Grief and Riley's unexpected voice

Riley with Freddie circa when the call was made.

I sometimes use Riley's bedroom as a space to make private phone calls. Yesterday was one of those days. I was on the phone for 50 minutes with our health insurance company, trying to figure out why some bills are going unpaid even though we have coverage. Then I spent another 30 minutes on the phone with the doctor's office. After I hung up, I put my phone and pen on my stack of papers and walked to my bedroom where I set all of it on the bed. From there, I stopped in the bathroom, then grabbed my phone off the bed before heading to put on my boots so that I could go pick up kids from school. I set it on the table before bending down to pick up a boot. As I pulled the boot over my heel, Riley's voice came out of my phone. It was a saved voicemail. It was a call that Riley had made from my house to his dad's house when he was about nine years old. His dad had saved the message on his phone and shared with me via Dropbox not long after Riley died. And now here it was playing in my otherwise quiet house.

His voice was shaky; he had called his dad to let him know that he'd forgotten Freddie at his house and asked if he would bring him over in the morning. I remember that night. His favorite item several blocks away. He'd have to settle for a lesser-loved soft toy to snuggle as he fell asleep. There were tears. And hugs to console my sad boy.

But how did Riley's voice end up being played from an inactive phone? When I opened my phone to see what was happening, Dropbox wasn't even one of the active applications. I just stared at it for several minutes, bemused and delighted to hear him and also sad because he was so sad. And also sad because I'll never hear his voice shape words into new sentences or questions. He won't tell me any jokes or read me Jon Agee palindromes or describe situations in bizarre Far Side comics. There will be no puberty or deepening as his sweet boy voice transforms into a kind man voice.

I won't know how that voicemail played in my living room. But I do know that I am open to believing that Riley made it happen. I will just chalk it up as another one of the unexplainable messages from him that make him feel everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Holding you

I held you in my lap on Monday. I was in the passenger seat and I clenched you, the brown boxes of you, as we wound along the roads from there to here. How I’ve wanted to hold you this past month, all those days in the hospital and all the days since. Even after you died, when I was allowed to climb onto the mattress next to you, to stroke your hair and whisper those last times into your ear, I wanted to pull you in, squeeze you like I always have. Not holding you, not touching your skin feels impossible. Yet here we are.

An everyday hug

And now I’ve held this new version of you, these two weighted boxes with your name on them. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when we arrived to claim your ashes. But you are not you at all. You are like a parcel waiting to be shipped. And when your dad takes his parcel version of you to his house, well, I cannot understand how can you be in two different places at the same time. Someone measured and made equal the ashes you left behind. It’s not like having some of your clothes here and some of them there.

All those days, and even now, I yearn to wrap my arms around your body as I have done all the days that I can remember being your mother. Even before you were born, I would fold my arms around your curled up body as it rolled inside of me. Why didn’t I hug you longer each time I kissed you goodnight? Why didn’t I hug you when you came in from school every day? How did I let you slip into your dad’s house without more fanfare? Did I really believe there would always be more? That the opportunities stretched beyond any given goodbye?

I know the answer to those questions. We simply lived our lives. We loved each other and lived together and you went to and from school, the park, a friend’s house. Our days were normal. Love floated through our worlds like the dancing vapor rising from a latte. It was faint, yet warm and visible. Each hug was never to be the last. Even that morning when I last heard your voice, when I said I love you and you said I love you too as doctors escorted you beyond the double doors—the last time I really saw you—it was a placeholder until the next time. Those words were casual confidence that there would be many next times.

Only now do I realize that more than my wants to hold you, to feel the way your elbows bend and the points of your shoulder blades, is my desire to feel you hugging me back, your small hands squeezing mine. To feel the weight of your limbs around my body or sitting on my lap just like all the other days. To press my nose into your hair and breathe you in, the warm wisps of love.

Chores are the new Play-Doh

When my ex and I split, I often filled my kid-free days with the never-ending chore list that seemed even grander when there was just one parent doing everything. I wanted to spare the kids the rush of errands from Trader Joe’s to Costco and Walgreens so that when we were together for those condensed hours each week, it was quality time. We'd read and wander to the park to play baseball. We'd blow bubbles and squish Play-Doh between our fingers.

To be fair, I'm sure I also enjoyed that those trips were easier when the kids weren't there. No one to buckle, no one to push in a cart, no one asking for this and that. It was quicker, stealthier shopping.

My kids are much bigger now. They can open car doors and buckle themselves into their seats and wander off to find capellini and edamame and cereal, if need be. But those opportunities for them to help with shopping and cooking didn’t happen very often for a few years as I navigated the hectic life of single parenting with graduate school. And I think my attempts to spare them the minutia of life did them a disservice.

When they arrived at my house on transition days, the refrigerator was full, the shower had shampoo, their clothes were washed. Sure, they have had chores for years, so it wasn't as if they didn’t contribute—they put their clean clothes away, they tidy up their toys and their rooms, they load and unload the dishwasher and sort darks from lights. But removing them from the household shopping equation created kids who didn't appreciate the efforts involved in keeping a house stocked with necessities and supplies.

And on days when I needed them to accompany me to the shops, they'd complain: “Why do we have to go with you??!!” I accidentally created kids who believed that everything happened while they were off at school or with their dad. They erroneously believed that their time shouldn't be wasted on shopping or picking up prescriptions. They erroneously believed that their time was exclusively for themselves. My response to their complaints: “This is part of being in a family.”

My internal voice said the antidote for those complaints was to make them go on more errands. So I started saving the trips to the grocery store and the drug store until after I picked them up from school. That gave me more time during those precious few childfree hours to work and to study. It also got them more involved (again) in helping out.

It was a slippery slope, though, because middle-schoolers actually have a bunch of homework. And between homework and extracurricular sports, they don't actually have much time left in their day for just being at home, together, relaxing. So this summer, we are doing more family tasks. They are bringing their dirty clothes to the garage, learning to use the washing machine, planning meals, writing the shopping list, chopping tomatoes, making bruschetta, cleaning up. We are going on more errands together.

It’s not Play-Doh, but we talk about meals they want to learn how to cook. And when we're at the store, I'm teaching them how to pick produce and to look for expiration dates on milk. There’s still family movie night, cards, and reading, but this is a new way for us to have quality time together. It’s all part of slow process of helping them become self-sufficient, independent young adults.

Over sharing?

I like sharing a salad before my meal and my dessert afterward. I like sharing a blanket while watching a movie. I like sharing a bed. I like sharing my dog with friends who like dogs but don’t have their own. Sharing is cool. It makes me feel good. There’s even a Jack Johnson song about sharing. You know the one, the “Sharing Song.” It was on the Curious George soundtrack: “It’s always more fun to share with everyone…”

I have been contemplating sharing and how we learn to share and the importance of sharing because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about an article I came across the other day. It was called, “Why I don’t make my son share,” by Very Bloggy Beth. She wrote: “I think it does a child a great disservice to teach him that he can have something that someone else has, simply because he wants it. If you doubt my reasoning, think about your own day-to-day adult life. You wouldn't cut in front of someone in the grocery checkout line just because you didn't feel like waiting. And most grown adults wouldn't take something from someone, like a phone or a pair of sunglasses, just because they wanted to use it.”

Bloggy, we wouldn’t do those things precisely because we learned to share and because we learned to wait for our turn. Hopefully we also learned not steal someone's sunglasses because we think they might look swell on our own face. Sharing is about enjoying something with another person. Sharing does not mean cutting in front of someone in line. Sharing does not equal taking all of something or taking an item forever. Sharing is about expanding your own personal joy by giving someone an opportunity to enjoy something too. I think I came across her post because someone shared it on Facebook.

Share the crayons with your brother. Share the Legos. Share the trampoline. Share the bowl of popcorn. Share your scooter. Share the bubbles. Share your shovel. Share the calculator. Share the Wiimote. In no scenario do any of these mean giving all the crayons away such that you don’t have any more crayons or that you never get another turn on Mario Kart. It’s about taking turns. It’s about getting to watch your friend have fun too.

The article reminded me of something I read years ago in the foreword of a book. It told the story of a group of children in Africa who were given an opportunity to play with a toy. My recollection is that whichever child accomplished something first would get to play with the toy. When the child “won” the toy, he was sad. When asked why, the child answered, “How can I be happy when everyone else will be sad?”

If I give a bit of my dessert to a friend and they love it, then I feel good. If I share my eye make-up with a friend who never wears make-up, watching her light up at her decorated self gives me joy. Giving opens up a whole bucket of feel-good feelings. I love sharing the extra fruit from our orchard and extra eggs from our chickens. I even like sharing when we don’t really have extras simply because people feel appreciative and that in itself makes me feel good.

The giver gets just as much—if not more—out of the act than the recipient. It’s about joy multiplying because more people are getting to experience something fun. Children who share learn about taking turns and empathy. They will learn about the joy of giving, the joy of helping. The joy of including.

Kids may not get the initial joy in sharing, in the same way that they like getting presents a whole lot more than they like giving them. But I’m going to guess it’s one of those things that happens over time. Like saying "I'm sorry," it gets easier with practice. R had to learn to share me when C was born. I had to learn to share my boys with another woman, and both of my kids had to learn to share me when my bonus kids came into my life. Sharing is the gift that keeps on giving. And on that note, I think I'll go share my bag of water balloons with the kids.

“Alls I’m saying…”

You can occasionally hear it in my voice. It’s the pesky “a” sound that makes hospital sound more like haspital and coffee sound more like caffee. You may even catch me using the expression “Alls I’m saying…” when I summarize something in my own persuasive way. These pronunciations and expressions are most prevalent if I’ve just gotten off the phone with my mom.

My mother lives in Western New York, which, to be clear is not Upstate New York. Western New York is the most western region of the Empire State that points like the tip of an arrow towards the west. It’s where one would find Niagara Falls and Buffalo and Rochester.

I grew up in Western New York, but that does not make me a New Yorker. A New Yorker is someone who lives in New York City, which is 300-some miles east of WNY. I was born and raised in WNY and lived there for 17 years and 364 days—from the moment I was born until the day before my 18th birthday when I went off to college in Boston. For the next few years, I ping-ponged around from Boston to London and Colorado before heading back to Boston. And not long before my 23rd birthday I moved to San Francisco. I’ve been in the Bay Area ever since.

That’s a good long 18 years and change, thus breaking my record for living anywhere… Honestly, I cannot imagine living anywhere else. And for the time being I cannot live anywhere else. This is where my kids live; this is where they go to school; this is where their dad lives. I do not have the luxury of even entertaining the idea of packing up and moving my family unit to another town or another state or another country at least until the last of my kids head off to college.

So it’s official—I’m a Californian. Unless of course, I have to wait until I’ve lived here for more than half my life, in which case I’ve got another three years. None of this has any real significance aside from being a mental milestone or a tick in my timeline. However, it does come with another realization. R is 11 1/2 and my youngest turned 8 last week. Alls I’m saying is that—poof—life happens fast.

Can you buy one online?

Sucking in, pushing out. That is how it feels to breathe some days. It is not natural or in the background. It is a conscious effort, so very conscious. So very full of effort. My body weight is concentrated in my legs. Lumbering along. Lifting, placing, balancing. Repeat.

These kinds of days happen more frequently when the kids are with their dad. And the kids are with their dad this week. Hours stretch before me and minutes are punctuated by fearful thoughts of which hospital the next doctor appointment will send us to. Of what tests will be performed. Of the risks bulleted in neatly typed rows. Of the consent form to sign. The declaration of bravery. The kiss goodbye just before the gurney rolls beyond the double doors.

And when it’s over for the little boy, it’s really just the beginning. There are the consequences of those tests. The data collected, the discussions, the sharing of medical records. Then there are the speculations, the probabilities, the percentages, and the likelihood of this and that. There’s the portable oxygen concentrator that goes under the seat in front of him.

I have far too much experience navigating these appointments and tests, of reading between the lines. And on days like today, I too easily fall into the dark places of the past. There have been too many ER visits and too many stitches have punctuated a newborn’s skin, a toddler’s skin, a preschooler’s skin, and so on. I also too easily get stuck in the hazy places of the future. The ones that include all of those haunting things and more. There have been few hours in the last 11 ½ years that those images aren’t the undercurrent on which I lumber along, even when I’m not lumbering.

There have been moments that twinkle like glittery flecks in the sand. I see a boy swinging from a rope off the back of a sailboat. I see a boy jumping on a trampoline. I see a boy eating key lime pie. I see a boy pushing pins into a map of the United States that hangs on his bedroom wall. I see a boy selling the lemonade he made from the lemons picked in our yard. I see a boy snagging a fly ball at third base. I see a boy grinning with his Tabasco, his garlic bread, his black pepper and parmesan. I see a boy wearing green. He loves green.

And honestly, the joyful days outnumber the medical days. There are also thousands of beautiful and uneventful regular days. I just don’t know how to quiet those powerful tangents so that I can focus on the sparkly bits. Does anyone have an emotional sieve I can borrow? Do you think they sell one at Target?

Between past and present

I woke up in my old house on the hill the other day. It was familiar like the shape of my toes and also confusing, like trying to identify the vegetarian options on a menu etched in foreign words in an especially carnivorous country.

I haven’t lived in that house in seven years.

For a split second, an entire world existed. I was married to my high school sweetheart. I typed in a red-walled office. I had two babies. With my eyes yet to open in the morning glow, I could see the way the light sliced through the vertical blinds and landed on the dresser. I could anticipate the sponginess of the carpeting if I’d pushed myself towards the bathroom. I could hear static from the baby monitor.

There was heaviness with each inhale. There was the ache of a strained marriage. There was the uncertainty of hospitals that cinched my world for four-and-a-half years. It was so real and yet, it felt wrong. 

That’s because it wasn't real.

And as quickly as it sprung up, that world vanished. Once I opened my eyes, I was in my current house, married to a different man. My world that includes four kids and two chickens and a rescue dog appeared and relaxed me.

I teeter between these worlds consciously and regularly as I polish my manuscript.

During the day as I write, I live in that house on the hill with the trumpet flowers that line the fence. I am married to the man I made babies with. We trek to the hospital and doctor appointments and blood tests. Our relationship slowly disintegrates as each of us learns to accept our son’s medical diagnosis and physical limitations.

And when I stop typing and editing and shaping that story for the day, I am married to a different man. We help our kids with homework, drive them to swimming lessons, and read Lemony Snicket before bed. And our marriage is new, strong, and brimming with communication, intimacy, and love. We proactively see a family therapist to keep it that way.

I haven't decided if this teetering is healthy or unhealthy, good or bad. But it’s real. And some days, like the other day, it’s very confusing. Straddling these two worlds isn’t forever, but some days I wish the past was just the past.

Living with us

When my eyelids open in the morning, I first notice the light. It’s not harsh, and instead of wanting to hide from it, I roll toward it and immediately notice the green. Leaves from the London Plane diffuse the brightness. I imagine I’m inside of a tree house instead of my bedroom. When C climbed into my bed one morning last week, we wondered how many leaves we could see. We also wondered why the barking, howling dog next door was barking and howling…

So much has happened in the last five years. I went to graduate school. I got divorced. I found dance. I endured 40 mediocre dates and one spectacular one that ended my Match.com merry-go-round. From there, life has settled down—my boyfriend and I got engaged in December, we moved in together in February, got married in May, bought a house in June and moved into a place with a big tree that could accommodate two adults and four kids (the house, not the tree).

As my world achieves the stability I’ve been reaching for, I am reminded that there will always be hiccups and challenges. The universe and its inhabitants are unpredictable. We just found out that my step-kids’ mom is moving 90 miles away. Instead of spending half of their time with their mom and half of the time with us, the kids will see her a few weekends a month and during some school breaks. In essence, they will live us.

The first emotion I feel is disbelief. I cannot imagine moving away from my boys. When my ex and his girlfriend moved in together, R was concerned that I would move away, as if I was perhaps obsolete now that one of his two houses had a nuclear family. I gently explained that it doesn’t work that way. The next emotion is sadness. The kids and their mom are losing their day-to-day time with each other—the daily routines around school and homework, rituals synonymous with childhood, rituals I’m gearing up for as we approach the first day of school.

Sure kids are resilient, but the only two people to really know the ramifications of this change are the kids themselves. And probably not until they’re adults. In the meantime, perhaps they’ll join C as we count leaves, right before their dad and I hustle them off to get ready for school.

The giant house we'll never have

Car rides offer a time to talk about important world matters. Especially those matters that are of particular importance to little boys. On our way home from a friend’s house one evening, C started talking about marriage… something to do with Justin Beiber… something he had heard in kindergarten. Then he started giggling. I knew he wanted to say something more, but he hesitated. I urged him to speak.

“Wouldn’t it be great if you and A got married and Dad and S got married?” He giggled some more, and after a minute, I asked, “Would you like that?” He said yes. Then R chimed in excitedly. “No, no, wouldn’t it be great if Mom and Dad got married!?” I opened the window, tilted my face towards the breeze, and took a long drag of fresh air before answering.

“Mom and Dad used to be married. That’s how we got you two,” I said. I couldn’t see his face in the backseat, but I could hear his expression. He went from jubilation to a pout.

“So why aren’t you married anymore?” It was an accusation, more than a question. I said that grown-up relationships are complicated, and that mom and dad love them both very much.

Whether you're divorced, married, or in a committed relationship, grown-up relationships are complicated. They are even more complicated when there are children. Kids don't care about any of that grown-up stuff. What they do care about is that parents have complicated their lives, too. They end up with two houses and two sets of clothing and they get shuttled back and forth.

My kids love S and A and A’s kids. All of those extra people have become part of my kids’ family. I'm pretty sure that C doesn't remember a time before A or S. R does. And while R likes the idea of his parents getting back together, I suspect he also knows that if his dad and I got back together (and that’s not happening), he would lose those other people that he has come to love, too.

I’m sure what he’d really like is for all of us to live in one giant house together. Since that will never happen, no matter where I live or who else is in their lives, I will keep encouraging my kids to speak when they hesitate and try to make sure that my house, my car, and my arms are always a safe place to say all the things that can and should be talked about.

The unsung mother

A year ago on Mother’s Day, I came across a picture of my kids online. It was not a picture I had taken. It wasn’t a moment we shared together. And it was then that I realized that my kids have a life that I am not a part of. Intellectually, I had known that for a long time. They go to school without me. They have playdates without me. They have visited their grandparents 2,500-miles away without me. They live in another house half the week. Without me.

But that photo wasn’t just a snapshot of them at the park or at the beach or at a restaurant. It was a picture of my kids snuggled up with my ex-husband’s girlfriend. The picture was taken on Mother’s Day. I knew that because R wore his sweatshirt printed with cars, and C wore his Giants’ tee shirt—the clothes they were wearing when I dropped them off earlier that day. And I saw that picture because the girlfriend and I have some mutual friends on Facebook and it showed up in my newsfeed.

At the time, that picture felt like a kick in the stomach. Who exactly was that woman cuddled up on the couch with my boys? I knew a little about her because my kids talked about her and her dog and cats. But she was a stranger to me. At the same time, she is someone who spent lots of time with my kids. They are comfortable around her. They get excited when they see her car parked outside their dad's house. They ask if they will get to see her over the weekend. They like her. A lot.

After seeing that picture, I spent a bit of time struggling with my feelings. I wanted my kids to like her because if they didn’t, well, that would be bad. But I didn’t want them to like her too much because, well, I’m their mom.

A few months later the universe did me a huge favor. It gave me a friend who helped me see things from the other side—as in, from the girlfriend’s perspective. My friend had fallen in love with and married a man with two young children. Those kids are about to graduate from high school now, but she helped raise them. She helped make their lunches and drive them to school and comfort them in the middle of the night. For fifty percent of their lives, she was their mother too.

From the time they were six years old, she was just as much a part of their lives as their biological mother. She loves them as her own and refers to them as her bonus kids, because step kids seems too impersonal. Years from now, I suspect my kids won’t remember a time before their bonus mom, just as they won’t remember a time before their bonus grandparent. He came into our lives when R was an infant.

I feel fortunate that my ex chose someone who has welcomed my kids into her life. I feel relief that my kids want to spend time with her. I feel lucky that there is another person who loves my kids and wants to be a part of their lives everyday, and especially, on Mother’s Day. Because there could never be too many people loving my kids. Bonus parent. How lucky. For all of us.