Boiled and steeped

As I hunched my shoulders against the 30 degree air this morning, I remembered that a year ago today I was in San Francisco on my honeymoon.

The air was a bit chilly there, especially on the ferry from the wharf to Alcatraz. But I got by with a sweater. My human radiator of a husband got by with just a button down shirt. Because he is a Martian.

Though P and I had been living together for over a year, I still had a giddy newlywed feeling. The most amazing man alive, in my estimation, had chosen me. We'd gathered our closest friends and family into one room--something that we'll never get to do again--and we said, Sure. We said, I pick you. We said, It's been rough and it may be rougher. But I want to do it with you.

I hadn't been that happy in a long time.

We were both making more money than we ever had, and the kitchen in our rented guesthouse sat unused--save the mini-fridge, which held wine and cheese. We ran all over the city, eating all the seafood we could, and trying ethnic cuisines that not even our sweet home Chicago could offer. We fell in love with the plant life there. We cursed the city we loved and called home for it's inability to support a jade bush outdoors.

Like most things in my life, the best parts of the trip were unplanned. Google all you want, but stumbling upon a tea store with a tasting bar manned by a guy who know everything about tea? Nothing gets better than that.

What I didn't realize until we were flying home, watching California fade below us was that for almost a week, I hadn't been sad. It had been four months since my mom died, and four months of intense sadness. As happy as the wedding had made me, it also reminded me that my mother was not there in attendance. But the honeymoon was a week off. I couldn't believe that I'd been able to go 5 days without crying. The tears came on the plane, as I wished I could call her when we landed to tell her about it all. I cried realizing that when I got home, my mom would still be dead, I would still be sad, the first holiday season without her was approaching, and that the week had been an exception and not a new chapter.

A year later, I am spending my day reading and writing, and drinking a puerh tea, aged a year. It's dried wrinkled leaves sit shriveled in a glass canister on our tea shelf. It tastes like the earth. It smells like outside. It is not blended over with a fruity infusion, and it does not take honey or sugar. No getting around that you are drinking a plant.

Perhaps that week of exile from grief was indeed the beginning of the next chapter, a flip of the page. I had someone with whom to grieve, yes. But white dress and open bar or not, P would have been there with me. What began in San Francisco and evolved all year was a keener sense of reality than I'd ever had. Like a good puerh tea, a good life is gnarled and cultivated, ugly and steeped. Sometimes, tea is just tea. It tastes like the earth from which is came and there is no need for cranberries or cardamom. And sometimes we desperately need a fruity distraction from reality. 

I still enjoy both varieties of tea. It's learning to live with both and not knowing which you'll be served when that gives me challenge.

As You Can See

There are things you do when someone dies. One of those things is to call everyone, seemingly, in the world, and keep ruining people's days with the bad news. I had never done this until my mom died. The people who are close, that are really upset, are difficult people to tell. But maybe more difficult are the people you haven't spoken to in years. 

My godmother was one of these people. We sort of lost touch somewhere in there. She lives in Virginia and she was my father's best friend. She did a wonderful job after he died of keeping up with me, but as I got older we lost touch a bit. But I wanted her to know that my mom had died. I only had an address, so I wrote her. She wrote back quickly with her number and we spoke on the phone shortly after that. We've been corresponding ever since. It's been really, really good. She knew my father before my mom  did, and she even met my grandmother--my parents met after my grandmother died. She still calls my dad "Danny" and referred to him as "one of the greatest men I ever knew." She said he was the one you'd call when you needed something, and he'd be there. Car trouble, family trouble, whatever. She told me the story, from my dad's perspective, of my parent's meeting. She has brought nuance to stories and vague remembrances. In her eyes, my dad was a real person. I don't remember enough of him for him to be real to me. 

She's been going through photos and has been sending me some of my parents, of me as a baby, and of her. There were several of my mom sitting at a piano, playing while everyone sang at a Christmas party. This was before I was born. When I look at that I think that the years I am living right now are the years my children will never know. These are the mystery years that are a part of me but that will never really be real to my kids. And I'm just old enough to understand, I think, that my parents were people before they were parents. 

I got a card today from my godmother with more photos. At the end of her note she says, "As you can see your mom has a problem, while pregnant, with swelling." There is a photo included of my mom with her legs propped up, ankles swollen. And I thought about how I won't have her to call when I'm pregnant and swollen. But I'm hoping to take advantage of the relationships I do have, like with my godmother, and other women in my life.