Overcome

This morning I woke up blue. I was blue from something Jonathan shared with me last night. I was blue because I hate winter and long days and cold--yes, even in California. No amount of caffeine or running or reading or sleeping can bust the mood.

So I walked into the Y for Benji's basketball game, and went to deposit Theo in childcare so he would not have to sit in the bleachers trying to read Percy Jackson. There on the wall was a picture of one of my favorite childcare ladies. Her name is Harriet. I have known her since Benji was born. She has loved my boys and appreciated them and loved me and been a wonderful presence at that Y.

When she asks me for money for the Y, I always give. She was older than the rest of the childcare people. I could tell she did the job simply because she loves kids. She noticed them, delighted in them, loved them. And I loved her.

Well, she died.

I hadn't been at the Y for awhile because I have been running. It didn't seem like long. But there was a picture of her on the wall, with a note that said, "Rest in Peace."

I felt sick. I felt sad. I felt heartbroken. I didn't get to say, "Thank you." I didn't get to tell her that I want to be like her when I am older. I will want to work in childcare to be around children, too. I didn't get to tell her how much I appreciated her smile and her cheerfulness and seeing her. She made me feel like part of that community.

And now she is gone. I took a month off and she is dead.

I ran to Ricardo, my favorite swim coach to find out what happened. He said she died suddenly. She had leukemia, but no one really knew how badly because she did not talk about it. Her body just gave out, and they found her alone in her condo. Ricardo said the day before she died she had gone around hugging everyone, as if somehow she knew.

Her turquoise Y shirt was laid out to go to work.

I am devastated by her loss.

She was not a major person in my life. She was peripheral. But so wonderful, so cheerful, and yes, so important. I stood at the desk at the Y with tears streaming down my face. I saw another mother crying, too.

I miss you, Harriet.

I can't believe you are gone.

Frog Funeral

For Christmas we received the most alarming gift ever. This is what happened:

Two days before Christmas Jonathan and I decided to get a jump on things and start wrapping, instead of waiting until after we returned from the Christmas Eve service and staying up all night so we were shot on Christmas morn. So we pulled all the packages that had arrived by mail from the basement and the closets and started to wrap.

We pulled out books and games and clothes. Jonathan opened a box that had arrived about a week earlier by UPS, been thrown over our high spiked fence, and sat in our bedroom since then. He reached into the styrofoam peanuts and pulled out...a plastic bag full of frogs. Live frogs.

He nearly screamed. Then me. Then we wanted to throw up. It was just wrong. How could frogs travel by mail? UPS? In a little bag with no food, no air, no nothing? Why hadn't anyone warned us? I wanted to all up PETA. It was deeply disturbing.

Worst of all, we could not take them out because they needed spring water, and after that they couldn't eat for two days, because they had to calm down after the trauma of travel and a new environment. I felt like they had been sent to us to die.

Worse, as I read the precautions and rules, I began to wonder what kind of frogs they were. They could survive in a box with no food, light or water for at least two weeks. We could not touch them. They were totally toxic. Were they some brand of corporate frog, bred for consumers? It was all so sci fi and wrong, and now we were part of it.

But, in the end, they were not toxic, merely carriers of salmonella. We got the water, set them up in their slightly cracked frog o sphere with bamboo and blue rocks and fed them. And, truth be told, they were kind of cute. It was fun to watch them swimming around. They were easy. They looked happy. The boys named them Silly Hopper and Snowflake. My sister did research. They were South African frogs, which grew up to five inches in the wild (wow!) which meant that if they ate real food, perhaps they could get that big in our house, which, I guess, is why they said to never let the frogs be anywhere near food. Perhaps they would show bionic force and burst from their frogosphere. They started to appear in my dreams--huge, emerging from the terrarium, hopping around, toxic. Deeply disturbing.

We enjoyed a happy month. We calmed down. Some days they were slower. They liked fire and sun. I think you can feel where this is headed...

Well, this morning we came down and the frogs were dead. Both were floating belly up. It was heart wrenching. And we don't even know how to dispose of them in an environmentally safe way. We plan to bury them in the yard, and pray that no bird or coyote will dig them up and become ill and die.

For now the living room is a dead zone. It feels sad. I really don't want to deal. The boys are sad.

The frogs we never asked for, but came to love, are dead.

We don't know what happened to kill them so suddenly. Were they cold? Already sick? We don't know, but we still feel like murderers.

We will give them a proper burial. It is all we can do.

yahrzeit

This is an important day. This is the day I set out for Larkspur last year to see Natalie. I was supposed to go up to San Francisco for the Blogher conference, and to see Natalie, but I didn't sign up for the conference in time, but had already gotten Jonathan to agree to some childcare, so I went to see Natalie anyway. It ended up being Natalie's last weekend on earth--and I was there out of a quirk of fate--and it also propelled me to start a blog, since I wasn't going to actually go to the Blogher conference.

So this is, really, the anniversary of my blog, and of Natalie's death.

Very important.

So I wonder, is my subconscious going to rear its head? Am I going to be tossed and turned by emotions deep inside me at the cellular level?

I don't know.

But I am seeking ways to commemorate Monday, the day of her death. And Jonathan suggested Yahrzeit, the Jewish tradition. So I will do that. I will light that candle for 24 hours, and think of her and all she was.

I have decided I will also do a few other things.

Today I bought some Tibetan prayer flags on impulse. They are more Marin County than Whitley Heights, but who cares? I will string them up in the garden. I will plant some nasturtiums and marigolds--because she loved them both. And I will try to get her memorial mix from her sister to play on Monday all day.

Finally, I will do a little yoga, dance a little, and do a little meditation. Perhaps I will make a vow to compost in her honor. I don't know. She would like it. But am I up to it?

If any of you have any ideas, let me know. I am grasping for rituals...

Your Lesson To Me

Everyone talks about what cancer taught them. About how it taught them to appreciate each moment. To live without fear. To love. To not put things off. All of this is so beautiful. And everyone who learns these lessons is blessed. But I feel like my lesson--watching my friend die--is the opposite. I already live for the moment. I have a carpe diem personality in excess. I live for the moment, to an extreme. I ALWAYS put off doing the dishes, paying the bills, and making the bed, to do the fun thing in the moment--much to the joy, and often annoyance, to adults in my life. Like my husband. My crazy, almost delirious urge to enjoy the moment comes from a life of constantly moving, the life of a Navy brat. As a child I never knew when my father was going to come home and say, "Guess what, tomorrow we are moving to X!!! Isn't that exciting?" It was. But there was no option. Each time I would leave my friends, my teachers, my school, and all the places I loved. I never knew if I would ever return. It was just over. I never knew if ANYTHING i did, ever, would be for the last time. I am an adult, now, so I have a little more control. But it has been hard to realize that. So I guess I live with the determination to appreciate that is often born in the terminally ill for the first time. I appreciate!
What I have a harder time with is things that last for a long time. My mental time horizon lasts about three months. Being pregnant was a mind-blowing experience for me. I could not imagine ANY endeavor that would last 10 months. Let alone 18 years. I always felt I would die young. I thought I would be dead by 30. I liked the biographies of young geniuses who flashed through the world like comets--ablaze and beautiful, lighting up the sky--and then were gone. I wanted to be like that. I have had trouble coming up with longer term goals. My husband has tried. As has my therapist. She said I have trouble with gardens because I do not believe, deep in my soul, that I will even be around long enough for the plants to grow. So why bother?
But as I lay with Natalia, who knew she had six weeks to live (which turned out to be three days) I thought about what I really want to do. I thought, of course, about what I would really want and wish for if I were told I had six weeks. It's never what you think it would be. It is not the big things, the trips, the grandiose gestures. It is the smallest, sweetest things. But more than anything, I felt myself switch from short term to long. I realized, as I lay there with her, that I CANNOT die now. I absolutely CANNOT die before my boys are 18. I must fight, I must be here for them, I must devote myself to them for the long haul. I cannot indulge in half-formed romantic notions of dying young (not that I am so young any more...) I must be here. I must take care of myself. I must take care of them. I brought them into this world and I must show them how to love, and swim, and surf, and travel, and make the world a better place.
I must do more than live for the day. I must live for a lifetime.