Barnmaven

The easiest parenting job I didn't ever do

 

Sometimes life is patently unfair...except for when it isn't.

There are many ways in which I think SG got the short end of the stick when he married me.  I don't care how bodacious my ta-ta's are, taking on me and my kids and my crazy zoo was an unmitigated act of bravery.  Acquiescing to taking on the role of stepfather to my two children was a very deliberate and careful decision on his part, and its one he doesn't take lightly.  He loves them, though, and they him.  Let's just hope they actually launch someday so we can test out just how great empty nesting is for your love life before we're in our 70's.

Step-parenting for me, on the other hand, has been a cakewalk.  Twice.  

 My ex's son who is now a handsome 21-year old college student became part of my life when he was six.  Navigating the waters of stepmotherhood was difficult only because of the tension between my stepson's two parents.  But the act of being a stepmom to CJ was always easy, always rewarding.  He was a smart, fun-loving kid who has grown up into a smart, fun-loving young man.   Even though I'm not married to his dad anymore, he and his mom will always be a part of my life.  I don't just consider them to be part of my children's family, I consider them to be part of mine. 

I have a difficult time calling myself 'stepmom' to SG's son, though.  There's no "mom-ing" involved.  He was already an adult when we met, already well into his career with the Navy.  The parenting part is already completed for him, I just get to sit back and enjoy him and appreciate that even though they had their own difficulties, both his parents took the job of raising their son quite seriously.

He joined the navy at 17 and has never looked back.  He earned his Chief's bars as a submariner in just eight years, then entered an accelerated degree program as part of his officer's track.  In May he graduated with a degree in Ag Economics and a couple of weeks ago we got to attend his commissioning as an officer in the United States Navy.

He booked the Pima Air & Space museum for the ceremony, the perfect setting as he has been accepted for flight school and goes to Pensacola in September.   We flew down for the ceremony and had an absolutely marvelous time.  It was my first opportunity to actually meet him, since we got married so fast no one had time to get here for the wedding.  

The ceremony was amazing.   

Here he is being sworn in as an officer by his CO:

Here his mom and dad are removing his chief's shoulderboards and giving him his new Ensign's boards:

His grandfather was honored to give him his new service cap:

 

Receiving his first salute as an officer.  Not a dry eye in the house.

 

My handsome husband and his handsome son:

Afterward we partied with my stepson and family and friends at his house.  Uncharacteristically, SG and I stayed up til the wee hours of the morning, swilling gin and smoking cigars.  The spectacular hangover I enjoyed the following morning fully underscored for me the fact that I am far too old for such behavior.  Even so, it was worth every moment of the blinding headache and the floppy stomach.  I am stepmama to an officer.  A future naval av-i-a-tor. 

Congratulations, Ensign Goulet.  Your family couldn't be more proud of you.  We love you lots.  Love, your stepmama.

 

 

Remembering Fransie

 

Fransie was an artist, a mother, a daughter, a birder.  She had a rich laugh and a devious smile.  She loved unconditionally and she appreciated things about you that you didn't know anyone else noticed.  She could be sweet and innocent and sewing costumes for the high school drama program one minute and flipping you the bird or doing body shots in the corner the next.  She was the ageless paradigm all women contain within them, innocence and knowledge and the power to make men kneel all in one broken vessel.

We worked together, and in the misery that environment created, we bonded.  We bonded over lunches, walks, Sci-Fi Fridays and an uncountable number of glasses of wine.  We bonded over faith and disintegrating marriages.  We needed one another, we helped one another, we carried each other when we felt we could no longer go on.  We looked past the worst in one another and always sought the best.

Her cancer was found in the spring of  '07.  Treatment almost killed her - surgery, radiation, and then chemo to which it wasn't discovered until almost too late that she was allergic.  When she finally recovered, she told me more than once, "I'm never going through that again.  If the cancer comes back I will only request comfort measures."   And when it did, she was true to her word.  It was her right to choose this, I never questioned it.  Suprisingly, the minor chemotherapy and pain control gave her a lot more time than anyone expected.  She and her children left New Jersey behind and moved to Texas to be nearer parents.  I know she relied greatly on - and was deeply grateful for - their love, care and support these last several years.

I was so surprised to get the email from her mother yesterday.  I guess I got used to her ability to exceed our hopes.  Just a few days ago she was still forwarding me emails with funny pictures or meaningful words that touched her.  While I always knew Fransie was fighting a battle she couldn't possibly win, I hoped for a miracle.  We all did. 

Whenever we talked, even though I know she had a lot of pain and that her ability to enjoy the things she loved was becoming more and more limited, she would still laugh and still wanted to know how I was doing.   The last time we talked, a few weeks ago, I had no idea how near the end she was.  She sounded then as she had many times over the last few years.   She was tired, but she still had that unique quality in her voice - a little sad, a little funny, a little wry.  We talked then, as we often did, of her faith and her firm belief about what happens to us after we die.  Even when she got mad at God, even when she couldn't understand why she had to go through all of this, she believed.  "I know that my treasure is in heaven," she would often say.  

And now she is in the arms of the One she trusted to carry her through.

She leaves behind her daughter, her son, her parents, her son-in-law, her friends - all of whom have been deeply touched and blessed by her love, her laughter and her heart. 

Fransie, I know you don't want us to be sad.  I know you want us to remember you in the things that you loved - in the wildlife you captured so beautifully in your art, in the birds you loved to watch and name, in the wooded paths and in the shallow ocean pools teeming with life.  And so I will. 

 

Brighter days

Its almost seven a.m. and I need to get up and get moving.  The farrier's coming in two hours and then the vet, and if the girls get the all clear, I can get them vaccinated and wormed.  The oldest of my guest horses is the slowest gaining weight.  Getting her teeth floated helped, but I'm hoping that once I can worm her we'll turn the final corner and start seeing some roundness to her.

I've been sitting in bed watching Gizmo chew on Roscoe's ears.  He does this weird thing where he'll start chewing on the end of one long floppy ear, and then he gradually pulls it all the way in so he's got a mouthful of ear which he masticates with eyes half closed, clearly enjoying it.  After chewing blissfully for a few seconds he spits it out and starts all over again.  By the time he's done (or I speak sharply at him to stop), Roscoe's ear is absolustely soggy with Chihuahua saliva.  He patiently lies there the whole time Gizzy's chewing on him.  I can't tell if he really likes it or simply tolerates it.  Dogs are simply unknowable at times.

SG comes home today.

Yes, it was a surprise.  He picked up a cold that turned into a bronchial infection the last week or more of the job he was working.  He'd been to the doctor and gotten antibiotics and such, but as he was packing to head to the next job, he still wasn't feeling right.  He went back to the doctor and his blood pressure was really high, which is worrisome.  But the doctor wasn't comfortable with him driving 2500 miles to work six twelve hour days a week for several weeks, so we talked it over and he made the decision to come home.  Fortunately he may still be able to go to the next job on a delayed basis, so if he gets the all-clear from his doctor here, it won't be a complete wash.  He'll get the work AND I get a conjugal visit.  We all win!

I've been on vacation most of the week with the kids on spring break.  I've managed to do at least a few of the tasks I was hoping to accomplish, which means my house and yard have begun to approach "acceptable" status.  They'd look even better, but I wisely chose to use as many days as possible this week to ride Bugs.

Its hard to put into words just how satisfying its been to ride him.  He is progressing so nicely right now.  Mentally he's become a more reliable and mature fellow.  Physically he is beginning to understand and respond to my requests to collect and round his back.  As he begins to collect and round for longer and longer segments, the pleasure of being the person on his back becomes indescribable.  There is something intensely pleasurable about riding a horse who is completely collected.  His face is at the vertical, he's flexed at the poll and his neck is nicely arched.  His feet are underneath him and the action at his knees and hocks becomes more obvious.  If  you're watching him from the ground you can hardly take your eyes from him because he just looks so great, and if you're lucky enough to be riding him, you can't keep the grin off your face because you know he feels and looks spectacular.  My cheeks are actually sore from the grinning this week. 

We also worked on some trail obstacles in preparation for our riding clinic tomorrow.  Michelle dragged out some old tractor tires and we took the black plastic from her garden and made a "black hole of death" obstacle.  Bugs negotiates the tires quite well, and even when he's stepped on the side of a tire and it flipped up and banged him in the hocks he did not get perturbed.  I can run him through them on the ground or on his back and he's a tire-crossing demon.  The black tarp of death is an entirely different matter.  He's pretty sure its going to kill him.  We made great progress with it, and yesterday I had him standing on the tarp while I flipped and rattled the edges of it.  He didn't like it much, but he stayed put. 

To have a good trail horse, you've got to get two things to happen.  You have to get your horse to trust you enough that he believes you will never ask him to do something that will get him killed.  He is a prey animal, and as such is highly reactive to unfamiliar stimuli.  Things that flutter or move can be terrifying.  Water looks like its a huge hole he could fall into.   A level headed horse who doesn't spook easily is wonderful to have, but more often than not a horse is not born that way, you need to help him learn to be that way. 

It is also a lot of fun to torture your horse when you think he's being unreasonably sensitive. 

Chicks arrived this week.  I've got three silver-laced Wyandottes, one Rhode Island Red, and four tiny little yellow banties.  Four layers and four pets. They're so cute and fluffy, we love to hold them and listen to them chirp.  If you hold one long enough it will fall asleep on your hand, and its almost unbearably cute.  They are doing much to satisfy my baby cravings.

Happy Easter to all of you who celebrate it this weekend, happy Spring and happy Eoster to those of you who don't.  Spring reminds me that life is a continual opportunity for renewal and redemption.  This week has certainly felt that way.

Where does it go?

I listened to Ann Tyler talk about her new book on NPR this morning.  Some of the plot is the result of the emotional processing she has done since losing her husband fifteen years ago. 

Tyler recalled her feelings around the loss, saying, "The thought that came to me was: 'I just don't understand. Where did he go?' He was this exuberant man who was a real enjoyer. And that's just gone without a trace. It's just not possible."

I considered my own exuberant SG, and thought about how quiet and how much more bland life is when he is not here. I tried to imagine how it might feel if he were never going to be here again and failed.  Put in the context of my brother's death, though, I think I understand.

I think love is a feeling but it is also a physical thing,  a set of behaviors and actions. Its both organic and contrived, innate and created.  I consider the love that I feel for my children, for my parents and other family members.  It is embedded in my bones, that love.  I've loved my parents and trusted them for my whole life.  The love I have for them is one of the cornerstones in the foundation of everything I've ever done and everyone I've ever been.  Loving my children came as naturally as breathing.  And when I think of them, shape their names in my mouth and picture their precious faces in my mind, a bubble of feeling that is too large to fit inside me wells up inside.  That feeling is love and joy and pain and worry and warmth.  Its the sum of all we've experienced together, all I hope and dream, all I fear.

Love seems a complicated tangle of physical sensation, emotional turbulence, concrete action and wishful dreams.  But what do you do with love when the person you love is gone? 

SG isn't here, but he's still here.  So I love him but I try not to think about how much I love him because it makes his everyday absence too uncomfortable.  I try not to think about how much I miss his touch and his physical energy.  I'm filled with love and pain, all tangled up and constantly needing to have the ends sorted out and tied up into a manageable knot.  That pain, though, is somewhat tolerable because the separation is finite.  He is coming home eventually, he's not gone forever. 

For the brother I've lost, though, what do I do with that love?  Its still there, full of hope and fear and memories.  I still had things to say, hugs to give.  I ache for wanting to hear the sound of his voice.  The enormity of what sits bottled up inside of me begging to be expressed, but without the human target of that expression, creates a feeling of pressure in my chest that is actually physically painful.  What do you do with all of that love you have for someone when they will never be here again to receive it?

Its not just the spirit of my brother that I loved, but the physical reality of him: His face, his eyes and smile, his unique nose and the shape of his hands; the voice that I could recognize instantly over the phone line that evoked the image of his face in my mind.    The human expression of all that he was shaped his physical presence and created the ability for us to relate to one another, to bond as family over meals and stories and shared experience.  The love my brother and I had for one another was reciprocal, had shape and meaning, helped to create the person that I am today.

And now he is gone, and the love we had for one another, what happens to that?  I don't know where to put it, I don't know how to properly express it.   What does it mean to the concept of "relationship" when one of the people in the relationship is gone to a place that we cannot go and cannot yet understand?

I see my children in one of those rare moments when they put their childhood fighting aside and I realize just how very close they are, and try to imagine one of them without the other and my heart crumbles into dust.

I have so many questions and so many feelings.  As yet I lack the understanding that I suppose will only come with time.  Just as love has a shape and a physical sensation, so I now understand, does bereavement.

Am I supposed to be over it already?  I hope not, because if grief is finite, I'm doing it wrong.  If grief is uncomplicated, I'm failing miserably.  My grief has a slippery volume knob, it won't settle at any one point on the dial.  Sometimes I can't hear it, and then some event or memory jostles the knob and it becomes so loud I can't bear to listen to it.  It goes quiet now for days at a time.  I sometimes even manage to forget about it to the point of no longer remembering that he's gone.  And I think of some future event and I imagine everyone who will be there, naturally including him...and the air is sucked out of my lungs as I realize thatwill never again be my reality.  Our reality.

 

 

Kill a groundhog, save our sanity

We woke up a week ago tomorrow to three inches of snow on the ground and frozen, crappy roads about half the way of my 45 mile commute to work.  The irony of this is that it wasn't that long ago I was begging for snow, and the minute I woke up and looked out the window, all I could think of was strangling a small burrowing mammal in Pennsylvania.

Over it now.  Enough with the winter already.

And then yesterday and today, I've had to drive with my windows down because its so warm.

Ahhh.  Spring.  Or as we like to call it in the Tri-Cities, mud season.

The arrival of snow was mitigated by the arrival of my parents, who returned this week from their annual winter sojourn in Yuma.  This was the last one for a while, my dad is increasingly less mobile, it takes an act of God to get him on an airplane, and the 1200 mile drive is getting increasingly more difficult for him.   I'm selfish enough to be grateful for this.  Their annual October departure is really hard, and not having family nearby makes me feel a little empty in the middle.   Now they're home, and not surprisingly I notice the absence of my brother far more acutely.  There's an empty seat at the table, we all know it, and we all struggle with it in our own way.  They're back though, that's what really matters right now.

Their timing was excellent, as SG left Friday for a six week job in Arizona.  (ARIZONA:  You are on notice.  Please stop borrowing the people I love. Thank you very much.)  I hope this is the last road trip.   He's starting a new venture when he gets back, and I'm hopeful that it will work out well enough to keep him from ever needing to do another outage.  Life is full of The Crazy as it is, and not having him here to balance out the Doing of Things That Need Doing makes for a very busy me.   Plus, the last couple of road jobs had him gone so very long, it was really a low time for me.  I'm struggling with it, I suppose I should know better, but there it is.  I hate it when he's gone.

I've managed (as usual) to complicate things by taking on two horses on a care lease.  I wouldn't have normally done this, because we all know I don't need two more horses.  These girls, though, are in need of some TLC.  Their owner is a very young woman who has had some issues and some difficulty, and they haven't been receiving the level of care they need.  They're severely underweight and need some vet care.  Sweet mares, both of them. 

Its never not a zoo around here.  Sometimes it surprises me how well SG has adapted to my chaotic life.  I think he has nerves of steel.  Or perhaps he can cope with it because he knows he can run away every few months and get a little vacay from the cray cray.  God knows I wish I could have one.

SG's departure and the bigger sense of loss I've felt around my brother with my parents return have me thinking about loss and the changing nature of life.    As David Richo reminds us in The Five Things We Cannot Change, "everything begins and ends," and you know - the beginning is always the easy part.  The ending not so much.  I took Tasha, my brother's dachshund, to my parents today so that they can care for her while SG is gone.  (She's used to having someone home, she's elderly, and I am gone 11+ hours a day when I'm working.  She needs someone to keep company with).  She's doing really well, considering, but we all know its a matter of time with her.  Truth is, its just a matter of time for all of us - and for all things  in our lives and in our world. 

Everything changes and ends.  Its a simple fact of life that its hard to embrace some days.  But I know that fighting it only leads to increased pain and stress.  Accepting it just means I can grieve and then, at some point, let go.

Its just...the last few months seem to have been so filled with loss.  My brother, SG's grandma, a close family friend, Hercules, a smart and talented blogger, someone's husband, someone's father, someone's wife, someone's child I read about in the paper. Half my chickens.  Even famous people who I normally wouldn't think twice about, but when your mind is dwelling on loss, their passing seems to only compound the egregiousness of it all.  I'd just like us all to have a break, thanks, even knowing that its not at all likely.

The changing and ending aren't always bad things.  Winter ends so spring can arrive with the scent of growing things on the warm breezes and the return of the birds and eggs in the chicken coop on a regular basis.  Spring ends so we can bask in the heat of summer and enjoy the great outdoors in all her glory, and then summer bows her head and gives way to the lovely burnished hues of fall.   

The seasons and all of nature, they just roll with it.  As should we all.

Where happy lives

I've been on a Buck Brannaman kick lately.  I've watched the documentary at least three times, and blew through his biographical book The Faraway Horses in about two days.   My trail riding partner Michelle and I are making plans to go watch him give a four-day clinic this June.  We've signed up for the incredibly long waiting list to ride, knowing that we likely won't get to do that, but also knowing that just watching him work with other people and their horses and listening to him teach will benefit us a lot in our own horse journey.

Buck's observation that whatever issues a person has in other areas of their lives will be reflected in their relationships with horses.  There are some incredibly concrete examples of this in the movie, and I'm sure many more on the 300+ hours of tape that hit the cutting room floor.  I see it in my own life. 

The mare I bought on a whim was sensitive.  More than sensitive - she would bolt at the touch of a feather.  If it was evidence of my own troubles that I added a horse to my barn that was drama personified, it was at the same time evidence of the working of God (or the spirit or the universe or whatever name you might give to Him) bringing me the challenges I needed in equine form to help me become a more balanced, calm and compassionate human being.

My standard approach simply did not work with her.  I had to learn a whole new sense of feel.  If all it takes to get your horse to respond is a half pound of pressure on the lead rope, why would you start with fifteen pounds?  And so I had to learn how to start with the smallest amount of energy and increase it only to the point where my horse responded to it.  I had - and continue - to learn how to recognize exactly when that response came in order to reward with a release more immediately.  To help my horse be able to make the connection between those two events.

And I took that mare as far as I could, and then my gelding entered my life, and while not the flight risk that little mare was, he is still a sensitive soul.  The only way to help him - and me - grow was to continue along that path.

And as I have worked on my issues through my horses, I have seen the results carry through to my home and work life.  I am not the same person I was two years ago.  I am a better parent, a better partner, a better employee, a better boss.  I'm not in such a hurry anymore.  I don't feel this frantic sense of urgency, I don't feel the need for everything to be resolved or understood NOW NOW NOW.  I am more in tune with others and how they react to me and to the way life unfolds around them.

Still, there are challenges.

The loss of my brother and the annual winter doldrums have brought a sluggishness into my days, a lack of desire to get out of bed in the morning, a heaviness of heart that makes doing the things I love seem less inviting.  And so I am learning that in order to keep the happiness in my life growing, I must apply some discipline.  In the same way that we make the wrong thing hard and the right thing easy so that our horse can learn in the safest way possible what it is we want from him, I need to create pathways for me to continue to do the things in my life that create joy and not those that simply lay waste to the potential of my life's moments.

I know that the terms "discipline" and "joy" might seem mutually exclusive, but I'm absolutely certain that there is a relationship between them. 

If I want to maintain a level of fitness that keeps me healthy, that provides the endorphins I need, that gives me the energy and mobility I need to be an active parent and to enjoy my horse, I need to be disciplined. 

If I want to make sure that my relationship with my horse continues to grow and develop, I can't just get on him once every couple of weeks and expect that's going to benefit either one of us.  I have to have the discipline to get out there a few times a week, even if its just to do groundwork or give him a good grooming.  He needs to have my attention, he needs to feel useful in order to be truly happy.  The time I spend with him is incredibly beneficial to me, it is one of the foundation stones of my own happiness.

Spending time with my husband and my children makes me happy.  But sometimes, especially when I'm feeling pulled under as I am lately, it seems easier to give my attention to a book or a social media stream or an email I want to answer.  Finding the joy in my relationships means applying discipline to the amount of time I spend online or disappearing into a novel.

Sometimes it is as simple as saying, Stop doing this and start doing that instead.  Sometimes I need to be even more authoritative with myself and schedule time for my joy.  Put it on the calendar, make a date with my husband, make plans with my kids or with a friend. 

And most important of all, I must take the time to savor those moments with the people I love, doing the things I love.  Death reminds me that life can be brutally short, that there might not be another time to express my feelings to someone, to hold their hand, to wrap my arms around them and hold them tightly.  Death reminds me of the pricelessness of moments spent doing meaningful things, even things as simple as stroking the small dog on my lap --  and of the futility of time wasted over pointless drama or feelings like anger and bitterness, jealously and resentment.

There is no time but now, but not everything needs to be accomplished right now.  Happiness waits to be found in being mindful of the way that I spend my time. 

This post was written in response to the question How do you plan to create happiness in 2012? from BlogHer's Life Well Lived section.  

Goodbye, hello, and letting go.

I can barely recap the month of December without feeling exhausted.   I will say, attempting to not sound trite, sappy or maudlin, that like so many prior years in my life, 2011 started with much promise and contained many surprises, both pleasant and not-so-pleasant.   It was a watershed year, year of epic change. It is a year that I am more than happy to put behind me.

I am sitting on the floor of my living room, coffee cup on my left and mimosa on my right, trying to shake off the effects of last night's wine.  I consider, as I do every year, what it really means when we flip the switch on the ball and a new year begins.  Dates are something artificial that we have imposed on our world to maintain the fiction that we actually control something.  Still, the seasons turn and the earth dies and is reborn every spring.  That promises us that something hopeful is around the corner, even as we suffer through the withering and dying of the winter months.

I had such expectations for 2011, such hope.  And because it is my nature to be hopeful, I have hopes and dreams for this year.  But because I am older and because I now understand more viscerally the nature of life, I feel the need to be cautious as well.  I tighten the reins on my hopes, hold them in check.  And yet...

I have been working with my horse on his collection and his need to charge forward.  He is young and full of energy, and you learn over time that although it seems counter-intuitive, holding your horse back is the surest way to make him feel as though he needs to go faster.  Because he is a prey animal, the more you try to trap him, the more he will try to get free of you.  Over time, if you allow him his freedom, guide him with your legs and your seat and your voice, trust him to be himself, he will trust you enough to relax when you release him and to allow you to check him when that is what you want from him.  He will trust that when you are done needing him to stop that you will let him go.  You will find, together, a harmony and a partnership wherein you don't need to hold him back and he doesn't need to get away from you.  And inside that bond of trust and respect, you will both grow.

In the documentary Buck, Buck Branaman says that our relationships with horses reflect the issues in our lives.  As we develop our skills to read and respond to our horse and our ability to establish his trust and his respect, so we hone our maturity in all other areas of our life.  If you can stand on the ground with nothing in your hands and ask a 1500 pound animal to back up with nothing but your energy and intent, and he does, there is nothing in your life that you cannot approach with the same energy and intent.  The first thing that is needed is that you know what you want your horse to do.  The second thing is to understand how you tell him that in a way that he will understand.  Lastly, you need to apply only as much pressure as is required to convey your request.  The moment that he complies, you release the pressure and reward the horse.

So it is in our everyday life.  Know who you are and what you need to accomplish.  Apply as much energy and intent as required and relax that pressure when it is not needed.  How much time have I wasted in my 46 years apply pressure to situations when it was not necessary? 

Something within me wants me to be cautious about my hopes and expectations for this year.  The child within me who was given away, the woman within me who struggled to find herself within a marriage that was wildly out of control, the woman who suffered unexpected and devastating loss, they think that they need me to hold the reins tighter on my hopes. 

The woman within me who has learned to appreciate what is good,who has experienced unexpected and incredible joy, and who has learned to release the pressure gathers them all close and tells them, "it will be okay.  You can let go."

Yes, there will be sorrow.  There will be pain.  There will be days when I fail to do and fail to be.  There will be great loss.  But there will also be great love and great joy, great success and great contentment for me, for my husband and children, for my family and my friends.  For us all.

And so I let go of the check and I allow the hope to blossom fully.  I will not temper it with caution.  I will hope.

I let go.

 

Different and the same

Christmas this year outdid itself in being a reflection of pretty much all of this year - a study in contrast. Joy and sorrow, tremendous love and tremendous heartache.  With and without the people we love.

I did not send Christmas cards this year.  I had created a personalized card with our wedding photo and some pictures of the kids, and had printed them out the morning of the day my niece found her dad's body.  When I came home I could not even bear to look at them, much less mail them to other people.  They are still in a stack on top of the printer.  I don't know when I will deal with them, but I'm assuming at some point I'm going to want to use the printer again.  Maybe I'll just move them to another temporary storage location for a while, perhaps the top of the toilet tank or underneath my stack of incoming-and-undealt-with mail.

Our first Christmas together as a married couple.  That was awesome.  It was the first Christmas of the rest of the Christmases of my life without my brother.  That sucked.

The kids had an awesome Christmas.  I cleaned both of their rooms thoroughly beforehand, discarding old toys and organizing bookshelves and shampooing carpets.  I gently put the gifts they had gotten from their uncle last Christmas in their respective places (Ken, I said it then and I'll say it now -- a BARBIE MAKEUP KIT for a nine year old?  REALLY?  But you're right, she DID love it.  Fine, I'll shut up now.) and the heavy rock that's been sitting on my chest since three weeks ago got suddenly harder to bear.  And then on Christmas morning, in standard kid-fashion, they ripped through the wrapping paper on a few hundred dollars worth of toys and then inquired if those were really ALL the presents? in a most incredulous tone of voice.   I laughed, and then sobered as it occurred to me that there would have been two more presents underneath that tree.   And then I spent the day enjoying the sound of them enjoying their loot, even if it was tremendously annoying to have to get up every five minutes to help assemble something, put batteries in something, or keep one or more dogs from DIS-assembling something.

I had a hard time making phone calls and I didn't call everyone I should have, because if I hadn't already talked to them about my brother I didn't want to have to go through any of it again.  I wanted to only have to say things like "this is really hard" to my mom and dad, because it required no additional explanation, and "I'm doing okay" to my sister, because mostly I was and I knew she would accept this and not push me for more.  And yet there was good news to report also, some awesome successes for my son on an anxiety-reducing medication that has in just a short two weeks made a world of difference for him (more on that in a post to follow).

We spent time with the family that was here and missed the family that was elsewhere. 

Where in Christmases past I have taken whole rolls of pictures (and made you look at them all, too), I took maybe four or five.  Some of the kids opening boxes, and some of dogs being tortured with reindeer antlers (T-Bone thinks you ought to call the ASPCA and turn me in).

It was...almost exactly what I expected it would be.  Easy and hard at the same time.  Different than last year, different players, different in some of the mechanics, but similar in our traditions and our enjoyment of children and family.  Just like all the Christmases of all my life have been.  Different and the same.

Fewer words, more photos

After you've been through a really sad experience, its good to go to the beach -- even if its freezing and spitting some Seattle rain at you.

It eased my heart to watch my kids play on the beach I played on when I was very small.

There's something irresistable about sliding down the middle of a very big fish.

We got in the the car, chilled and shivering, and made the long drive home.  Yesterday, we retrieved all of the dogs from the kennel.  We are now a four-dog family.  One thing I know my brother would have wanted was for his beloved Tasha and Gizmo to be as well cared for as possible, and Lord knows this is the house for it.

They had a traumatic several days, I hope they know how loved they are and that they are safe here.

I'm kinda guessing they do.

They've been snoring on the couch next to me while I typed this out.  I worry about Tasha - she is 17 years old and she has tumors which the vet identified as cancer and said had metastasized.  She seems energetic and her appetite is good, though, so we will keep her spoiled, comfortable and loved for as long as she remains with us. 

Ken would have wanted it that way.

 

Doing the unthinkable

In two days - no, make that one day, since its past 1AM so technically its now Saturday - I will be doing something I never thought I would do.  Or at least, if I did have to do it, it wouldn't be for another thirty or forty years.

I will be delivering my brother's eulogy.

My big brother died sometime between December 1st and December 7th, most likely sometime around the 2nd or 3rd.  Because he lived alone and because geographically he and my parents and I are far apart and because he doesn't always see his grown children every day, we did not know that he was gone until his daughter found him on Wednesday.

I can't go into details, it is so personal and so private.  He did have health problems, but we weren't aware of any that were so bad that they would be fatal.

My brother and I were each other's trusted friend and confidante.  There was much he would share with me that he would never share with anyone else.  As we grew older and our familial bond grew deeper, we learned to lean on one another and to hold a common front with our parents and our kids and our various spouses.  We planned and we hoped and we dreamed.  We cherished family time, whether it was with spouses and children or just the two of us and our parents.  In fact, I loved those times when it was just the four of us, just like it was when we were young, sitting around the table, sharing the same space, talking about our lives. Telling my dad to shut up.

I can't believe he is gone.  I can't believe I will live the rest of my life without my big brother to lean on, to reach out to for support and advice.  This is just...incomprehensible.

So I'll be gone from here a few more days. 

In addition to our parents and my children - who are devastated, they LOVED Uncle Kenny - he lives on in the essence of his three beautiful children and his three darling grandbabies.  Life was often a struggle for my brother but he had a unique and beautiful soul, and he was always always there for me.

I'm not ready to say goodbye.