The Stan Space

I've been trying to cry for three days. Emotionally constipated with worry, sleepless nights and far too many to-do’s; my elusive tears have left me gasping for breath, restlessly aching for that leg-up, pacing around in circles looking for more time, understanding and patience. But at last, a phone call to my Gran was the catalyst that launched my resistant tears.

Gran’s 92 year old boyfriend, Stan, passed away this morning. 92! As I reached out across the phone line, Gran reached back with a tired and trembling 88 year old voice, reassuring me that she would be ok.

 With a smile summoned from her Grandmotherly reserves she reminded me that Stan had lived a full and long life. She comforted me when I told her that I felt so sorry for her pain.

 “I don’t know what to say, Gran. I’m so sorry for your heartache.”  It was weak, but honest. 

 “What can I do? I wish I could stay the night with you.” I pleaded from three states away.

“You are so, so dear, you sweet Angel.” Through her stoic, sad face she reassured me until I stopped crying. And I’d never even met dear Stan. Even in the spotlight of her own grief, Gran was lovingly comforting someone else.

 “Who was it that said, ‘Don’t cry because it ended, smile because it happened’?” She asked. I admitted that I had heard it before, but I didn't know who was wise enough to think that was a good idea. I kept crying. Some help I am for the grieving. 

But, despite her bravery, Gran’s sadness soon bullied its way into her optimism.

“It was so sudden,” she said after a long pause. “Monday he drove himself to the hospital. Wednesday I learned he was sick, and Friday…well…” Her voice trailed off just as she started to get into the meat of how she was really feeling.

“I met his daughters for the first time at the hospital. They told me that he had spoken of me and told them he was seeing ‘a younger woman’!” With that, she laughed, but even her laugh dripped with the tears of love lost. 

“I had no idea he had told anyone about me. I certainly didn't see him as an older man. He was the same age your Grampy would be.”

I felt a little embarrassed that we were having a rob-the-cradle conversation about 88 and 92 year olds. But, it seemed to be a pleasing distraction for her, so I silently blushed and wept as she shared some thoughts about love and death.

“You make room in your life for people, in your heart. And when they go, they leave a hole where they were. It feels like I have a Stan shape in my heart. I don’t know what to do with that space now. How do you repair a hole in the middle of your tapestry?”

I've wondered the same things about the holes in my own heart.

I expected she would follow this question with some of her own spiritual advice about how God mends us, stitches our hurt. I expected a comforting verse about death, Heaven, His abiding love. Something. But she didn't cling to any of that. She didn't even reach for it. She simply sat on the line, sadly, with a Stan-shaped hole in her heart. While I couldn't relate to the pain of my lover dying, I could certainly empathize with the pain of wondering, “what now?”

“I don’t know, Gran. Maybe we just meet that space gently and sit quietly in it.” Easier said than done, I have found.

“He had the twinkliest blue eyes! And you should have seen his hair, the most beautiful white hair and beard. He had these fine wrinkles around his eyes, and when he winked at me –oh- I was toast!” I heard the smile in her voice again, and I could sense that she had her hand over her racing heart as she swooned under the memory winking back at her.

“I’m sorry I never got to meet him, he sounds like a special man. I’m so glad that you found each other and had this time together.”

“Me too.”

“You know, he is so lucky that he had you at the end of life. I’m so happy that he had the joy, and the sweetness of your love. Even though it feels like it was short, it was such a strong and comforting end to a long life.” I made myself jealous with that one… I hoped that I would have my love beside me when I am very old and leaving life. Gran has lived long enough to have many places in her heart where love has lived; and gone. Many of those places are soft and still hurting, like the Stan space. Many are old, puttied and scarred but not forgotten. I often wonder if my heart will look like Swiss cheese or a hand-made paper snowflake when I am old, or if it will be stretched to capacity with love given and received. I pray for the latter. I wished I would die old, with love squeezing my hand.

She asked about the kids, and reminded me to savor the noise, and the hard days. She told me about a day she threw herself face down on her bed and sobbed, “I can’t do it anymore!” after her houseful of 4 teenagers had driven her to the edge. I imagined my Gran crying into her pillow, broken down. She talked to me about taking her daughter to the emergency room with cuts and scrapes after a fall. “I felt so afraid, terrified. I felt so guilty, like the worst Mom on Earth.” She reminisced. She sounded like a worried mother. A tired mother. A mother doing the best she knew how to do.

She sounded like me.

As we finished our call, she was laughing and smiling with sincerity. She talked to me like a woman talking to her friend. I recognized the emotion in her voice. I recognized that my Gran is a woman who melts at the wink of a handsome eye, has been fed up with kids and scared in an emergency room. I felt thankful that Stan had happened to my Gran and I recognized that I have felt those same fears, surrender, love. The kind that will leave a hole in the middle of your tapestry.

“I think it was Mark Twain who said it.” She added at last.

And then, I smiled.

Now Landing, Gratitude

I heaved the shopping cart around the market last night for over an hour. By the end of that hour, I gave serious thought to texting my husband and telling him to come help me tow the load to the checkout. I was exhausted. With two cases of water weighing down my painfully full carriage of groceries, I had lost my momentum and was now leaning into the load which was creeping towards checkout at a rate of 1LSPH (Linoleum Square Per Hour).  This is shopping for a family of 6 and 1 dog.  I felt like a Toyota pulling the space shuttle.  

I docked the space shuttle at lane 4. The nice young man bagging my order asked me three times if plastic was ok, and three times I said, “yes.” The nice young man asked me three times if I found everything I was looking for tonight. “Yes,” I replied three times as if my bulging cart wasn’t indication enough that I had found all that I hoped for and more. He continued bagging at a rate of 1BPH (bag per hour) while I multi-tasked between watching the register screen for accurate pricing and intermittently cherry-picking the delicate items being carelessly tossed down the conveyor by my cashier (serving me since 1983). Yes, I’m that lady.  

The nice young man was so far behind on bagging that my items were crunching, crushing and colliding into one another as they backed up into a mountainous, heart-breaking  pile. Finally, the cashier had to stop the belt and help him bag. I helped him bag.  I gave him the requisite stink-eye as I reached into the bottom of the mound for a bag of chips which was now certainly a bag of birdseed.

I resisted a second urge to text my husband. Help me.

When the nice, egg-breaking, chip-crushing, card-smashing  young man didn’t offer to help me out to the car, I tearfully dragged my cart through the black, crushed snow in the dark parking lot.  Bumping, skipping, sinking, and trudging through slush, the cart’s wheels became wedged with chunks of ice and I had to carry the cart on my back the rest of the way to the car. One of the bags broke under the weight of three bottles of sparkling cider and 9 cans of canned chicken.  Chicken bounced off my bumper and plunged with a splash into the melted slush between my freezing feet. Sparkling cider rolled to a stop against the tire of the parked car beside me.

I was instantly relieved the young man hadn’t helped me to the car or I might be shoving his body into my trunk along with 9 cans of dirty, dented chicken. Parked in my garage at home, I teared up at the tasks ahead of unloading and sorting my haul. Luckily, the husband could see it on my face that I had to sacrifice a courtesy clerk just to make it home with my eggs in-tact. He helped me unload and put away my freezer goods in the garage. Never mind that in the house, I had about two weeks of crusty Thanksgiving  left-over’s, uncovered, wilting fruit, and spoiled eggnog to dispose of before any of my new items would fit in the fridge. Every year I excitedly buy eggnog like it’s some kind of interior fridge Christmas décor and every year it sits front and center, untouched on the top shelf.

*toss*

By the end of my herculean grocery effort, I had convinced myself that I probably have some kind of blood disorder which is rendering me this fatigued.  “I’m just so tired. I feel like I’m tired all the time. I can barely lift my arms.” I whined in my head.  I suppose it has nothing to do with hauling the space shuttle around King Soopers for over an hour.

 Alas, I know I don’t have a strength-sucking disorder.  I’m just a busy, tired mommy.  I was tempted to reach for a crushed bag of birdseed chips and collapse on the couch with marathon episodes of Amish Mafia. Instead, I kissed the husband and surrendered to the day’s demands. I crawled into my freshly washed, freshly made, deeply warm and widely comfortable bed.  I was thankful for my bed. I was thankful for the sound of football on TV in the living room below. 

 As I fell asleep safe and sound, I was even thankful for a space shuttle full of groceries for my family.

Women Who (Still) Do Too Much

     It's not usually like this. It's just been a hard week, a lot going on. I've been so busy. The excuses pile up like so much laundry on the floor.
     Before bed last night, I rummaged through an ecclectic assortment of laundry, hair product, a spent coffee cup and an empty Kleenex box on my bathroom counter top to find my toothpaste, which had been squeezed to the end of its useful life because I haven't had time to go to the Market. After I faux-brushed my teeth, I hop-scotched across still more laundry, a phone charger, and ironically, a stack of Market ads from Sunday which now had collected a silt of dust. My eyes were puffy, new wrinkles had etched their way across my face and my thinning hair looked unbearably thinner.For extra self-loathing, I squeezed my fat roll. Ugh. 

      I hopped into bed and knocked over two empty water bottles on the nightstand while frantically looking for my insomnia meds. Unable to identify what pills I had accidentally co-mingled in a nameless pile on the nightstand, I reached for three random pills of various sizes, cut one in half (to reduce the risk of overdose, of course) and hoped sleep would find me. It didn't.
In the morning, I navigated my way backwards through the same impossible gauntlet of my room, all the way  down to my *still* empty toothpaste.

     Eager to escape the melee of my bedroom, I dressed in the same sexy yoga pants, tired and torn t-shirt, and very fashion-forward Powell Middle School hoodie I have been wearing for the last four consecutive days (coincidentally,  the same day I ran out of toothpaste). My husband hasn't complained yet, so I chipped away at something crusty on my pants, tightened my drawstrings and began my day. Even though I left chaos in my wake, I walked into the rest of the house with a sense of satisfaction and peace because I knew everything else in my house was perfect. Sort of.

     The dishes sat sparkling in the enclave of their sanitary dishwasher. The laundry was clean and tightly folded in neat stacks by size, color and alphabetically by brand. (ok, no.) Perfectly arranged, the ornaments on the Christmas tree spun and glittered in the glow of the porch light which was being snuffed out by the rising sun. The tables were clear and clean, the napkins perfectly angled on freshly-pressed linen placemats (again, no).
     The point is, my house is in perfect order. I know where every backpack, pen, movie blanket, remote control are. I can tell you without looking where to find your favorite coffee mug, the book you were reading for homework last night and how many chewy fruit snacks are left in the third drawer of the storage pantry. Everyone is well-provided for, maintained and in good working order. Not a worry, not a care.I take care of the cares.  Every need, every demand, every clean pair of jeans placed neatly at the foot of your crisply made bed.
     My mom used to float a book around my childhood home titled, Women Who Do Too Much and I used to think to myself, "Why would anyone in their right mind do that?" And now I know. I even know why someone wrote a book about it. Because we are women, that's why. Hear us pack lunches, volunteer at school, buy, sell, mop floors, run errands, run to the mailbox, walk the dog (and go to the gym, wrap gifts, write checks, refill toilet paper and wipe out the sink while we're at it).
     As a result of my doing-too-much-edness my bedroom is a disaster. I'm a disaster. I'm a woman who Does Too Much. I'm officially my mother.
*lets head fall back painfully with exaggerated sigh* Well, that's not so bad. At least I recognize that I'm doing too much. The problem is that I recognize it, and then I do more.

     I sat bedside in the pediatricians office this morning while my son had his cast removed. He reclined on the crinkling paper, and moaned that his stomach was hurting. "It started this morning," he said when I asked when he began feeling that way. He should stay home today. I will have to call school, I will have to cancel my class with Deb. I wonder if the Dr will check his stomach if I ask. After all, we are only on the docket for a cast removal not a check-up. They may charge me. How much do I have in the checking? I'm really hungry. I haven't eaten yet, have I? No...
     "The Doctor is running late, he should be here in about 15 minutes. I apologize." Said Nurse Crazy-Scrubs. I closed the door behind her and flipped off the obnoxiously bright florescent lights.
The early morning sun crept in through the blinds, casting an easy, soothing, dark blue glow in the west-facing room.  I put my head on the edge of the foam-filled table and listened to my son breathe. Slowly. Quietly. The generator outside stroked the office walls with a hypnotic vibration. Forgetting about school, my appointment, the office bill, I listened to the quiet. I sat still. I closed my eyes. I checked-in with myself, reminding me that I'm ok and it's ok to just sit still. It's ok. I felt my body melt like hot lead into the plastic chair. I visualized warm, yellow lights swirling through my body, top to bottom.
     I rested. Hard.
     It was the first time in 13 years I was blissfully relieved to be waiting in a doctor's office and I welcomed his tardiness. I wished he would never come. I wished they would forget that we were even in there. Welcoming a few stolen moments of ridiculously precious solitude, I didn't open my eyes until the rushing Doctor flung back the door, stared questionably into the darkness and flipped the lights awake. "Good morning, so sorry to keep you waiting." He smiled, and held out his hand to shake as if he hasn't seen me at least once a quarter for the last thirteen years. By now, I think we should hug. Instead, I shook his hand, took renewed breath, smiled and told him, "It's ok."
   
 

Eat Your Heart Out

With strength that could pull a Monster Truck out of a sand dune, I readied to peel apart the inner pouch of the cereal box. Apparently bound by some futuristic adhesive resistant to my iron grip, I pulled at the fused seams harder. Bearing down, grunting, squatting, I wrestled the bag. I gnawed with my teeth, trying to penetrate the weakest area of the bag that I had only been able to stretch.  

With a final act of Herculean valor, I hoisted my foot up on the counter to brace myself for what was sure to be the greatest feat of any breakfast making mother ever. 

With my elbows pointed to the sky, my knuckles turned white under the stress of the mighty choke-hold I had on the bag.

I roared with determination until a herald of angels erupted into a resounding rendition of Joyful, Joyful! as I finally ripped open the bag. In half.

In an act of celebration (or violence, I’m not sure which) I was sucked into a breakfast matrix and showered by cereal confetti as it was explosively ejected from the box. 

Thousands, millions of store-brand Whole Grain Oats littered my hair, the counter, and overflowed the creases of my bathrobe.  Cereal crunched under my feet as I crossed the room to collect the dustpan and broom.

After cussing out Jesus and mankind, I tried to shake off the hundreds of statically charged O’s clinging to my wool socks. Cereal continued to rain down from the sky for forty days and forty nights.  When the assault finally stopped, I swept the length of my whole arm across the countertop, knocking all the cereal to the floor.  Upon hearing the tick of cereal hitting the floor, the dog dutifully came running to help clean up. Generic Cheerio’s stuck to his wet nose as he sucked up my failure.  I picked wayward O’s from behind the toaster, the dish soap, the potted plant by the window, the couch, the neighbor’s driveway.  After I shooed away all the looters and restored order to the kitchen, I reached for my coffee, which of course had Cheerio’s floating in it.  I felt defeated and weak.

A similar chaotic outburst erupted last Friday in my Writer’s Circle. Instead of a shower of Whole Grain Oats, there was an explosion of the emotional variety as I sat before a panel of my writing peers and ripped my own creative self in half.  Through the journey of writing my book, I feel like I am met around every corner with impossibility. Doubt. Frustration. Procrastination. I launched into a shameless testimony about failing, fear, the haunting of the past. I ruminated at length about how hard it is to keep working on my book. I emoted about how hard it is to face my fears and visit my past.  How hard it is to open up and pour it all out.  I felt defeated and weak.

“Maybe I just need to quit? Maybe this is just too much for me. Maybe I’m not as strong as I thought I was.” I admitted.

 My writing coach’s face turned ghostly white, and I could tell that she was thinking about launching herself through the second story library window.  But she didn’t jump. She and the other writers listened to me quietly until I ran out of pitiful steam.

“I can’t do it.” Just short of unstoppable crying, I summarized my plight with an act of surrender. I wanted to quit.

“No, no, no! You can do this, look how far you’ve come. It’s hard, it is, but you can finish it.” They swept up my exposure like it was a thousand fallen Cheerios; rushing to my aid with support and encouragement so I didn’t have to get out the broom and do it myself.  Days later with a refreshed spirit, I went back to work on the book. It's incredibly hard. That hasn't changed. But, I know that I’m not going to get everything right and sometimes pieces will fall on the floor.  I may spend more time cleaning up than successfully making anything and that doesn't mean I should give up on fighting for what’s inside. It's good for me. It might even be the most important thing I do all day.   

Today, I easily opened a new box of cereal, poured a hearty bowl, and finished the whole thing.

Best Friends Forever! Kind Of.

It's a strange flux I find myself in right now. I can feel the stage being set for some sort of change or shift in the dynamic of my friendships. Reunions, new friendships, friendships headed for time-outs. My kids seem to be in the same state of flux:  battling with greed, jealousy, loneliness, and an over-saturation of texts, tweets and Facetime. To name a few. Who's been added? Friended? Favorited? Liked, winked, LOL'd at? Or worse, Deleted.

 Oh Social Media, what a tangled world-wide-web you weave. 

Two of my favorite friends have moved away in as many months. Life goes on. Marriages, do-overs, jobs. Sometimes to live the dream you gotta chase the dream. I get it. But still. I have a deficit of cool friends anymore, and I can't afford for them to just be moving away; especially at the same time. I find that as I get older, my friendships become more important to me. They mean more, they are deeper. I find that they are moving away from me. 

 "Is there something on your mind you want to talk about?" I asked my son as I tucked his covers snugly around him at bedtime.

 "Yeah..." He closed his eyes softly, and although I'm sure it wasn't meant for me to see, a tiny tear popped out. 

"What's wrong little sweet?"

"Well, me and Will are fighting." A second tear chased the first and I wiped them both away with my thumb and the corner of the sheet. 

"That's sad, what are you fighting about?"

 He emoted at length about the injustice of it all. The unfairness, the disregard, the neglect of common courtesy. 

"It's football, it's playing fair. It's talking to other friends or kids who don't like me, it's being ignored like I'm not even there. It's everything." 

Ah, yes. The everything. 

I coached him with flawless advice about how to approach Will, how to confront him with kindness and an open mind and heart. I advised him on being a good friend, even when its hard and when it hurts. 

"Give Will the opportunity to do better. Talk to him. A good friend will give you a chance to correct and adjust. Let him know what the perception of him is when he cheats. If he responds with poor choices and decisions and isn't a respectable person, we will go from there. Ok?"

He nodded, jostling another tear out of its home. There was no mucous, and the corner of the sheet wasn't too damp so I figured I had done an acceptable job of neutralizing the situation. At least for the next 8 hours of night-night. 

Today I made contact with a friend I've been out of touch with for about twenty years. I hate to admit that I am old enough to have a friend from twenty years ago--but it is what it is.  She sounded the same, but everything has changed. Marriages, divorces, kids, moves. Wins, losses. So much has happened over those twenty years, yet in the span of a 45 minute phone call, it was as if nothing had changed. Time stood still for us. A flood of memories came back to me the rest of the day. Smiles crept across my face, sighs. Giggles. Stories I told my husband about my journey with my friend all ended in, "I guess you had to be there."

 James Taylor said it best when he sang, "The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time..." Amen. My friends have moved unrealistic distances away to meet for coffee, Pho, shopping. But I enjoyed the time that our paths crossed and we walked together. My hope is that Will and Jack have one of those magical friendships that can make time stand still. I hope that by November, they won't even remember the fight they had in October.  And when they laugh and tell the stories twenty years later, they will all end with,  "Guess you had to be there."

Mother's Rap

She spread the slats apart and squinted through the narrow opening. The north facing window was hazy, opaque with sun glare, rain spots and cobwebs.
"What are you looking at?" I asked as I forged for last night's leftovers in the fridge. Without breaking her concentration, mom waved behind her, "Hand me the phone. Fast."
I pinned a piece of cold fried chicken between my teeth, tucked a two-liter bottle of Orange Drink under my arm and handed her the cordless phone.
"I can't believe you still have an answering machine. Seriously, mom." Twenty years of dust was caked into the seams of the antiquated electronic. The recorded greeting was at least that old. "Ssh!" Mom urgently blasted me to keep my voice down. I defiantly asked with my 'inside voice', "what are you doing, anyway?"
"I have to call 911."
My cold fried chicken shed some of it's congealed coat and the camouflaged crumbs dropped to the speckled vinyl floor below. I didn't have to look to know that she was still at the window. Watching. Her paranoia didn't impress me anymore.
"Why do you have to call 911?" More crumbs fell out.
"Because! There's some..." She paused to find the most dramatic, least offensive, urgent descriptive she could come up with."...there's gangster raps outside!"
My laughter heaved a bolus of fried chicken into my esophagus, launching me into a fit of gagging and choking. "What the stink is a 'gangster rap?'" Now she had my attention and I looked up. Mom was in the same crouching tiger pose at the window, motionless, spying the 'gangster raps'. She lowered her voice to a whisper, "Thugs, gang kids!" She positioned her thumb on the '9', ready to dial.
I poured flat Orange Drink into a coffee mug. "What are the gangster raps doing?" She stared harder through the tiny opening in the wooden blinds. "They are standing around that car across the street."
 "So, they aren't actually doing anything?" I confirmed her observations but she didn't answer. "Mom. It's not   911 Prevent an Emergency. Put the phone down." She continued her surveillance, waiting for the gangster raps to do something-anything-litigious.
"What's mom looking at?" Lis swiped the last piece of chicken from my paper towel plate. "She's watching some gangster raps, and waiting for the shit to go down." Mom raised her voice above a whisper, "Don't swear in my house!" Lis stood beside her and looked over mom's shoulder into the street. "Oh, I graduated with those guys. One of those kids was in Student Council I think, and that other kid was in my Honors class."
Mom stepped back and put the phone on the counter beside the sink. "I want you girls to clean up all those crumbs you dropped and throw away your trash. I mean it." She was heading upstairs when the phone rang. "Will one of you brats get that?" Mom hollered from the landing where she had resumed her neighborhood watch crusade at the upstairs window.
"Maybe we should keep the line open, mom, just in case? The machine will get it."

Cardioship

Relationships are hard. Romantic relationships, friend and family relationships. Neighbor and work relationships. They all take a toll on the heart.
Relationships can make you feel good about yourself and horrible about yourself. Love, doubt and dislike yourself. Never mind how they can make you feel about the other person in the relationship.
Oy.
Some relationships are worth the never ending investment of mental and emotional sweat. Some are better left severed and walked away from.
But no matter where they end up, all relationships have to go through the heart before they go anywhere else; making the heart a sort of filter, a sciv to let the love through and keep the crap out.
Like any machine, hearts are fallible. They aren't perfect. Sometimes they fail. Sometimes they even break. And that is the part that makes us human.
That is what makes our heads kick in and make up the difference when the heart falls short.
And then it's anybody's game because that's where all the crap goes that the heart once filtered out.
That's when we draw on past experience to help us make choices. Decisions. Mistakes.
That is when we have to count on the other person's heart to do what's right and hope that their heart isn't broken too.