"I think everything counts a little more than we think."--The National, "Ada"

I'm sure that in the day-to-day of raising children, you don't quite know what is sticking. What will become a memory?

In a little over a week, my mother will have been gone for 2 years. That seems impossible, but here we are. If ever there was proof that Freud has some things going for him, it's the way my grief manifests as I move further from the last time I saw her face and heard her voice. Rather than a conscious thought, "I miss her," I find myself talking about her more. Searching through old photo albums and lingering longer on her face. And, listening to show tunes, particularly The Sound of Music.

I grew up on the movie The Sound of Music. I likely recognized the voice of Julie Andrews around the same time I recognized those of my parents. I believe I have posted before that my eulogizing of my mother was based on the plot of the movie. It meant that much to her, that it's a huge part of what keeps me connected to her.

I bet she didn't know that would be the case, on rainy weekdays as we snuggled on the sofa watching Andrews throw open her arms to the mountain sky.

Holidays and family visits have always sort of made me anxious. The expectation to have fun, to make memories, to make this "the best Christmas ever" is a tall order. And, after all the hype, cross-country travel, and money spent, it often can't live up to the expectations set. SImilarly, with so many organized activities that take up children's days, and highly choreographed vacations to sanitized, pandering-to-the-masses places like Disney World, I hope that people are also making time for what usually sticks: ourselves. Over years of screenings of The Sound of Music, I learned more about my mother each time. She had seriously considered becoming a nun; she had wanted many children; she used Maria's wedding march when she walked down the aisle to marry my father; she had been a musician since the age of twelve. The list went on and on. Each of these facts spun out into more facts, more stories, of a life before I existed. Of the life that existed now, with me. I don't think she planned these lessons. It was just what came up. She just answered the questions I asked. And when I look back on those conversations, and singing loudly in the car with her, and seeing her meet the actual von Trapp family in person, these are the things I remember. These are the ways in which I know she was real. The vacations are there too, and the birthday parties she planned for me. But those were about me. And I am so profoundly grateful now that she also chose to make my childhood a bit about her. When I think about raising my own kid(s), I wonder what will stick with them. And then I try not to over think it, as I think that is exactly the point, right? Just be. Just be with the people you love.

What likely began as a way to keep me occupied and stationary so she could relax became the thread I can pull when I need to unravel her.

Easter

Today is Easter Sunday. Family-oriented holidays are strange for me, given that my "family" is made up of a husband, and then a random assortment of close friends scattered around the Midwest. There is no usual, no tradition, and each year is different. As an atheist, I don't care. Holidays generally are more gloom for me than celebration. They remind me of happier holidays, or holidays where people who are now dead gathered. And while there is much liberation in getting to choose each year and each holiday how I will spend it and with whom, there is also a feeling of instability.

There is a popular psychologist who says that too much choice and freedom is bad for us. At the start of his teaching career, he said his students didn't worry about much--they knew they would likely marry their high school sweetheart, settle in the same hometown in which they were raised, and their kids would attend the same schools. Now, everything is up for grabs. There is something delightful about that, but also something so unsettling. Nothing is assumed, nothing is for sure, nothing is forever. Limiting, and freeing. Constricting, and inspiring.

I took a quiz online that was supposed to compile my interests and concerns and tell me the best places in the US for me to live. 4 out of the top 5 were in Oregon, which makes sense, I suppose. When I imagined a new life there, I thought about my friends-like-sisters in Indiana. Would I want to be so far? Could I manage only seeing them once or twice a year? Don't I want my kids to know them? Everyone I care enough about to factor into this decision lives in Chicago or Indianapolis. Would the quality of life outweigh all of that?

I suppose I feel that since I am sort of unmoored, and only moored to some people by choice and not chance, that I can do whatever I please. That I would be perfectly happy with P and any children we have, creating my own little tribe anywhere. My little family, my dog, my coffee, my books. Some place cheaper, so not all of our income went to mortgage and property taxes. Some place with a decent school system. Some place safe.

After 8 years, I feel the weight of this city life, and no wonder, as the cost of living, as well as the violence, has risen dramatically here in my tenure. It's all a lot. It feels noisy. It feels limited. Perhaps all I need is a vacation. Perhaps all I need is a beer. But after 8 years and no family to stick with, and "family" who is also spreading out and understanding of this need to see and experience and explore, I'm curious. And I'm restless. And I miss the Easter basket cupcakes my mom used to make every year, with the dyed coconut flakes as grass, three jelly beans for eggs, and a bent pipe cleaner for the handle. And I suppose if I can't have those no matter where I live, I also suppose it doesn't matter where I live. No matter my zip code, I'll constantly, as always, be making it up as I go.

One of my favorite memories is of my mother and I on a park bench in Paris, France. It was the last city of our three week tour through Europe and after breakfast of croissants and coffee, we sat on a park bench to decide how to spend our day. I ended up asleep, my head in her lap, the cool early summer breeze funneling through L'arc de Triomphe and over us, ruffling my mother's frosted feathered hair.

Fancy meeting you here

I admire bloggers who stick with it. Honestly, I do. Posting day after day. I suppose I have things to say every day, but I've come up against two things. For one, I began grad school last month. I am five weeks in and totally in love. The thing about it is, you aren't ever really done. If you are caught up on reading for this week, you better work ahead for next week because there is also probably a paper coming up, or a professor will email you extra reading, or there will be some event happening on campus during your scheduled study time. I've had a really difficult time putting down my work to see friends, watch a movie, take a run, et cetera. Most days I spend at least six hours on school work. After doing that this past weekend and waking up with a headache today, I gave myself permission for a "day off." I still worked for three hours. And the worst and best part is that sometimes this happens because I can't distinguish work from play. Grad school has just put an intense focus and rigor to the things I already found interesting. So if I'm assigned reading and writing on the 1996 PRWORA, I do it... and then I Google and read more about it. And then before I know it I'm down a rabbit hole, watching a documentary and emailing my congresswoman about something that pisses me off. And it's all school work. And I live and breathe it right now.

Secondly, this blog began with a narrowed focus: grief. Living with death. Continuing to forge an adulthood while healing childhood wounds. I've felt less inclined to write about these things recently because, as stated above, I'm busy. But also, I've been doing a great deal of healing. And unlike last summer when I started this blog, I don't feel like every day is a battle. My depression has greatly decreased, and not every incident seems to be related to my mother's death. All good things. But good things often don't make good writing. It may have been Hemingway who said something about creative geniuses all being a bit melancholy (that sounds very Hemingway, anyway). There is some truth to that, I believe.

Sometimes I think about how much I want my children to have. And then I think, "But what will they write or paint or dance or compose about, if I give them a perfect childhood?" Is that insane?

I think blogging will never really be the perfect platform for me. I write when I'm moved to, and I don't care enough about traffic to fill the space with a silly cat video if I don't have anything to say. I just don't write. But I do miss writing for the digital abyss. So maybe I'll try to come around more often.

The senate passed VAWA today. My faith is a bit restored.

Unpacking

Pretend your parents are dead.

No, but seriously.

Or any loved one, really.

Pretend they are dead, but talk to them. Go through boxes and photos and journals with them. Ask your questions.

The last time I saw my mother was two years ago this week. I went to visit her in Indiana for a pre-Christmas celebration. We went to the symphony holiday show, something we had done most every year of my childhood. We bought the same cookies in the same lobby. A tradition that endured, and there is something poetic and almost foreseen about us going to the show together one last time, for her last Christmas. I know that I'll probably think about her death every July 1st for the rest of my life, but I wonder if every year I'll remember that it's been 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, 25 years, since I last saw my mother. What parts of grief endure?

Wanting to feel close to her this week, perhaps, I thought I would start going through some of the boxes P and I took from her house earlier this year. I didn't get very far, but I did find a journal she had written during the trip on which she met my father. I scanned it for mention of him specifically, but along the way found reference to friends that had been on the trip, a priest that had been along, cities where they had stopped. I had so many questions about who these people were, what she had thought of my dad the first time she saw him... and I won't get any answers. And I wished that I had stumbled upon this when my mom was alive. I wish we could have talked more about this trip. I wish I could ask her the names of people in photos found in the box.

But then, no matter how much of this I had been allowed, there would always be photos unaddressed, memories unresolved, and an argument to be made that I needed more time. So I am trying to be content with what I do have, knowing that I would have never hit a maximum fill line, requiring no more of her.

I could have asked her questions forever.

On Eagles Wings

For some reason, once in a while, I will get old church hymns stuck in my head. These were family favorites, the ones my father sang most robustly during Mass, the ones my mother chose most often as a church organist and choir director. There wasn't much need for her to practice, especially these old favorites, but if she had to sing rather than just play, she'd practice. And I have many memories of her at the piano downstairs, making music, that I could hear clearly through my bedroom door.

One of the most missed aspects of religion (and, really, perhaps the only one I truly miss) is tradition. Tradition is comfort. It is a collective memory that says you are not alone. Or, even if you are, that it was not always so, and that thousands or millions of other people know the same prayers you do, the same hymns. That you could walk into any Catholic church and follow along, the contents of the Mass unchanged. Though P grew up in an Italian/Czech family in Pennsylvania and I in an Irish family in Indiana, it is like we have some shared memories, or notions, from childhood. I jokingly say that I had wanted to find a formerly Catholic, currently atheist man. I found one, much by accident. So as this man who had not met many of my friends or family sat next to me during my mothers funeral, he sang along, he knew when to sit, kneel, and stand. He squeezed my hand when the priest uttered words he knew I would find offensive and worthy of an eye roll.

This week, we are two atheists with a seven and a half foot Christmas tree, garland and stockings on the mantle, and a manger scene. We've done every Christmas since we've been together. We both like the lights and sparkle, the ornaments with a story, the excuse to dote on one another with gifts. Each year I mentally refine a bit more how we will handle Christmas when we are parents, raising atheist children. Each year I become a little sad, remembering the god father who gave me that manger scene, gone eleven years now; the father who helped me build a stable for it, gone nineteen years now; the mother who gave me most of these decorations, gone not even two years. And when I think about how I will tell my children that some families believe in the myth of Jesus, that it gives their lives order and meaning, that they celebrate this story at this time, we take this time to celebrate love and family. We take the days off work to visit loved ones or to help people in our community. We take the long cold nights as opportunities to drink hot chocolate and read together, to eat a little less healthy than the rest of the year because sometimes, it's okay to splurge. We take the time to celebrate another year that we've had together.

While my children may enter a Catholic church as I would a mosque, respectful and unsure, they will know tradition, and they will know community. They will perhaps even know the old hymns that penetrating the floor boards of my childhood bedroom, as, like a nonsense meditation chant, the songs will sometimes come to me as a focus for my brain that is trying to drift away; an anchor about which I do not have to think but merely drop and feel safe against the waves.

I hope they have less waves than I did as a child. I hope they always feel safe.

A little friend

The symptoms of my emotional breakdowns look like a bad flu that suddenly becomes a screaming match that is entirely one-sided. For days I sulk, I wallow, I even start aching and coughing, actually. And then one thing sets me off and I start yelling, a lot, or crying, or both, and screaming into pillows like a banshee muted behind several closed doors. These episodes have likely caused my husband and other loved ones to wish for several closed (and locked, and heavily guarded) doors between us.

The days following the death of D were in keeping with my model. I actually felt ill. The novice I was several years ago would have thought I was actually fighting a virus, but the seasoned me knew that it was grief. I had just done research on it not that long ago, in that lull between my mom's death and D dying. I learned that the body sometimes does not know how to handle shocks to the emotional system, and sometimes the physical is affected. For days I woke up each morning unrested, feeling like something was sitting on my chest, feeling like my neck and shoulder muscles were on fire, feeling like putty moved through my sinus system. But I pushed through: there was the important meeting at work that I really ought to attend, the memorial service to plan, the memorial service to attend, the dog to be walked, the breakfast my growling stomach needed. Something usually pushed me out of bed.

But the disease held firmly finally, unshakeable, too heavy, one day. Shackling me to the bed as I tried earnestly to get up. As I weighed the pros and cons in my head, as I tried to care what the HR department or my clients would say, I reached for my cell phone to check the time. I was hoping to learn that I had ten more minutes to decide. But what I learned was so much sweeter.

One of my oldest friends was a new mama.

His name, the name of this new human, was followed by the date and time of his arrival. I was told he was doing well. I was told my friend was doing well.

And I got up.

It may have been just the morning before his birth that I had dropped the shampoo bottle on my toe and retaliated by picking up the bottle and bashing it against the wall of the shower, in actual anger. But the morning I knew that some little person was having his first morning, ever, I showered with a smile. I bounced around the house through my morning routine and called my friend's mom on my way to work to giggle and congratulate. Just ten days out from Ds death, my co-workers were still a bit somber around me, still asking with those eyes you only get for divorce or death, "How are you today?" So when I skipped into the office that day shouting "GUESS WHAT!" I think a few assumed the worst. But soon they were showing me the best baby toys on Amazon, and we were talking about our favorite children's books.

When M told me she was pregnant, I was sure her little one would be my buddy. I hoped that though we lived in different states, the kid would think I was cool, and maybe we'd have some "thing"--we'd go to the same ice cream place whenever I came to town, or I'd give them a cool nickname.

He seems to like me alright. Granted, he's 7 months old so his preferences are not very discerning at this juncture. I don't know what he will end up thinking of me, or if he'll relish the thought of having a "thing" we share, but I know that each time I see him, whether in person or in a photo text message, I think about that morning after his birth. I think about being too despondent to cry anymore, I think about wondering how I was going to get through losing two parental figures in less than a year. And then, with one piece of information, a smile. Some news to share that was good. A reason to travel that did not call for a black dress and sensible shoes. No speech to give, no thank you cards to write, no faking of grace when a distant relative says the wrong thing. No pitying eyes. So for now, that is our thing. Our thing is something he won't be able to remember, but I hope one day I can tell him that his first morning was my first morning of coming back around to myself.

I hesitated writing this for a while, because I kept thinking, "This baby and this birth are not about me. Why do you always have to make everything about you?" But I think I realized that the beauty of it all was that, for the first time in a long time, it wasn't about me. It wasn't about who I'd lost or how I was coping or how long it had been since my last panic attack or the last crying jag. It was about someone else, and about life rather than death. It was about everyone other than myself. And suddenly, my world again became bigger than my grief.