come home

i feel a lone flare in the night sky

even though I know better

he will never follow the light of my vigil back to this life

he will never return 

and still i burn for him

a pathetic and obvious exercise in futility 

i want him

always

always

always

i'm habituated to the dull ache

there, always, in the periphery 

even when i am happy 

still incomplete

tonight the dull ache is sharp and stings

self-flagellation 

where did i go wrong

where

where

where

he feels like a memory that only i can remember

i think he is fading out of existence

one day i will stand alone 

still waiting

still waiting

still waiting

for him to follow my burning heart 

and come home.

berries

In George's Garden there are berries.  Raspberries and blueberries, two different kinds I think.  There are roses and hydrangeas and a number of other plants that border the circular plot of earth in my in-law's backyard that is named after their first grandchild.  But it is the raspberries and the blueberries that make my heart ache each time I find myself there.

So easily I can conjure up images of Clio and her cousins -maybe one day a living sibling too- clamoring around the garden snatching blueberries and gingerly maneuvering around thorns to capture tart raspberries.  I see blue mouths and red stains.  I smell dirt-stained knees and I hear the gaggle of laughter bubbling up from tiny mouths.

It is the blueberries and raspberries that make my heart ache.

Because I so much would like to be able to see there with the rest of them a little tow-headed boy with his father's eyes and his mother's toothy grin, leading the charge into the clearing of grass with blueberries and raspberries in hand.

But instead I see a ghost roaming in and out of the periphery of my vision and I wonder how long it will take before even that is gone.

a westerly fold

An interesting thing happened a couple months back; Leif expressed some interest in starting a blog with me.  We finally went ahead and did it, although I have no idea what it will be about as I'm sure it will evolve over time.  But I do know that it will be a little bit of Leif: art, music, graphic design.  With a little bit (more) of me: wordy sentences, half-finished crafts, high caloric food.  Probably a little of us together: home-remodeling (When we buy a home of course, we aren't going to be remodeling any random person's house.  Unless, of course, you're offering to finance us remodeling your space because then hell yeah, there'll be some of that), city-exploring, Clio-loving, photography and hopefully some small business-starting.

A little something for everyone.

So I am going to bid adieu to my other blog, The One Year Lease.  I hope you can come by and visit us at A Westerly Fold.

grandpa george

Bridget was a toy poodle, a ball of tight black curls and fluff who had a love for dirty socks that were still attached to their owner's feet.  Any napper or leisurely couch-recliner at my grandparents' house was subject to a game of sock tug-o-war with her, a game of which she was nearly always the victor.  Her tenacity for sock-chewing was unrivaled by any beast.  It is Bridget and the awe of a tiny glass menagerie that make up the majority of foggy memories that play in my head about that time of my youthful life.  That was before my grandmother died and time and distance and other issues too abstract for a little me to understand removed my sister and I from that part of our lives.

Now, about 25 years later and a world of experiences later, my grandfather George, a man I love but hardly know, is dying. Four days ago, after landing in another state and on the morning of a job-interview, I received a text from my mom letting me know that my father's father had a massive stroke and was in the hospital.  When someone gets to be 91 years-old news of their approaching death shouldn't be surprising to those in close proximity yet somehow death always seems surprising. Despite the most inevitable fact of life being death, we are all blindsided when it's cold breath brushes against our neck on its way to claim the person we are standing next to.  It is simple arrogance and delusion on our parts but undeniable nevertheless.  

I've spent the last few days thinking about the life of a man whom I barely know but who also shares a name with my father, my father's grandfather, and my own son.  What I've been able to accumulate in my mind is little more than a references of facts about his life; son of a famous track coach, sports star in school, went to medical school at Dartmouth, married and had three children, lost a son at the age of 19 to a drunk driver, avid fisherman, lover of Dr. Pepper and Rocky Road ice cream.  I remember sharing a warm coke with him at the kitchen table when I was no older than seven or eight and big strong hands and golf trophies and a quiet demeanor.  Of course what little I remember and what even littler I know of him isn't the total of who he is and yet that is all that I really have to draw upon to form my opinion of him.  

It is only inevitable that now I no longer have the opportunity to ask him questions I can think of a million that I would like answers to.  What was it like to be at the 1936 Olympics?  Why is my dad's nickname Jay when his real name is George?  Why doesn't my own dad know the answer to that one?  Does he have regrets?  Great triumphs?  How did he endure the death of his youngest child?  How did he go on living after something so terrible?  Did he ever think about his great grandson, who was his namesake?  Whatever the answers to those questions may be they will be lost with him and a part of me grieves those losses just as much as I will grieve the loss of the man himself.

A couple of days ago, while I was eight hundred miles away from his bedside, my aunt put me on speaker phone so I could talk to him.  I spoke to him about how I was far away but that I wished I could see him and give him a hug.  Despite being completely paralyzed on one side of his body by the stroke and unable to speak, my aunt told me that he smiled while I spoke to him.  Now that I am back in the same state as he is and a four hour drive away he is passed the point of any recognition and so I am grateful that I had the chance to speak with him when I did.  But really our goodbyes were already said last month when I called him on his birthday.  We chatted about trivial matters like Rocky Road ice cream and about how I was moving to Oregon.  I told him that in August I was going to bring Clio to meet him on our way through California, which he said he thought would be wonderful.

"I love you," he said to me.

I replied, "I love you too, Grandpa"

inadequate

It is 7:44pm and I'm sitting in the bathtub and wishing we had one of those huge soaker tubs that you see in the glossy home magazines.  I don't need jets or any fancy accouterments, just a tub that can accommodate my 5'11 body.  As it is now I can only submerge a portion of my body at a time; either my legs are covered so that my torso isn't or vice versa.  I can't have both. I have a bad habit of taking my iPhone into the tub with me to peruse Pinterest or read blogs or play online Scramble, of which I am in the top 0.6% of all online players.  Some folks exceed at scholarly pursuits and others at artistic endeavors but not me.  I am just really good at playing online scramble.

Tonight though, in betwixt text messages with my sister bemoaning the current state of our Not Youth, I am writing this blog entry.  As it turns out I will be bemoaning the current state of sleep or lack thereof in this house so tonight is just all full of bemoaning.  To spare any of you reading here the long story that is about to follow let me sum it up for you in a few succinct words: Clio says, "Ah Hell No," to sleeping through the night and I am at my wit's end with the situation.

Last night she woke up every 90 minutes.  I tell you no lie.  She wasn't sick except for a near constant runny nose that we have concluded is a result of allergies.  She wasn't too hot or too cold.  She wasn't in need of a diaper change.  There was nothing wrong with her other than a decided lack of boob in her mouth.  After listening for the sixth time to her wake up, whine and cry for 5 minutes before putting herself back to sleep I finally got up to bring her back into bed with me to nurse her.  Usually I can stick her back into the crib after she nurses herself to sleep but last night she wanted to sleep only ON MY CHEST.  Which, as you can imagine, makes it difficult to sleep for the one who is the human mattress.  

This morning I woke up feeling completely frustrated with Clio, feeling utterly at a loss as to how to help the situation (we've tried a modified version of crying if out but that was a miserable failure), and feeling like a shitty mom.  You know, because, I had a baby die and dammit I should never take for granted that I now have a thriving daughter to love and hold.  All day today my patience with Clio's whining and fussing and squealing -Egads she hates the car seat- was as thin as it has ever been.  I wanted to hand her off to Leif and run away for the day, not worry about breast feeding -girl will only take a bottle at day care and not even for her dad at home- and just be alone.

There seems to be no end to my stupidity and naivete because I thought that experiencing George's death would somehow turn me into Supermom; Capable of Surviving Indefinitely on Hardly Any Sleep and Possessing of Infinite Pools of Patience. Apparently that is not a gift that was bestowed upon me in the wake of George's death.  What was bestowed upon me, and maybe all mothers feel this to an extent, is a tremendous feeling of guilt and hyper awareness of my failings as Clio's mother.


I should be grateful I have a living child.  I am but just not grateful enough.  I should never get frustrated or feel like I can't handle her whining anymore.  But I do feel those ways sometimes.  I look at Leif and think that he must never feel that way. Clio is going to grow up feeling like her dad loves her more than her mom.  That is what races through my head on days like this.

So here I am hiding in the tub, partially submerged in the rapidly cooling water, writing this.  Feeling sleepy, guilty and inadequate.


It's 8:30pm. I think I hear Clio crying.

right where i am: two years and two months

It is noon and a kind of silence has settled in around me.  What breaks through the otherwise thick layer of quiet is the muted chirping of the red house sparrows that make their homes in the trees surrounding our rented house and the clacking of the keys as my fingers strike their intended targets.  It is silence that just a year ago I would have needed to fill with distraction; a soundtrack of Modest Mouse and The XX or simply an episode of bad television.  

I enjoy the quiet now as I am alone with my thoughts so infrequently these days.  Most of my time is happily spent chasing after Clio or, when she is down for the night, laying on the couch with Leif.  We get so little time together now, just the two of us, that I greedily gobble up any time we can share together.  In quiet and solitary moments like this my thoughts no longer automatically stray to George's birth and death or if they do I don't have quite the emotional response that I used to have toward them.  Two years and some change later I am beginning to be able to look at it from a different perspective- one that isn't shrouded in despair and self-loathing.

What happened was very sad and there are still times when I find myself sobbing at the memory of it all.  Mostly now though I'm past all the railing against the universe and fist-shaking.  I've accepted what happened and that as a result some aspects of my life have changed for the better and for the worse.  Life doesn't feel so lopsided anymore and neither do I feel like my life is cast in the shadow of Unlucky.  I've come to recognize that I am a supremely fortunate person who happened to have one supremely unlucky thing happen to me.  It has taken me some time to reach that conclusion about the direction my life has taken since that day in March, two years ago, but it is now a conclusion that I feel at peace with.  Any regrets about the choices we made or questions that I've had about how things could have turned out had stars aligned differently are all but non-existent these days.  I look at my daughter smiling and happy and my husband beaming with love and there is no question in my mind that I am right where I want to be.

George's existence has been woven into the tapestry of my life.  Even in his absence he is more present than I had dreamed possible.  During the first year and a half after his birth I could only see that portion of my tapestry which was immediately connected to his death.  It was dark and so hard to look at that I could not even imagine it being anything else.  Now I stand back and see that his part of my tapestry is profoundly beautiful.  It is woven in and out of the entirety and has changed the contours and colors of my life.  It isn't perfect, my life's tapestry, but it is my own and I think it is beautiful.  All of it.  Even the ugly and sad bits.

Right now, at this moment, where I am is this...

I miss him and my life is full and I am happy.

Where I was last year.
Where you can find more information about the Right Where I Am project.

moving

Last week I gave notice to my work.  I'm quitting.  By mid-August we will be in Portland, Oregon.  It'll be two years behind our original schedule.

We were supposed to move the fall after George was born.  I was going to graduate, pass my board exam, and then have George all with in a six week stretch back in 2010.  I'd have six months to stay at home with him full-time while I got my license and looked for a job in Oregon.  That plan disintegrated pretty quickly in March of that same year.  After he died I was emotionally incapable of leaving the home that we had built here.

I'm ready now, for the most part, I think.  But the nostalgia for a city that I haven't even left yet has already started to kick in.  I've lived here, in different parts of the city, for the better part nearly thirteen years.  For all its faults, Los Angeles is a pretty fucking rad place to live while you're young.

I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't nervous about the move.  My parents, my sister and her daughters are all less than a couple hours drive from my house so I see them fairly frequently.  My sister and I are very close and I love my nieces like they were my own.  The thought of leaving them makes me sick to my stomach.

We've made really amazing friends here too.  Some are the kind of friends you know that only come along once or twice in a lifetime.

Oh, and the weather.  The lovely, lovely, sunny weather.  As a Californian, born and raised, the adjustment to the cold and rainy weather in Portland is going to be a huge adjustment for me.

But there is so much to look forward to as well.  Leif's entire family lives within a forty minute drive of Downtown Portland.

It looks like two of our best friends -another set that only comes along once or twice in a lifetime- are coming home to Portland from The Netherlands the same time we are moving there.  Which, I admit, I cried a little out of excitement at the thought of being able to live near them again and being able to watch our kids grow up together (no pressure Natalie but you better be coming home...lol).

We will finally be able to buy our own home.  Maybe, just maybe, my dream of owning a big chunk of property with a renovated barn and lots of room for guests will come true while we live there.
And, of course, Portland is just about the most awesome city I've ever been to (Barcelona a close second).    So there is that too.

You'll have to excuse me if over the next three months I get a little weepy around here while we prepare to move.  I can't help it.  I'm gonna miss Los Angeles.

P.S.  Also, if you know of any tricks to make a move to another state easier I'd love to hear them.