Wet Feet

Eulogy

My grandfather died a week ago. 

I was asked to give the eulogy, and of course I accepted, knowing that doing so would test the limits of my abilities. I took a deep breath and welcomed the challenge.

It was uncharacteristic of me to be so prepared, to wake up the day of his funeral with the speech finished, practiced, and parsed out on 23 index cards. There was no winging it, there was no risking failure. This is too important.

Here's what I said:

Thank you, everyone, for sharing this day with us. We're celebrating the life of a person who had a talent for bringing joy wherever he went with his sharp wit, his charming smile, and his unforgettable singing voice. 

After spending any time with him, you'd know of his capacity to love. He was fortunate to fall in love twice in his lifetime- once with his wife of nearly 50 years, and after she died, with his grilfriend Agnes. 

He loved his dog, Comet. And before Comet, Cosette. He loved his Diamond Club Membership at the casinos, his Irish cream (he preferred Carolann's but would drink Bailey's if that's all there was). He had a fondness for a good barbershop quartet, and MSNBC (someone should email Rachael Maddow and tell her that her most loyal fan has passed).

As I prepared for this I heard so many stories, too many to share here. There were common threads to the stories I heard: Something that came up over and over again was his generous heart. He never missed a birthday- his voice started us on every rendition of Happy Birthday we sang as a family. He made every grandchild an angel ornament for his Christmas tree, and every gift he made for our annual Polllyanna was both thoughtful and useful. He made my cousin the dancer a ballet barre one year. The year I moved into my first apartment he made me a sturdy wooden toolbox I still use today.

Another thing that came up was his intelligence: he was always turning his agile mind to one puzzle or another- whether it was figuring out how to fix a broken TV, devising a system for betting on horses, or finding a technique for growing the best, biggest tomatoes. He was always a step ahead of his time, he was one of the first people I knew to have a computer.

And then there was his sense of humor. Always quick, often biting. He had a knack for clever one-liners and nicknames with staying power: Zip, Cookie, Deedle, Whitey, Missy, Brian, and Rich the Itch are just a few.

he had a way for telling a story that gave it meaning and humor. My brother said something that rings true for me and probably for all of his children and grandchildren- all of the best family stories, the ones we tell and retell, we hear them with his voice, with his words. In this way, he'll live on inside of us forever.

Thank you, Bips. Thank you for the twinkle in your eye, the same twinkle I see in my daughters' eyes (usually when they're up to some mischief). Thank you for the example you set of toughness when facing life's adversities. Thank you for your tenderness when those close to you faced their own trials. Thank you for your irrepressible faith that the next jackpot is just around the bend, for your tenacity and hope that lasted into your final days.

Thank you for living your life and for bringing us into it. Thank you, Bips. You've cashed out a winner.

I've fallen into a hole

I have a family member with cancer. Being jobless and available, it makes sense that I'd be the one to provide daytime support and care. 

My grandfather, the beloved patriarch of our close Irish Catholic family, has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. He had surgery last week, and came home from the hospital Monday. 

I am struck with how closely it resembles infant care. He wakes up, needs to pee, needs to eat, needs to be kept up and somewhat active for some time, and then is settled back into bed, and then I do the other things that need to be done: dishes, laundry, dusting, mopping. And then he wakes up and the cycle starts again.

My days are infused with the mingling scents of Pledge and urine. My thoughts linger on mortality and meaning, on endings, beginnings, and the space between the two. 

I take copious notes. I ferret through the rich family history of his house. I look away as I help him pull up his pants. I balance his dignity and his needs. I feel so grateful that I can be of service to him in such a time. 

He brought us all into the world, he made my crazy-sweet-beautiful family happen. He is peaceful, sweet, compliant in my hands. I give him the tenderest care that I can: his skin is itchy and dry so I rub the lotion in. He is hungry, and I feed him. He is tired, and I settle him into bed. 

It is only fitting that the way we go out of the world is the way we come into it: with our loved ones taking care of our most basic needs. I am honored and humbled to be in the position to provide this care. 

This is what life is about: taking care of the people you love. That is the only meaning that makes any sense to me.

Back to the Start

I started this blog to write about my experience of open adoption. It could still have been defined as open at the time although it had already disappointed my own expectations of what "openness" meant. And after that devastating letter six years ago, and the aftermath that followed, it would be better described as a closed adoption. 

Gradually those feelings and that pain shrank into the corners of my mind. The drama of Miriam's birth, the subsequent disintegration of my marriage, and my own post-divorce rumspringa  took up all of my emotional resources. And now, I hardly think of E at all. I have moved far enough away from the pain of her loss that I have to do some quick math in my head to remember how old she is (13 on Thursday). By some people's definition this would make me a success story. I have enjoyed a few years of peace. I have taken a vacation from the pain. This is the luxury a closed adoption can afford. 

Events of this past year, while having absolutely nothing to do with her, have made me revisit the lessons open adoption taught me. "I am leaning toward letting the door close. I have my own mental health to think of. I don't want to be bent into shapes that fit around their insecurities, I don't want that responsibility on my shoulders anymore." Reopening that wound led to the irritation of other wounds. Her age, also, makes me wonder whether now might be a time when she needs her first mother. And for the first time in three years, I'm considering contacting her. Nothing intrusive, just a birthday card. Something to tell her, yes, I'm still here. I'm still listening. I haven't forgotten.

Lost and Found

I have a resolution this New Years. And no, it's not to lose weight. It's not to be a better whatever.

My resolution this year is to write more. To find my lost voice.

My voice, it's been lost. I don't *know* anymore. there's no *point*.

And this, I know, is the perfect time to write. 

In the wake of finding the person who I want to spend my whole life loving, I have to cut away all the bullshit I've been building around me. it's the same bullshit that has kept me from writing here. the untellable detritus. He has stripped all that away and now I'm as naked as I've ever been. 

So this is the first post of what I hope will be my resurgence. It's short but it's *true*. I want to find myself again. I've been lost for long enough.

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It's not that I don't love you, blog. Of course not. Don't ever get the idea that it's you, this is totally me. All my fault. It's just that I"m a different person than I was when we met, and I've grown to need so many other things. You really haven't grown at all, blog. You are still basically the same as you were in 2004.

Silly breakup metaphors aside, 6 years ago, when you could almost count the number of parenting bloggers on both hands, when an arena existed in which this goofball could be Kind of a Big Deal (hi Jo!). My lifestyle was the absolute opposite: I never left the house after 7PM except in an effort to get a baby to sleep. My mainstay of social contact was through a screen, by way of writing rather than talking. I rarely drank. Maybe one beer. (Guinness helps make milk, you know...) And I never, EVER went anywhere without the baby.

A friend of mine said that the reasons I had as many facebook friends as I do (actually we were talking about Mafia Wars *shame*) is because of my "fake internet persona". I laughed at the kernel (melon?) of truth in that. These days I have very little tolerance for stay at home motherhood, I drink more than is good for me, I don't even bat an eyelash at daycare or joint custody, and most of my social contact comes from grownups who might not even have kids and have never met mine. 

I'd take the whole blog down if it weren't for the links to adoption posts that were pieces of a larger discussion (remember that? when discussions took place between blogs?). If it weren't for texting and facebook I'd hardly be stringing words together at all. My ability to compose anything longer than 140 characters is severely compromised. I hate everything I write, including this post so far.

I can't say right now what kind of resolution this blog identity crisis will come to, if it gets resolved at all. I could take it in another direction, I could abandon it and start fresh somewhere else and blog about hair or something, or I could just continue going long stretches without posting and then feeling guilty whenever I see the bookmark. Maybe you'll get some more drivel three dye jobs from now.

FYI

I thought you might want to know what my hair looks like now. Voila. It's blue. And magenta. And green.

Every day, people on the street tell me they love my hair color. I never get tired of it. My hair is fucking rad.

I love having blue hair. I feel supernatural, like a faery, or something that's nearly human but not quite.

The only downside is that it's nearly impossible to go incognito. People remember the blue-haired chick with eyes on her back who's name is Kateri. Anonymity is the impossible dream. 

Soon, I think I will color over the blue with transluscent blue-black. I'm not there yet. We'll see.

And FYI: the color I use is semi-permanent. That means it stains the cuticle of the hair and only lasts a month because it does not penetrate the cortex. Normally it would run and bleed in the shower and in the rain, which is a pain in the ass to say the least. I have discoever than using a demi-permanent glaze prevents fading and bleeding. I highly recommend that if you try this at home you follow it with a glaze. It's colorless and it seals the cuticle for four to six weeks. I used a product called Shine Happy, available at drugstores. That enorsement wasn't paid for. It's the god's honest truth.

Equinox

There are ten bags of trash on my sidewalk today. I am chucking literal and metaphorical shit out the door. Again.

I've come to the point where I can't believe in my own transformation because I've made the effort so many times before. How many times have I shucked off the excess only to gather it around me again more quickly than I could have imagined?

Something feels different this time but I am quick to downplay the significance. I am tired of disappointing myself. I am tired of letting down the people who dare to have faith in me.

My house has been such a catastrophic mess that the last week has been soaked in bleach and loss. I've cleaned messes that I can't even tell you about. I've let go of accumulated clutter I've collected for years, sentimental perhaps, but excessive and unnecessary.

I have finally come to that breaking point where I must remake myself or die. I know that sounds dramatic. I can't go on in the way I've been; there needs to be a fundamental shift. My default setting seems to be self-destruction and someday I will know why that is. Not right now. Right now I need to get things together, for me, for my babies, for everyone who loves me. Self-destruction is an indulgence I can't afford. Through the diligent practice of building (rather than destroying) I may discover why I have always been so driven toward self-sabotage. That is the only way I will ever find the answer.

I have done this before. I have been on the brink before. Maybe not this particular cliff in this specific location, but I have been close enough to the precipice of so many cliffs that I know what it takes to direct myself back to safe ground. I have done this before and I know I am capable.

Every time you come to a cliff it seems like the steepest, the most treacherous, the most irresistible. That's just perspective. This cliff is no different than others I have already conquered. It is just a cliff; the only thing I need to do is walk in the right direction.

Fancy meeting YOU here

"Hi! Wow, it's been ages! How've you been? Oh my god! That's so interesting! I, um, have to go, um, wash my hair or something! Yeah, I have a headache! Yeeaaaaaah. It was so great to see you! Take care! Byeee!"

Jesus gay, I'm sorry, blog! But that's the treatment you've been getting from me whenever I see the link to post in my bookmarks. The same greeting I would give someone I met one night at a bar and promptly forgot about.

You deserve better, blog. I put so much energy into you, in the yesteryears. And now when I see you I treat you like a cheap one night stand. I'm horrible.

I would love to say that there's been some wildly emotional and poetic reason for my protracted silence but there's not. Burning bridges doesn't leave much time for writing. Acting like an asshole doesn't leave much room for self-reflection.

But the leaves, they are a-turnin'. The trees, they are a-fallin'. 

Literally, actually. Not just because it's nearly autumn but because the tree outside my house fell down last week.

This tree has been slowly dying for years. Last summer it produced a few green leaves, this year it produced none. Fungus crept up the trunk.

The rain drenched the trunk until it became spongy and the weight of the dead branches pulled it down into the street. There it sat, blocking cars from using the alleyway, until the city cleaned it up six hours later.

This tree began dying around the same time my marriage did. "We should just chuck it out and plant a new one", one of us said. "Maybe with some care it could be healthy again" countered the other. I don't remember who argued for which side and knowing us we switched roles every time. It was a recurring discussion.

Every year the tree got sicker, leaves sparser, fungus more plentiful. And I wondered when Nature would finally do away with this albatross, this poor dying tree. The tree figured into my dreams regularly because the nearest branch almost brushed the bedroom window next to which I sleep. It came to symbolize my baggage, all my problems that just wouldn't die. 

Sometimes I imagined it being set ablaze in a thunderstorm. I wondered if it would fall apart in pieces or just keel over, and if it would cause property damage on the descent. Every time I looked at that tree I imagined and wished for its demise.

And when I sat reading in my room on that rainy day, when I heard that whoooosh I didn't have to look out the window to see what happened. From the relief I felt in my bones I knew: the tree had finally kicked it. 

I am not silly or superstitious enough to think that the tree dying will really change anything. I am savvy enough to know that if I want it to mean something it will. 

Since the tree died I gave my kitchen the scrubbing of its life and revamped the bedtime routine to involve less yelling and more reading. I have been consciously redirecting my attitude (a near constant battle against old habits, believe me) toward being compassionate instead of impatient and frustrated.

Naomi's heading into a hard year of school and this is no time to be selfish. I am very aware, perhaps more aware than most, of the kind of damage a bad year of school could do to her self-esteem. She will be seven in a few weeks, the age of reason, and this is the kind of parenting I've been waiting to do ever since I began thinking of parenting all those years ago.

Before bedtime every night we read a few pages of A Tree Grow In Brooklyn. Naomi is captivated by the language and the imagery, we are both enthralled with the magic that can live within such hardship, and I am inspired to be as tough a mother as Katie Nolan.

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That's the back of a boombox circa 1985. And that's an Ipod hooked up to it. And up top there is the foot of a hipster who has gone too far.

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