Becoming Mom

The evidence is above my head. Old t-shirts from Davis’ basketball teams, old hand towels from my first wedding, a Loyola shirt that someone has grown out of, leftover t-shirts from charity events hosted. All these sit atop the wire shelves in my laundry room, in plain sight, pointing to my guilt.

Each day, a new piece of evidence appears. Just last night, I rinsed out a carry home salad container from the pizza parlor to store with my Tupperware. And when my friend Leigh and I are out for lunch and she offers me lotion, I watch as she squeezes the lotion out of the tube into her palm, while I flip my hand over and nudge a little lotion onto the top of my hand, then rub both bony tops together.

My sighs are heavier now, my worries a little deeper. I have set laundry days and usually threaten that any remaining items in the laundry will be donated to Goodwill. When did this begin, this becoming my mother? I ask and laugh to myself.

Surely, I have always been her, in some fashion. But now, I want to bake more of her cookies, try my hand (again) at ravioli, create my own sauce from homegrown tomatoes. I sink further into this writing chair knowing it is because she is slipping away.

Were I to survey my friends, my cohorts, would they reply the same? That “becoming their mother” occurred when they noticed she was not really available to them anymore.

There has been no official diagnosis of dementia, but even if there were, my mother would forget that she had dementia anyhow. If it werent so sad, it would be quite a funny running dialogue about her either forgetting to take her meds, or not wanting to all because she forgets she has the disease!

Oh sure, mom still answers the phone. Oh sure, she still makes cookies, better than I ever will. But for Fall, she iced the cookies with Easter colors. When asking about the stepdaughters’ birthdays, two of whom were born in November, my mother cannot understand why the third daughter’s birthday does not also appear on her November calendar. I answer quietly, “If you flip to April, Mom, you’ll see her name there.”

As we speak over the phone, I envision her scrutinizing her calendar. She mumbles back and forth about this April birthday and that, while in my mind, I am wishing, “I don’t want you to go, mom. Inside your body to a place where none of us can find you. I know you will be safe there. I know it is a good place to be. After all those years of fighting back the arthritis, which I swear was caused by the stress of your worries, you are lighter. The telling is in your face, your oh so youthful, almost angelic face. Your soft cheeks, not yet hollowed all the way out. You were and are the original Ivory girl. There was never a need for a Sephora in your life. No cosmetician ever asked you to sit in her chair. There was no need, they could not have sold you on any product that could soften or lighten your face and cheeks.”

Her actions, her quirks, her ideas are now lost in a jumble of neurons. As of late, I have been telepathing them, almost intentionally performing actions that define her as Mom so as to hold on to her as she was. Her thriftiness that she displayed by saving all the old tees and towels for rags, I too am coveting, as if there are stories attached to each piece of fabric or rag. Stockpiling peanut butter, when it’s on sale or not, though it is the cheapest lunch item by far in my grocery cart. I leave my shoes at the foot of the staircase, when I go up the carpeted steps to the 2^nd floor. When I descend, I put those shoes back on.

I find myself shopping less, because I know she doesn’t anymore, considering more duties in the community or the writing center. She was a committed person, who taught first grade CCD every Saturday morning for ten years. Who could blame her for choosing the first graders, they had to be so much cuter than we were at 14. And too, she had been trained as a teacher for the young ones, she was at her best, reading the Bible stories, emphasizing the Ten Commandments, she was never deep, but always firm. And then, immediately following her classes, she would rush us off to bowling leagues.

Her energy I have never duplicated, but I also recall her naps – and am prone to my own – on the couch when we came home from school, her daytime attachment to General Hospital – I guess that’s no different from my attachment to West Wing or 30 Rock.

Just last night, I looked up from my post at end of the kitchen table and was caught off guard by my reflection in the sliding glass door. I may someday fear looking in any mirror, seeing myself actually age into my mother. But for now, I observe a woman who saved the world- the world she lived in - through photos, dinners, traditions and green stamps. I am trying to become a little piece of that woman.

08-27-08

My husband Mark once said that I write best about loss. But if writing is about capturing a moment, one that was formerly present, then writing is truly about finding a container for the past.

First, I tell you, I carry an ocean with me everyday. I have since the day I first dipped a tentative toe into the Pacific Ocean along the Oregon Coast some fourteen years ago. My son Davis was birthed there, my first husband’s ashes spread there, but mostly, it is where my soul resides. Every year since I moved away, I return to spend days at a time strolling the sands of Oceanside, and the many other beaches where my spirit found peace and healing in the tide pools and sand dunes. It helps that my son’s grandparents now reside where we once did.

I used to plan my Oregon trips according to the tides. When the moon was at its fullest, at the height of the July summer, the tides were at their lowest due to gravitiational pull. A tug that not only impacted the water levels, but pulled at me too, to take flight and return to my place of peace. I would pack up my son, and then my not quite yet ready for blending family, and head West. This year, that date coincided with a family trip to Europe.

So I gave up the notion of traveling when the tides talked the loudest to me. My consolation was that I could use my frequent flier miles to travel to Oregon with Davis, my son, for a quick trip on the heels of the European tour. Such was the plan, until an e-mail arrived in my inbox one day with a flier about his tryouts for the golf team.

To understand the importance of golf in Davis’ life, one should know it is of equal or greater importance to the tides. His father was a golfer, his grandfather and great grandfather. We held golf outings in memory of his father. And when it came time to spread his ashes, we did so with a 21 golf ball salute into the ocean. We still comb the beach looking for the return of any of those balls, but that would be a pointless as expecting his father to arise from out the ocean and walk back into out lives.

Davis had to make a decision on whether to travel to Oregon or stay at home and tryout for golf. And regrettably I would have to follow. In the back of my mind, my hope for peace washed away, carried out to become an actor on someone else’s stage that night. Sadly, Davis placed the call to his grandparents – he would tryout for the golf team. And they were ecstatic – there are dreams of families and then there are family’s dreams.

In the end, Davis would call from the car phone, to tell me he made the team. The coach had expanded the team by three places because the coach couldn’t make the cut. In Davis’s mind he questioned whether he would have made the first cut. In my mind, I knew that to choose an ocean over the greens, one must surely be in favor with the golfing gods, or at least a golfing dad.

Yet I still feel like I let Davis down. It has always been my job to help him remember his father, and for me to honor his memory as well. I could never have imagined that allowing Davis to choose between sandy beaches or sandy traps that he would have chosen the latter. And that this too would be a way, albeit a mature one, in which he could honor his father.

It is true, Mark was right. I can only write about loss. But I am writing so that I can let go of those moments of birth and death, son and father, and of course, my own rebirth as mother and writer, and give that moment away when necessary – even if I am only giving it back to me.

Make New Friends, But Keep the Old

6/10/08

We left behind the house on Observatory, a sunny yellow Victorian, with greenery everywhere, and its olden brick patio, moss ever so slightly creeping through the cracks. The stars were out, the moon in its banana form, with a few milky white clouds in the form a mouth, preparing to consume the moon. These are the nights when friendship is meant to be consumed, in between slurps of borscht, bites of Tuna Niçoise and chucks of blue cheese.

Our small group of writers had been together for one semester of Women Writing for (a) Change, but we had shared lifetimes, in the fifteen minutes that we often aired our writing. Inga, Allsyon, Naomi and I shared our values through our feedback and our compassion through our silence, or sometimes, from Naomi, the occasional, Ooohh.

It’s no secret in middle age we all struggle with making new friends. I have never given a thought to how close we were as writers and women, just always knew we were. And yet here we sat, Inga, the Danish mother of three, Allyson, so entrenched and liberated as a modern Jewish mother, now moving to support her husband’s new work at a Jewish Center, Naomi, a sixties-ish WASP, recently remarried, after time alone or spent advocating for the environment, and me with my Italian Catholic roots, my blended family, and my love for all things Oregon, and yet we could save the world in one night.

As I drove home with Allyson and Inga in the car, Inga riding shotgun – we had to explain that one to Naomi - my thoughts drifted to Lynn, my close friend now faraway in Phoenix. I never did call her back yesterday because the car pooling was horrendous, and then I needed time to get ready and be present for this outing with my writing friends.

I have been having a friend “crisis”, possibly just reimagining, which began shortly after my training within the Feminist Leadership Academy. This crisis was caused by a few events that occurred while I was proceeding through the weeks at the academy and only after last night could I put them into words that made sense.

The first event occurred while in conversation with my neighbors. I happened to be discussing my middle step daughter, a bright child with so much hope and desires for the future to truly find a way to eradicate hunger, educate the homeless. These are no small tasks and require not only a bright mind, but a solid core. Of course, I was bragging about her, because here was a child that lost her mom when she was 11. Her mother had been ill since she was six years old. For a young woman with poise, potential and compassion, I would brag on her all day. As we continued our discussion, one woman suggested that Shannon was a show off about her grades. (Shannon has a 4.6). And I said, “Of course, she should show off. I would show off too.” But then, I also said, “I find that hard to believe because she does not do that at home, at all.” At an all girls school, there are plenty would be happy to start that rumor anyhow.

As Allyson, whose mother died when she was young, declared later when retold this incident, “I’m an uber person too, and sometimes, I think it because my mom died when I was young, when she was young, I don’t want to leave any stone unturned.”

The second event occurred while in conversation with another close friend. We were eating lunch, discussing a separation between my sister and her husband. I simply shrugged my shoulders and said, “She doesn’t feel happy and isn’t sure this is the life she wants.” To that my girlfriend replied, “It sure seems like she has everything, what’s not to be happy about?” I replied, “There’s plenty in her background that she dealt with over the years that’s not my business to share, but everybody has their stuff.”

And from this I learned something else. When those who appear to have everything begin to “crack”, confusion reigns because someone is making a choice that may not be in line with societal expectations, but may certainly bring that person happiness from within.

These two events had caused me to rethink my relationships, in particular with women. While I missed my Monday night writing class, I had found solace in the company of women from my leadership classes. But with summer approaching and both classes and the academy ending, I missed those women more. When I am feeling lonely, my writing friends are the ones I think of. They are so authentic. They own their own problems and recognize when they are having problems they are simply pulling too many outside factors into themselves and not allowing themselves to be out in the world.

At the beginning of year, I embarked upon a journey to make new friends without the knowledge that Lynn would be moving. How refreshing to tell my young girls that I am making new friends. And I want to be intentional about my friendships. After writing the above stories, I see how easy it is to be unconscious and how quickly we can cause pain with our outbursts.

So this morning, I am taking time to write this, to put down in words, my commitment to be intentional with my new relationships, as well as the old ones, recognizing they could take months, years to build and they only take seconds to dismantle. For my longtime friends, for Allyson and Lynn, for Inga and Naomi, for Leigh and my FLA sisters, wherever their life will take them, I will put my energy into growing that which can be grown or cultivated regardless of how near or far.

Designated Mother

Mark is in Scotland, or perhaps his flight has already departed for home. I don’t deny him the joy of this trip, for he has learned that life is not measured by days on the calendar but by the miles of life he explores.

In this week of his absence, I have found myself to be a different mother, a kindler gentler mother. In the days of Marks’ presence, in particular with his girls, he had always been mother and father, there seemed little wiggle room for me. While my son Davis was content to go to whomever was available, for tossing balls or quizzing on homework, the girls still went straight to their dad. And oftentimes, I would just be the maid, the cook, the cleaning lady, the chauffeur, the signer of the many declarations of independence, but never mother.

This week, while Mark was rounding the greens of Scotland, I was traversing the state of Indiana to reach Cheryl in Illinois and return her home for a few weeks before she returned to Loyola for the summer. My stomach was often tight during this trip, on the way up, as I listened to classical music and the return trip, wondering what she and I would have to talk about. But she surprised me, I surprised myself by actually finding common ground, talking to her specific interests. She does not need me for advice, she needs me to just show up, keep her apprised of family events that she or may not attend to, and offer her dinner which she may or may not eat. But she is here, and she is home.

While the middle of the week was occupied with Davis and baseball and Davis and Strings concert, I found myself readily handing out cash to the girls, which most of the time, I don’t do. Shannon, here is money for groceries for Relay for Life. Kaitlyn, here is a ride back and forth from Kiera’s for the science project, waiting up, picking her up later than that time I suggested to eliminate the prospect of being such a taskmaster. The girls readily ate dinner and with aplomb entertained Davis’ grandparents, their step-grandparents, with their stories of boys and grades.

At week’s end, I was scheduled to pick up Kaitlyn for the OB/Gyn appointment. Since the beginning of her periods eighteen months ago, her periods have been irregular, lengthy, heavy flow, unpredictable. I understand her deceased mother also had this problem as a teenager, so we are having her checked out for thyroid, blood and hormonal issues. I have come into raising teenage girls without the benefit of giving birth to them, to knowing their bodies cradled in my arms, such that when the doctor asks, I too can respond with knowledge of their bodies. So all I can offer them is another woman who has a broader knowledge of bodies than me. We discuss periods and breasts and frequent urination with a teenager who is giggling during the doctor’s instruction for a self-exam of her breasts. I glance over at her breasts and see that they are more like the women of ancient times, round, full of life, whereas mine have disappeared, or are at least below my sightline. I tell her, I know that was not fun, but you may as well make friends with your body, so you don’t feel as if you are coming up against the enemy each time you are at the Ob/Gyn.

My final hours of interim single parenthood were filled with boys and baseball cancellations and sub sandwiches for dinner. For as much as I enjoy eating green and red and orange and yellow, I could not fathom another dinner without Mark, cooking at my side, or cooking in my place. Shannon called from the Relay for Life for Cancer Event, first to find out if we had received a letter from her school about academic awards. I confirmed this to be the case. Second, she wanted to tell me that the Relay luminaria ceremony would be held at 10:00 p.m.

During the ceremony, they turn out the lights in the stadium, light bags that spell out HOPE, and then light bags that have the names of those who have died from cancer or are still in the midst of treatments. Shannon had written two – one for Devin, and one for her mom – Susan.

I told her I wasn’t sure I could make it to the stadium, my legs were aching from running around all week, and my eyelids were finding themselves more relaxed when I closed them. But after a quick board game with Davis and a friend, I sprang into action, baked my “love cake” for Mother’s Day, and decided to join Shannon.

I called her from the snack stand at the stadium, and she walked around the track to meet me. Her friends joined in welcoming me, noting that they missed having Shannon’s dad there, as he was last year. We walked in the rain for a half-hour, then made our way up to the main tent. Danny Strunk, a survivor, talked about how he bears the burden of finding a quick cure for cancer. We all do. Shannon stood apart from me, but I could feel her sadness. Quick cure vs. long-term grief. Looking at Shannon’s face, it was an easy choice.

We continued our walk, noting each individual candle and name, first finding Devin’s name. She asked if I wanted to stop, but I shook off that notion, wanting her to know I was here to support her. I have made my share of memorials to Devin over time.

We walked on another 200 meters and found Susan’s name. Shannon and I stopped and she turned to me. I offered her my arms and tears. Soon we were joined by friends who stood by her side, crying in the rain. Why is it always easier for tears to come in the rain? As she sat by her mother’s candle, many more classmates stopped by to share in her sadness. As I stepped back, another group of classmates approach Shannon, only to be surprised by that fact that she had indeed lost her mom. Shannon, her friends and I walked on another lap around the track, slowly they all peeled off. It was she and I for one last lap.

Before we approached the main HOPE luminaria, the announcer was calling out names of those we were honoring. Shannon said, “I don’t know why they say in memory of, because I really don’t have much memory of her, maybe just at the end.” I nodded to agree. “I think they should all be in honor of…”

We continued around the oval and Shannon asked of us, “Let’s listen.” We walked more in silence, and instantly, upon reaching the stadium bleachers where the HOPE was spelled out, the announcer called out, “In memory of Devin Wick.”, then “In memory of Susan Manley.” Shannon and I looked at each other with near delight. A sign, I am always looking for one from above.

We found Devin’s name again and this time paused. I put my arm around her and said, “You know, when I was pregnant, Devin and I were convinced I was having a girl. He knew I wanted a Januzzi girl, really bad. But obviously that didn’t happen.” “And so now, you have three,” Shannon spoke out. “Yes, now, I have three – three bonus girls.”

We passed by her mom’s candle one more time, then she walked me to the entrance. We said our goodbyes and I love you’s. I cried all the way to the car. I was grateful for this time of Mark’s absence, not for the task of driving the kids all over the city for baseball, doctor’s appointments, school functions or Chicago. No, I was thankful that his trip allowed me to be, even for a week, the designated mother to my bonus girls.

Ski Dreams

A long time ago, in a land far far away, there was a little girl from Amherst, Ohio, who came home from school one day waving a flyer that said she could rent equipment and learn to ski all for the cost of seventy-dollars over six weeks. Her mother looked at her with a dazed look in her eyes, wondering, will my child be safe, and weighed that with the fact that her mother too had always wanted to ski, but girls didn’t do that in her day. So, with reluctance and prayer, her mother said ‘yes’. Her parents faithfully took her shopping for attire and patiently waited each week night for her return, when she would regale them with tales of diamonds, only these were black and double black.

Soon enough, the time came for her to pick a college. Her parents were not wealthy and not knowledgeable enough to encourage her to follow her dreams to attend school in Colorado. She settled on a college called the University of Akron. In those days, the university sported a ski club which once a year offered a trip to “Ski West”. She knew of this trip and dreamed of it often. When her junior year rolled around, she enlisted, without any friends to accompany her.

She would travel 2000 miles by bus through states she hardly remembered the capitals of, over a twenty-four hour timeframe, which eventually turned into 30 hours, after their expedition was besieged by a snowstorm somewhere in Kansas and as she would learn, all of Kansas, is really just nowhere. She would survive on her mother’s famous Italian Christmas cookies which had been packaged carefully in bubble wrap, bypassing the stops at McDonald’s.

On this trip, she would flirt with a football player who played for Gerry Faust, learn about grain alcohol, acquire more friends that she could have imagined, but mostly, she would fall in love with the West. And someday, when she grew up, really grew up, with a real job and a real life, she would come West for good.

On those mountains of Crested Butte, she would learn that skiing was meant to be a solitary sport, no matter who she rode the lifts with. And that someone else could tell her about the gentle slopes or steep drops, but no one else could really tell her how she would feel about them that day. And that she really could fly downhill, if she held your arms out just so. And in the woods and powder, she could tell the trees her secrets and they would be safe. She could stand quiet there, hear her heart beat, and the branches would flutter in rhythm to hers. And she would come to understand that winter would always be her season, one that not many others would claim, and she would claim it just for that reason

She went on to join the ski club out West for five more years, even after college, though by then, the allure of riding the bus had been lost in her youth. She would fly by plane, but miss those times when bonding happened in the backseat of the bus over cookies and cards.

She married a young man Devin, who knew little of the sport. But they would ski Big Sky and Mt. Hood and Mt. Bachelor all the same. And when the time came, she would finally make her move West, only this was further west than the Rockies, this was the Oregon Coast. The mountains would still move her, but the sea would still her heart.

In subsequent times, she would give birth to a young son, Davis, lose a husband to cancer and teach her son to ski in areas she could only describe as hills. Together, they would attempt Wyoming skiing and snowshoeing, but somehow, she was still deep enough in grief to resist the pull of the powder.

Years passed and she met someone else, Mark, who had also attended college in a land far far away. And he had three daughters, older than her son. And they decided to become a family, but it would not happen instantly or gently for her in the months that followed. His college friend would come to own a home in the mountains of Utah and invite him to ski. After amusing her with stories from his time on the slopes (and off) with his friends, he suggested they ski together, as a new family.

So, they would travel during a blustery January day to take respite on the slopes of place called Deer Valley. The first day would be filled with constant activity of moving the children from slope to slope. The second day would be filled with motherly frustration for her son who needed to leave the slopes and sleep instead and motherly angst for the teenagers need to be themselves. And wifely resentment for the husband who always found the glass and never cared if it were half-empty or full. And on the third day, the sun would rise over the mountains, first in flesh tones, then pink, then yellow and she would be happy again.

And she would ride the lift to the top of Flagstaff Mountain and stand tall, gazing at the other peaks in the range and think, everything is insurmountable and nothing is as well.

AJW
1/30/2008

20071012 – Thoughts My Own Private Italy

What have I left behind for my child? What did my parents leave for me? I asked this question of Mark as we flew blindly over the Atlantic Ocean, awaiting the sleeping pill to take its effect. I was drifting off but still bothered by the oaf sitting next to me who huffed and puffed every time he changed his seating position as if it were someone else’s fault that he was here on this flight to Genoa or that he could control when dinner was served or the lights go out. I tried to keep my mind on other things.

What had my parents left for me? Did they really leave me the legacy of our Italian heritage or was that something I chose. I have four siblings. Did they remember being served baccala (smelt) at Christmastime? Does the scent of anise wafting in through their noses bring on a dance of joy?

My grandparents, Enrico and Stella, had both died before I turned 18. The same was true of my mother’s mother, Rafaella, who died before I was born, and her birth father, Vincenzo, her namesake, who died before she was born. I remember the Italian language spoken at various holiday meals, but don’t recall anyone specifically trying to teach us this language in order to help us absorb the culture.

We pronounced most Italian foods dropping the last vowel, prosciutto was proscuitt, in same way Americans drop the a in Roma and just call it Rome. We were told it was a dialect thing and shook our heads in agreement. I had a waitress once who corrected me with the pronunciation of a certain kind of pasta I had ordered. “I’ll have the gnocchi,” I asked.

And she corrected me while writing it down, “It’s gnocchi , with an e sound at the end.”

“Oh,” I said, embarrassed for her. Devin, my first husband, rapidly put his head down as if he could feel the confrontation at hand. He smirked into his empty plate.

“Well, I continued, “in the Italian language, there are many dialects, just like English and yes, I know how to spell gnocchi, but growing up in the my house, we always made gnocchi(i). So. I’ll have the gnocchi(i).”

Our service that night did not improve, but at least I had won the battle.

But there were other things that my family has left behind. Banquet tables filled with tradition were the backdrop for every family gathering that was captured via Polaroid or Kodak. Baptisms, Holy Communions, Graduations, Christmas and New Years. Every Christmas since I can remember, Mom has made her famous raviolis, filled with either meat or cheese. She has never veered from this, despite the new fusion which might call for vegetables or crab as filling.

Just as the interiors of the pasta remained the same, so did the exterior. The raviolis were always served in the same bowls, with a toile (twal) like scene around the bowls, the scene on one bowl depicted in red, which has now turned pink, and the scene on the other bowl depicted in blue. And so it become that the red bowl coddled the meat filled raviolis, while the blue bowl held the ones with cheese. I have begged my mother not to put those bowls on any garage sale because for me, they have held more than pasta over the years.

My mother’s birthday cakes were somewhat legendary at least in our own family. They ranged from an elephant and bunny to a fire engine cake with marshmallow wheels. The only store bought cake we ate was for graduation. When Davis was born and started having birthdays, my mother arrived with armed with cakes. In his eleven years, she has produced a puppy, Scooby doo Mystery Machine, fire engine cake, a golf course, a bowling alley, veggie tales, dinosaurs, trains, and baseball and some other cartoon character that is no longer in my memory or his.

This year, though visiting for his birthday, my mother arrived with a Kroger cake in hand. Davis is 11 now, and though we would have been hard pressed to come up with an appropriate theme for nana to bake his cake, secretly he was looking for one too.

My father has been an avid gardener. This summer of 2007 was the first time he had not planted a garden in the forty-one years I have spent with him mainly because my parents are encroaching upon their eighties and selling their home. Each summer, my father would fret about the rains and when could he rent a tiller to turn the garden. May 15 was too late, April 15th too early. My father staked the tomatoes – the romas, the beefsteaks, and as life progressed, he succumbed to our culinary whims or branched out by growing cherry tomatoes and grape-size ones too.

I was more of a homebody in my teenage years, and I would wander out to help my father water the garden and flowers. We would discuss nothing in particular, other than the size of the zucchini or how my mother would kill him this year because of the huge size of the crops or that the darn weatherman was wrong again about the rain and its arrival, because no where on the horizon did dark clouds appear and as a matter of fact, the sun was so red it prompted us to both repeat – red skies at night…

We picked apples from his miniature trees and swore at the bugs infecting his cherries and pears. They froze their own produce, unheard of at the time in our little burb of Amherst, and canned their tomatoes. The freezer still contains green beans from 1984. But my father stood side by side with my mother in the freezing, the canning, and the dishes. After every one of the banquets referred to above, my greatest memory is also of my father in the kitchen. He never cooked, but he is always there.

And each spring, I watched him carry out the scarlet pot containing the fig tree, which had hunkered down in the winter beneath a blanket of burlap, a tree handed down to him from his father. Funny all those years, until you start missing your own father you don’t realize how much he must miss his. The fig tree never produced more than a dozen figs in any year’s span, but we lauded them as each one was the prodigal son returning home. As the fig tree grew, dad’s strength waned, so much that he decided to put the pot on wheels, so he could roll it in during the harsh winter and then roll it back out. Spring came not when any crocuses bloomed, but when the fig tree appeared on the patio.

My parents drove us to all our sporting events, gave advice when we least wanted it, and yelled and grounded us for our many infractions against curfew, grades and general malaise. But when I take stock of all they offered to us, what they gave us mostly was not food filling our stomachs, ravioli filling out the meat and cheese bowls, tomatoes filling the sauce bowl. But passion to fill our hearts.

What to leave behind for Davis? I struggled with this too. He is part German, part Italian. He is part meatball, part saurkrautball, though I have to say he likes the meatball part better.

His father died when he four, fought cancer for the three years before that. Tradition was absent for fear we would take hold of something that wouldn’t stick. So we piggybacked on to everyone else’s, which is as good or the same as coming up with your own. Now with a few Irish in the household, there are other traditions to consider as well.

Davis’ father and I moved to Oregon with the notion, “this is a once in a lifetime opportunity,” and we were right. After his diagnosis of cancer, we returned to Cincinnati, with the subconscious contract we had made with ourselves that we would return to Oregon in five years. But two years following that declaration, Devin would pass away. I have since returned to Oregon with and without Davis, but never with Devin and never permanently. It was, a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Kaya, a writing peer, recently approached me to inform me “I was told to read your book, the way you describe the northwest and what you found there for yourself, your love for a place,’ Another writing peer had counseled her to do this. My book centered around not just love and loss but finding who you are in the midst of chaos and tragedy. The book boasted of the Oregon Coast and how its stark nature allowed me to strip down to the bare necessities to be the me I wanted to be. Kaya loves California, the northern redwoods, the southern sun in the same way I love the Douglas firs and northwest rain of Oregon Coast. The northwest is a gloomy beauty in some of the ways that I have often thought of myself.

Davis will surely recall those days that I cried, alone, and wiped tears from my eyes to shield him from pain and the days I wiped tears from his eyes, with me, as we missed his father’s presence and guidance and hugs. Those were certainly days that Davis will recall as gloomy beauties – there was something sorrowful in our days and yet something magical at the same time. We were becoming our hopes. He was growing up and was doing so in a fashion that even I could not imagine, wise beyond his years, having fun – “yep, that’s how I live my life,” he told my mother once when asked if he was off to find more fun.

He is proud of his birth in Oregon, because that makes him different. I gave him that, the ability to proclaim yourself separate. He returns each year to visit with his grandparents who still make the Oregon Coast their home though we had been first to call the coast ours. He calls Oregon home. Every walk on the beach is blazing a new trail, every agate he gathers up is another just recently let go from its mother rock needing a home. I will leave behind for him the western sunset, the bow to the day that had just been completed, a reward for a day well lived, a salute to a good life.

I have not left him any traditions of food. And instead of recalling me bending over my garden and digging with hands for summers on end, he will recall the steam from tea or coffee or whatever was hot as my fingers flew over the keyboard to capture a moment in the same way my father tried to capture the perfect tomato, or my mother roll the perfect ravioli.

Kaya, my writing friend said after reading my book, “I understand what you mean about finding yourself in a place.”

I replied, and yes, once you find that place that makes you who you are, no one can take that away from you. You can carry that (confidence and love of self) with you wherever you go.”

No matter how far away from Oregon I am, that I am still there, I go there in my mind in times of pain, I go there in my mind in times of confusion and I can feel the arctic winds from the north blow down and blow away the cobwebs of confusion. When I need to stand firm in my life, I picture the three arch rocks, standing erect in the open sea, no one allowed to come within 500 yards of their structure, letting only the sea lions rest and sing at the foot of these rocks. When I need strength, I reach back across the miles to the tiny town of Oceanside, its 200 some inhabitants clinging to a way of life that is eroding elsewhere. And when I feel a loss, it is the first place my mind travels to, the place of Devin and his blue-green eyes that were a reflections of the pines on the sea, the loss of dreams.

I travel to Italy in my mind when I need to feel life. When I need to conjure up joy, I recall a certain meal at La Stalla, being greeted with Prosecco. I let myself recall the stinging coolness of the Mediterranean when I want to be awakened, not in the morning, but to feel awake in life. When I am flabbergasted, in awe, in wonder at what surprises have been brought into my life. When I want to remember and celebrate my family, especially my parents, I think to the tiny towns clinging to a hillside that helped spawn this new generation. I travel to the Liguria sea when I want to remember Mark and how his eyes matched the color of the Ligurian sea, and yes, it is a blue different from the Mediterranean, which is so deep, it seems to block out the light. The Ligurian sea is blue, but light bounces off the waves all day long.

I have given Davis a sense of place in Oregon through my words in the same way my parents and their love of food gave me a sense of place in Italy. Someday when he makes his trek to his Mecca, he will be the beneficiary of my having given him the Oregon Coast to house his soul and Italy to light his fire.

20070911

It is that day again. It arrives always with much anticipation, for him and for me. And now, for the others who fill up our house with chatter and love. It is September 11. Davis was born on this day, or shall I say this morning, at 2:18 a.m. His father Devin and I had been traveling in Portland, Oregon, but upon my hitting my mark of 5 out of 7 sevens of being in labor, we hurriedly checked out of our hotel and raced back towards Oceanside, our little retreat on the Oregon Coast. We didn’t quite make it to our home, which is OK because the hospital was on our way and we thought we should stop there first, and have our baby – considering we had no knowledge of that process ourselves.

As a newborn, Davis arrived in true Davis fashion which over the years, he has come to be known for being first up, despite the last to bed , or at least later than me. He has arisen early, dressed for his first baseball game of the year, then plodded into my room, to let me know he was ready – three hours before the umpires would be.

Davis original due date was October 5, 1996. And now, here he was, wanting to show up a little early, maybe check out the competition, of which there would be none for many years to come, or perhaps he was just hungry.

As a newborn almost premie , the doctor recommended I feed him every two hours. Anyone who has ever had a look at my breasts, with or without shirt on, will testify to the fact that this is nearly impossible. I tried nonetheless. The Tillamook visiting nurse association even brought in a contraption that came straight out of Dr’ Suess’ Horton here’s a Who. We were running out of strategies, so I switched him to formula instead. I promised him as a mother that he could always rely upon me, no matter the situation, but apparently, I forgot about failing him within the first six weeks. The two hour feedings were brutal, in particular, because his father traveled through the week, though helped out tremendously on the weekends.

I have to say, he may eat fast now, because I always encouraged him to drink up when he was a baby, knowing, that I could put him down, somewhere, a stroller, a nap, the floor, and have some time to myself. I also have to say, he still eats every two hours. So it is true that the first five years determine so much about a child later in life.

But what a day it was. Prior to giving birth, Davis was the breech position. There is a well-known technique that doctors can perform which will allow the doctor to attempt through massage to turn the baby in the womb. Apparently, the doctor had lost sight of my frame, what with the extra 28 pounds and all, and did not see that there was really no room for him to move. He head was stuck beneath my upper rib cage, and when Dr. Saylor attempted to turn him, I thought my ribs would bust, and not in a funny way. I soon put a stop to that, loud screaming will do that to a doctor, and we decided to “go for” the C-section instead.

This of course, involved a not so small incision 5 inches below my belly button, the number of inches grows each year, depending on my stomach size. I recall making friends with the anesthesiologist on staff, or maybe he was making nice with me, especially if he heard about the screaming incident earlier with Dr. Saylor. When the surgery was complete, I had delivered a 5 pound baby boy. I could never imagine that someone or thing that had caused so much physical pain, caused me to grimace every time I made a move to the bathroom, that he could bring me so much joy.

He woke this morning to the sounds of his grandparents, grandpa wick playing the piano and the two of them signing Happy Birthday, as recorded on my cell phone. Can’t wait to see the phone bill for that message. Unfortunately, Davis day also began with that fact that his stepsister’s mom had died on September 11, and a suggestion from school that he wear red, white and blue, in honor of September 11th attacks.

“Why did I have to be born on a bad day?” Davis always asks. And I tell him, “First, you came into this world before that happened, and second, you were born on this day, as a reminder, that good things happened too.” With so many dates that we honor for something tragic, we have to find a reason to go on. He is that reason to go on.

Last night’s book club for my recent release I’ll Be in the Car was the most educational to date. The women, in their late forties or perhaps slipping into their fifties gingerly, were not some high-brow group wanting to know more about the structure of my book nor were they fascinated because they knew me. They weren’t even seeking a spiritual lift. One member had simply acted a whim at the local hair salon, believed in a cause and passed it on to her dearest friends.

Bonnie Gulker twice had sat in the Eva Ribero’s stylist chair before asking Eva about the book prominently displayed on her workstation amidst Bedhead products Control Freak and After Party and other assorted names meant to imply something else!

Bonnie finally got up the nerve to ask about the book. “That’s my Annette,” Eva had likely replied. Eva had cut my hair through perm days, long and short. She had come to understand my bad hair days during Devin’s dying and appreciated my good hair days, the day I remarried Mark. I would put my hairstylist up against a bartender any day. I don’t need margaritas, but I need my fix of Eva to stay sane.

Eva explained to Bonnie why the book sat at her station and what our relationship had been over the years. Later, Eva called me at home. She never does this, despite the number of times we have promised to call for margaritas, red wine or both. Hours before, I had sat in the same chair as Bonnie while Eva worked her mojo. I must have forgotten something important or had forgotten to pay. But Eva called to tell me that Bonnie was interested in the book for her club and passed along her number.

During my phone call to Bonnie, I offered to make a dozen or so copies available because not only did I have access to my own stash in a warehouse in Kansas somewhere, but had access to the dozens or so sitting at my feet while I wrote, like a loyal puppies curled up at the foot, waiting for their next owner to buy them and read them lovingly.

I delivered these copies to Bonnie despite her offer to pick them up. Really, I had explained, they were doing me the favor, exchanging quality time with their husbands, which I later learned was OK, versus spending time engrossed in my book.

The evening of June 20th arrived and I was welcomed into the group with a Oregon Pinot Noir (I noticed the rest drank beer!) Once we chowed through Bonnie’s spread, chatter turned to discussion. Patty or Mary mentioned they had been caught up in reading about the transplant process in Seattle, living it with me. Yet, they remained fixated with reading the rest, knowing that Devin was going to die. For this, they had sacrificed their relaxation time.

Thus the talk turned to death. Susan mentioned the death of her father. She felt as if in bubble when speaking with the thoracic surgeon about her father’s condition. Everything was happening in slow motion. And the question arose, “Did you ever stop once to think, Devin may not make it?” But the breathless energy it took to be caregiver during that time seemed to convey otherwise and this was true. When in the midst of a system that prescribes every waking breath, failure was not option, unless all other remedies had been exhausted. Devin thought so too. And when each morning, we woke to the warm brown eyes of little Davis, I would say to myself, “No one dies today while I am taking care.”

It was not the healthiest of attitudes, but we had been in it long enough to rise up with determination, in particular during Devin’s good days. As time dragged on, the good became less and less so, and we struggled with staying focused on his life. In the end, as discussed, Hospice was an easy choice to make, to provide comfort and not remedy, to choose for Devin to die. Sometimes, I am in awe that Devin’s parents had allowed me to make this decision. Partly out of respect for Devin’s wishes, partly out of trusting me, but partly out of not wanting to be the one to make that choice. No one should ever have to make that choice.

Ideally, we would all like to die in our sleep. Susan recounted how the move to put her dad in hospice, while welcomed, was still not easy to accept. “I knew it was the right thing to do, but I thinking whoa, I don’t want this. No, I’d prefer if they kept him alive with some machine next to him, the rest of my life, in my house.” Susan said this with biting irony because there are no easy choices. It’s not lot like waltzing into Graeter’s and choosing between peanut butter chip or black raspberry chip or mango sorbet, depending on if you wanted to taste salt or sweet.

Our choices had not been dependent on taste, or even how Devin felt for the day, but over the long term, was there any hope for a reasonable shot at coaching Davis in basketball, ever making love again and producing offspring, celebrating his father’s 70th birthday?

The intimacy of Bonnie’s backyard lent to the mood of that evening. Friendships here had been cemented in deaths, cancer diagnoses, sons who were friends, kids attending the same school. In our neighborhood, school choice is mandatory, as if one has to pick somewhere different from two catholic schools, a few private Christian schools and an excellent rated public school, which leaves us all only a common a plot of land.

The pool offered a reflection for these women and me on life, on relationships. I thanked them for welcoming me into their circle. They wanted to know, “How do we stack up to the other book groups you’ve been to?” There was some casual joking about a “box of rocks”, but only casual. “I’ve never been to a book group that bought wine just for me, because it came from Oregon.” “I’ve never been to one where for three hours, we talked about my book for only thirty minutes and debated life the rest of the time.” No one suggested I should be on Oprah or that I should consider injecting a little more of Jesus Christ into the spiritual aspect of the story. Other than one group led by my girlfriend Kristi, no where had I walked away wishing I could have been friends with these women. Their circle was tight, but flexible and willing to open and extend an arm to welcome me.

Recently, I had received an e-mail from a reader in Dayton who wrote, “I will be 67 in August and just this past year have grown to where you already are.” She thanked me for putting my experience down in words and offered that she envied me for possessing such wisdom an early stage in my life, wisdom which she is just coming into. But like any child who skips a grade or has to grow up in a hurry, I missed out on playing with my friends while acquiring this wisdom.

Last night, this group of women laughed about how great their kids were in sports and school in the early years, but now, they are just thankful their kids were not in jail or on drugs. Bonnie or Susan suggested, “Its amazing how over time you lower your expectations of your kids, of your life.”

As I struggle through blending families and coping with the absence of my name on any best seller list, I am thankful for their lesson in lowering expectations to enjoy life. That’s what kids do best. I hugged each woman before Bonnie showed me the door then I hugged her once more saying thanks. “Omiogsh thank you for coming,” she blurted. But I hadn’t been thanking her for the invite to speak, but for the opportunity to learn. They had distinguished themselves from other book clubs through their willingness to put themselves in my shoes, to speak so frankly of heartache and erectile dysfunction and teenagers. It wasn’t just their intellect or their wine or their spirit, but the wisdom that comes from loving friendships which had separated them from the rest.

Six years ago, my husband Devin was diagnosed with Acute Lymphacytic Leukemia. In the midst of Devin riding the roller coaster of relapse and remission, I began to write. I had no other outlet for what I was feeling at the time, nor did I have the energy to seek one. Three years later, Devin succumbed to the disease though we were the ones who were supposed to “make it.”

To begin with, we had the love and support so often associated with success in cancer diagnoses. When Devin was first diagnosed, we were living in Oregon, 2000 miles away from our home state of Ohio. Devin’s parents had recently retired and lived in Oregon only three hours away. My parents too were retired and spent weeks at a time with us, just to be near. Socially, Devin was well-liked, strong, healthy and generous with his time and energy.

Second, Devin and I had been astute enough, and financially successful enough, to invest our salaries and bonus monies in life insurance policies and other long-term strategies. Eventually, due to his rank within the company and his past earnings, the disability checks we received during Devin’s treatments allowed us to balance our checkbook.

Alongside those first two aspects, we had a reason to get up in the morning and his name was Davis. Despite his premature birth, Davis had turned out healthy and became our inspiration for everyday living.

Next, Devin was being treated under the watchful eye of Dr. Keith Lanier in Portland. Later, after moving back to Cincinnati due to a job consolidation, Devin had been referred to the practice of Dr. Philip Leming. When the insurance company considered dropping this physician’s group from their coverage, Dr. Leming wrote a persuasive note to convince the company otherwise.

In conjunction with the above, Devin had access to stellar insurance coverage. When we did embark on a bone marrow/stem cell transplant, we were presented with the option for Devin to undergo this process in the Pacific Northwest at a “blue chip” facility - Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center – www.fhrcrc.org. As Dr Leming put it at time, “That’s what they do, and they do it well.”

Finally, we had attitude. Devin maintained a positive outlook on life, this disease, and how this could help make him a stronger person – I quote from his diary - “God has a plan for me in all of this – and each day (it’s only been 5!) I learn more about what the plan might entail.”

Outside of the disease itself, the above are crucial factors in the successful treatment of a cancer patient. But there are instances when insurance, caregivers, money, love, and medical care simply do not matter. Ours was that instance. The only thing that would have mattered at the time was a cure.

It took six years of writing my book, I’ll Be in the Car, (www.IllBeintheCar.com) to accept the fact that we had all the means for success and in the end, it did not matter. I’ll Be in the Car is the story about Devin and me. But more so, about how our lives were impacted. I wanted others to witness that we fought over money, in-laws, child-rearing and lawn-mowing, in the midst of fighting leukemia. I wanted others to know even during Devin’s down days, we held bridal showers, went on vacation, and watched movies and read Tuesdays with Morrie, before the notion of Devin dying had even crossed our minds.

Two weeks after Devin died Davis and I began our journey of fundraising for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (www.lls.org) by attending our first Light the Night Walk, surrounded by more than fifty family members, friends and neighbors who were still in shock and needing to grieve. Over the years, we continued our participation, walking with friends, sisters and brothers and finally just Davis and me.

Two months ago, I married a wonderful man whose first wife also died of cancer. He brought three motherless daughters into our marriage. The other night as a family, we had been out spooking the neighborhood, leaving tricks and treats and laughing all the way home. Later, while putting my son to bed, I saw that he had been crying. “Davis what’s the matter?” I asked. And he just burst out, “I didn’t get to say goodbye to Dad.”

This is six years later. And that one moment sends me backwards in time, wishing there had been a cure. If we cannot have a cure, if we cannot raise millions of dollars, then we must raise eyebrows while finding other means of comforting those affected. I speak out today to tell the story of little boys who still miss their dads, of young women who still grieve for a mom I can never replace. To talk about mothers and fathers who still yearn to see their son walk through the door at Christmastime. And to be the voice for friends and lovers, husbands and wives whose light we carry inside.

No Words Can Fill a Mothers Heart
4/17/2007
AJW

My first visit to the former World Trade Center site began by gazing at the fenced off dusty hollow and marveling at the depth and enormity of the buildings’ footprints. By visit’s end, another void would have more impact.

Walking in silence with my stepdaughters Shannon and Kate, we turned away from the hole to join the rest of the crowds gathering outside the FDNY Firehouse Engine 10 Ladder 10 where a bronze memorial plaque had been placed, holding the names of 343 firefighters who died in the rescue operation of 9-11.

My eyes followed another line one curving towards a building signed WTC Tribute Center, located in the former Liberty Deli. After the attacks, the deli had become a respite providing meals and clean air to the rescuers. We were coaxed inside by the intimacy of the space. In that brief moment, the girls and I left our world behind.

I first caught sight of wreckage from an airplane window where a passenger had viewed the ground disappearing on takeoff and world peace disappearing upon impact into the first tower. There were walls with photo replicas depicting the “lost” flyers at the site, “lost a banker last seen at the bagel shop, “lost – a mother last heard from after dropping her child off at daycare”, lost, lost, lost. Actual photos of those that died were also on display alongside the occasional bowling trophy and a drawing of a dress designed by a four year old, kept in the wallet of her mother for 27 years.

We made our way downstairs to The Voices of Promise where cards were posted on the walls by visitors, politicians and mothers, containing recollections of 9-11 and its aftermath. In the middle of the room, a table was laid out with blank postcards beckoning me to write:

“I clearly remember the day of 9-11, or more so the emotion. I was newly widowed and had just marked the one year anniversary of my husband’s death from leukemia. I knew intimately the grief of others who had instantly lost a loved one that day and felt their sorrow and mine become one. We also celebrated my son’s fifth birthday that day. Two years later, in 2003, my new husband and his daughters would mark the death of wife and mother on that day. So every year on September 11th, we mark a birth, a death and the struggle for peace in between.”

I rose from the table and walked towards a woman in a red shirt who sat somberly in a folded chair. Her badge read Theresa Mullan. “This is amazing,” I shared with her. “This is wonderful - that this is here.”

“Oh, we have people from all over, come in and just sit and take it in. You know, we did it, the families made this happen.”

I sensed a need to continue but she beat me to it. “That’s a picture of my son, there on the table.” I glanced at a booklet from a memorial service.

“Michael, oh he was quite the character. He loved Sinatra and musicals.”

“Was he married? I asked curious to know what else he had left behind.

“Oh no, he used to say, he loved all the women, there were too many good ones to choose from.” She went on, “Did you get to see the firefighter’s memorial outside?” Again, I shook my head. “You know, the mayor wouldn’t let us put their ranks next to their names even though my son died in the line of duty.”

I looked at Theresa closely, to see how different grief appeared when it was one of your own, and not married to it. “So many people come here to tell their stories,” her voice trailed off. I took this cue to thank her and move towards the girls.

Katie had completed her writing and Shannon said nothing, but abruptly came up beside me and reached out for a hug. I walked out of the Tribute WTC site wishing my son Davis and stepdaughter Cheryl had been with us as well. They too had many outlets for their sadness, but this one would have connected them to the world. I cried for Devin as I relived those moments as widow and mourner. And I yearned for my new husband Mark, wishing for simpler times in our new romance of two middle-aged adults.

I said a prayer for Theresa, mother of Micheal Mullan, Ladder Company 12. And I prayed for my own mother, whose first son, David, died two days after birth.

While growing up, we would make mention “had little David lived…” to mark his birthday. Or we would visit his gravesite on Sunday mornings, and still not know the pain of my mother. Later, in the evenings, Mom would kneel down with us and pray, Dear God, please bless Mommy, Daddy, Laura, Paul, Annette, Beth and Jeanne, and, little David, watch over us and help us to be a good kind and loving family.

During my final conversations with Theresa, I had offered up again that I was truly sorry for the death of her son. She didn’t need a monument or a written card, only my acknowledgment that mothers hold the pain of the world in their hearts. They are able to carry only so much sadness before their hearts explode, leaving a gaping hole to remind the world we must work hard to earn the privilege of having a mother, or becoming a one.

I am trying to imagine my future. One without children, possibly even parents. So that is what compelled me to drive to the riverfront. Drawn by the meditative effect of the water, always the water.

I avoided parking fees and pulled into the Montgomery Inn Banquet Center, soon to be One Riverview Plaza. My husband Mark had sent away for brochures touting this new property which will soon contain multitudes of condos overlooking the Ohio River. For Valentine’s Day, the real estate company sent us Aglamesis Chocolates. For March, they enticed us with an invite to brunch followed by a viewing of a local artist’s work whose signature line is considered Luminist style – all light.

As a matter of fact, the Executive Vice President of this venture called the other day. He asked for Mark and I shared that Mark was not in. When he asked if I had any questions regarding this opportunity, I should have told him, “I’m not so easily swayed.” To begin with, I didn’t like the name of the property.” There were so many other options – Yeatman’s Plaza, or one named after the property owner, Gregory Square, or one named after its famed restaurant, Montgomery Center. Something significant. Perhaps, after living in a town called Oceanside and Loveland, I could only live where names were synonymous with the lifestyle.

And yet, I found myself in the parking lot, contemplating the view from here, from now in the present, and observing from the deck my future. I was deep in contemplation for a while near the river, almost in prayer, asking forgiveness for past transgressions of knocking Cincinnati as too provincial, for demeaning the river and its cleanliness or lack thereof. And I wondered could I ever love, so fully, a place other than Oceanside. Recalling a famous journalist’s theory that to love in a city is to live in it, I think I can.

I was not so foolish as to consider a move here tomorrow, but there is a future in my partner and the life we want to choose. After all, there are many lives that we may want – lives movie stars, sports heroes, famous authors, presidents and classmates or neighbors. But there are not many lives that we have the tools, desire or the passion to choose.

As I exited my car, my legs were still aching from pulled muscles and pinched nerves. I yanked off my sunglasses and instead, replaced them with my ski hat. I had been cold before leaving home, but now properly clothed, I felt the need to walk, to stretch not just my legs but my imagination.

I made the twenty-mile trek by car convinced that I was headed back into that same dark hole of grief that I had once experienced after my first husband’s death - the one that swallowed me while protecting me from not only the harmful rays of the sun, but the healthy ones too. “I don’t want to go back into that hole, God.” That had been my recitation as of late.

I believe we cannot heal the world, if we nurse the same wounds as our parents. And my parents were still, at eighty years old, licking their wounds from having married and had children so late in their life. For years they proclaimed, “If only we were ten years younger.” They were embarrassed by their age, forbidding us even a peek at their driver’s license. One of us actually stole their wallet away, not for their money, but their most valuable secret, their age. To this day, when I calculate their age, I subtract using the 1928, the year I so clearly saw stamped on mom’s license.

As children, we also played a role in the guilt they felt over their age. We were embarrassed because my mom didn’t always understand or support the current fashions. We were ashamed that my father worked many weekends and didn’t know much about basketball. Eating disorders, depression, all were prevalent our house, as well as anger and fear. My parents never conveyed their own sense of pride and thought pride is one of the seven mortal sins, it had been rendered extinct in our home.

Passed down to the next generation like brown eyes and olive skin, we became embarrassed too, perhaps by the fact that they carried a shame deep within them. It will never rise to the surface. I can only speculate it originates from the death of my mother’s father while she was still in the womb. Her mother most assuredly passed down that remorse to her only daughter. I can only guess that my dad too had so many emotions locked inside of him, so much that all he could do was yell. He too must have been beaten into submission, working in a family business where he had no passion, living with a father who always wanted more for his other son.

So that is what brought me to the river to watch, to observe, to walk until it no longer hurt my hips, my hamstrings, and even the insides of my legs, which represent childhood and protection from hurt.

And as I began this down this path, I lost myself in the buffer between concrete buildings and the railroad tracks that comprises the path where there grows a bevy of trees, firs, pines and spruce, each one placed erratically placed, and yet they had all grown together in a homogeneous collection as if this right here was the true immigrant experience. Two cats played hide and seek at my feet and thankfully, the black cat did not cross my path.

Strolling I began to envision a future living here, with our children, needing a place to return, a place to hang their backpacks, for some time after they graduate from college. This is still ten years away, but I see the irony in the contrast of planning for ten years ahead and wishing for ten years before. It is making a choice to move forward. Away from my family’s wounds, so I can heal my own.

I did it once, I can do it again, I convinced myself. So I kept on trudging, visualizing scene out on the Ohio River, the working man’s river. There was something awe-inspiring about mud that day, and the debris, including the wooden spool tossing about gently in the current. I would have to learn new terms about the water and its movement and its affect on me. Currents, steamboats, old keelboats, barges. I would have to be OK with debris floating downstream while the barge pushes, tries so hard to move its petroleum products upstream. Yet, there was something rousing about muddy waters, because life was so, not always the Columbia River or even the Pacific Ocean. No life could sustain itself as such for too long a period of time, before mud became a part of the problem or the solution.

Further down river, the sidewalk pavers cross east and west and north and south, hinting at all my past paths here, revealing those of my future too. Finally, I came upon Whistle Grove. I had been a Cincinnatian long enough to appreciate hidden gems, but never more so than now. Whistle Grove was comprised of many stacks, representing old steamboats, that whistle when you walked a certain path – “You’ll walk an X within the ring” the rhyme notes and no sooner did I begin walking and whistles blew, the whir of steel drums bouncing off one stack to another. “The hidden music is in between” the poem ends.

I was in-between that day, living in the present but concerned about aging parents and worried over school choices and homework. If I could just get to that hidden music today, tomorrow, it would guide me for the next ten years and keep me from traversing more then necessary the decade I have just lived.

2/13/2007

AJW

The Chimney

The grey limestone chimney stands alongside a road named Marriott in Brown County, as if this were a path welcoming visitors to the well-known hotel chain. Portions of its brick have fallen away leaving indentations resembling eyes and nose. A makeshift mantle runs across the top of the hearth opening in a tight smile. The chimney’s façade easily morphs into the opening of an old amusement park attraction, the hall of mirrors where one perceives one self to be fat, skinny, tall or short but always alive on the other end. Within the gap, one can hide, reappear and disappear again. When the wind blows across this barren land and its lone memorial to former farmer’s home (?), a whiff of old smoke drifts across time and place.

It is here that the story of Marcus Fiesel ends or begins, depending on who you are. Whether you are the foster parents who are the alleged killers of little Marcus, the tawdry girlfriend of the foster father, the perplexing birth mother or whether one have been a bystander since the day of Marcus’ supposed disappearance in a Hamilton County Park. Either way, once a visit has been paid or a viewing had been made of this particular chimney, one remains innocent no more.

As written for Cancer Family Care, Cincinnati, Oh, January newsletter

Defining Progress

January 9, 2007


Recently, Stephan Keirnan, author of Last Rights: Rescuing the End of Life from the Medical Profession, was interviewed by Terry Gross of NPR. Early in the interview, Stephen spoke from personal experience. Steve’s father suffered a brain aneurysm at age 65. His mother helplessly stood by as a feeding tube was inserted in her husband’s throat, causing a dry tongue and raw cracked lips. Distraught over his physical discomfort, she persuaded the doctor to try something else. The doctor responded by performing a tracheotomy, which involved making a tiny slit in his throat for the feeding tube to run. “At the time,” Steve recounted, “we considered this progress.”

While listening to that interview, I heard disappointment in the author’s voice and knew it all too well. My husband, Devin, battled leukemia for three years. During his illness and subsequent death, there were many things I’d have done differently.

I would have let his mother, Judy, care for him more. Before Devin’s first treatment, I promised his mother, “You take of my son and I’ll take care of yours.” I wrongly assumed Devin would live and there would be plenty of moments for mother and son, both sets, to share in each other’s lives. As Devin’s wife, I knew to leave him alone when required. As a mother, letting our children be is not in our nature. But I still regret the time he and his mother missed. Devin was Judy’s son for forty years versus my husband of three years. Certainly she and Devin had more ground to cover than he and I ever would.

I also would have stepped in earlier in his process of dying. Six months before his death, we received word that Devin’s stem cell transplant, performed at Seattle Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, had failed. Over my objections, Devin’s first reaction was to call Seattle’s long-term follow-up team to ask about recommended next steps. LTFU suggested a process that was in its infancy stages and we would have once again uprooted our family, as we had done nine months prior, for a long shot at a cure. In the end, Devin was denied entrance in this clinical program – because there were no next steps.

I wish we could have had that talk –spoken in the tone of a county sheriff with a long southern drawl, “Whoa boy, you need to start slowing down.” Devin didn’t need to start dying but he and I should have had more discussions around how. Two months prior to his death, Devin’s leukemia had infiltrated his spine to such a great extent that he could no longer lie in bed without pain. During his final hospitalization, upon making the hospice decision, it was also suggested that we have Devin fitted for a back brace. I helplessly stood by and watched him grit his teeth, while three grown men – three - took turns shifting him around on the sheet in various positions so they could take the proper measurements and create a brace. Ironically, the brace would go unused.

In the end, I would have chosen to lie down beside Devin and let everyone else do the work. But I was afraid that giving in to that notion meant giving up. Perhaps then, I could have taken more time to help shape his last days, months and not always looked upon him as a patient. I would have talked more about my fear of his death, and of death in general. I would have nagged less, but I equated nagging to love. In so many ways, I gave care not love. In the end, Devin died at home, in the comfort of the office where he once felt energized, and when he let go, I was relieved to once again see the person I was meant to love.

Six years later, I remarried. My new spouse, Mark, is a doctor. His first wife Susan died of lung cancer, though not a smoker. When asked to consider what he would have done differently, Mark responded, “In my heart I feel I benefited greatly by knowing pretty clearly the medical situation, and that freed me somewhat to do what I thought was best for Susan without feeling bad that maybe the cure was just one last desperate treatment away. As you know, I feel strongly that health care professionals are ill-equipped to STOP treatments, to give up. It is just not in our nature, or the training. We need a better system, enhance hospice perhaps, to guide people to a softer landing when it comes to the end of life.”

It is not in a doctor’s nature to stop, nor was it in mine. I had been Devin’s first line of defense in securing blood products for transfusions, scrounging for soap and towels inpatient and even buying his new Merrell mocs, when they were still an unknown brand. Though a writer and computer programmer, I too felt ill-equipped in predicting when the clock would actually cease. No doctor, no human will ever be.

Stephan Keirnan could not have written his book without examining his own stories. If those who have been there continue share their views on "what I would have done differently" with honesty and candor, it will make it easier for others to say stop when the time is right.





Annette Wick is a local author whose memoir I’ll Be in the Car: One Woman’s Story of Love, Loss and Reclaiming Life from Three Arch Press is now available through bookstores or online at www.Illbeinthecar.com. Her new husband, Mark Manley, M.D., is an anesthesiologist with Anesthesia Associates of Cincinnati.

Choosing Joy – On Retreat – 1/13/07

Can we choose joy? I believe we not only have to want it, but must also expect it, and deem ourselves worthy of joy. And I often think to myself, there are moments that have been complete joy.

When my stepdaughter gives me a hug and I am the adult, I should have been reaching out to her. But there is joy in that she chose to hug me, not because it was what she had always done. When my middle stepdaughter opens a letter from the foreign exchange program and asks, did you have this sent to me? When I hand my oldest stepdaughter an article about a female improve trio appearing at the playhouse proving that she too can feel joy when someone else recognizes her hopes and dreams and doesn’t call her dreams silly or a waste of her talents. When during Davis’ basketball game, his stepsisters and visiting cousins, all girls, start a cheer for him when he comes in off the bench – D-A-V-I-S and he rises to the occasion fouling the biggest kid on the other team only to turnaround on the next play and toss in a layup..

And on Christmas day, when my new husband, who swore he didn’t know what to buy for me, really believed me and bought me a dartboard, because, well, I wanted a dart board. He was under the impression I was an expert dart thrower, but I confessed that I really just wanted to throw darts because its a lot like life. No matter the supposed target, I am always off, but I always land exactly where I aimed.

There is joy inside of me today. Perhaps it is this joy that has made it difficult to write about what been referred to as the bigger stuff. But this was also a break, a time to welcome joy into my life and remember that I wrote the big stuff, I told the truth, I wrote the ugly words about death and cancer and beautiful words about Oregon and my son and the poignant ones about love that was lost and the love reclaimed.

I skipped a leadership meeting last night, where many women were discerning their next move with their practice. I wondered later if I would regret this move. But I believe I already know my calling at least in this moment. There is no greater proof than this: My two stepdaughters have both been participants in the young women’s classes. The youngest wrote a lot of rhymes, but always about her mother. She writes likes she is on a deserted island with nothing else to do. The middle one had shared many stories of her mother’s death in her writing and she will again someday consider the leadership academy. The oldest asked me to read/help edit all six of her college essays and writing prompts. She wants to start her own laugh Olympics sketch comedy event because she found healing in laughter and knew others would as well. And even Davis, who finds healing in his art because he cant sit long enough to look up how to spell a word, says the only reason he can’t attend summer writing camp is because our community is called Women writing for a change, not women and boys. But he will be here someday too. And just recently, Mark and I co-wrote our first piece together for a newsletter for Cancer Family Care, We wrote about things we would have done differently during the final days and months with our respective deceased spouses concluding no doctor or human will ever be equipped to know when to stop the clock stop, but if we continue to share our experiences, other may have the opportunity to be more forthright in their decisions about their loved ones.

My intentions this weekend were many pronged including hesitancy in writing more in the second phase of about me, per my former pastors previous remarks. But, on my drive down here, I found myself chuckling about the story mark and I said we would write one day, about blending families and how hard it is to have sex in a household such as ours, with kids up at all hours and neighbors always peeking in or calling. When I woke Saturday morning, I wrote four pages on this particular theme.

And in my new year’s resolution, with so much agony in our world, with war, poverty and sickness, with our family reeling from a sister who drinks too much and can not possibly see joy in her life right now, with drugs and guns and the killing of little children, I said I would choose the light each day. That I would lead in this way, and that I may not always write about light and joy, but I would live a life of light, to constantly seek and reflect the joy that is in each one of us.

So as I write this, I see now that within the context of our family’s fusion I have created my own writing circle and developed a practicum that may not always be practical or applicable to the outside world. We don’t always light the candle or open the circle with poem, but we have created a safe space for the children and for ourselves, when they are hurting, when we are hurting. We have allowed for plenty of light in lives that could have been overshadowed by anger and grief. We have no plans now or in the future to add new members to our brood, but we are giving birth to joy.

Confessions from a Basement Yogi
Annette J. Wick
January 5, 2007

It comes as no surprise that my practice of yoga began in my basement. The basement played a primary role in much of my upbringing. I learned the lyrics to Jay Geil’s Centerfold and Bruce Springstein’s ThunderRoad in the basement of my parent’s home while sitting at an old kitchen table covered by the gold and white checkered tablecloth. In college, our rental home’s only shower was located in the basement. In my first starter home, the pool table took prominence. And now, as I have matured, not aged, in the basement of my current, I began the practice of yoga surrounded by prickly berber carpeting, greystone grey walls and a basket of laundry waiting in the tangerine pink laundry room nearby.

I admit to early ignorance about the practice of yoga. Instead, I confess to finding a bargain bin with Rodney Yee’s gentle pose and sculpted forearms staring up at me in the middle of the grocery aisle between the Cookies and Cereal aisles. The latter being comfort foods for me, during long winter nights after my husband has passed away.

Physically, I had been running five or six miles a week and had found a new workout routine through a local tennis club. Exercise was not new to me, but body work was. I had been seeing a therapist who was also a rolfer. The sheer force of the emotions she unleashed during a deep-tissue massage was in some ways overwhelming. Why not try yoga? I asked myself after wandering to the middle of the Snack aisle. I raced back to the bin, hoping no one else had been given this divine intervention, at least not within the last ten minutes.

Rodney and I began in the basement, after my son left for school in the morning. I loved the dark damp nature of the basement and needed it at the time. I would turn off all the lights and literally let myself fall into the black blank space unsure of what emotions would follow me there, unsure of what emotions would follow me back out.

Soon enough I realized the practice of yoga was helping to release tension in my elbow from typing out my memoir I’ll Be in the Car and pain in my hip from trying to live too fast and speed up my my grief. I found a place where I time crawled and so did I. When my session with Rodney was over, I would shudder with tears and recall my days spent in the basement of my parents house, singing ThunderRoad, the loneliness of Bruce’s voice breaking into my yoga silence. The pain of losing my husband would drain out of my fingertips. Amazingly, I would feel energized and march on through my day.

The months and years alternately crawled and flew. I continued to practice yoga in my basement only. I was self-conscious about my postures, but not really interested in moving my practice to any new levels. Every aspect in my life as a single mother was already new, including how to throw a fastball with my son. There was little sense in adding to the mix.

Then, I remarried. My oldest step-daughter moved into the basement bedroom and occupied the basement bath. The area where I used to have an open space was now occupied by an elliptical machine and a foosball table, neither of which inspired me to become a better person. The view to the small TV was blocked by an old leather recliner. The media room next to my formerly open space contained a large screen TV, a concession to my new husband, and an L-shaped leather pit group. Though the lighting remained the same, and the color of bluish walls remained, my ability to find peace was stifled by the largeness of the TV and couch. Life felt overwhelming when trying to practice in either of these rooms.

In a 3700 square foot home, there was no where to practice in peace. This sounds small, but this realization forced me to pop out of bed one morning and walk into the new yoga studio, yogehOMe, 1.52 miles or four minutes from my home for Traditional Vinyasa. While still our honeymoon phase, my new husband must have certainly expected otherwise on this rainy Saturday morning. But to be bold, one must act quickly.

In the yoga studio, a gentle green graced the walls, a crème painting of budda gave me a focal point for (my drinsi). Candles set the mood and the enclosed space allowed me to see past the piles of laundry. I joined in the Traditional Vinyasa class and at the end, signed on for a five-class pass and decided to give my practice of yoga a dose of intentionality. With lackluster commitment, I tended to my practice every so often.

But the weeks went by and the notion of feeling present in the moment in a house of teenagers and ten year olds boy was not going to happen because everything is an emergency with teenagers and ten year old boys will not stop to look where they are going and simply run you over.

Perhaps it was the purchase of a mat and a ten visit pass that cause me to resign myself to the fact that I would have to leave my house to find peace. Or maybe it was just plain envy over the fact that my husband was now practicing with Rodney, as I had done, so many months ago that was the final shot of reality.

I have since made my way around the mat, trying Hot Yoga, Gentle Yoga and Anusara Inspired. With sweat still streaming out of my pores, I came out of shivasina the after Hot Yoga the other morning. My senses had awakened in a place that felt familiar but it did not feel like the studio. I struggled for moment to ground myself in the dimly lit room. The music had stopped, but the calm raspy voice of the instructor harkened me back to my teenage years and the rhythms pulsing on the stereo. I had found a new space to call my basement.

Feeling the risks inherent in the deep things of the soul - 12/6/08

Here in my writing is where I confront my meanest self, my angriest person. Here I challenge the fearful little girl inside of me. I push the conservative woman and pull for the liberal one, then turn around and pull, then push. Here in this blank space is where I pencil in my blessings and color in my joy. Here is where I find a courageous writer and a shy friend. And here is where I discover the strongest mother whose knees are sometimes weak.

I believe there is a reason why my ten-year-old son’s favorite subject is recess
- and lunch. I believe we all need time to play. In particular, adults become increasingly worried about finances, jobs. We wonder whether our child will become the next great genetic scientist. We are concerned as to their college prospects, their self-esteem and their clothing.

As a former single parent, I had these worries more often than not. And yet my son intrigued me because his self-esteem remained intact no matter the decisions I made regarding to his participation in baseball - let him play competitive or recreational, do homework – before dinner or after dinner. And in particular their social lives - let him skate or not skate.

Recently, his school’s PTA offered fifth graders the opportunity for an after school skating party at the local roller skating rink – Castle Skateland. I grew up roller skating on the weekends with friends. My ten year old birthday party was held at the roller rink because our basement flooded out. Skating is lights, music, and sometimes friends, but mostly, it’s you and your skates.

I’ve skated at Castle Skateland. I have seen elements there any parent might find disturbing. But my son was insistent on going. “But who of your friends will be there?” I quizzed him. “I don’t know. Brian said he may go if his mom lets him.” This was our conversation as we were walking out the door for me to drop him off. I was unsettled as to how he would manage – mainly without me.

I am no longer there to coordinate friends, nag about chores and mostly shelter him from some of the nastiness that life can sometimes deliver. Lastly, he can’t skate. Well, technically, he shuffles along the side of the rink, holding on to the rails and ledges where he can. He bobs his head to the music, because he at least loves music, and scoots around the rink, one time for every three revolutions of his friends.

Upon our arrival at Castle Skateland, he eased out of the backseat and hesitated for a moment, wondering if he should kiss me. Instead, he grabbed my arm and held it for just a split second and then he was gone. As I saw the scene unfurl in my mind, he walked up the plank over the moat of grass and pavement and opened up the large imposing double doors with their fake cast iron hinges and handles.

I departed for a meeting struggling with the fact that I would not be accessible for him, if he needed me. He had my husband’s cell number and a few extra quarters, which I never saw again. Davis, I had told him, “If you feel like your just done, call home and someone will come get you.” “Ok, Mom, but I’ll be fine.”

I called my husband to let him know that Davis MIGHT call. And I pleaded for him to keep his cell phone nearby – which as a doctor he always does. I wanted to be absolutely certain that if Davis was not having fun, he could get home instantly.

The evening passed without incident and as I drove home, I had absentmindedly forgotten about Davis and his skating. My mind was still on my meeting as I walked in the door at home. Davis was preoccupied with my I-pod, bobbing his head to the All-American Rejects or Pirates of Carribbean theme. “Mom, they played my song at Castle Skateland,” he said loudly over the music. “And I skated to it the whole time.”

I nodded my head, as if I understood, but I really didn’t. Nor did my husband as we exchanged curious glances. It wasn’t until later, as Davis and I sat watching a college football game did I ask again about skating.

“So, who did you skate with?” I asked. Davis rattled off a few names I knew and one that I didn’t. “How’d you do with your skating,” I inquired, knowing this to be a loaded question. “I did fine. I skated slow the whole time, but I didn’t care. I had fun.”

In the past, Davis has circulated flyers in the neighborhood to elicit sign-ups for the BFL – Backyard Football League. He and his Charlie Brown Peanuts gang run from house, rounding up players until they can get a game. After a few weeks, they even planned for a Super Bowl. And while he avidly follows Troy Smith and Ohio State, and Bengals and Carson Palmer, he would much rather play football than watch.

I was Davis’s first playmate. And for many years, I did double duty as playmate and parent. I taught him how to play. I taught him to walk away and remember its just a game. I taught him these things because I believed that he would learn more in the backyard than in front of the television. That he would learn how to manage relationships and conflict. That someday, he would know how to have fun in a life that wouldn’t always be so.

Recently, in my newly blended family, we skipped mass one Sunday and instead practiced what I have called outdoor church. It is nothing more than spending time outside in the neighborhood, at a park or sometimes, hitting plastic golf balls in the backyard. But the point is that we are together. There are no distractions and no space between us but sky and earth, creek and leaves. We took our kids, ages 10-15, to the park at the end of our street. The park has a play set, one of those universal three sided, one tube plus monkey bars set. We talked about God and heaven and our daughter Kaitylyn wondered aloud – “what if there is no heaven. What if we’ve been wrong all this time and there is no heaven.” Our kids were asking questions aloud, which doesn’t happen in church except asking to go the bathroom or get a drink.

Following a period of silence, I suddenly, I ran at my husband and yelled, Tag you’re it. And so began a twenty-minute game of tag. It was not a battle of wills. It was not a test of strength. It was a test of who could laugh the hardest and still run, who could lose a shoe(in 30 degree weather) and still be it.

I believe that we all must make time to play. We must turn away from our idols in the news or on the screen, and even on occasion walk away from our notions of God and heaven, and learn how to negotiate through our lives from the perspective of the playground.