my, your meyer lemons are tasty

Everyone knows the old adage, "When life hands you a bowl of lemons, make lemonade."  Well, it just so happened that last week my sister gave me a large bowl of Meyer lemons from her tree* and so I decided to make lemon bars.  And because apparently a little lemon goes a long way, also lemon risotto, preserved lemons, and the proverbial lemonade.

I've never made lemon bars before.  As it turns out they are really easy to make as well as really, really tasty.  I'm talking about the type of tasty that effectively lobotomizes your frontal lobe, leaving you with the inability to understand the future consequences of eating too many of said lemon bars or at least the inability for caring about those consequences.  But, I can claim no responsibility for the way these turned out.  The kudos goes to the -essentially- idiot-proof recipe I followed.

I highly suggest that if you happen to find yourself the unexpected recipient of a booty of lemons you should try to make these bars.  You won't be sorry.  Well, after the fifth bar in a row you may be sorry but before that you will temporarily forget your troubles.  That ability, even if only temporary, is a welcome friend.

And since I can't do anything -accept for, ahem, certain things- without taking photos, I present to you,  "When life hands you a bowl full of lemons, make lemon bars and then eat them until you aren't sad anymore," in photos.

Making the crust with a lot of butter.  Delicious, delicious, butter.

Raining powdered sugar.

My lemon bars had bald spots.  

Being enjoyed by my husband.  

*There are really only two things you can count on living in southern California.  One is that at nearly any time of the day you will be subjected to an excruciatingly slow drive in freeway traffic.  The other is that someone you know has a citrus fruit tree of some sort whose fruit is going unused and rotting on the tree.  This is the case with my next door neighbor (but not my sister) and her beautiful lemon tree.  I would ask her for lemons but I don't speak a word of Korean (aside from Hello) and she doesn't speak a word of English.  Oh well.

.thanksgiving.

Today Leif and I have decided to celebrate Thanksgiving by spending it by ourselves.  We are going to go on a hike, eat Singaporean Chicken Rice for lunch, take a nap, stop by one of his coworker's house for a bit (not sure how long I will be able to last there), and then eat a French take on Thanksgiving dishes at a restaurant we have been wanting to try.

This is the first year since we've been together that we have not had Thanksgiving with my family.  Actually, it is the first Thanksgiving of my life that I haven't been with my family.  Our decision to be alone this year had nothing to do with not wanting to be with our loved ones but everything to do with the fact that we do not feel particularly celebratory this holiday season.  I think this is a sentiment that many of the people who read this blog can relate to.

I want to emphasize that neither of us are walking around in a haze of self pity today.  Although I think it would be perfectly acceptable for us to do so if that was how we were feeling.   But we aren't.*  But we aren't, at least not today.  We just want to be alone.  Alone, together.  

I'm trying to think of all the things I have to be thankful for.  They are numerous and wonderful and I truly know how fortunate I am.  I just wish I had a five month old George here with us instead of an eight month old urn.

.L.

Maybe this will sound hollow.  But it isn't meant to.  

Happy Thanksgiving.  I hope it is gentle on all of you.

*I actually chuckled out loud as I wrote that statement.  There are so many days I walk around in self pity that to write it out that I am not feeling that way today looks kind of absurd.  So I went ahead and amended it to more accurately reflect reality.  

.the happy place.

Last week I went to Disneyland,

with Jackie, her babies, and her brother's family.

It was decorated for Christmas.

I saw the Loneliest Looking Person in the Happiest Place on Earth.

I took photographs of The Haunted Mansion as it is decorated like The Nightmare Before Christmas...

and I took photographs of the Carousel...

and of the lights in Peter Pan' Flight...

and of the "lasers" in Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters...

and of all the lights on Main Street.

It was so much fun.  I needed that.

.silence is deafening.

Today my landlord referred to my son as "It" after I told her his name was George.

"Oh, it had a name already?"  She kind of scoffed.

I went on to explain to her that I was nearly 7 1/2 months pregnant when he died.  That he was born alive.  That had he not been as sick as he was he very well might have lived being born at that point.

"He was my son."  I said.

"He looked like a person?" She asked.

She went on to say things like "Maybe the spirit wasn't ready but the next one will be," "Maybe stress from school was part of the problem," "You have lots of time to make other babies," "You can't hold on to this,"  You have to stop thinking about it everyday..."

I've never spoken to her about George since he died.  Leif has, briefly, but I have not.  While we were trying to save his life she had a vague outline of what was going on but that was the extent of things really.  Until this afternoon she has never brought him up and neither have I.

I don't want to get in to too many specifics because ultimately they aren't really relevant but I will say that she was born and raised in a country other than this one.  I mention this because she is from a place known for the stoicism and bluntness of its people.  She is both stoic and blunt.  Very blunt, in fact.  So blunt that some of the things that she says can make a lumberjack blush.  We normally write her wildly inappropriate dialogue off as cultural differences, which, for the most part is what I believe to be true.

Over time I've discovered that if you can get passed the stoicism and bluntness, she has a good heart.  This afternoon I think in her own way she was trying to provide some comfort to me.  Knowing that, I wasn't angered by what she said but it did make me a little sad.

I already struggle with the idea that to only a relatively few people in this world was George an actual human being.  I think to many he is not a dead son but rather a lost pregnancy; an "it."  Some of this, I know, is all in my head.  But I am absolutely convinced that some of it is not.

I understand that people are afraid of saying something upsetting or sticking their foot in their mouths.  Or that people may think that it isn't their place to say anything at all.  Or that if they bring him up it will somehow make things worse for me.  Sometimes it takes people awhile to find the confidence to say something.  I was once that person who didn't know what to say when a friend had a miscarriage.  I get it but I am done accepting it.

Because here it is.

I appreciate her so much more for saying something.  Even though it was the "wrong" thing.  Even though a simple "I'm sorry for your loss" would have sufficed.  It was something.

And that is something.

You know what I mean?

.blue.

There used to be a time, in my distant past, that I actually enjoyed doing things of a more creative nature.  Sketching, painting, making collages...things of this sort.  Now most my of creativity, if you can call it that, comes out in the form of refurbishing old furniture or writing on this here blog.

I think I stopped painting because I just didn't find it inspiring anymore.  Or I wasn't inspired by anything enough to lug out my paints and brushes.  After George died I thought this would change but it didn't.  All I could think of painting was big black and blue circles and so I just didn't even bother.  I'm no Kandinsky, after all.  My drawer full of paints and my crate full of paper/canvas has just been sitting unused and collecting dust, quite literally.

But this last week I have been feeling particularly blue and it has got me searching for things to occupy my time.  I still have no job and nothing is looking very promising at the moment.  I could take a job that I do not like but I am not quite at the point yet where that option is looking to be a good one.  I'm close to that point though.  Very close.

What I have been finding is that being unemployed, childless, and bored is a recipe for also being very sad and for feeling pretty crappy about myself.  Oh self-esteem, where art thou?

Today I dragged out my paints and my brushes and spent most of the daylight hours painting.  I chose one of George's ultrasound pictures.  Actually it was the one we got at his 20 week scan and the one we found out that "the baby" was actually George.  That, along with the day I married Leif, was the happiest moment of my life.

As ultrasounds tend to be, this one was a tad bit confusing and I had to take some artistic liberties with one of the limbs (seriously I can't tell if it is a foot or an arm so I just made it into an arm).  I will probably end up fixing some stuff about it later but for now it is what it is.

I can't say that I am completely happy with the way it turned out but it does look like my boy, especially his face.  I can see his dad in that face.

I'm kind of nervous about putting this up here but...here goes anyway...

George Ellsworth.  Acrylic.  

.stretched and stark.

On days like this it comes so near as to snatch the breath from my lungs.  I reach out and feel the bitterness and anger and sorrow on the tips of my fingers.  Smooth, solid.  An obelisk of obsidian throwing long shadows on my life's landscape.


A seed of wide love coated a thousand times over in mourning.  My very own black pearl. 

My mind wanders to naked branches, limbs stretched and stark against a blue sky.  They herald the coming season but instead of choirs of angels I hear them speak to me in cautionary baritones.  The Winter creeps ever closer still and one morning I awake to find that it is almost upon us.  The nearly imperceptible change of the angle of light throughout the day; soft and simultaneously inexorable.  I feel the weight of it pressing on to my shoulders.

There is no shine or sparkle to these days ahead.

I once read a book* and it pulled loose a small thread in one of my seams.    

“Nothing is predetermined, it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given – so we track it, in linear fashion piece by piece. Time however can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once. The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was is; everything that ever will be is – and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we imagine that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. In the end, or rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but something that is.”

I've since unraveled as time has pulled me away farther from him.

Underneath something different.  Nearly imperceptibly so.  Softer and simultaneously inexorable.  

How I ache to believe that we will be brought together.  That he is more than just a single brush stroke on this canvas.  That he is, no matter how small, intimately and sensibly tied to all others.

My son, where are you?

I miss you.

I am incomplete.  

*Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin

.hooray.

I love to vote.  I don't really know for sure if my vote matters in the grand scheme of things.  But going to the polls makes me feel like it does.  What about you?