Grief and celebrations

Riley with Freddie

There’s a warm glow radiating from the dining room. I can see it from where I’m sitting outside in the dark. I haven’t moved in an hour. It wasn’t dark when I landed on the sofa outside, but it engulfed me and I feel invisible. I like feeling invisible. But I don’t understand the warm glow inside my house. It looks so inviting and I can see the family photos on the walls. I can see the green impasto painting I bought on Etsy, its swirls drawing one’s eyes around and around. You can’t see the dust from here or the cob webs. Everything looks nicer from outside when you peer through the windows. It doesn’t look like the house of family with a dead child.

It also doesn’t look like the house of family whose daughter is celebrating her 16th birthday today, either. There are no balloons or streamers. There are no envelopes or bits of wrapping paper. There are no birthday candles. Although there was a large kitchen mess this morning when her dad made eggs Benedict (her favorite) and waffles (Riley’s favorite) with strawberries and whipped cream. He’s a good dad, that one.

Every single day there is a struggle to be present in the day while being sucked into grief’s vortex. And to be fair, I like grief’s vortex. It’s familiar and I feel like after almost four years, I understand how it works. I’m over here by myself observing other people over there in the real world. I am only an observer these days. I cannot participate in anything without feeling angry or sad or mad. Today, I’m angry. I am annoyed. At everyone. For having a birthday in the first place. For wanting to sing that song that people sing. For being excited about presents or eggs Benedict and whipped cream. For wanting to be together and talk about how exciting it is to be 16 and all the things that kids who are 16 get to do, like get a learner’s permit. It doesn’t matter how many times I go round and round with my therapist. I know intellectually that I’m not actually angry that my stepdaughter is having a birthday or that people want to celebrate that. I’m angry that Riley is dead and that he’s not here celebrating with us or that he doesn’t get to ever turn 16 (or 12 for that matter).

But emotionally, it’s hard to understand those things when all I want is for Riley to be here. My stomach is hurting. Everything is hurting. Mostly my heart, though, even though I am used to feeling my heart hurt all of the time.

Most of the celebrating seems to be done now. I can hear the dishwasher whirring. I can hear the TV chattering. I can see the dog curled up on her bed snoozing. It’s time to get some bubbly water for my upset stomach. I'm looking forward to crawling into bed and falling asleep, the only place where I don't know that Riley is dead.

Grief and social events

Looking for you in nature

All of the voices inside my head were arguing. They were shouting over each other, angry at all of the merriment around me. Much of it was about who is safe and who isn’t safe and what is allowed and what isn’t allowed now that you’re dead. There are so many rules and it’s so confusing that it's hard to keep track. And sometimes I forget the rules, which prompts the angry voices to shout and finger point and wear steel-toed boots just in case they need to kick someone. In all their rage, venom drips from the tongues, words too vile to include here. That anger was directed at everyone -- the people I live with, the acquaintances I saw at the park on Friday night. When the voices are shouting like that, I need to close my eyes, hoping to see your face, or stare into the distance towards nature.

I laid my head back on the blanket at the park and my vision grabbed a branch of leaves. The school jazz band concert at the park had finished and people were just milling about, chatting and visiting and laughing because it was a lovely night, and well, why not? Facing the sky, I saw a cluster of leaves that looked like a heart, if I wanted it to look like a heart, anyway. I always want everything to look like a heart because I know it means you are nearby, that you made it look like a heart so that I would know you are nearby. That leaf heart swayed with the breeze, thumping with the beat of my broken heart. I’m with you. I see you. I know you’re here, it said.

I had not been to a concert in the park since before you died. Although we did watch your younger brother sing a couple of songs with his glee group not long after you died at the same park, on the same stage. There was no blanket or picnic that time, though, and we huddled near the edge of the crowd ready to depart as soon as you were done. This was different. Very different.

You see, on Friday, I packed a picnic and made sangria. I spread our blanket at the park hours before the concert began. I left camping chairs, too. Then we went with our picnic and our sangria and the guacamole that I made. We brought the dog and it was so exciting with the people and the music and the sun warming our backs. And being a school event, there were lots of familiar faces. Other people had also set up their blankets hours ahead of time, and I had joked (yes, joked) with them that we’d be neighbors. And I waved at them and even went and said hello when I recognized the neighbor’s daughter from your brother’s second grade class.

Then it was all too much. Too much sangria, too much talking, too much of you not being there. How am I supposed to talk and eat guacamole and talk to the people on the adjacent blanket when you are not here, when you’re never going to be here? When they don’t know that you’re dead. I tried to recover by staring at the leaves, but everyone was laughing and eating ice cream when I just kept thinking about how you were dead and I was pretty sure that no one else was thinking about you being dead. I’m always thinking about how you’re dead and how you’ll never, ever, ever not be dead. That’s when the shouting in my head started. It’s so hard when I’m the only one remembering that you’re dead. It’s easier when other people remember and talk about you. Then it’s not all on me because that’s when it’s too much.

So I stared at the heart-shaped cluster of leaves and tried to make everyone think about you, but they kept laughing and someone who was talking with the family on the blanket next to us was talking about an interview that they went on. And someone at the end of our blanket was talking about what kind of camera they have. And they were licking their ice cream like it was the most normal evening in the world. This is great, we should do it again, my sweet, well-meaning husband said at one point.

The sangria made everything cloudy. Maybe I shouldn’t have had the sangria and maybe I should have eaten the caprese sandwich that I had made for myself because you like caprese sandwiches. I should have eaten more than chips and guacamole. And all of a sudden I was so angry at everyone. The neighbors who talked about their interview. My kids at the end of the blanket talking about cameras and ice cream. My good-natured husband who was having a good time and wondered out loud if we should maybe do this again another time when they have the regular concerts in the park. It was just too much. Probably the most socializing that I have done since you died. Too much. I so often feel like an observer in my own world, watching it unfold around me, unable to move into it, be a part of it. It’s like there are two different planes: I exist in one, the rest of the world exists in the other and we're separated by plexiglass.

Finally the shouting in my head was too much. I stood up abruptly and wavered a bit. I picked up all of the camping chairs and a picnic blanket that we weren’t sitting on and took them back to the car across the street. I put them in the trunk and sat in the driver’s seat for a bit, enjoying the warmth of the air toasted by the sun, trying to figure out what to do next. Husband came over with the cooler filled with all of the uneaten veggies and dip and watermelon and the caprese sandwich I should have eaten. I told him I was angry at everyone. Everyone, he asked? Yes, everyone, I said, and told him that I wanted to walk home.

So I did. When I got home, I watered the plants in the garden and then went into your room and laid under your desk and never told anyone I was there. And I stayed with you until everyone was in bed.

Time machine

Have you ever had one of those moments that shifted the sense of time, so that you were somehow in your current world and also somehow decades away?

That happened to me yesterday. It was such an ordinary moment. I was at the carwash and the sun was oppressive. There was just one bench in the shade and two people already occupied it. But surely I could fit between them with my book and my purse and it would be fine for the next 15 minutes as we waited. I asked and they obliged, each edging to the outer sides of the bench and I maneuvered between them on that waffled metal bench.

I didn’t really look at either of them, but once I was seated the woman to my right spoke to her husband in their foreign language as he came to join us. The three of us moved over, making room for him as well. Their conversation in foreign nouns and verbs transported me to my childhood where I was somewhere, like Burger King, with Italian grandparents when I had no idea what they said to each other.

Her perfume and the thickness of her arm made me want to lean into her softness as tears welled behind my sunglasses. I ached for my grandmother and my childhood more three decades in my past. I wanted to lean into her. I wanted to talk to her and try to explain to her what I was feeling and I swear her husband said “lasagna” several times, even thought I’m certain they were speaking Russian or Czech and definitely not Italian. It was so real.

The man to my left got up to retrieve his car, and the older couple and I sat on that bench at the carwash while “Don’t Stop Believing” played softly from the speaker near the exit sign. I loved her thick old lady necklace and her near-white orthopedic open-toed sandals with the stockings. I loved her in that moment. She was my grandmother and I was four years old. I so wanted to hug her and for a moment be hugged by that woman. My own grandmother approaches 100 years. I haven't heard her speak Italian since my grandfather died more than 15 years ago, and I didn’t even recognize her last time I visited her. She was hunched in a wheelchair in the nursing home she now lives in. She was nothing like the grandmother who lives in my memories.

A few minutes later, the couple got up. As they walked away from me, more than thirty years were instantly added to my age and I was alone on the bench.

A consolation vacation

We were tossed into retro romance the instant the Tang-colored door swung open and swallowed our tired bodies. Once our eyes adjusted to the brightness, we were surrounded by bold. There were the paisley bolster pillows for our backs, the purple and orange striped carpets for our feet, and slick, red plastic chairs for our booties.

Beyond our room, through the glass, those could have been tropical waters reflected in the turquoise sky. But once we slid the door open and stepped onto our balcony, the cool Northern California February breeze pinched our skin.

Still, we didn’t immediately go back into the heated room. That view held our dream of being dipped into warm waters like strawberries into melted chocolate. As if on cue, that’s when we noticed the hot tub below.

But this was not a romantic getaway. Yes, I shared a bed, but there was no nudity outside of the shower. There was no kissing, outside of playful pecks. There was no arousal, even though I’d hoped for a juicy dream. This was a weekend with my mother and two boys in Santa Cruz. We’ll call it a consolation vacation because my mind was preoccupied with snow and skiing. It was Ski Week after all. My boyfriend and his kids and me and my kids were separated by 200 miles, 6,225 feet in elevation, and circumstance.

I didn’t really want the thick coats and ice scrapers of Tahoe—at least that’s what I kept telling myself while we debated a walk on the beach versus a swim in the chlorine. I hate that my son’s medical diagnosis crops my map and makes mountains off limits unless accompanied by an oxygen tank. So I exercised my credit card and splurged on views and heated pools and hot tubs. Those high-thread count sheets, down pillows, and snow-white duvets softened the emotional toll of being stuck at sea level.

My family didn’t know that they didn’t get to go to Tahoe. No one complained that they played in the sand instead of the snow. No one complained that they soaked in a hot tub at a hotel with lime accents and veneer next to the salty ocean instead of in one at a cabin with floral wallpaper and wood paneling next to a clear lake.

But it was so darn romantic. “It’s like being on my honeymoon,” my mom said.

“Then I must be a disappointment,” was my snarky reply. Although what I meant was I wished we were there under different circumstances.

A time to remember

I thought this year would be different. My house is decorated and I sent holiday cards. We baked cookies and I’m hosting a small Christmas Eve soiree at which I will wear a mistletoe headband. There were end-of-semester dinners, a work party, and walks down Christmas Tree Lane with cups of hot chocolate. We delivered a sack of Matchbox cars to UCSF Children’s Hospital and I have five weeks of vacation from graduate school.

I’m happy. I’m busy. I’m in love. Yet, my stomach twists and gurgles and the minutes are long in the darkness of my room each night.

Maybe it has something to do with this time of year. Maybe it has something to do with separate houses, split accounts, and legal matters. Maybe it has something to do with the words pre-cancerous cells and the subsequent surgery I had last month to remove them. It might have something to do with the pages of medical records I thumbed through and the details I unearthed this semester that will make my book fuller, but make my heart tighten. It might have something to with the interviews I conducted and then painstakingly transcribed that rehash months in the hospital and remind of an uncertain future.

In the dark of my room, I have also thought about my grandparents' house, the one I went to every Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas for 18 years when I lived in Lockport, NY. And I wonder if my brother thinks about it too. I have thought about my 90-year-old grandmother, a woman I passed in the hallway at her nursing home because I didn’t recognize her. I have thought about my parents and their divorce. I have thought about the dogs I don’t have, the house I don’t live in, the years and circumstances that unraveled my marriage, and the family I no longer exchange presents with (or get Christmas cards from).

I have thought about fear, communication, transparency, respect, trust, following through, and walking away.

Fortunately the nights are offset by the days when I see him smile and hear his laugh as he decorates gingerbread cookies. I watch him as he continues reading long after the timer beeps and his 15 minutes are up. I hang his drawings of taxis and trains and baseball fields on his bedroom walls and admire how much his art has changed. I listen as he proudly plays Deck the Halls on the piano and smile as he unconsciously sings I hear those J.I.N.G.L.E. B.E double L.S. I radiate as I tuck him and his brother into the bed that they share after they tell me that they love me.

I have also thought about the future, as I wonder how long I get to have this life. And I wonder what I’ll look back on when I’m old. I hope I find that writing the book was worthwhile. And I hope I find the baking and singing and piano-playing and laughter are prominently featured and not all that other stuff that keeps me up at night.

In case of emergency

There wasn’t anything unusual about the white form attached to a gray clipboard at the doctor’s office. It was all very standard, you see, nothing out of the ordinary.

There were questions about my family medical history. My medical history. The first day of my last menstrual period. There were lots of boxes to check, things to circle, a lifetime of illness to disclose since it was the first time I visited that particular office. Then I landed on a question that evoked a physical response. My stomach quivered, my vision clouded, and I needed a deep breath to steady myself even though I was seated.

A blank line needed the name and telephone number of my emergency contact.

Stumped was how I felt, even though it was a question I’d answered dozens of times in the past 15 years. A question that never evoked any kind of response, outside of a slight hesitation as I wondered the street address of FIC's office.

I dug through my purse for a tissue, but ended up using the sleeve of my favorite sweatshirt to dab away that feeling that left a salty residue between my nose and cheek. My eyes shot a glance around the mostly empty waiting room to see if anyone caught my emotional response to the black on white of medical paperwork.

I thought I’d gotten through all the tears. I thought the hard part was over. All those decision … You keep the bunk beds, but I want the 80-pound wooden frog we saved from the trash in Westboro, Massachusetts in 1996. You get Rogue Wave concerts and I get the silver reindeer with the antlers that hold tea candles – that holiday decoration I always joked our grandchildren would make fun of. You get Easter, I get Thanksgiving, and we’ll alternate Halloween and Christmas. But clearly, I hadn’t dealt with all of the ramifications and emotions of divorce.

Then I shook it off and realized it’s just a name. It’s just another change I didn’t know needed to be made, sort of like my address with the DMV (still haven’t done that).

I penciled in my mother’s name, her out-out-state cell phone number, and was grateful that I have her helping out with my kids when I’m in school. When I need to go to the gynecologist. Even with her name on the paper, there was a sadness. I don’t think it was a longing for my marriage, but rather a longing for the stability that comes with a long-term relationship. Of knowing without a slight hesitation, who will be there if there’s an emergency.

I prefer the real world

Today was one of those lazy weekend days when we wondered what we should do with our precious family time. Father in Chief tossed around some ideas – Coyote Point, the Children’s Discovery Museum, the Academy of Sciences. He figured today was a good day to check out one of those usually-too-crowded museums because most people (he hoped) would be home getting ready for their Super Bowl Party.

But I hate kid museums.

Call me a curmudgeon or a bad parent. But I hate them for all the same reasons I hate taking my kid to the playground. They are crowded. And they are pretty much boring for parents. Or at least I find them incredibly boring. Whenever the weather is nice and it’s light outside, I always have the babysitter take the kids to the park. At least they get to go. I’m pretty sure there is no rule that says I have to take them, right? As for museums, I avoid them too – unless I’m going to be meeting up with one of my favorite friends. Then I’ll suffer through it.

As we pondered the list of kid-approved venues, I figured that they’re had to be a better place for us to spend an hour or two without crowds, without germ-infested buttons to push, without kids fighting over the buckets and shovels in the sandbox. I wanted to go somewhere that the kids could still learn about life without it being a place specifically designed for learning about life. We decided to take the kids to the bike path near Oracle.

R rode his bike. C finally figured out how to pedal his tricycle. We stopped at nearly all of those exercise pit-stops, which are part of one of those ancient exercise circuits made of wood. We did push-ups. They slid down the one that was supposed to be for inverted sit-ups. We saw birds. We saw cyclists. We saw rollerbladers. We saw flowers, clouds, and talked about brackish water. We saw airplanes, leaves, stones, and sticks. C and I even marveled at a spotless ladybug for several minutes.

It was great. There was fresh air, no hefty admission fee, no stressful search for a parking spot. There was no line for the bathroom or the drinking fountain. There was no one demanding anything from the snack bar. It was just our family enjoying each other’s company at our own pace out in the real world.

Sure, we didn’t learn about gravity or wind in any kid-designed experiment. But we saw gravity in action as we watched the kids hurl sticks out to the marshy water and as stones fell to the ground. We learned about the rules of the road as we corralled the kids to the right side of the path to lets others pass around us. We learned about the food chain as we talked about the birds swooping down to the water as they scooped up their lunch.

It was the best.

My mother, myself

As a little girl, I wanted so much to be like my mom. I wanted to know all the things that she knew. How to bake the best pies. How to make the most delicious spaghetti sauce. How to can tomatoes, or peaches, or pears. How to be a beautiful belly dancer. How to sew. How to be silly. How to not care what other people thought of you. I wanted to look just like her too.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I didn't want her life, her domesticity, her dependence on my father. I needed more. I needed to get away from the small town I grew up in, I needed college, and a job, and a partner that was my equal, a life that was my own. I didn't even want kids for a long time. I felt that having kids would equal failure. It would equal falling back into the roll that I wanted to escape. When I finally did have a baby, I was 10 years older than she was when she had her first baby at 19. It was almost as if I thought those extra years would ensure that my life would be different from hers.

But it's not so different after all. I haven't had a full-time job since a couple of months before my first son was born. That was more than five years ago. And I am very much dependent on my husband.

Early in Waiting for Daisy, Peggy Orenstein writes of her own mother, her ambivalence about having children, and how her childlessness made it difficult to connect with her mom who also had children early in life. She wrote, "I longed for a mother who I could be a mentor, someone I could turn to for wisdom and guidance. Her limits made me short-tempered....It wasn't just hostility I felt around my mother, it was inadequacy."

Like Orenstein, I also feel inadequacy when I think of my mom. I get so dragged down with my kids' constant needs that I sometimes find it hard to enjoy just being around them. We don't bake pies together. And my kids have logged many more hours with sitters and preschool than I ever did. As a result, I sometimes feel that having children has made the gap between us even larger.

Hopefully someday I'll figure out how to get past the fact that my mom and I are similar and different, and it isn't good or bad or success or failure. It just is.

An emotional trifecta

Some of my recent posts have given the impression to some concerned readers that I might be depressed. I might be. But I think I'll blame my emotional prose on all the book-writing I've accomplished recently (which drudges up a lot of feelings), on this time of year (a little old-fashioned seasonal-affective disorder), and the fact that I'm just about done nursing Baby in Chief (a hormonal whack-job, to say the least). Each of those issues alone can create a lot of stress. But they are all coming at the same time, unfortunately.

Yes, this is a lovely time of year with all the festive music and the lights and promise of packages and sprinkle-covered cookies. All of that goodness holds the promise of mountainous highs. At the same time, it also can bring on chest-crushing lows. I'm really looking forward to the arrival of family--the family we regretfully did not spend Thanksgiving with due to the 2,500 miles separating our houses. The anticipation of their arrival, the joy of a family holiday is exciting. But then there is the added responsibility. The extra responsibility of ordering the holiday cards, writing notes on and sending the holiday cards, picking out the right gifts, wrapping the gifts, mailing the gifts, decorating the house, baking festive goodies. All that stuff is piled on top of all the regular responsibilities of parenthood, of being married, of running a household.

I know I'm not the only one with this extra long to-do list, but toss in the hormones and all the feelings I'm revisiting as I write my book and whammo. I'm not complaining. It's just nice to know that there are actual reasons for me feeling so off. Then again, I guess it could be a teeny bit of depression. Last weekend I read online: It's not my problems making me depressed, it's my depression making me depressed.

I sort of like thinking about things that way. Maybe instead of feeling overwhelmed by the piles of toys, the sink full of dishes, the car full of wrappers, or the holiday shopping, I'll just blame that overwhelmed feeling on my depression. Thinking of it that way actually takes the pressure off a bit. It's nice to have a scapegoat, even if it's an artificial one.

Dreaming of an uncomplicated life

I have a crazy delusion that life is so complicated because I don't live in Western New York anymore (that is where I grew up, and I recently spent two weeks there). I think to myself... If I lived there, there wouldn't be so much stress, so much stuff to weigh us down. But that notion is entirely untrue. It just seems that way because there are no real stresses there when I go to visit (outside of the fact that very little is child-proofed).

It is a total misrepresentation of reality. None of my responsibilities are there when I visit because I don't live there. If I did live there, all of those stresses and responsibilities would most certainly be there when all the boxes were unpacked. And then instead of living in the beautiful and exciting San Francisco Bay Area, I would live in dreary and depressed Western New York. But our families would be there and that would be wonderful. But then once we settle in, all of the stuff that gets me down and makes me feel overwhelmed would appear as our lives started to settle in there. There would still be groceries to buy and laundry to wash and cluttered cupboards and bills to pay and deadlines to meet.

But it's always so deliciously deceptive when I visit because none of that stuff is there. My only real responsibilities are to care for the daily needs of my kids. And even then, there are grandparents around willing to take the wee ones for a bit so that I can go out with friends or take a mid-afternoon snooze.

I'm sure that is partially why I get so home-sick. I'm sure I don't really yearn for Lockport, New York. Yes, I long for the day-to-day stuff we miss out on with our families and the stuff they miss out on with us and their grandchildren. And I long for the simple times that I remember. Because when I lived there 17 years ago, there was little real responsibility in my life. Everything was in front of me. My life was just starting to unfold. And that is a beautiful and wonderful time to think about. Now if only I could figure out a way to bring that feeling home.

Been losing sleep

I just couldn't do it four nights in a row. I'm not that young anymore. And I just need more sleep. I don't know how people can go out night after night and have drinks and not go to bed until 3 am, and then still get up and be functioning members of society.

Three nights in a row was my limit. I went to Niagara Falls in Canada to a nightclub that plays nothing but 80s on Thursday night. It was fabulous--you know how I love the 80s--except for all of the 19-year-old guys. Yes, they can be cute, but for the most part, they are usually quite drunk, never offer to buy you a drink, and are terrible and aggressive dancers (Think Dirty Dancing without the suave part).

Then on Friday night, I went out to see a local band with my girlfriends. We danced and had some drinks and ended up at Denny's. I can't believe they still have Moon Over My Hammy on the menu!

And then Saturday morning I was supposed to have breakfast at my dad's house with the kids. Breakfast??!! I had just gone to bed five hours earlier and now I'm supposed to be awake and have my kids dressed and ready for the chitchat that goes with blueberry pancakes and scrambled eggs?

Then I looked in the mirror. And there was a very disturbing image staring back at me. My hair was straggly mess. There were dark circles under my eyes. My eyes were only half open. I was wearing the same shirt that I had slept in and I had not put on any deodorant. I was a mess. We ditched our plan to go to the zoo and I took the kids to my mom's house, put the baby down for a nap and crashed on the pull-out sofa for more than two hours. Thankfully my mom was there to watch Preschooler in Chief. My siesta was followed by a quick shower and then it was time to go out all over again.

There was dinner with my dad and the kids, then driving to my mother-in-law's house to get the kids to bed. We watched a movie, and then it was time to drive back to Lockport to go out dancing with my mom and her girlfriends. It was fun, but I have now put mascara on my eye lashes four nights in the past week and that is more mascara than I have worn in the past four months. I lasted about an hour before I needed to head back to my mother-in-law's house.

Just five hours later, the kids were awake.

I was supposed to go out again tonight. And. There. Was. Just. No. Way. It. Was. Going. To. Happen.

I don't think I'll complain about my I-like-to-go-to-bed-and-read-at-9-PM lifestyle once I get back to California. Or at least I won't complain about it for at least a couple of weeks and I start missing my friends and the dance floor. And now I'll take this opportunity to go to sleep. Good night.

You can take the girl out of WNY...

But you can't take the Western New York out of the girl. I arrived in Buffalo (yes, Buffalo is Western New York, not Upstate New York), after a long day of travel with two small kids and it was as if I was instantly converted to another version of myself.

My vowels immediately sounded more nasally. All words with an "o" started sounding like "aah" (for example: instead of hospital, it would be h-aah-spital). I was excited about my PT Cruiser rental. (Sadly, they didn't have one for me, and I ended up with an HHR, which is sort of like a PT Cruiser only it looks more like a pick-up truck.) I happily programmed my rental's radio to have all of the local Top 40 stations for the 30-minute ride to Lockport. After my boys were tucked in, I was ready to tackle the local bar scene. I hoped that I'd see someone I went to high school with. And I drank Yingling, a WNY favorite.

The bar wasn't much to look at, but it was spacious and it was full of faces that I wanted to be familiar. The dance floor wasn't overly crowded, but if it did get too packed, the dancers just back up in between tables and along the bar. The band was working hard and the crowd was the payoff. It wasn't the Cheeseballs, but it was a wonderful, town-I-grew-up-in close second. And I felt comfortable, at home, included, loved. It's no surprise that I managed to meet the band. And during the last set I got at least 15 shout-outs because it was my birthday. And I was with one of my best friends. It was perfect, except that Father in Chief wasn't around to enjoy it with me.

There is something about going home, home to the small town I grew up in that is comforting. I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that my family still lives there. My dad still lives in the house I grew up in. My mom lives in the house that my family lived in when I was born. My grandmother still lives in the same house she has for the past 60 years. My uncle lives in my other grandmother's house. Two of my best friends still live here. Stores come and go, but the shabby downtown keeps trying to reinvent itself with renovated buildings and new bars. Mostly, it's comforting because when I lived here--17 years ago--life was pretty simple. The biggest worries were whether he was going to call and whether I was going to have to work on New Year's Eve.

A burden lifted

An inevitable part of having relationships with people--friends, family, acquaintances--is that there will be arguments and fights and disagreements and misunderstandings. That is part of life, part of relationships. And it's too easy to be angry. To be negative. To hang on to bad stuff.

I've been talking with my brother a lot in the past two weeks. I'm trying to get him to patch things up with my mom. They've been estranged for years. He took sides in my parents' divorce. And 10 years have gone by. It breaks my mom's heart. It breaks my heart. I think about my two boys and wonder what it would feel like if they didn't want me in their lives anymore, wouldn't speak to me. I would be crushed under the weight of that sadness. She is my mom. My dad is my dad. He is my brother. It's time to move on. To unwind all the damage that has been done. To begin the healing. I hope he will have the courage to take a step towards forgiveness and reconciliation.

I've been exchanging email with a college friend, a college roommate that I had lost touch with. She was hit by a car while riding her bike several years ago and had numerous broken bones. She wrote, "I've realized its poisonous to hold on to bad feelings. I even have forgiven the kid that ran me over...I don't have bad feelings towards him- I hope he's straightened out his life and become a better person...I want to celebrate being alive and be grateful."

These two scenarios have reminded me of something incredibly important. It was as if I'd forgotten so many lessons I learned during Toddler in Chief's hospitalizations. To be thankful, to be grateful for all the things I have in my life. Because I do have so many things to be grateful for and have come too close to losing the things that mean the most to me. Life is so short and precious.

I realized I too had some growing and forgiving to do. I have spent the better part of the past year being angry at my sister-in-law over an argument that nobody won. We were both hurt, both angry, both sad. How did I waste so much energy being angry? It's exhausting and all-consuming. It's stressful and negative and steals sleep. And I'm stitching up the torn relationship.

I want to teach my children to love and to forgive. This means I too need to love and forgive. It is one of the hardest things, but it is so important. And it is so freeing and refreshing.

Traveling with two

I decided to brave the airports with two kids so that we could go visit our families on the east coast. When leaving San Francisco, I didn’t have to fold my stroller. They just took it over to the side and examined it for explosives and dangerous water bottles. But the Atlanta airport was not so friendly. How exactly are you supposed to fold up your stroller to get through airport security while holding a baby? I ended up setting Baby in Chief on the table. Fortunately he’s not big enough to roll off, and Toddler in Chief is a good listener so he stayed right by my side. Once I got through the metal detectors, the only table-like structure was the one with the rolling conveyor belts. I clearly couldn’t put him on that, so I just stood there and wondered what to do. Eventually one of the security personnel came over and told me I needed to move because I was blocking the aisle. But TIC and I didn’t even have our shoes on yet. Finally, I was able to talk the security guy through the process of opening my stroller and we were able to move all of our crap to another table out of the way. Good times all around, and I can’t wait until I have to transfer planes in 40 minutes or less on my way back home.

Another new family member

About three weeks ago we welcomed a nice Toyota Prius into our family. This replaced my wonderfully reliable Honda CRV. I have had to do some mourning over not being able to charge into and out of our very steep driveway. I need to slowly and carefully back out into the street. If I don't do it just so, then I scrape the underside of my car. And sadly, I can only back out one way. That means if I need to go the other direction down our street, I need to turn around in our neighbors driveway. Seems silly. And I'm sure it will be very annoying when I'm in a big hurry.

We've been learning how to drive our new baby to get the best mileage out of it. But so far, we're only averaging in the high 30s. I suspect this is because we live on a hill. Every time I go out for an errand and have to drive up the hill to get to our house, my overall mileage dips. Still, even with less than stellar mileage and having to go at a snails-pace in and out of my driveway, I feel better that I'm a bit less reliant on fuel. Even if I continue to get in the high 30s, I'm getting 50 percent more miles than my CRV got.

And to the obnoxious Hummer owner on my street (I don't know you, but I know you're obnoxious simply because you purchased a Hummer): sure you could drive up and down our driveway no problem (not that you're welcome here), but you can't fit into your own garage. So there. And by the way, I hate you.

Where's the enthusiasm?

When family comes to visit, I love those little breaks from full-time parenting. And recently the breaks are even that much more appreciated because I'm totally exhausted and downright cranky from just being pregnant right now. My energy level is shot, my desire to play on the floor is nonexistent, and I really, really appreciate feeling like crap all alone, without toddler arms and legs jabbing me in the gut.

However, I realize this as I sit back and watch my mother read countless stories to Toddler in Chief that I don't have that kind of energy, well, ever. I'm sure the pregnancy has exacerbated my inability to be totally present with TIC, but there's something about watching other family be so excited with him that I feel sort of inadequate. My vocal level never quite reaches that same exuberance that my mom's reaches when she watches him play or accomplish some task. My cheers don't seem quite as authentic as the other onlookers when TIC poops on the potty. Is this just because no one can have this level of enthusiasm every day? Is this just because my kid's a novelty to these out-of-state relatives that they manage so much authentic emotion?

I don't know what it is, but it makes me feel like I'm not living up to the proper motherly standards, whatever those are.

What does it mean to be a father?

There's more to being a dad than just being the provider of sperm, that is for sure. But what does it really mean to father a child?

I got thinking about this after reading a post on crazedparent called, "WTF with co-parenting?..." It's about the term "co-parenting" being tossed around a lot lately and what that term has to do with parenting. It said:

Am I to understand that the routine job of being mom and dad and raising your children together, otherwise know to the free world since, well, FOREVER, as PARENTING, is now referred to as "co-parenting"...[I]t's not just enough for me or my husband to be parents...we have to "co-parent." The idea of each of us having a role in this day-to-day world. But aren't we doing that already by virtue of being parents? Lame. Lame. Lame.

Anyway, all this talk of parenting and co-parenting got me thinking about single parents. I won't pretend to know the difficulties of being a single parent--Father in Chief rarely even travels for work these days, and I often can't wait for him to get home at the end of the day to hand off some responsibilities. But I do have a handful of friends who are single parents. Sometimes this works out well and sometimes, well, it doesn't. And when it doesn't, it can be sucky for the kids. That said, I was encouraged by an email I got from a single-parent friend yesterday. She wrote:

"[A]nd i think, perhaps, hopefully, i may be more accepting my single-momness. meaning, perhaps, hopefully i'm not as angry, blaming, etc [baby's dad]. and while he deserves it, i don't!!! and neither does [baby]. having such emotions and feelings like that seems so selfish, negative... really there's nothing good that can come out of it, at all.

So true. I wish I could say that it will get easier or that it will all work out. But I don't know that. All that I do know is that your child is lucky to have a dad who wants to be involved. Because there are so many kids out there who don't even have that.

Go quietly, but carry a noisy cane, or walker

When I'm old and have a cane, I can only hope that I'm out there stirring things up and getting arrested for just causes.

From time-to-time, my activist mother-in-law is involved with a group called Raging Grannies (she's third from the right with a yellow bow on her hat), who promote global peace, justice, and equality through song and humor. There are branches nationwide, and she sent me a link to a New York Times article about 18 Manhattan grannies who were arrested for blocking the doorway of the armed forces recruiting station in Times Square.

It must have been quite a sight to see these women in court:

The grandmothers - 16 of them, anyway, plus a doctor's note from a 17th asking that she be excused because of a hip replacement - appeared yesterday in State Supreme Court in Lower Manhattan armed with symbolic silver handcuffs...Courtroom regulars marveled at the sight of 16 women, some carrying canes and pushing walkers, stretching across the room. Many wore photos of their grandchildren on chains around their necks. Some lawyers complained that the group had taken along about 50 supporters, making it hard to get a seat.

My favorite part is that the judge offered to drop the charges against the women if they did not get arrested for at least six months. And they turned down the offer "because it would hobble their protesting." This group is called "Grandmothers Against the War," and every Wednesday they demonstrate outside Rockefeller Center, according to the article.

New baby tough on dads too

Now that I'm pregnant and out of the pregnancy closet (at 15 weeks), I can't help but thinking about when the Baby in Chief arrives. And I'm not talking about what that means for my work. I've realized that will be the easy part. I'm talking about what that means for our family and for Father in Chief. I started thinking about this after reading Miriam's post called, "The New Year." It's about paternity leaves and the sad and short duration that they so often are. Her husband's short paternity leave recently ended. She wrote:

We parents face terrible choices. It's the obvious thing to say, but it strikes me all the more. It's not just moms. My husband took off the first two weeks after Amelia Jane was born. He held her, cuddled her, stared long and meaningfully at her. Then, January 3d it was back to work.

Her words about her spouse shot me five-and-a-half months into the future to see what our life will be like. Most of us at-home moms already know that we are devalued in society. But what I sometimes forget is that fathers are devalued even less. When we think of new babies, we think about the moms and short maternity leaves, "but we often forget that there are two parents who are likely struggling with the desire to be at home with the baby," I wrote on Miriam's blog. But when one parent isn't making very much money (as in our case), someone needs to be out there earning money to support the rest of us. And in our case--as in many cases--it's the dads.

I know that Father in Chief had a really hard time going back after our son was born. But somehow his conflict isn't respected the same way it is with women. I'm going to generalize here, but I think that the work-world *expects* women to want to be with the new baby. But men are *expected* to be indifferent. Or at least not care outwardly.

How did we get here?

In this hectic world, it so often seems that we value what is not important (big car, fancy house) and devalue the most important things (time with our family and friends). And as we spend Christmas with our families in snow-covered Buffalo, this time underscores what is most important to me. Even though I often struggle with floundering, non-existent career, I’m so grateful that I get to raise my son.

That seems like such a strange thing to say. It makes it seem like it's a privilege instead of a right as a parent. But more often that not, parents do not get to raise their kids. In 2004, 70 percent of women with children under 18 years of age were in the work force, compared to 27 percent in 1955. And of those currently working, "only 16 percent say they would choose to work full time if they felt they had the choice," according to the January 2006, Sojourners Magazine cover story called, "Taking Back Our Kids: Child rearing, never an easy endeavor, has become in many ways a countercultural activity." (free registration required)

How did we get here? How did something so valuable as raising our families end up in the backseat? Or how did we get to a place where parents don't feel they have a choice in the matter?

Much of it comes down to our government not caring enough about its future. It has done little to preserve manufacturing jobs in this country. It has done little to curb the "womb to tomb" adverting overload, which overwhelms influential kids with advertising, increasing the wants that families have. And it would rather spend money on war than on benefits that would revamp the way the American families live, such as a separation of job and health care and longer, better-funded maternity leaves. At the same time, real wages have declined by 10 percent from 1973 to 1993, according to the magazine, leaving families with less money.

So what does this have to do with moms working? Families are making less, there are fewer jobs, and advertising has increased people's expectations about what they should have. And many families find that the only way to do this is to have two incomes.

The more I think about the policies of our government--especially the Republican party who claims to be so "pro family"--I'm disgusted and disappointed that the priorities actually sacrifice families and instead focus on short-term gains, personal vendettas, and profits for the wealthy and corporate America.