after alice

“What a curious feeling!” said Alice. “I must be shutting up like a telescope!”

And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going through the little door into that lovely garden. First, however, she waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this; “for it might end, you know,” said Alice to herself; “in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?” And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle looks like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

I expected to be able to write last week with staying in one place and all but I couldn’t.  I brought the Mrs. here while the Dr. was getting his passport stamped again and thought that simplifying my duties under one roof with caregiving the beasties and the Bubbe-Mrs. that my brain would function.

It was more like Alice’s tumble down the rabbit hole – falling slowly enough to be aware of everything around me but unable to grab hold.

The week was relatively quiet with hours of Fox news, word search puzzles with the glorious switch over to the Dog Whisperer when I couldn’t take the talking heads one more minute.  There was a simple routine to our days and I kept quiet so as not to make her think that I had better things to do and making her feel that she was just in the way.  Obviously there are always a million things to do but if I’ve learned anything from Cesar it has everything to do with the energy one projects to the beasts they are trying to tame – calm, assertive leadership to achieve balance.

Before we knew it – the time had come to take her back home and it was right.  She was ready to be in her own space – doing things that make her feel productive.  Things that I would never dream of doing if I were bored – like washing and drying a china cabinet full of Candlewick.

Meanwhile another kind of tumble resulted in a broken wrist for the F-I-L which complicated his chauffeur duties for the M-I-L who was just about to embark on her second cataract surgery in 2 weeks time.  So with the Mrs. safely and soundly back in her own space, I took to helping them out with some doctor’s appointments.

This last week helping out aging parents, I am more aware than ever of the frustration inherent in the process.  It’s like we are all merrily strolling through life when suddenly we find ourselves tumbling down a rabbit hole without a clue as to what we will face at the bottom.  The Mrs. says she doesn’t know who took her “seventies”.  Suddenly she’s solidly in her eighties and can’t account for how she got here.  I watched the frustration on M-I-L’s face as the audiologist tinkered with the buttons and knobs on her hearing aids.  It’s annoying to have technology that doesn’t always cut the mustard leaving her with the inability to hear and has all but given up that there is any hope for a smooth transition to an in-between place.

So how can I age gracefully?  How do I embrace the natural aging process surrounded by a world telling me a gazillion ways and a gazillion times a day that younger is better?  I loath certain hair styles on balding men.  I vomit a little in my mouth when I see inappropriately dressed middle-aged women. The adds on my facebook page tell me that 54 year old women just like me are buying pink UGGS and am I sure I don’t want a pair? Really?  Can’t we all just act our age?  (Except that this doesn’t count for the 65 year old members of The Who rockin’ out at the SuperBowl right now.)

At the same time,  the internal wrestling match between my hopes, dreams and unmet desires and the fact that getting out of bed in the morning is accompanied by more aches and pains than when I hit the sheets, is a daily reality.

Can I drink the potion and follow Alice?  Can I change and still be the same?  Can I gracefully tweak my expectations of what I think I’m entitled to?  Can I deal with the disparity between what I expected to be mine in this season and embrace the reality of what IS? Will I just telescope down or go out like a candle?

I’m not saying I don’t do the things I can to help improve my situation – it’s called a fist full of supplements morning and night.  Then there is that exercise thing – that I’d don’t do morning or night.  It really has more to do with finding myself looking at the Mrs. and Shop Girl and remembering that I was where she is and she was where I am.  I used to be Shop Girl – now I’m the Mrs.  I just keep looking at the Mrs.,  MIL and FIL and wondering how Shop Girl and Best Boy will treat me in another few years when life is spinning and they’ve tumbled down the rabbit hole with the rest of us.

No telling how that will go but for now, I’m just going to go through that garden gate – I’ve got that little golden key.  It’s all part of the adventure.  You’ll just have to ask Alice when she’s ten feet tall…

down, down the rabbit hole

“Well!” thought Alice to herself “After such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down-stairs! How brave they’ll all think me at home! Why, I wouldn’t say anything about it, even if I fell off the top of the house!” (which was very likely true.)

Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end?

Let’s get crazy!

This is a re-post from my brother-in-law’s facebook page.  For years he’s been involved in finding ways to facilitate international adoptions.  Thought I’d share their latest hopes and dreams…

HAITI ORPHAN PLANE

Sometimes the time is right for a great dream. At others, it is an audacious vision that is simply ahead of its time. Several years ago some friends gathered together to talk about how to make a significant impact in the orphan crisis. Was there a way to break through the bureaucratic log-jam and financial barriers that restrict the number of orphans worldwide from finding loving homes? While recognizing the value and important protections provided by agencies, we wondered aloud whether there wasn’t a larger door that could be opened for the over 100 million children without parents.

We talked about a 50-year old, Oregon farmer named Harry Holt who would just not give up until the U.S. Congress had passed special legislation allowing him and his wife to adopt 12 mixed-race, Korean orphans. He flew them in on a plane the media dubbed the “Stork plane.” That was 1955. The crisis was the plight of children fathered by American GIs during the Korean War and rejected by the culturally protective Koreans. The “Stork plane” was followed in 1958 with an aircraft carrying 107 orphans. This was only the first such attempt at breaching the orphan adoption bottle neck. Eighteen years later there was “Operation Babylift.” In 1975, in the terrifying days preceding the fall of Saigon. President Ford set aside $ 2,000,000 to help pay for 30 orphan planes from Vietnam. In a few months 2,000 children had been rescued.

Operation “Pedro Pan” from 1960 through 1962, though not focused specifically on orphans, was the largest mass exodus of children for humanitarian reason in our North America. In 22 months, thanks to the commitment of a 30-year-old priest, Bryan O. Walsh of the Catholic Diocese of Miami, 14,000 minors were evacuated from Cuba.

And, then of course, most recently is the orphan plane into Pittsburgh. Yesterday, spearheaded by these same friends, a task force (most of whom are adoptive parents) gathered to discuss making that slumbering dream come true. The crisis is here – a devastating quake in Haiti taking the lives of perhaps several hundred thousand. The need is incontrovertible – the neediest country in our hemisphere already overwhelmed with its 380,000 orphans, now, in a week’s time, suddenly responsible for tens of thousands more. The precedent has been set. The only question is, do we have the will? We have been assured that we have a strong advocate in Congress. The word we were given was “don’t worry about Washington D.C. prepare the catcher’s mitt in Michigan.”

And so we shall.

We are committed to rescuing no less than 10,000 orphans, in a State that has suffered the worst from our economic recession. And perhaps the weakest will lead the way. Perhaps we will help start a flotilla of planes filled with Haitian orphans who have lost everything, including arms and legs, but who will gain the protective nurture of loving families, with room in their hearts and homes for at least one more.

The time for dreams to become reality is here.

The time to fulfill the hopes of the most desperate and vulnerable is now.

Stay tuned.  (Timothy John Stoner)

counting candles

Oh this wasn’t just any birthday celebration…no, this one was special.  There was something quite different about this one as compared to the one a year ago. My  83 year old mother got her driver’s license renewed.

Months ago the State of Indiana was kind enough to send out two separate letters reminding us of the need to renew her license.  They sent TWO (count them – TWO) letters outlining the multiple documents we needed to present so that she could get the new SecureID  – “to ensure that you can use your driver’s license to board commercial airplanes and enter certain federal buildings.” Now there’s something new for 2010.

We had to have an original certified copy of her birth certificate.  Fortunately for me, she’d gotten a copy of that back in 1984 when she got the other “SecureID” called a passport when she and Billy crossed the pond to come visit us in Spain.  In this last couple of years of practicing my new hobby of document gathering, it had been filed in a folder with a tab that said “Birth Certificates.”  Imagine my surprise when I found the REAL deal right there for me to use!

We also needed to have a social security card (NO idea where her original is of that), a W-2, tax form, an SSA-1099 form, or a pay stub showing name and Social Security number.  And to prove “residency” we needed two statements issued within 60 days from a utility company, bank, credit card company, doctor or hospital, federal or state agency showing her name and residence.

So the afternoon before her birthday with a wad of documents in hand, we made the trek to the BMV.  It was late in the day so there wasn’t much of a line – save a handful of teens with parents in tow – so we didn’t wait long before our number was called.  The clerk began asking for the docs in a certain order…the birth certificate – check…

Next she wanted the marriage license…”Excuse me, what?”  “The marriage license to prove the name change from her birth certificate to the present…” “OH DEAR GOD.  ARE YOU SERIOUS?”  The ONE STUPID DOCUMENT I HAD FAILED TO INCLUDE!!!  I should have known better by now…after all, my book, The Boomer’s Guide to Dying is about to break into the New York Times Bestseller List.  I could have bloodied my toes kicking myself for being so stupid as to not put the entire fireproof filing system in the car before we left the house.  Never, never, never again…

I get it.  It was my fault.  I needed to connect the dots for the state.  After all, she’s only had a driver’s license in this state since Heck was a pup (click here to figure out where this saying came from) and now we need to start verifying she is who she’s been pretending to be since she moved here at the age of 16 or so?  We can’t connect the government dots that this person has held a valid passport in the past – our most vetted document?  Wait – what is this for?  This makes it secure for us to get on airplanes and to get into government buildings?  Hummmm….will that really make a difference?

Anyway – then and there, I opted for the straight up license renewal.  We will give the state another $11 at a later date and be able to sleep more soundly knowing that SHE has a SecureID in her possession.

Adding to the excitement of that outing, we tacked on two doctors appointments the next day and put a bow on yet another year by getting a store bought cake topped off with twenty little polka dot candles to mark her milestone.

As she was on her way to bed after the cake and ice cream dessert we had, she poked her head into the TV room and thanked me for making it easy.  She would have been overwhelmed with 83 candles she said.  Twenty was just enough to remember it was her birthday.

I go back and forth with this stuff – personally I wouldn’t be offended at all if my kids never lit the candles on a cake and stuck it in front of my face.  But for her, at least it is a way to mark a special day in the year – a date she doesn’t have to think much about…she doesn’t hesitate a lick when you ask her when she was born – month, date, and year.  And maybe a day made a little less lonely – after all, since the day after she turned 21, she had Billy by her side up until two years ago. She reflected a bit on that too…and was glad to have had those long years with him walking beside her.

What’s it like  when suddenly you don’t really have a wedding anniversary any more?

Anyway, back to where we started…we have three more years till this new driver’s license expires.  I wonder how many more documents it will take to renew the document.  I wonder if the State of Indiana will ask itself if it is wise or safe for her to be driving.  I wonder if we’ll still be able to use those SecureID’s for anything at all.  But if she’s around – there’s no doubt that we’ll be having more chocolate cake and ice cream.  Maybe I’ll do 40 candles for dramatic effect.

white noise

The Dr. sleeps with the radio on – our local NPR affiliate runs the BBC – all night long. White noise for him, by day (via a steady stream of CNN, HLN and the like) and by night, are voices commenting on world affairs.  After all, it is his bread and butter to know what is happening around the globe.  Sometimes in the darkness, I can tell what time it is without looking at the clock by counting the times I’ve heard the stories on repeat – they are on a cycle that runs three times. Those aren’t my favorite nights.  I don’t blame him for my insomnia because as many times as not, the talking heads don’t bother me at all and despite all the yakking, I sleep fairly well.

A few years ago some friends in LA introduced us to genius little white noise machines that they had in each bedroom.  Just cranking those puppies up regardless of whatever else was happening in the house (usually late night recording sessions involving a dozen or so people in and out- so LA for us artsy fartsy types) the cacophony was so masked that sleep was just an instant away.  I was officially addicted.  Once back home I got one of these by Brookstone called Tranquil Moments ® Sound Machine for Sleep that sits on my bedside table.  There are nights when both the radio and the white noise machine are going.  If I’ve been working with words during the day then I need to quiet the voices at night. No more words – no talking…just noise.

If it is too quiet I am distracted by the constant hum of the tinnitus I think I’ve inherited from Billy.  Oh, it could be meds, it could be impending deafness inherited from the Mrs. or it could be insanity…but I can hear it right now throbbing it’s way through the veins and vessels in my head like little subway trains using my ears as tunnels.  The word in Spanish is a perfect onomatopoeia for what it sounds like to me – zumbar: to hum, buzz or whirr.  (When pronounced in Castilian that “z” becomes a “th” sound.)

The subject of white noise came up when Shop Girl’s friends from Spain were visiting.  She has a nice machine in her bedroom and suggested the use of said device for the jet-lagged duo so as to drown out Donny Diva’s squawking for a midnight snack.  They just guffawed at the preposterous notion that you could actually sleep better by piping noise into your ears.  It is all around us whether we notice it or not…on planes, in the malls, in office spaces…almost everywhere.  I love the fact that to muffle certain noises all you have to do is add ALL noise to it.  That IS white noise.

There is another kind of white noise affecting my life these days – snow – drowning out voices in my head telling me what I should be doing.  It’s either been here by the foot or along the lakeshore by the multiple feet or dumping right along the southern edge of the lake, making stretches of the highways impassible or not advisable at best.  It almost seems like I’ve been on vacation with this extended time at home since Christmas.  The Mrs. has survived just fine thanks to the kindness of a good friend from church who stepped in during my absence – doing a grocery run and sorting through a week’s worth of pills.  These people have saved my skin on more than one occasion and I am very grateful.

There have been moments where adding just one more voice of worry to the chorus ringing in my head (“Is she eating enough?,” “Has she remembered to take her pills?,” “Will she try to drive somewhere in this weather?”) has begun to work like a white noise machine.  By adding more things that I can’t do anything about – it’s actually calmed me down and relaxed me in a weird sort of way.  It’s helped me to focus.  I have more energy.  It’s like getting eight hours of uninterrupted sleep!

Maybe it is because I’ve turned my nervous energy toward my own basement for once and have donated about a dozen boxes of stuff and thrown away an extra eight bags of garbage in the last two weeks.  I can hardly wait till next week when I get started on a new facet of my winter project. I found a place that will take the twenty-plus boxes of books collecting dust and donates them to schools and libraries around the world.  To think that someone can actually USE all those tomes we bought instead of spending money on groceries during the Dr.’s years of graduate and post-grad work -  really makes me happy.

With each box and bag I carry out of this house – it is like white noise music to my ears.  By Spring, maybe Donny Diva and I will both be sleeping through the night.

now what?

Mary Alice’s naked Christmas tree is laying curbside waiting to be recycled.  I finally put lights on mine two days ago.  The Twelve Days of Christmas aren’t over yet.

But here we are into the New Year and I can’t help thinking about all the things I know now that I didn’t know at this time last year.

I didn’t know Best Boy was moving.  I didn’t know there was a Mimi that loved him.

I didn’t know if Book Boy could survive nine months of Shop Girl’s roller coaster hormones.  Nor did I know they would make their whack-a-doo landlord so angry that they’d have to buy a house.  I didn’t know that an hour after his birth, Donny Diva’s wide eyes would look straight into mine and bury themselves in my heart for a long long time.  I didn’t know that a smile from him would make whatever is happening around me seem so insignificant.

I didn’t know that the Dr. would travel in and out and in and out and in and out again from some of the scariest places on the globe and come home safe every time.

I didn’t know that we’d spend enough money at the dentist this year that we could have paid for a kitchen and bath make over.

I didn’t know that the Mrs. would survive as well as she has on her own.  I didn’t know I’d have the strength to clean out Billy’s basement – or the strength to touch so many things that had been precious to him and throw them all away and not die from the guilt.

I didn’t know I’d have a dozen faithful readers.  I didn’t know I’d have enough to say to keep writing.  I didn’t know much.  And I stand here with another twelve calendar pages to turn and wonder what I’ll know soon enough.

We’ll all lose and gain – weight, money, friends and family members.  We’ll all cry – tears of deep sorrow, tears of unexpected joy or the ones when we get caught off guard and stumble on an episode of Extreme Home Makeover and they shamelessly play the emotion card yet again.

And if we’re smart – we’ll all learn something in the process and hopefully apply those nuggets to living more authentic lives.  Being ourselves – who ever we are and dealing with whatever comes custom made for us.

storytellers

Travelers.  Wanderers.  Immigrants.

We were surrounded by the unfamiliar and my soul was longing for something to hang on to in this place where all of my cultural cues were misplaced.  The songs were unrecognizable.  There was no snow.  It was midnight and the neighbors were banging on the radiators upstairs in jubilation.  It was Christmas morning and I was thousands of miles away from home.

In the following years as I became acclimated to my surroundings, I began picking up on the nuances of  Noche Buena.  Families would gather late – for a huge meal before going to midnight mass.  It was one of two nights all winter that the heat in the apartment building would be on all night long.  I had to come up with a way that we could stay up late too – albeit our family gathering was only the four of us…sometimes more depending on whatever ex-pats we could host.

Each trip Stateside in the following years, I would visit a favorite children’s book store and leave with armloads of stories about Christmas.  That stack of books became the center piece of our attempt at making the wrong feel right. We had something to keep us up till midnight.  We could eat and we could read together as a family.

Once permanently removed from the foreign back to the familiar – it all fell apart again.  Here there was too much to do.  Almost too much family but we couldn’t say that outloud without great misunderstanding.  We missed the huddling together to read but Best Boy and Shop Girl were churlish teens by then and bored with the whole routine anyway.

Somewhere – sometime – we caught the NPR stories.  We replaced our books with the radio stories that meant Christmas to us.  Do yourself a favor…sit…be quiet…and listen.  That is what Christmas is about anyway.  Listening with our hearts.  My Christmas gift to you – a link.

securities and exchange(s)

Yesterday Shop Girl wanted to stop over at some friends’ house to invade their space for a mini photo shoot with Donny Diva acting as the talent.  It is the home of a family bound by deep love that exudes warmth and is a visual treat as well – given the creative souls that inhabit the dwelling.

On the Eve of this special day of the year that our society has duped us into thinking that it is all about the number of gifts under the tree or a “love” that has a price tag attached to it – I was reminded that some of the best gifts are homemade and humble.

Lacey paper snowflakes plastered over the windows cost a few sheets of paper.  Just think of it – we can be boring, flat, blank sheets of paper OR we can get folded, cut, have holes cut through our middles and really become a thing of beauty.

a basket of hand-knit goodness…

and a star wishing a “marry crismis to all you.”

I was talking to SisterSib this morning about the transitional stage of life we find ourselves in as our brood now have their own homes and spaces in which to create special memories with the ones they love.  Once Donny Diva is old enough – we’ll have some special something that will be imprinted in his memory bank about going to Momo’s and Papi’s at Christmas, but not this year.

Can you remember details of the last ten Christmases or even five or three?  A few are memorable but some…not so much.  What about all those people in a panic at the Mall right now spending money they don’t really have to spend on things that people don’t really need and by this time next year won’t even remember that they got?  Is THAT Christmas?

What I don’t wonder about is the security of the love my immediate and extended family share…that is enough gift exchange for me – thank you very much.

p.s.  In case any of you were following the cookie mystery of the last entry – she found them.  They were in a place she always kept cookies when she made large batches but I had obviously not looked carefully enough to see them in the cupboard.  Oh, and I was talking on the phone to Nascar Car last Sunday when I kept smelling something like the oven on in the kitchen.  When I got off the phone, I walked in to find I had boiled the teapot dry!  Who’s crazy now???

christmas cookies

The Mrs. was a working girl.  When I was in elementary school she went back to working full time and continued to do so until after she and Billy had put three kids through college and I was married.  Elaborately decorated Christmas cookies were never her style but she’d find time to bake between doing laundry and housekeeping on those weeks leading up to the Holidays.  Mexican wedding cakes, pecan tarts and peanut butter blossoms to name a few would be around the house for snacking and sharing.

This year it was just before Thanksgiving that she started to make noises about getting the ingredients for the peanut butter blossoms – those ones with the chocolate Hershey’s kiss on top.  It used to be Billy’s job to unwrap the candy as she prepared the dough. It goes without saying that lots has changed since those days.

There was a profound bewilderment in her eyes as she said, “I just get all screwed up…I don’t know what’s wrong with my memory.”  She wonders out loud about why a simple recipe that she’s done so many times before with such success seems so overwhelming to her now.  I talk about the realities of aging (I chose to not use the D word – dementia) and motor planning.  I’ve been witness to hundreds of hours of physical and occupational therapy working as an interpreter at a rehab hospital and with wonder been a casual observer of the fragile nature of our gray matter.  Sometimes I’d get to see the lights come back on and other times – the lights were out for good.

She insisted that she’d made the peanut butter cookies and another batch. “You know those ones with the cereal and the melted marshmallows?” I got excited thinking that I’d be soon snacking on rice crispy treats while I balanced her check book, filed bills and spent time on the phone taking Billy’s name off all the utilities and switch over the auto-pay billing to a new checking account we had to open in her name alone.

But she couldn’t remember where she had put them.  I defaulted to what I had told the Fabulous Mrs. T not long ago. “There is always a thread…there is always some logic behind the twisted thinking.”  A few months ago our dear family friend had stopped by for a cup of coffee with the Mrs. and as soon as she got home to her computer – she quickly pounded out an email to me concerned about the confusion in the Mrs. mind about when Billy had passed away, etc.  I could easily explain all the faulty thinking probably because I am a lunatic myself at this point and it all makes perfect sense.  Some call it denial – I call it coping.

Back to the missing cookies – as if I am a a principal actor on CSI, I try to uncover the truth.  She had gone to the store to gather ingredients – the receipt I found proved that she’d found the baking aisle and brought home brown sugar, powdered sugar (enough to make cookies from now until next Christmas) and a box of puffed wheat cereal.  She explained that she’d not been able to find the one that was specifically listed and figured if she just got one of the same brand (Post) then it would all be the same.

I had a hunch…I went to the front closet and there sat a pan of “cookies”.  See, that closet is cold and not insulated and if the recipe says to “store in a cool place”…then why wouldn’t she put the cookies there?  And once I got a look at the pan, there was even more clarity.

There is a fine physics involved in baking.  Baking powder and baking soda can’t be substituted one for the other.  Rice crispy cereal can’t be substituted with a puffed wheat cereal – or at least not without a very distinct result.  I gently reminded her that a Ford Fiesta is not the same as a Ford F-150 truck…but when she doesn’t really understand or comprehend she gets this look on her face and nods with a half smile like you do agreeing with a two-year old about some preposterous statement they’ve just made. To her it was all the same.  And in a way, it’s all the same to me too.

She just wanted to make some cookies for the Holidays.  I learned a valuable lesson.  I need to hear her words…listen to the intent behind them.  I need to stop my busy life and with grace – as much as is humanly possible -  just help her do those things that give her some sense of fulfillment.  I could have avoided this whole mess if I would have taken the time to be with her while she made those cookies she felt she needed to have in the house.  But I live on a teeter-tooter full of tensions…struggling to keep my balance between the things I want to do, should do, have to do and those that are my responsibility to do. Always straddling the center – never really in one world or the other – always somewhere in the middle.

I feel her slipping away – tired of things that once made her excited.  Maybe it is happening to me too – I haven’t decorated for the last three Christmases and if I stop to review I find the thread that I told the Fab Mrs. T about…this time of the year has become sad to me.  One year it was a Dec. 17th pink slip for the Dr., another was a Christmas morning visit with Billy that I called 911 when he couldn’t get out of his chair – (the paramedics were sure it was nothing but I stood there watching him have a TIA), another was spent in the hospital with Best Boy having his gut re-opened.

There will be new memories soon enough when Donny Diva is up and running around and I’ll be that Momo that decorates and bakes. I’ll get it back.  Right now I’m stretched…doing it for the Mrs. makes me not want to do the same here and have two messes to clean in January.  Mine own is mess enough any time of the year.

So here’s a big head’s up to Sister Sib and Nascar Guy about the cookies awaiting them.  Enjoy them with big smiles on your faces next weekend as you sit with her around the tiny little pitiful tree sparkling away in her TV room.  Know they were made with lots of love.  And please let me know if you find the peanut butter blossoms she supposedly made.

a moving day

I’ve been doing a lot of looking over my shoulder these days.  Moving always does that to me.  This one wasn’t my move but one I fully participated in.  The experience always has me thinking back over the 22 some odd moves the Dr. and I have made…some before Best Boy and Shop Girl were around – but most after.

I was about the age Shop Girl is right now when after 5 moves in less than 5 years I got a taste of a big move.  It was time to pack up our things for our overseas adventure in Spain.  Best Boy was two and a few months – Shop Girl a hearty 7 months old when a semi-truck pulled up to the front door to haul away the air freight shipment I had prepared.  Each box had to be weighed, measured, a bill of lading prepared in triplicate, customs paper work and off it went.  That sentence actually took me months to do and seconds to write.  I remember standing behind a screen door with tears running down my face from exhaustion and fear of a new life I knew nothing about – trying to explain to the 2 year old where all his toys had gone.

That was only the beginning.  I know a thing or two about packing.  The next handful of places never lasted more than 4 years and some as short as 3 months.  I could pack for a week or a month or a year at the drop of a hat.  A dozen years after that first trip over the pond, I watched as the things most precious to us were loaded into a 12 foot sea-worthy container headed back to the States with Spain at our backs.

Not one of them has been pretty.  Some I’ve been glad to move on and leave the particular space with a whole hearted “good riddance” – others with fond tears flowing but none without a good bit of trauma.  Everytime your life is dragged out of the dark cupboards and closets, basements and out from under beds it is traumatic.  To touch everything you own and visually and mentally assess it as it gets prepared for its new place is exhausting.

Shop Girl’s experience last week was no different…except maybe adding the stress of adjusting to less sleep than she’s ever had in her life as the mom of a month old baby and continuing to deal with the whack job of a landlord that started this whole mess. It was no wonder that in a brief pause between truck loads, with no one else around but me and Donny Diva – she collapsed into wrenching sobs when she looked at the chaos starting to take shape as a livingroom and she said, “I’m home!”

I knew what she meant.  She gets to start where it took me forty years to get to.  She gets to give Donny Diva a bedroom to call his own.  She won’t be playing Goldilocks like I did for most of my life.

It wasn’t a pretty move – a smooth move – an organized move.  One small U-haul truck, a handful of able bodied friends and family, the sunshine of a Saturday post-blizzard, the job got done…moving all the personal belongings of a new family from one rented space to their own 6 blocks away.  She has a long winter ahead to organize closets and decide where things should best go.

I wish that all this first-hand experience would have taught me to travel lightly through life.  I fear it hasn’t but I also detect a change.  I’m no longer responsible for Best Boy and Shop Girl’s things.  What is left in the basement will get offered then tossed.  They haven’t asked for it in 10 years – they probably don’t care.  But up until now – I didn’t feel like I had the right to throw away their past – the bits and pieces of the places we’ve lived.  We can’t drive by those apartments, tiny houses  and condos, the place where they planted a tree in the yard, point a finger to remember those days so I chose to drag some pieces with us.  I’m not sorry I did…I’m just ready to move on.

If I have learned anything from this last year of sorting through Billy’s life – it is that disorganization leads to waste…I buy another doo-hickey when I can’t find the one I think I have. In my effort to hold on to things that SOMEONE might need SOMETIME – others could be getting benefit from it now if I’d just get it packed into the car and drive to the closest donation drop box.

Oh, and Shop Girl…I’ll drop off your boxed wedding dress tomorrow.

For good visuals of how I’d like to live from now on..check out Shop Girl’s producer/musician friend Evan Slamka’s video with Marjorie Fair’s Empty Room and then be a good Do-Bee and donate a box of junk you keep dragging around.