING OF BAKING HER OWN CAKE, YOU MONSTER.

And then: She calls him on the phone, from the airport, just to say she loves him. My heart shatters into a million pieces and I'm sobbing -- bawling -- because I can't do that, ever again.

And that's how it goes. I stuff it down. I look away. I keep the photos and clippings in the basement. I put his fingerprint back in my jewelry box to protect it from Ike's grabby little fists. I dab at my eye makeup with tissues and laugh at myself and go to the store for cat food during Noah's karate class while Ezra tries to sneak ice cream into our cart and I text my husband to find out if I should pick up some dish detergent too. I'm fine! Really, really fine. 

And then I walk past the Band-Aids and there it is, again, bleeding ever so slightly around the edges.

IN WHICH I COMPLETELY DORK OUT FOR CANCER AWARENESS

Wait! Don't run! This post is not another bummeriffic downer of a weepfest or whatever. I'm totes back to embarrassing myself for fun!

Long- and semi-longtime readers now that I have been partnered with the American Cancer Society's More Birthdays campaign for quite awhile now. At this point, they pretty much say JUMP and I say HOW HIGH AND WOULD IT HELP IF I HIT MY HEAD ON SOMETHING ON THE WAY UP? 

This time they asked me to sing.

Oh my God. You guys.

Yes, Noah is covering his ears the whole time. Yes, Ezra only knows the "YOU TOO, YOU TOO, YOU TOO" part. Yes, poor Baby Ike is flopping around helplessly like a loaf of Wonderbread because I clearly have never held an infant before in my life. 

(This was Take One. Things devolved even further during Take Two, believe me.)

And yes, I am singing and five weeks postpartum and also the whole right side of my shirt is soaking wet because I got trapped outside in a torrential downpour about five minutes before filming this because I am no better at holding umbrellas than I am with babies.

Also: My hair. I know. I KNOW AND I AM SORRY.

But anyway, after you're done laughing at me (s'okay, I know I'm a total dorkball, I deserve it), I would like to encourage you to submit your own 30 Seconds Or So Of YouTubed Humiliation for the More Birthdays campaign and contest. And then you can be all, "HERE'S MY VIDEO" and I will laugh at you for a change. Or maybe I'll just kind of hate you and your beautiful singing voice and fabulous hair and Pillow-Pet-free bookshelves.  

TOGETHER WE CAN OUT-DORK CANCER.

Only In Dreams

I have dreams about him.

In my dreams, he is a composite of himself: He's wearing the ivy style hat and long coat he wore to his teaching job every day of my childhood, but his face is older. He's holding a briefcase, but wearing sneakers. His hair and beard are fully gray, but thicker than it was at the end, after the chemo. The glasses he's wearing are from some fuzzy, unspecific point in between. 

They are not happy dreams: "What are you doing here?" I asked him in the very first one, bubbling over with joy.

"Your mother died," he said simply, and walked away.

W. T. F?

I immediately woke up and texted my mom -- something unrelated and upbeat, just "cuz" -- and then sat in terror as the hours went by without a response and I wondered if I could fake it through a phone call without letting on that OH HI YOUR DEAD HUSBAND TOLD ME IN A DREAM THAT YOU DIED BUT YOU ANSWERED THE PHONE SO I GUESS YOU'RE GOOD OKAY SO NEVERMIND.

Kind of a day-ruiner of a dream, to put it mildly.

Since then, his presence in a dream unsettles me. I'm afraid of what he'll say; I'm afraid that he simply won't say anything and disappear. I'm afraid of waking up because when I wake up I lose him all over again, I once again feel the full weight of he's gone, he's really gone, and I will never see him again.

Except for the glimpses of this mixed-up shadowy phantom. Who even in my dreams I know doesn't exist anymore, doesn't belong there, and who even in my own dreams I cannot seem to go up to and hug and say the one thing that was left so painfully and permanently unsaid. 

"Hi Daddy, I have someone I want you to meet."

Father's Day

I just really miss the phone call, you know?

 

I Know

I climbed into bed late last night. My nerves were on edge, my brain refused to stop inventorying and obsessing over the pre-baby to-do list, all the things that I MUST do, SHOULD do, WOULD LIKE to do, and was that a contraction or is the baby just stretching and jamming limbs into tender organs? I put my hands on my belly and tried to will the sensation to memory, because this is it. The last time. The last few days. Oh, but I'm so tired and sore and done. And yet not ready. Not enough time. 

One week to go. Short and endless and terrible. 

Eight weeks since he died. Like it was yesterday and forever ago, and also terrible.

"He just wanted to hold that baby!" my mom wailed, out of the blue, the last time we talked. She's still prone to bursting into tears at random moments in conversation, and no topic seems to be free of unexpected emotional mines for her. I don't know what else to say except to murmer "I know, I know."

I said the same two words to him, eight weeks ago, over and over again. Shorthand for I know you want to be there. I know you won't be there, that you can't be there. I know you tried. I will always know how hard you tried. 

And yet. Not ready. Not enough time. Not fair. I know. 

Imprint

I haven't cried since that night. I've teared up a couple times, my voice has wavered now and then, I've stood deer-in-the-headlights style at a party waiting for the topic of conversation to move on from cute stories about other people's fathers, but I haven't cried. 

That is, until this arrived in the mail:

That's my dad's thumbprint. I took the impression while sitting with him after I could no longer talk with him. Some people take photos or locks of hair, I rolled up balls of purple-and-white putty and gingerly pressed his fingertips into them. 

This is it, I thought the whole time. This is IT. 

I suppose I'd known before then -- after all, I'd specifically requested the compound be overnighted ahead of our visit, just in case. On the Friday before he passed away I told him about Janessa and the fingerprint jewelry she offered to make for me and my mom, and I felt...weird, like YO I KNOW YOU'RE DYING AND ALL BUT IMMA GONNA MAKE ME A NECKLACE, OKAY? 

He didn't think it was weird at all. He thought it sounded like a lovely idea. 

Still, though. I left the compound in my suitcase until Saturday, when he was unconscious and we were waiting for an ambulance to arrive to take him to hospice. I did one frantic batch of impressions then, like omg omg fuck shit hurry get it done, and another batch on Sunday, because I was terrified I'd done it wrong in my frazzled state the night before. I was alone in his room then -- I'd sent my mom home to shower and change clothes -- and I repeated the process. Gingerly, quietly, reverently.

This is really, really it. And it's okay. 

I don't know which batch Janessa was able to lift this particular print from. Either way, holding it brought the memories of the whole awful, terrifying, precious weekend back in waves, and I sat on the couch and just...sobbed, for the first time. 

And you know what? It felt good.

He is gone, but he wasn't always. He was here and I had him, for 33 years, and after that I also had the chance to be there at the end and say goodbye and preserve a tiny reminder of him in silver. For always. 

(Thank you again to Janessa for making this charm for me. I don't think there are enough terrabytes on the Internet for me to fully capture how meaningful it is, so instead: Y'ALL GO BUY STUFF FROM JANESSA AND GIVE HER NICE MONEY BECAUSE SHE IS GOOD PEOPLE.)

Yellow & Black & Read All Over

Hidden among my father's rows and rows of books -- every book that had ever landed on the high school English curriculum list, plus a few from the banned column, for good measure -- was an impressive stash of Cliffs Notes. 

I remember being surprised by the huge number of yellow-and-black-striped study guides one day while digging around for something to read, something more challenging than the pathetic selection of Christian young adult fiction-with-a-Jesus-message my school's library offered. I think I was on a Thomas Hardy kick, or maybe it was Vonnegut by that point. Either way, I knew I'd find something that would alternately impress and/or horrify my own English teacher, but I wasn't expecting the Cliffs Notes.

I knew exactly what they were, and how most of my peers used them: For cheating. You read the guide and not the book, and hopefully gleaned enough information to bullshit your way through class discussions and tests. They were a safer bet than renting a movie version that might have changed everything, but of course they cost a lot more, and you ran the risk of having a teacher or parent catch you with them.

And then there was my parent, who was also a teacher, who owned dozens of them. More than dozens! Right there in our house, steps away from my bedroom! Dickens, Shakespeare, Hawthorne. Books I'd enjoyed and books I'd barely been able to endure. 

I can't really explain why it blew my mind, but holy SHIT, it blew my mind. 

So I asked him about the Cliffs Notes. Why did he have them? Weren't they like, totally solely for cheating? Weren't they a sin of some kind?

Well, yes and no, he told me. He bought them to help him write tests that would weed out the cheaters. The kids who relied solely on the notes and regurgitated the sample essays and themes. Cliffs Notes left stuff out a lot, you see, so he could include questions about the left-out stuff on exams, thus quickly teaching his students a lesson: Mr. Corbett Will Not Let You Get Away With That Crap. 

But sometimes the guides were helpful, if you've read the book but need a little help understanding what you've read, or keeping characters or historical events straight, or just want to maybe read a different interpretation than what your teacher tells you.

Here he gave me A Look, since we had a bit of a private joke about my English teacher's absolute butchering of Great Expectations the year before, because every single work of literature contained Christ-figure symbolism according to him, and I'd gotten so fed up with it I'd written an entire paper arguing that Miss Havisham represented a "fallen Christ figure" just to be a pain in his ass, and he gave me an A on the goddamned nonsensical thing. 

After that, I frequently helped myself to the Cliffs Notes. Never in place of the reading the assigned text, because, well, my dad trusted me with his Cliffs Notes. He knew I wasn't a cheater. He knew I didn't need to cheat. I was smart, I was an A student, I'd been holding my own with him in discussions on Shakespeare since junior high. 

The funny thing is that I didn't really and truly know he knew all that until he trusted me with his Cliffs Notes. 

Then Heart of Darkness happened. Heart of Fucking Darkness, by Joseph Fucking Conrad. I hated that book. I simply could not get into that book. I tried, over and over again, but somehow ended up lost and frustrated only a couple chapters in. I had a lot of other projects going on so I procrastinated, figuring that I could speed read it under pressure at the final hour in time for the exam. 

The final hour came, and I was in tears. Never in my life had I been so thoroughly defeated by a book. Never in my life had I encountered a book I hated so much that I just could not get through it.

I went to my dad's study in a panic. Had he ever read Heart of Darkness? Ever taught it in class? What was I missing? What was wrong with me?  

Nothing, he said. I hate that book too. The horror! The horror! Terribly written. It's a chore to get through. 

And then: Do we have the Cliffs Notes for that one?

Yes, I said. But...I haven't read the book yet...

You tried, he said. I won't tell. 

And he never, ever did.

(And I did just fine on the test.)