man/dude/dawg

Hazel

A mother's day gift, of sorts, from  a very special someone that you don't get to know about just yet.  As for the dog, she chews my cords and pees on my carpet and refuses to let anything happen on the floor without her participation (her scrabble skills are lacking).  And she makes us really happy.

four months

when I was seven I started going along to church camp with my grandmother every Summer.  It was  an entire week of rustic dinners and nightly worship services that sometimes went on until dawn.  I wholly believed all of the words that floated into and through my brain during those weeks, but benefited more in their ability to buy me a week away from my mother and her husband beating on each other than I did from their message.

Each year my grandmother and I would drive up into the park together, an hours long session I would spend talking, and she would spend listening.  It was the high of having someone's undivided attention.  It was being in the presence of someone who believed in me, and loved me unconditionally, and had never once raised her voice at me.  On several occasions over the years, the thought crossed my mind that I would have to go on living a large portion of my life without her   at my side.  And so I collected pictures, and letters, and souvenirs of her always, all the while ignoring the voice inside of me that wasn't sure I would ever be old enough, and mature enough, to go on living without her.  I didn't know where to look, or if I would ever find, the strength to do anything at all besides curl up next to her and die myself.

The last time I had any notable contact with my grandmother was over two years ago.  She came back east for a thirty day visit, during which it was my job to care for her every weekday.  It was a miserable experience, and hyper emotional for both of us.  She left at the end of her visit having already said her goodbyes to me.  We stopped calling each other.  We stopped sending cards, and pictures.  We stopped visiting each other.  It's easy to look back now and see that she was weaning me off of her.  She forced me to talk and grow closer with my own mother, to rely on her instead of on my grandmother.  It worked, it seemed, because when I arrived in sacramento last spring, I was fully prepared to step up and see to her arrangements and wishes and details.  I was ready to let her go.  I knew i would be okay.

And I returned home as if from a business trip, focusing only on my mother picking up her own pieces.  I had emerged unscathed.  Today on a whim, I plugged the picture Cd from my trip into the laptop, and was struck with how much I miss her.  I thought of me as a little girl, wishing nothing more than to keep her in my pocket for forever.  I thought of me as a little girl, who knew I was wishing for the impossible, but didn't let it stop me.

  

So...

Can I buy a little more silence?  Just a few more days to explain where I've been?

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

thanks.  :)

Hi, Wayne.

If you need help finding anything, feel free to shoot me an email.

-Alison

Wednesday

I spent the last two weeks trying to figure out just how to go about explaining the process that is letting go of the most important person in my life.  The truth is that this whole chain of events was put into place almost four years ago, and that no one ever expected us to make it as far as we did.  She was supposed to have had six months. 

We left the airport that Wednesday afternoon and headed directly to the hospital, assuming that every phone call any of us received en route was the big one, saying that we had come close, but that she was already gone.  We'd been warned, and re-warned, and primed for her appearance...the bruise from her fall out of bed, the swollen fingers and leaking skin from her kidney failure, the shallow breaths and glassy eyes.  The room was hot and uninviting and required constant foaming and gloving and ungloving and refoaming and later that night, when everything was over, I stood in the bathroom deciding if I could ever wash my hands again.  Did I like the smell?  Could I live with it?  It ended up being a no.

And so you stand around for hours, taking turns in a clockwise rotation cracking jokes and making ticking noises and pressing on her cheeks, trying one last time to get her to open her eyes.  You cheer when she does, even if they remind you that no one is there.  Even if they try to convince you that her eyes have disconnected from any and all thought process.  Even if their minky-brown color has already started to cloud, you cheer, and immediately try to do it again.

We stood around a tiny room all afternoon, as doctors and nurses stopped by to remind us that she was dying, and each time more family would crowd into her room, until it was as long as anyone could handle standing there to watch tears and drool roll out of her face.  We invented an unofficial pecking order for private last goodbyes, and all left the room to wait for our turn.

My brothers and I were recently accused of being too close, and too dependent on not just each other, but on our mother as well.  I immediately argued that her dependence on us trumps any and all dependence we have on her, but we do, as a threesome of wayward siblings, certainly share a bond  and so the three of us stood there, encircling our grandmother, taking turns keeping our mother upright and facing the bed. And it was  thanks-giving.  It was laughing to the point of tears, it was poking and prodding and not allowing interruptions until we were okay with it all being over.  It took 25 minutes. 

It was dark outside by the time I was called back to stand watch over my mother, while they disconnected my grandmother.  It was 7:35 pm.  I stood, watching the heart monitor dance around 117 beats per minute.  I watched the saturation monitor blink a silent red rectangle.  I watched my mother and three aunts hold their breath.  I watched Devin fall in the corner at the conclusion of his mom-watching shift.  I watched the entire room progressively sigh as tubes came out, and IV pumps were turned off.  And then I watched her. 

I watched her calm down.  I watched her head stop thrashing.  I watched her chest stop shuddering.  I watched her lips part over and over while she took her last breaths.  I watched the bpm drop to zero, and buried myself into my brothers.  I listened to the ups and downs of the monitors until they came in to turn them off.  I watched the clock roll over to 8:02.  I watched the blood drain from her face, and down her neck while the minister prayed her away.  I tore the calendar page off of the wall, and my aunt called the nurse to come and remove the rest of the tubes and lines and catheters. "I want it all gone", she said, waving her  arms in the air, "Everything". 

And then we set about cleaning her up.  It was this strange form of auto-pilot, probably more primal than anything else, and it struck everyone, to just clean, and wipe, and prepare her for something none of us really knew much about.  It seemed perfectly normal, required even, to send her down the hall with blush on her cheeks and Vaseline on her lips and a fresh sheet draped across her arms to hide the bruising.  Like maybe if they knew she was loved, they could undo it.  Like maybe if we showed her one last time that she was loved, we would all be okay.  Like maybe it was our thank-you to her, albeit thirty minutes too late.

You leave the room with your arms full of stuff...clothing and cards and blankets and get-well-soon balloons...and your arms are so full that for a second, you can almost forget that you are being forced to leave behind the only thing in the room that you actually want.  And then you remember, and you have to go back and make sure she is still there.  You have to go back and make sure she isn't suddenly waiting for you, bright eyed and dressed in polyester pants.  On Wednesday, April 2, 2008, at 9:45 pm Pacific Time, Melba was not.

times up

She had the gift of stopping time and listening well so that it was easy to hear who we could become.
And that was the future she held safe for each of us in her great heart.  You may ask, what now?  And I hope you understand when we speak softly among ourselves and do not answer just yet, for our future is no longer the same without her.

don't say I never gave you anything

Download 152650.avi

twenty eight

When Matt turned thirty, I remember taking pause to consider the likelihood that when I arrived myself, I would be all set.  That I would just be waiting for thrity five, when I could, in theory, become prezident.  It seemed bleak to me, to be at a point where the surprises and the anxiety would have faded long before.  I thought there would be nothing but more of the same for forever and beyond.

Clearly, I'm not holding out much hope for that being the way it all goes down two years from now.  The thought of not knowing is exciting, if for no other reason than allowing myself to not realize the growing gap between my respective physical and mental ages.

I've learned a lot in the past year.  I've done a lot in the past year.  It is easy to look back to this time last year, and put the checks in the boxes (not those checks in those boxes, nadine), and see that nothing is as it was.  I have successfully re-worked my entire existance, but somehow managed to hang on to the good parts, albeit at times only with the assistance of gravity.

My family is convinced I have lost my mind.  My mother gets wind of a pilot friend, or a weekday when I am not reachable via even my cell, or dinner and a drink with someone whose identity I will not divulge, and she worries that what I am doing now is intentionally breaking my life.  And my marriage.  The life part is absolutely correct, but the marriage?  Come on.  That was *so* last October. 

Test everything. 

That's the flowery way I have chosen to refer to "intentionally breaking my life".  I think more folks should do it.  I think everyone should toss every stupid little piece of their arrived life up in the air, and catch only the parts they are certain that they can not live without.  I have six.

My Matt.  My Girls.  My peace.  My options.  My Devin.  My Slou.

And I've already caught those pieces.  One, namely Matt, I have several times come very close to dropping, and have dropped, even, but his placement on that little list of things I can not live without makes me always catch it after the first bounce.  And it does bounce.  Frequently.  And everytime, we find ourselves eventually back to okay.  Back to the friends that can't live without each other, but also can not live with each other.  It's a dance with honesty, and courage, and a promise to always be there for each other.  Even when one of us chooses to date one of the others' good friends.

This year has taught me the finality of actions, and how poor or in-explainable ones can reverberate uncontrollably longer than is necessary.  It has taught me how stubborn some are in their beliefs, and how I have to be moreso in my own to combat them.  It has taught me how ridiculous one's beliefs can be.  It has taught me how easy it is for people to place more stock in others than in themselves.  It has taught me to, especially when it comes to people, follow my instincts.

Still a quarter burried in carnage, at least it has been buldozed off of the sidewalk.  Bring it on, twenty nine.  I'll fight you, too.  I'll kick your ass.  I'll make you buy me a drink.

switch

The past few days I have been inundated with the number 117.  I think I've touched on that number here before, and don't really desire to again right now.  I see it every day.  But the past few days, it is everywhere I look, each time building on the time before, and I am hard pressed to decipher if this is a golden signal that things are going exactly as they should, or if it is the blinking light saying that something...quick...STOP!...is about to careen everything I know into oblivion.  The hour of the day has great influence over which of the two paths I acknowledge.

Matthew and I broke our relationship tonight.  Not the marriage part....but the other part, where neither of us could be without knowing the other would always be there.  The part where it was best if we renamed our marriage what it actually is.  Best friends.  I guess the road back to two can not be as smooth as we thought.  I guess I should have placed more stock in my gut feelings.  I guess I shouldn't have said yes, all the while my brain was silently screaming no.  I guess it changes when the list of involved parties starts to dance into itself.  I guess, just like I crave on any other platform in my life, everything can always change with this, as well.

I'm lucky that Devin is here right now.  His distraction has been exactly what I need.  His support has been exactly what I need.  On my nights off from the girls, we've taken to getting a drink and laughing hysterically at the chaos that is being a member of our family.  he makes fun of my porter and I make fun of his hard lemonade.  I'm starting to get it now, that family actually is something good.  That they are the people who will always be there.  That he is the person that will always be there.

I called him tonight, to talk me down, which ended up just amounting to him sitting on the couch while Matthew and I talked on the back steps, but I kept thinking that he was there, and that so many times over the past year, he could have moved a nanospace to the left, and he wouldn't be here now.

And so on the porch tonight, it became very, very clear that things between M and I are not as they seem.  it became very, very clear that the arrangement we came to, and the reasons we used to arrive at it, are not the blueprint for the direction M is heading.

And I'm strangely angry.  Maybe it's just now hitting me, or maybe it is hitting me all over again just harder.  maybe I am seeing the past ten years together as a solid chunk now; all of the pieces are falling into place; all of the little, tiny, easily overlooked things have rolled into a massive ball of goo, whose core was revealed tonight, and alarmingly void of regret.

And so tomorrow morning, after I drop the girls at school, and my "shift" with them ends, i will not see my house again until Saturday.  I will not see my girls, what they are wearing, or eating, or saying.  And on Saturday, when I return for my shift, it will be the last time I will do it.  They will bounce back and forth, and the two of us will have our own, 95% unrelated lives.

Our old house will be my house.  Our old car will be my car.  The counter in the kitchen that M refused to help me change, will be changed by me.  Just like it would have been anyways.

Saturday afternoon, the door to the last ten years will close for good.  I want to be sad.  I knw that at some point, I will be sad.  or maybe I won't.  maybe I've already gone there.  Maybe I will jump back to where I was once the anger subsides.

Broken.  Caput.  Maybe at some point, I'll actually miss him as a friend.  I'm near certain it will be quite a while...

bounce like rubber

Silence has two purposes here, and so it goes that the world blows up, and there is silence.  And then the world gets glued back together, and repainted, and someone puts all of the fish back in their pond, and again.  Silence.

The fish are all back in their pond.  I've spent so much time talking about the process in my real life, that the thought of replaying it all here just sounds awful.

Things are strangely back on track.  Granted, it's not the same track as before but alas, the smoke and flames have subsided, which has freed up way more time to do okey-dokey things.  Like hang out with friends, including Matt, and not have the conversation nose dive into cliche's and stigmas.  Unless we lead it there.  Which we do sometimes.

But mostly, we don't.  A large tribe of people, floating just higher than the excitement of the past few months.  And loving it.

(just to bridge the bad with the good...a useless post)

messages

I called my mom tonight, to tell her that devin had left a message on my machine, to say he was in Germany.

"I just want him here for Christmas," she said.

"I just want him done," I shot back.

He's done.  His year...our year...of waiting for phone calls, and emails...our year of not watching the news, has ended.

He'll be here soon.  We'll be side by side on barstools downtown, exchanging our literal and figurative war stories.  He is safe now.

cool.

those times we mentioned

Yesterday morning started with a very early meeting between me, matt, and becky, the divorcecounselor.  I question the use for an 8:30 therapy session.  My only thoughts before about say, 10 am, have largely to do with coffee, and how bright the world is, and these socks?  Did I wear them yesterday?

It's no surpise then, that the only regular openings she has are at the time of day when neither of us can function, or articulate, or really even care, frankly, about anything more involved than going back to bed.

Matt and I spent most of the weekend discussing everything.  Not everything like the events that got us here, but everything like the bigger picture.  We had those holiday parties, and blew them both off in the end for two seats side by side at the only local bar that no one we know goes to with any regularity.

The analyzing went back years.  It was ah-ha moments, and oh yeah moments, and in the end, it was realizing that this whole divorce thing is nowhere near as bad as everyone makes it out to be.  Granted, there are many cases where ties have to be severed, and legal counsel is required, and the authorities, too...but this, betweeen matt and I, is nothing more than the renaming of something that has never fundamentally wronged either of us, now changed its purpose in our common lives.

When have we ever regarded the other person as something more than a friend?  When has our own needs ever come after the needs of the other?  Waking up the morning after those two marathon sessions, I expected to see much more carnage.  I expected risidual anger, and resentment, and wounded hearts to surface and throw our whole philosophy out the perverbial window.  We had a plan...a master plan...a script, almost, for how best to break the Chabe duo's marital ties.  Both of us stand behind it.  it is fool proof.  it is genius.

And so we got up Monday morning, to go tell becky how awful the institution of marriage is.  To tell her how much it was not beneficial to matt nor to I.  We took turns sleepily outlining the scale used to weigh the pro's and cons.  We explained how this divorce was nothing more than lending absoluteness to a feeling both of us have harbored for years.  The only benefits of marriage that we could see were tax/insurance gains, and the supposed ability to get sex with a safe, prescreened partner at any time.

The money isn't enough for me.  I've already proven the existence of the second one outside of a marriage.  "Becky...what do you think?"

She told us of her own marriage.  A fourteen years long, wonderful, rewarding experience.  She tried, quite subversively, to put doubt in our heads.  She told us how breaking a marriage doesn't end your relationship if there are co-parenting goals.  She told us that we would always, on some level, be accountable to the other person.  "Fine," I said.  "But now, I don't have to wash his socks.  And he doesn't have to call apologising and feeling guilty when he works late or forgets he scheduled an extra band practice."

"So you two want an open relationship," she said.  We both sat there considering the advantages of remaining married, yet having multiple sexual partners.  Somehow, that marriage word still made the whole thing seem unappealing.  Go figure.  We left our session, and then sat in the Tim Horton's drive-thru, agreeing that maybe we weren't going to benefit any more from our divorcecounselor sessions.  We have one more after the first of the year.  Hopefully, we can't invent anymore trauma between now and then to make Becky a regular in our life.  besides, her shirt didn't match her sweater on Monday.  How can I trust someone to help me solve my life's problems when they get dressed in the dark?  Are they qualified?

That meeting Monday solidified for both of us that this thing we are doing is going to happen amongst ourselves.  I need matthew as my best friend, and him likewise, but experience is already showing us that outside influence is pre-programmed to disallow such nonesense.  Outside influence says we have to hate each other, and be wronged by each other, and yeah...I know I've done a fair amount of wronging him, but so has he, and these things aren't, as a whole, anything besides symptoms of a much larger issue for us.

This week's goal is to clean the ding-dang office out.  Very soon, someone is going to have to sleep in here.  This will be one of our's private space.  it will be the room to hide in if it is not the occupant's turn to take the girls to school.  Roommates, we decided, is the wisest way to proceed through the winter.  The rules are simple.  If it's your part of the week to care for the girls, don't call the other asking them to bring home milk.  Don't drink the other's beer unless they offer you one.  No sex in the house.  if you're gonna ask a question, expect to answer it yourself, as well.  Love the girls.

Maybe our decisions are nothing more than glorified deflection.  Maybe blaming archaic, illplanned institutions is easier than blaming each other, or ourselves, for the demise of our marriage.  And yet maybe, that M word has just had us on its shit list all of this time.  I was speaking with a friend about it the other day, and she was saying how the two of us are just not the marrying type.  It's not the religious connotations, or the gender connotations...it's the limit on options.  It's the limit on autonomy.  it's the thing that half of us need to get by and be our best, as well as the thing that stifles and embitters the other half of us.

Whatever.  it works for some folks.  Some folks, even, like my mother, have it work for them several times.  I'm all set.  I'm not losing anything in this, nor is Matt.  becky can take her lispy self home and watch survivor with her husband.  me?  I'm gonna go back to shaving my legs again.  Even though it is winter.

Becky

A little over a month ago, Matt made an appointment with a marriage counselor.  It seemed the appropriate thing to do, if for no other reason than to train ourselves in the art of not hurting each other.  A few days later, I found out about the baby, which negated any tri-colored vision either of us had at reconciling.  At putting off the inevitable for a few more years.

After the baby, I begain referring to becky as the "divorce couselor", which was still mildly funny to both of us this morning, when we met for our first session.  Sitting in her office, those first few moments where everyone is waiting for someone else to speak, I had this smirk on my face that I couldn't shake.  It's one of those things where the sum of all of the parts doesn't seem big enough to hold all of the pieces.  I can take a section, or a day, and explain it, but to relive the past year...to condense it all into something small enough to give to someone else...is impossible.  I passed the task on to matt.  And sat there, drinking my coffee.

It turns out that counselors don't just tell you what you need to do.  You can't just walk in, tell them everything, and leave with a slip outlining your next ten steps.  That was disappointing.  About thirty minutes into our meeting, the gloves came off.  Not in a violent, or horrible way, but it became very clear that Matt and myself are both still harboring a lot of anger.  His seems to mostly surround Blake, and not even our affair, but more my handling of things since being found out.  He erupted into this tangent, about me loving someone else, and still talking to that person, and it went on, and on, until Becky cut him off, to say that we were divorcing.  I wasn't his business anymore.  He didn't get to know who I had feelings for, or what I did with them, and it hadn't yet occured to me that I didn't owe him that information.  I don't have to divuldge my every thought to him anymore.

He was taken by her comment.  He got quiet, so quiet that I could hear the let-down in his brain.  I could hear the disconnect.  I could hear him slip away, if only just a tiny little bit.

Today was mentally packing our bags for the trip away from each other.  I fear how dirty it will get before it is all over.  I'm confident that we both have things inside, supressed for god knows how long, that will surface.  I'm afraid of them all, but eager to have them gone.

We have two christmas parties this weekend.  One is for my work, the other for a local young proffessionals organization we both belong to.  No one will even see anything different.  No one will see that things are not as they always have been.  It's not an effort to hide it.  There's nothing to hide.  I think we're both beginning to understand that it has been, quite literally, years since we were anything more than best friends (with benefits...).  Albeit without the benefits, I don't see that changing.  I don't want that to change.  He doesn't want that to change.  And so once a week, from now until who-knows, I'll sit with him in a room, decorated with crystals and tacky picture frames and worn self-help books, to try and hold on to what is left.

fun.

step back

I was sitting on the couch last night when Matt asked me if I was still blogging.  I've passworded him out along with everyone else, and while the events of late have pushed him to finally start his own blog, and use it, even, like an old whore, the goings on of 259 have caused me to do the exact opposite.  lately I've been thinking that eventually, I will have to open this back up.  I will have to remove the password block, and people will read my sordid tales, more people will, even, judging by the recent surge in Google searches for this space, and I'm not quite sure I'll ever be ready for that.  I'm not quite sure I'll ever be ready to admit, over a universal forum, the extent to which I lost my mind in late two thousand and seven.

Every morning starts with confusion.  And anger.  And frustration.  And sadness.  None of these come as a surprise to me, but the fact that still, after two months, I am forced to ride their wave day in and day out is a suffering, useless task that has no end in sight.  yet in the middle of all of this is one of the central reasons I initially decided to divorce my husband.  I wanted more kids, and knew he never would.  It shouldn't surprise me that this is how the world chose to give me exactly what i wanted.  I should have known better.  I do know better.  I can't explain anything away.  I don't know why.  I'm beginning to understand that more than likely, I never will.

And so as cryptic as everything has been here since I closed down, as raw, and new, and undigested, and unexplained as the last several posts here have been, I'm closing my eyes and turning everything back on.  Be gentle with me.  Be kind to me.  Eventually, I will explain it all.

the sixth third

the summer I spent in the loony bin, I temporarily shared a room with this girl who had something called dissociative disorder.  essentially, something I never was privy to had kicked her brain so hard that from time to time, her brain would still shut down because of it.  sometimes, she was lucid, like in a group meeting, and her eyes would hit the floor, and she would look up again, and it would be obvious that she had no idea what she had just done.  she had no idea she had just grunted the names of everyone in the room while playing the air guitar with a couch cushion and a washable marker.  Except rarely was it that comical.

I've thought of that girl many times over the last six weeks.  The last six weeks being the same six weeks I chose to turn the lives of four people inside out, shredded into little piles of half memories and blind futures.

I thought I would never bring this here.  I wanted what was already here to be enough.  i wanted to keep the rest to myself, as a secret forever, but as it turns out, that is just not how this has all chosen to go down.  I look back to August, and how it was great because things downtown were taking off, and Boot was heading for kindergarten, and work was rolling smoothly, and then all of a sudden there is this shift, and while I know I am the spark behind the shift, the far reaching arm of those actions is still, over a month later, not accessible to my psyche.

And it has all honestly been one big catastrophe, only its the kind that keeps growing, like a wildfire that jumps an ocean, and then the planet, and before anyone can even open their eyes against the glow, it is all over.  Like a wildfire.

Before the latest blow today, I was numb.  I was speaking with someone this morning, and when I told them that I was honestly about five days behind on processing things, they nodded and smiled.  But did they really understand what that meant?  Can you before it happens?

At some point the events since my last post will, I am sure, all find their way here.  I'm sure, also, that at some point the password block will come down, but that doesn't so much concern me right now.  It just all needs out.

Late last week, Matt met with someone, and they were shocked to hear the chain of events up until that point.  There concern, which they pointed out to him, was that bad things always happen in threes, and we only had five.  We had Matt's job spiraling away, we had the resulting money issues, we had me, saying I wanted a divorce, we had M's car being broken into and roughly $1,000. worth of musical equipment stolen.  And then we had my affair. 

And so as he sat there, telling me about the sixth third, and how it was going to come, I immediately knew what it was.  Only I didn't let myself think it.  I still won't, even though I know without a shadow of a doubt what it is.  I wonder what it will do to a situation that is already hanging on by someone else's thread.  I wonder what it will do to Matt, and to the girls, and to myself, even, although as the instigator I have a hard time allowing myself to have self pity.

I think of that girl...and I'm waiting to wake up holding the marker.  I'm waiting for the doctor to say it is okay, and that every time is happens, I am one time closer to it all being over.  Even though, we all knew, he lied.

Autumn

When my brother Brian was five years old, we lived in Coloraddo.  One night before bed, he went out on the deck to pet the dog, who just happened to be having her evening meal.  The dog was mean and crazy, but really cute and fluffy.  And big.  And so my brother, being the one who will never be able to see past the tip of his index finger, thought it was a good idea to bend over and show the dog a piece of food that had fallen out of her bowl.

Only the dog didn't so much appreciate it, and she attacked his head, and I remember being upstairs in my room listening to some Paulaa Abdool, and hearing the dog growl, and then him scream, and I remember how in the middle of all of that noise, I could make out the low, frightened whimper of my mother.  I remember thinking that that was the worst sound of all.

And I ran down the stairs to the first landing, and just jumped from the sixth stair, and he was standing right in front of the sliding glass door, his hand cupped over his eye, and I remember the blood, pouring out from between his fingers.

My mom laid him down on the dining room rug, and peeked just for a second, for just as long as it took to pull back his hand and replace it with a towel from the kitchen.  I called the neighbor, and she came over, and off we went to the emergency room.  The whole way across town, my mom kept apologizing, and saying that she loved him, and demanding that we not take the towel off of his eye.  The two of us sat in the back seat, more fearful of her catching a glimpse of the damage than we were of the damage itself.

Yesterday I sat at work, willing myself to believe that what i was doing was for someone else.  I filled in all of the appropriate forms, and at the very most last possible moment, filled in the address, and then Matt and I's names.  And then I printed.

And then, because I was alone and safe in my office, I went online to download our forms.  And I couldn't even bring myself to read the links before clicking on them.  I just clicked, and printed, and watched one by one as they were spit out of my printer, focusing only on the hum and racket of the various printing mechanisms.  I watched as the printing cue grew smaller, and smaller, and as the last page fell onto the pile, I grabbed a folder, and threw the whole lot into it.

I shoved them into my bag  I've refused to look since.  I've refused to accidentally drop a pen, or my keys, or my phone, anywhere near that pocket.

This morning, I thought of my brother, and that dog that ate his eyebrow, and i accepted that for now, I'm still en route to the ER.

thechurchroad

I bought my first car before I even had a license, and so it sat in the garage for three months while I waited out my learner's permit.  I used to go and sit inside of it, playing the stereo, wishing I could just take the damn thing out on the road without my step-dad grading every stop and left hand turn I made.

The first day i was able to drive to school, the urge to drive right past and keep going proved stronger than I could suppress, and so I wizzed down the street to the coffee store, purchased something, and continued heading out of town.  I made it about a mile down the road, and randomly turned right, and then right again, circling all around until I was back at school, albeit fifteen minutes late.

It quickly became a morning ritual, if I was giving friends a ride in the morning, I would drop them off first and off I would go to fly over and around a small, winding, rural strip of pitted concrete known as the church road.  I'd play tapes so loud that I couldn't even think over them, and drink my coffee so fast that it burned my tongue, and smoke so much that I thought I would never be able to breathe again.  I quickly began to rely on those twenty minutes of nothing.

And maybe it all started because for my whole life, I have never been able to NOT think.  I have never been able to just have a simple conversation with someone about a new pair of shoes, and not have the periphery of my mind running like wildfire.

Catching air out there, doing seventy over those little mounds of pavement, it was all I could do to concentrate while the music rattled the seats and coffee threatened to spill on my bag of books.  It quieted the internal dialogue.  It had me hooked.

While I got older and my life grew more involved, so did my dependence on the church road.  At times I would find myself out there three and four times a day, just lapping the outskirts of town, changing the music to fit whatever it was I was trying to not process.

Everytime, when I made it back in to the stoplight, I felt like I could handle things again.  I felt like whatever it was that was coming, I could make it work for me.  And if it didn't, I'd just do the whole thing all over again.  And again.  Until I was clear.

When I went back to work full time, I immediately fell back into my old habit, even the part where I am late every day, only I have shaved that down to seven minutes, now.

Yesterday morning was no different.  I dropped the girls at school, and headed out to my right turn, and then my other right turn, and the car could not go fast enough, or high enough, and the music could not be loud enough, and as if all of that frustration wasn't enough, I learned that they have closed off the last length of road in my circle.  They had stolen five minutes of my journey until sometime next April, to repair a bridge.

It was pain, and panic, and indecipherable, but maybe all of those things were just being projected onto the road.  Maybe, just maybe, the road didn't do anything wrong.

Thoughts again continuing, trying to find another way.  Driving.  Coffee.  Finding okay.  Making peace with myself, just to make sure that someone....anyone...can.

sandstorm

The Mighty M spent Columbus Day weekend on a 4 day trip with his uncle, climbing Mt. Katahdin.  He used to do it as a boy, and has talked about it fondly as long as I have known him.  He jumped at the chance to go.

The night before he left, I dropped the girls off at my mom's house, as I also had plans to run away for a few days with some friends.  We all had too much to drink that night, and it was pretty evident by noon on saturday that no one was up for a trip anywhere.  Matt was already gone, and so I left the girls at my mom's anyways, and set out to have a few days of R&R all by myself.  Only I didn't tell anyone that my trip had been cancelled.  I hid inside my house, refusing to answer the house phone or open the door.  It was, quite simply, a hiatus.

I took a long, hot shower, and then wrapped myself in a towel and sat on the couch for what seemed like hours, just looking around at all of the stuff that has magnetized itself to us over the past ten years.  We have always been good about keeping the stuff at bay, we throw stuff away, we give stuff away, we try to keep things neat.  The past year, however, it has built up, and maybe that should have been an indication to me sooner.  Maybe I should have taken THAT as my first red flag.

And so I was sitting on the couch, and became overwhelmed with the idea that every piece of everything in this house is soaked in memories built with my husband.  it was a feeling of drowning, and despair; it was the first time ever I have actually allowed myself to hear what my heart has been saying for so long.  I sat there hours longer, until my hair was nearly dry, unable to move past what I was hearing.  Could I do it?  Was I just hungover and not thinking clearly?  Was the anxiety that plagued me when Griffin was a baby returning?  And then, most importantly, could I ever really forget what I had just realized?  Could I get up off of the couch and go back to the way things were when I went to bed the night before?

I could not.  I could never go back.  I could never erase it. 

I love my husband very much.  I care about my husband very much.  I count him as one of my closest friends.  I think that if we had taken things slower, and that if we had been older, maybe this could have gone on forever.  Maybe I could still be 100% sure that I am where I need to be, and likewise for him.

I've spent almost an entire month allowing myself to think.  I kept thinking that maybe I was in shock, maybe a few days would pass, and I would see some trigger somewhere and it would send me back to him.  What I have had to accept is that there is not going to be a trigger.  There is not going to be a second moment of clarity to wash away the first.  I simply have to let him go.

I'm not hiding it very well anymore.  The twelve pounds I've lost from not being able to eat aren't helping.  The hours of laying in bed unable to sleep, until all I can do is get up and busy myself aren't helping either.

I just don't know how to tell him.  I don't know what kind of person I have to become to walk into a room and turn his world inside out, with no hard evidence or catastrophe with which to back up my request.  I don't know how, years from now, I will explain to my girls why I screwed everything up.  I don't know anything else right now, besides that I have to do it.  But this is the sort of thing I always write about.  Listen to your heart.  Take a deep breath.  Jump.  And now, I wish I could be a hipocrite.

The other day, I was challenged to say in one sentence why I needed a divorce.  I racked my brain trying to come up with something terrible, or important sounding, and after sitting there making six or seven false starts, it left my mouth and made so much sense to me.  All of these years together, I have done nothing but take care of Matt.  I'm a nurturer by nature, I know that, but somewhere in there things have crossed, and our dependence on each other, especially his on me, has grown wildly.

And so as pure as I can make it, I need a divorce because my husband will do whatever I want.

He will follow me forever.  He will never allow himself to see me any way besides perfect.  He will swallow any desire, or dream he has if he believes it will not please me, and I can't be responsible for that.  I can't stand by him for the rest of our lives waiting for the moment he realizes that he could have done so much more.  I need to be his friend.  He needs to be his own person.  As much as he is going to deny it, he can never be that person if he is attached to me.  Every ounce of change he makes will always and forever be because I told him to.

I will never be prepared enough to tell him this.  I don't even know how I can live while he comes to understand this.

I reckognize what an asshole I sound like.  I am wholly aware of how calous, and evil, and self absorbed this all sounds.  I know I am over simplifying this here.  I know that I will not be able to completely explain what has happened to my brain until I am forced, by matt, to be accountable.  I know that even then, this will not make total sense.  But I know what I feel, and doing anything else besides what I am doing would be a dis-service to both of us.

And its this weird combination of numb and raw, like falling off of your bike, after the spray of bactine.  It's a saddness like I have never known.  It's a freedom like I have never known.  I wonder if I can handle any of it.

(I can't find the alternative.)

five and one half

James is a very precise charachter.  She's the one who has to initate conversations on the playground, just to be sure they go the way she wants them to.  She accepts that things just are a certain way, and then that way becomes as concrete as tombstones, or banana bread, or McDonald's cheeseburgers.  Things don't change.

She is also very observant, and she catalogues information away inside her head, and then it never leaves.  She assumes that the whole world operates this way, and that is fine, until I do something like take a different way home from school or walk up the stairs with my left foot first.  I know kids are sponges, but this goes far beyond just being a sponge. 

The other morning, we were getting ready to leave, and she was putting on her shoes while i got Griffin ready, and when I came back to tie them, they were tied.  "I did it myself," she said, like maybe she has always been able to do it, and I was just too stupid to ever ask.  Cool.  Very exciting.  Now get in the car.  We're later than usual.

So that night, I'm picking her up from kindergarten (not sure how we got to the big K...), and her teacher is just getting ready to go, and we're talking for a few minutes and James does it again.  She ties her shoe.  her teacher starts telling me how she is very anal about the shoe tying, about how James thinks she does it best, and makes sure the knot is perfectly tightened before moving onto the next task.  I explain that James is weird and bordering on OCD about things, and off we go.

Driving home, she randomly starts saying the pledge of allegiance, and so I turn down the stereo and am listening to her.  It hit me again that she is growing up FAST, that she knows all of these things, and I don't even have a clue what they are, and I'm feeling a little sad about the whole thing, like I've chosen to miss all of these things, and home school?  Yeah!  Maybe I should home school!

I ask her what else she keeps in that head of hers.  I want her to recite love poems to me.  I want her to sing songs and puke out more dinosaur facts about dinosuars I have never even heard of.  But she does none of that. 

"A few good things," she says, "and lots of bad things that I'm not supposed to say".

Its funny, because since she is so anal, I sometimes forget that she is still half me.  Forever.  Granted, it's the sarcastic, smart-ass side, but it's something. 

Unable to pass up the "bad things", I ask her what it is that we don't say.  I'm waiting for glory-filled f-bombs.  I'm waiting for fat cow, douche bag, and son*of*a*bitch.  But those?  Those would just be ordinary, and james is far too evolved for ordinary.  As quickly as she gave us "Cat Master The Flash" she cracks open her head, rolls out her tongue and yells "Get out of here or and I'll destroy your car!"

Which is puzzling, because we don't even have cable, and never have guests that require me to throw them out, but it is also intriguing, and promising.  The next time we head to a big city, James is *SO* invited. 

eggs

I give back to humanity by dragging the girls with me on impossible errands.  I tell myself that I need to do it.  That the deli section of the supermarket, and the waiting room at the cable company, and the combined ten thousand square feet of our local gap stores all NEED me to bring along my children.  And not because they are nice to look at, or smell good, or are really good at spotting thieves or anything.  I do it because in each of these places I take them, there are teenagers.  The kind who make uber-high marks in school and work their allotted twenty hours a week bagging groceries and french fries.  I do it for these good kids.  Because one of those classes they aced, all the way back in their freshman year at the local high school, was health class.  Health class, as we all know, is a sort of final attempt at ridding young people of the urge to do really fun things. Like drink.  Do drugs.  Have sex.  Eat cheeseburgers.

And we all know that the best way to do that is to scare the kids.  You show them pictures of meth freaks, and you pass around slides taken of a diseased lung.  You bring in reformed teen moms to talk with the students and cry, and tell them how she just gave up on herself when the school wouldn't let her bring her breastfeeding newborn to prom and THAT IS WHY SHE NOW WEIGHS FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS.  Sorry.  I really needed to yell that.  cause I didn't make it up.

To further reinforce all of these teachings, you dole out a bag of flour, or a raw egg, and turn the lot of prepubescent punks loose into the world for a whole week to be parents.  And they stamp your egg so that you can't eat that one the next morning with your orange juice and replace it later.  They check your egg everyday for signs of abuse, and then in the time it takes to get through one chapter in your algebra class, the little experiment is up and "now see?" they say, "being a parent is nothing you want to do at your age!  What if that were a real baby?  What would you do then?"

I would have smacked you for drawing on its forehead, that's what I would do.  But I have children now, as we all know, and I swear that every time they act like children, I still think about that egg.  That sweet, quiet, angelic little ball of protein.  To think that I didn't even give it a name.  Or a gender. 

And so the need arises, with great immediacy, to journey out by the mall, and roll into target for some rolls of toilet paper, or some new shampoo, and yeah.  I pile the girls into the car.  And you know what they do?  They run into each other and fall down.  They try to hug displays of stuffed horses and bring the whole damned pile down.  They sit together in the back of the cart having the "nu-uh.  I did it!" battle.  Loudly.  And then Griffin pees her pants.  And sometimes, while I swear at them under my breath, and threaten them with things such as making them live in the backyard, I look up and down whatever aisle we are stuck in, and laugh a little bit, under my breath.

If, by chance, the lady today from target is reading this...the one who got the wad of ABC gum flung into her cart while I tried to find the lids to the under-bed storage containers...you looked so put together, while I booked ass out of that aisle, and I just wanted you to know that someday?  Someday your own kids will do so much worse.  You can only hope they do it back to me.  Because me?  I will understand.

And laugh.

fortunate son

Alison Chabbe to playinarmy,  Aug 23, 2007 1:13 am:

I just realized that you should be ramping up to coming home, but that you won't be.

I feel like an ass that I wasn't sending packages every week, and emailing more, and talking to you...

please come home safe.  i know that you will never tell us how things really *were*, but I know folks, and I think I get it all.  I think...

Thank you for everything, for always.  take care.

xoxo

A

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playinarmy to Alison Chabbe, Aug 23, 2007 2:11 am:

Sis,
After reading you email I thought about two things... are you apologizing because you need more $$ or are you drunk and feeling bad... either way, don't worry about not sending me things every week... you actually were the one that emailed me the most out of anyone back home, so for that I'm thankful... and don't worry when I get back you can make it up to me by buying me usless shit that I don't really need... i.e. Xbox360 lol... two more things... Did mom ever get her flowers?  and just for you to know I should be home before the new year, but I'll let you know more as we get closer to leaving this shit hole... and I thought Maine was a shit hole... boy was I wrong... loves
give hugs and kisses to the girls...

D

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Alison Chabbe to playinarmy, Aug 23, 2007 1:44 pm:

you are such a douche.  I was neither drunk nor apologizing for needing more money.I simply wanted to make sure you knew that I hadn't forgotten about you.  Mom did get her flowers.  She asked me to email you and say thanks, and to let you know that her computer is broken and that she has mentally shut down completely, so taking it to the fucking technician is about as hard as shitting out of her ear. 

(Everything after the word "broken" was my own interjection...)

Woo-hoo to new years!

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playinarmy to Alison Chabbe, Aug 24, 2007 3:52 am

loved the email... anyways on a serious note... how is mom doing... i know that she's been hitting rough waters, but my concern is will she make it through this one... the last time she went down we all paid for it... let me know if there's anything i can do or need to do before i come home...

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Alison Chabbe to playinarmy, Aug 24, 2007 10:52 am

honestly?  the temptation is very real to seek guardianship over her.  She went and saw a shrink, who put her out for the rest of the year, and told her it was okay, because she was just having trouble coping with civilian life.  So he pretty much just gave her a friggin permission slip to keep blaming everything besides herself for her problems.  Thanks, shrink-man.

She won't take medication, but she has stopped throwing away the scrips.  Monday night, BJ came over and was hanging out, and then we all went to bed, and the next morning when I got up there was a message on my machine from her at 2 am, and she was all loopy and crazy sounding, saying that we had gone to bed and left a light on, and we should get up and turn it off, and she was just on the way home from the ER and thought she's see what we were up to, and that the ER told her she had vertigo.

So the next day, Sandy was driving Naya back to the airport in Manchester, and they left and then mom was just laying around saying she was so tired, BLAH BLAH BLAH, and me and the girls went to leave, but Jared called my cell and told me to wait because mom was coming out and she needed something.

She wanted me to drive her around to pay bills, because she wasn't "coping well" with the vertigo.  I told her I would, and I swear to god, I wanted to fucking leave her at every stop we made.  I ran in to pay her cable, and my cable, and just as i was leaving she came stumbling into the office like a friggin lunatic, with her hair going every which way and squinting like she hadn't been outside in three years.  And she started talking loudly about how she didn't feel good, but came inside because sometimes they won't let you pay someone else's bill for them.

And I was like, "woman....back to the car!"

I was seriously fucking pissed off, and she knew it, and so for the rest of the afternoon, she was miraculously much improved from her vertigo.  The whole time we were out, I just kept having flashbacks to mom carting grandma around, and how she would act all dramatic about having to faint or pee or pray, and how pissed mom used to get, and it occured to me that I was TOTALLY reliving my childhood as an adult, which really?  I'm seriously all fucking set with that.  You?

She is incapable of making any decisions, besides the one where she decides it is okay to ask every person with a penis if she can borrow 20 thousand dollars.  She actually told me that she wondered if MY boss would hold a loan for her, and I was like, "if they're doling out cash, it's going to me" lol.

Having Sandy and Naya here didn't really help much, but she's just so paranoid and into being the victim that everything anyone does is because they are out to get her, and better than her, and how it's not fair that everyone has an easy life compared to her.

Which is funny, because I have a friend who is raising an 8 year old by herself because his dad was blown up in Iraq, and the last time I went to denny's, our waiter was freaking out because his 4 year old had just died in a car wreck and he had to work EXTRA to pay for a funeral, and I'm just trying to figure out how these things are EASIER than accepting the fact that you have chosen to live your life as a man-eating, close-minded rage mongrel, and that maybe after 50 years there would be a consequence or two stemming from that.  Like lots of divorces and a few spoiled children and maybe not too many friends.

And this all sucks, because she was like, my number one babysitter, but Matt put the kabosh on that after she got her shrink/medical leave.

So yeah...rush right home, honey!  The coffee's on...

clarifications

The new Interppol is awesome, even though I have had it for almost a month, and have only been able to push myself through to the sixth track.  They can't all be easy, now, can they?  It is definitely worth the time it takes to get into it.  You should try it.  Really.  "No I in threesome" is the current repeat.  Anyhoo...

I started this blog alongside a tribe of scrap-land residents.  It was the thing you were supposed to do, and it was fun because everyone read everyone else, and commented, and I'd meet folks for the first time, and they would know all of these really cool tales about me and strip clubs, and it was great!  Awesome!  Fabulous!

And then we moved back home, and had the house, and maybe I got busy living my life instead of recreating it in letter sized pages with obscure context and supremely coordinated papers.  I lost the scrap-bug, they would say.  I stopped submitting to magazines, and entering contests, even the big ones, and what I realized was that I didn't miss it.  The detox lasted about as long as it takes me to walk from one end of my house to the other, which equates to about 600 square feet per floor.

I still don't miss it.  I dabble here and there with re-entry, but generally?  I'm all set with that.  Never has something, besides a child, sucked me dry on a continual basis, and this, I am sure, is reading like a hair flip, "i'mbetterthanyou" exit, but truly...who cares?

So...digressing.  Removing myself wholly from scrap-land left me with a blog that I can't stop pushing keys for, but about the same time as I realized this, typepad made these things called widgets, and for fun I hooked one up to my blog to monitor traffic, and that?  That is scary.

Traffic is good, I suppose, but what really alarmed me was the little page called "came from", and for quite some time it was full of google searched for local swimming pools, and adult diapers, and Banggor's juicy gossip, and what I realized by watching all of these search engine hits is that I don't want to be an expert on any of these things.  I don't want random people searching for ET movie set relics to stumble here and gawk.

The simplest solution I could think of was to just start misspelling keywords.  Always.  Which is why Nadine has had to learn the new way to spell my fair city.  And why I chair a steering committee for a bunch of unpronounceable names.

To speak for my solution's success...it is just that.  The downside?  Y'all get to read words that are spelled wrong repeatedly.  Learn to dig it.  Embrace the {reclaimed} anonymity.  uh-huh.

methods

This morning, I stopped at the grocery with the girls to pick up flowers for James' retiring teacher.  It made us late, and so when I got there, I had already resigned myself to sliding into work on the outside of 9:30.  And maybe it made me linger, or maybe it made me more willing to stay once I had arrived, but while dropping glove off in her room, her teacher called me back, to ask a very strange question.

I know her teacher only by the complaints I lodge to Matt against her.  Most of them are catty, and unfounded, but the mom in me has always felt that maybe she didn't have my black/white, emotion driven ideal of people-raising as a foundation.  I mentioned unfounded, right?  Good.

She wanted to know if my office had any properties with owners who would be willing to work out a rent to own relationship.  I made the funny raised eyebrow face to her, because she has spoken on several occasions about the uber-house her and her mate are building together.  When I say uber, I mean roughly three times the normal, everyday house value for our area.  Uber.

So I asked her what had happened to the uber house, assuming she had uncovered a bum contractor, or encountered a setback with the city, but instead she went honest with me, and it blew me away.

Her man, it turns out, took the opportunity last weekend to beat the ever loving shit out of her, for a reason she still can not understand, and I kneeled there around the snack table listening to her whispered story, and it scared me in ways I can not explain, because for reasons time did not permit me to know, her guy decided to unleash testosterone on her, after four years of remarkably calm and promise-building history.

It's funny that I only come here anymore to unload baggage.  I have no problem processing the good and the up and up, day to day actions.  I never give them a second thought.  Sitting here now, envisioning her hiding out in a shelter awaiting something to happen that no one really understands...it shakes me.  To think that she embarked on this battle, alone, over a week ago sickens me, and has gotten my brain working, calling up connections within my office, begging agents for this or that...I get it now, that I am nothing more than a bleeding heart.

Yet I am also the queen of turning things around, and by the time I could appropriately relay all of this to Matt tonight, my panic had turned to promise.  I am a Chabe, after all.  It will be okay, I told myself.  Better now than later.  Air.  That.  Out.

For parallel structure, I caught half of Opprah tonight.  The show had something to do with being thirty.  It had everything to do with not being where you thought you should, and towards the end, there was this guest who really...had my day not gone the way it had, I would have blow off as middle aged and dumb.

This lady got to thirty, and didn't like what she saw, and so she wrote her own obituary.  "No regrets," she said, and I believed her, and she decided right then who she had to become, and I sat with the tv volume set to loud, hanging on her every word.

Matt and I don't maintain many close relationships.  We've stopped believing the reason is because it is bad, and have shifted the thought process to us merely being too intense for most people.  That isn't even a lofty, flowery way of putting it.  We are intense people.  We don't have drama or anything, but we expect a lot of people intimately involved in our lives.  We don't live the way you are4 supposed to.  This woman, apparently, doesn't either.  But she was much more elegant in her interpretation of our philosophy.  I dug it.  I nodded my head to it, and at one point blurted out "YES", which made my children think it was okay to grab the kitten by his neck.  ( it is not)

The framework for our lives is not a series of goals.  There are not milestones, or victories, but instead there are boundaries.  And listening to said housewife Opprah chick, I heard the framework for what we have always believed.  You have to know where you need to end up.  You have to have the clear picture, of sixty years from now, and you have to feel the emotion of it, and you have to accept that not every moment of your journey on its behalf will be a step towards it.

Making way for hiccups, and monkey wrenches, has done nothing but good for our respective journeys.  it is the Old Man and the Sea, who brings nothing home but the skeleton of a marlin.  Make.  It.   Your.  Journey.

Marrying my life ideals to the events of this morning should be much easier.  I want to sit her down, and explain the beauty and hope of rumble strips.  I want to end it, and help her walk her bags out of the shelter.  I want her to open the door and see what I see.  Nothing has to change everything.

That is HUGE, I am told.  I don't see it, because I care so little about so much, but Matt and I are both confident that our children will leave our house someday, with a dream for their future, and it will not just be an education, or a mate.  it will be success, measured in a list of really good ideas, checked off one by one.

That, I believe, is power.

No...

...it is not a puppy, Moriah.  Closer, though.  Baby steps...

My mother and I had long overdue plans to meet for lunch on Friday.  We used to do it twice a week at least, but trying to coordinate an hour's break from two very unpredictable work schedules makes those days a distant memory.

I started to close down at work to meet her, and my cell phone rang, and it was her, calling to say she had gone out into the mall to speak with someone, and saw this old lady with two kittens she was trying to get rid of.  I've been joking for almost two years that my children are my pets, but lately they have both been so un-baby the joke was turning into more of a sad excuse.

I told her I would head over right then, and to have the woman wait for me, and I would try and get permission on the way.  Matt was not having any of it.  He's gotten used to my mid-day calls pleading for a kitten.  I've gotten used to his saying no.  Only a few weeks ago, we discovered that we may have a resident mouse, or at least  a vacationing one, and that?  THAT was my golden ticket.  We needed a mouser.

So meet the kitten. 

I picked the girls up early on Friday.  I told them I had a surprise, and told them it was something small, and smelly, and that we used to have.  Griffin, excersising her genius once again, guessed a kitten.  James was sure it would be a flower.  Or a pool.  Or a new plate.  Puzzling, indeed.  I told them that when we got to Target, they would know because the first aisle I would go down would be THE aisle.

I wish I would have had the camera.  Boot was in disbelief, blinking and asking a thousand questions, needing to know the color and where he came from, and "DID DADDY SAY YES?!?"  I took them to meet the kitten, and asked james what she thought a good name would be.

Everyone knows that you should never ask a child an open ended question like that.  You're supposed to name the thing while driving it home, and tell the kids he already had a name when you got him.  And then make that name romantic and proper.  I was going to go with Graham.

"Cat Master The Flash," she said, like she had been storing the name for ten thousand years, waiting for that moment, and because kids get so few choices in their free, sticky lives, that is his name.  Cat Master for short.  In a sing-song sort of way.  Like maybe we are luring him out to eat him.

He's a good little kitty, now that he has been properly rid of fleas, and his claws have been trimmed, and he is on an appropriate diet of soggy kitten food.  Maybe, when no one is around, the Might M almost digs him, as well.  Maybe.

   

it goes

I've started this post umpteen times, and each time deleted it trying to get at the core of what I want to convey.  I assume this will be the case this time, as well, but if it doesn't all get out soon, I wonder if the magic will lessen.  (it won't)

A few weeks ago, after a rock show downtown, I found myself sitting around drinking beers with the venue owners.  I was drunk, and high off of my trip to the roof of their building, and because the sun was rising quickly in the sky, I poured my heart out to one of these men, unleashing my feelings about this town, and the gift this venue affords teens in our area.

Maybe it was because i used to be a teen in this town.  Maybe it was because I remember the impact of Banggor's seen and not heard mentality.  Maybe the beer made me strong, all the while still being weak to the memories that drove me so far from home eight years ago.  Maybe it was luck.  Maybe, it was ever thing.

I left that night with a secret in my pocket, that now it is safe to share. 

Tucked into a corner of downtown Banggor is a duo that works for free seven days of the week.  They take donations for their thrift store, and hand over all of the proceeds to buy food for their food cupboard, which serves the larger metropolitan area.  They have done this for almost seven years, because it needs to happen, and because they want, and need, for it to work.  For some reason, this wasn't enough for them, and so they have opened their doors to local artists, and musicians, and every Friday and (sometimes) Saturday for the past few months, the Chabe Four have hiked downtown and watched as talent after talent has come to rock the house.

This isn't a high ticket affair.  The fliers every week, with a couple of exceptions, are full of names I have never heard of.  Most of it is just not my taste in music.  I cringe and I laugh and then I stop to remember being fifteen, and arty, and stifled.  And that is the magic.  This is the kids that don't play sports, and don't have the familial backing required to believe that they can do anything they set their mind to. 

And so the collective we, that sit up until morning bouncing dreams and methods and ideas off of each other, do it because someone that was supposed to do it decided that it wasn't worth their time.  Only it would have been, for them, and in their absence, I am lucky to see what they could not.  The experience has forever changed the way I view people.  What I have learned is that the majority of times, when my instincts tell me to walk away, I am better off to not.  The gifts, and genius, housed in so many of these people is incredible, and to think that if not for that big, rundown building in the middle of the city, I never would have known.

Last Wednesday, I sat down with the owners and a small group of people, and while I poured wine into donated champagne flutes the word was spread that I would be heading up the steering committee.  I actually had to ask Google just what a chairman does, and what a steering committee does, and while I was there I also read my horoscope, where I was relieved to learn that no one in my immediate future would be playing the "ha ha! just kidding!" game with me.  Because that?  That would have been awkward.

I don't have a lot of money.  I don't even have a lot of time but, for all the complaining I have done about this place since my family first moved here, the least I can do is offer what I can to help correct all of that.  The immediate challenges are, of course, money.  I'm ramping up to hit the pavement for donations, and as far as I can without getting arrested, "no" just will not fly with me.

I am not a good example of how to conduct yourself at the age of fifteen.  I wouldn't even say I am a good example of how to conduct yourself at the age of 27.  What I am is someone who gets how unimportant most things are, so long as you are honest, and willing, and dedicated to whatever it is that you need.

I need this.

genius alert

never mind, dudes.  I figured it out.

and also, on a side note

I have a new banner, that I can NOT get to show.  If you see it, or can lend some tech-support, I'll be your BFF.  thanks.

breathing it all in

This morning while the girls and I were trying to get out the door, a freaky yellow bug on the screen caught my eye.  I called the crazies back up the stairs, and we all gawked together.  I took care in shutting the door so that it wouldn't get inside, and we took off to, respectively, not kiss boys, not pee our pants, and sell some freaking houses.  I stopped in for a minute at lunchtime, and the bug was still in the same spot, and so I stuck my car key in his wing to test for life.  He began a free fall and caught himself on a panel in the back door.  (Someway, I just felt it was a boy...)

Fireflies.  I didn't figure it out until tonight, after dark, when this orange orb began swimming towards me through the air, and I had to talk myself out of thinking I was about to be absorbed into an alien mothership.  It was just a flicker, for less than a second, but you would not believe the thoughts you can cram into so little time when you think you are about to be impregnanted with stale, neon green sperm.  Clearly, I am tired.  Why would it be stale?

I don't think I have ever seen a firefly before.  If so, it has been years and years to the point that my jaw was again required to hang loose at my knees and will them to do it again.  Mid-summer, six months back to normal, and you can tell.  We've adjusted.

I unofficially sold a house today, in record time, in a manner that reminds me that not everyone I meet has to be an asshole.  It seems like such an overstatement to me, if I don't stop and think about nine tenths of my interpersonal encounters since the turn of the year.  I won't even begin to explain it here, but to say that there is much to be said for someone who can just be good.  I don't even mean in a philanthropic way, in being bigger than yourself, in being a force of positive change.  I just mean being GOOD in everything you do, and being aware of the places your name can take you before you ever walk into a room. 

I tell clients all of the time that I left this town pounding fists into my palm, swearing I would never be back.  It flows off my tongue like drool, and without fail, they always wait to hear the sad tale of what brought me back.  They want to hear that I couldn't make it out there.  They want to hear stories of stolen bus tickets, and then of rebirth, within the safety net that only a hometown can provide.

But that isn't it.  All those years we were gone, with littles growing up at our feet, and the wheel spinning on principal...it just happened, one day, to stop being worth it.  And like a squirrel at your bird feeder, home grows on you anew.   

And then we realized that all of those things that drove us away are still here, and thriving, and torturing a whole new generation of kids who, god forbid, have dreams.

In a half-lit corner of this place, all of that is changing.  I am thankful that both the Mighty M and I have  been given the opportunity to be a part of it.  I'm not divulging specifics yet, but it is huge, and exciting, and quickly becoming the something of a spark in all four of us.

AS you can imagine, sparks take energy, and the vast majority of ours has been redirected towards it.  Please bear with us.  The lack of presence here is more than worth the wait.

xoxo

Friday, June 8th

The end of May, I borrowed the gumption of a Lark and told the babysitter, as plainly as possible, that I was giving my two week notice.  This babysitter, I should clarify, was the owner of the in-home place I had been stashing Glove away at since mid-October.  I appreciate her.  I am so thankful that I was able to find her, and that she took such good care of my girl all day. (there's a BUT coming)

But Griffin was falling behind.  I know that sounds pretentious and freaky when speaking of a two year old, but the truth of the matter is, she was the oldest of six toddler girls there, and the lack of potty-trained, cable-free influences was turning her into a...er....heathen?  Sure.  We'll go with that.  A Heathen.

So June eight rolled around.  Griffin's very last day of daycare.  Less than two hours after I dropped her off, I got a call on my cell phone, from the sitter.  These calls have happened with some frequency since the girls left the nest, but every time I have ever looked down at my cell, and seen those two phone numbers, my heart has stopped.  For nothing, it turns out.  knockonwood.

This call was to say that a (still unnamed but identified by griffin) baby had pulled at griffin's glasses, and broke them off of her face.  My first thought, of course, was sharp plastic near eyeballs, and that maybe this would be a dangerous story, one full of blood and blindness and unrepairable frames that had almost become a third child in the past six months.   Like I said...those numbers freak me out.  Maybe I was in alarm mode.

The kid was fine.  Panicked that her glasses were gone, and she couldn't see, but no blinder than when I had dropped her off.  (that is almost funny)

I drove to the daycare and snuck into cubby-land to retrieve them, thinking a paper clip or something short of tape could repair them.  I begged Lenzcraffters to throw me a bone, I bought crazyglue and epoxy and by lunch time, had pretty much resigned myself to her glasses...those little brown things with the blue tint...being beyond repair.

Which ended up being okay, after the replacement discount at the above mentioned retailer.

I begged and pleaded with the woman...the same woman who fit griffin last winter...to let me keep her original frames, and after some bribing, a few tears, and a hefty amount of sulking, she slipped me this little lens-free pair of spectacles as she brushed by me coming out of the lab.  They sit in the cupboard now, like an old friend, and when I open the door to grab the rice or pasta or whatever, my eyes keep falling first to them.

I almost made it five years before hearing that something was wrong with one of my children.  I don't even mean a big thing.  I mean anything.  We had colds, one flu...but really, birthmarks under clothing were the closest thing to imperfection in my life as a parent.   I don't write this, or think of this, and not think I am lucky that THIS is the something in our lives.  I know we have gotten off luckily in our journey.

Big or small, finding out something is wrong with your child changes you.  It makes you question every time you ever held your breath, and every time you didn't hold it longer.  It takes every thought you ever had, and interrogates it, and spits it out amidst algorithms and Latin phrases, and it doesn't care if any of it ever makes any sense to you.  Because it never will.  It knows that. 

I remember feeling guilty in December.  I remember offering to drive home, so I could take my mind off of it for another hour.  I thought I should have seen something sooner.  I thought I should have spent less time complaining when she cried, I should have spent less time pushing her onto grandparents and brothers and anyone else, just so I could catch my breath.  I should have put that energy back into her, because then?  Then she wouldn't have gone two years without the ability to discern her mother from a pile of laundry on the couch.

And I stood in the mall, with the belief that the only way to start to make this right for her was to pick out the best frames there, regardless of price, or insurance, or it being the week before Christmas, and the oil-tank being a hair above the 1/4 tank line.

And we did.  And I vowed then to make it all up to her.  To forever forget the absolutely awful newborn and infant she was.  To stop holding as evidence my pregnancy with her...the near losses as well as the early arrivals...to just go forward following her lead...right there, I swallowed it all, and had yet to look back..

But now, I open the cupboard...and it all comes back to me. 

Self-check?  My guilt is almost gone.  Her eyes are improving.  Soon, I think, I should move them.  I can move them.  Maybe even tuck them away. 

Our old friends.

thank you.

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