365 DAYS

As I sit here in nothing but the glow of the Christmas tree lights and the computer screen, staring at the ornaments that have been collected to be brought out and admired for only a handful of weeks out of the year and then tucked away, safe in their packings until Christmas rolls around again, when another few ornaments will be added to the collection and the process repeats itself, I wonder what milestones will have come and gone when I next look at them.  When I looked at them last, I was not quite the person that I am sitting here tonight and I marvel at how much can change in just 365 days; how many ways a person can evolve day by day as events unfold that no one can know until the moment they happen, or even, perhaps, until they've already passed, the change as yet unperceived, but there nonetheless.

I used to be terrified of death, and of dying.  I have never felt that feeling of invincibility others talk of feeling in their youths - I spent far too many hours and days surrounded by sickness and death as a child to ever feel as though I had the power to laugh in death's face.  I saw him early, and he terrified me.  It is only as an adult that I have managed to conquer that terror, consigning death to an immutable and unavoidable truth that may never bring me peace, but is not something that haunts my nights with its presence.  What terrifies me now, as I look at each ornament, some marking my birth, some made by a Carrie long-changed by days and years of accumulated events, some made by the kids I could never quite imagine but desperately wanted, is uncertainty.  Uncertainty destabilizes me; knocks me from my center into a freefall of unknown variables and onto a path around which I stumble, not knowing what I might find around any corner.  Not that any of us ever know, really, but if I can at least have a vision of what I hope to find at the end of the path, I can walk it; can handle the odd twists and turns when I know that there are a few constants upon which I can ground myself.  It is when you have no constants that the algebra problem becomes unsolvable, no matter how many ways you rearrange the equation.  And this terrifies me.

I feel my constants slipping into a place of mutability, where change becomes possible, and the goals are no longer clearly seen on the path ahead.  I am forced into a state of becoming, once again, and I'm not sure I'm ready for that, or the 365 days that will mark the time that passes when I once again sit in front of these lights, looking at these ornaments, wondering where I might find myself another 365 days gone by.

Just Breathe

My sister asked me, upon finding out that I managed not to fail out this semester, if it meant that I could breathe now.  And I don't think that there is a more apt question that could have been asked.  It seems that I have been in a state of breathlessness since the semester began and when I look back on it, it is a miracle that I managed to do as well as I did (even with the medication...).

Somehow, between the end of last semester and the end of this semester I managed to get married, sit at my mom's bedside in her final days, start class days after her death, deal with K jumping from a moving car to escape going to school, find and close on a house, move, put a house together, handle E's severely damaged knee and subsequent wheelchair, try to deal with the holidays and actually pass the semester.  Not extremely well, but not horribly, either. I DID manage to kill my 4.0, but hey, everyone is entitled to one bum semester, aren't they?

In the last weeks of the semester, I found something curious happening to me.  I had this overwhelming urge to create.  Something.  Anything.  (Please do not mistake this for PROcreate... I've had my fair share of THAT, thanks.  There will be no making of live things in THIS household.)  I think that my brain has been so immersed in left-sided thinking that the right side of my brain has been feeling a bit neglected.  I have this overwhelming desire to learn how to paint with watercolors (oils were always my thing... always did want to learn how to do watercolors successfully), set up my jewelry bench, seriously get creative with my new camera, write, anything that feeds my poor, depleted right side.  But oddly, the things that inspire most of those activities (with the exception of the jewelry), are the things feeding my left brain - the beauty of the cells and neurons that fill my head.  Is that slightly weird?  Of course, we all know that I'm slightly weird anyway.

So now I'm sitting here, trying to ignore the cool neuroscience book that I got for my class next semester to do some light reading as I head off down to Florida over the holidays, and trying to sort out what I need to do first: the mountains of laundry that managed to pile up over dead week and finals week, clean, grocery shop, christmas shop, or bathe.  After the blogging, of course.  And the deep breath.  Strangely enough, that is the thing that comes the hardest.  Remembering how to do that.

4 Little Blue Monsters, A Hallow's Eve Poem

Oh curse the dawn, with its
black skies and heat-seeking winds
when all else sleeps on this Hallow's Eve
and I stumble madly in the cold,
hair wild and crushed beneath hat,
heedless of pajamas and slippers
peeking out from my coat like a homeless child
through the desolate lot of a half-lit gas station
in desperate search of 4 little blue monsters.

Funny the things that can make me wax poetic.

Mini-Respite

What heavy things weigh on my mind at 5:30 in the morning as I roll out of bed to take my newly minted freshman, O, to 6:00 a.m. swim practice?  Honestly?  I wish I could say I was having profound thoughts, bringing with them clarity and a sagacity that I seem to have sought all of my life.  But really what I'm thinking is, "Oh God, do I have an energy drink in the refrigerator? NO? Do I have enough time to stop BEFORE I drop him off?" and "should I shower after I pack Roy's food, do some math, and then take E to school or should I shower after I drop her off, before I have to make it to class?"  And all the while I'm distracted by the 3 boxes and downed whiteboard in our study, calling to me like the ghosts of abandoned children; I can hardly shut my mind off to their whispers to even begin studying. So what do I do?

Well, isn't it obvious?  D: None of the above (except the food - already packed the food).  And 6:30 hits, alarm goes off (again), I hear the stirrings of E's alarm signalling shower time and it is time to start the ball rolling, my tiny bit of calm and quiet before the storm of the morning ritual ends almost quicker than it began.  I'm sure I will sit down again today and breathe.  Maybe.

A Hundred Years of Solitude...

...would not be enough, if you were to ask me at the moment.  But that is just this very moment, when the sky is still dark with cold, late fall, morning rain, and I am the only one awake, procrastinating that daily ritual I call personal hygiene.  We all have our lows, I suspect, at least once in our lives.  While I'm far too superstitious to say that I have hit mine, I'm pretty damn sure that this is as close as I ever want to be to it and still be conscious.  I'm sure that deciding to buy a house directly on the heels of those little things like marriage and death and the beginning of what has become the Semester of Unfortunate Events has not helped the situation at all.  Not that I regret the house - in fact, I don't think that I have ever been so in love with a home before; it just has that kind of energy to it.  But it has been overwhelming.  In fact, if I could sum up the way I feel with one image, it would most likely be something like this:

And I'm sorry, but if you feel like that, there is something definitely not going right in your life.  A hundred years of solitude seems awfully nice at the moment, in the quiet, semi-darkness of my study (yes, I actually have a study... a REAL study, to do some serious studying in) and if you were to ask me right now, I might actually take you up on it.  But I have a feeling that tomorrow I would wake missing all the people that have become so important to me in my life and want to click my heels together and go home.  Because even if home means that I'm taking 5 different kinds of medication just to keep my shit together, it still contains the only thing (aside from aforementioned medications) in my life that gets me through the days at all.  The love of the people who hold me up through it all and don't complain about my sweaty armpits around their shoulders or the deodorant stains I leave behind. And that is surely what love is all about.

I AM MY MOTHER'S KEEPER

Ever beautiful.

Not in the way that I ever thought I would be - not sandwiched between my mom and my daughter for a day of shopping, or for a baby shower, or any of the number of things that I was fortunate enough to do with my mother and her mother, or that she was fortunate enough to do with her mother and grandmother. 

Love notes to Mom, 1988

But I keep her in so many other ways.   I am blessed that I was given an acute sense of mortality at a very young age because I keep finding her everywhere I turn.  Much like when I left on my exchange to Venezuela for a year and hid small notes all over the house for her to find as a reminder of my love for her while I was gone (seriously, I thought it was a good idea - it never dawned on me that instead of making her smile, it would make her cry every time she found one), as I pack up my house and get ready to move into our new home, I am surrounded by little reminders that she is with me always in spirit. And now I understand exactly how she felt as she came across one of my little love notes randomly. 

Autograph album, 1979 Mom and my Mamaw.

    I am her keeper and it feels right.

Feeling Horribly Optimistic About Life at the Moment

Need I say more?

SILVER LININGS AND POTS OF GOLD AT THE END OF THE RAINBOW

Ok, I will not lie.  I should be studying Mendelian genetics, epistasis and other patterns of genomic inheritance.  I know this.  My professor giving the exam Monday knows this.  My husband (yes, my husband... yes, I'm pretty sure I did mention it somewhere) would know it as well if I weren't over here pretending that I was studying avidly.  So please don't make me feel more guilty than I already do even contemplating writing this. But as you all are well aware (and if for some reason you missed my previous muse on this topic, you can brush up in Part One here) when turmoil arises; when strong emotions arise; even when overwhelming indigestion arises, I find my center in words.  

4 years and one week ago I posted a blog about the roller-coaster of life.  And it hit me tonight, as I read the words of my 36-year-old self, how much we grow, and how much life continually teaches us if we actually bother to listen to the lessons and search for the silver linings hidden in the adversities we face.  That woman writing 4 years ago had an inkling of how her mother's illness would change her.  She had already begun re-evaluating life, making changes, starting to live actively rather than passively.  But she could never have guessed that out of such a cloud of grief and heartbreak that was the illness consuming her mother, there could be hidden a beautiful lining of silver.  Maybe she wasn't supposed to know.  Perhaps it would have been easier in some ways if she could have guessed. Perhaps it wouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference.  But today, as my 40-year-old self had a conversation with a new acquaintance about the deep lessons of life, I was able to articulate to her just how powerful it is to know that out of adversity can come things that may never have come otherwise.  

A case in point: my father.  Dad and I have always had a rocky relationship with a seemingly impenetrable wall that kept us from having a really meaningful relationship.  Perhaps it was the impasse in our ideologies and our collective stubborn inability to let go of differences in life philosophy, religion and politics.  Maybe we just didn't know how to find common ground upon which to relate to each other.  Whatever the reason, I never imagined having a truly meaningful relationship with my father.  A sad thing to admit, but the truth nonetheless.  

And then one day - I believe it was not long after I took Roy down to Florida to meet everyone for the first time - my phone rang and it was my father.  My heart immediately hit my stomach, because I knew something was wrong.  For my dad to call me, out of the blue, most certainly meant something at least close to approaching bad.  The first words of my mouth were along the lines of, "Dad? What is wrong? What happened?"  "What?" he said, "Can't I just call to see how my daughter is doing?"

For the first time in my memory, my dad called just to talk.  To actually talk.  To me.  And not even about anything in particular.  I kept waiting for the motive to reveal itself, but it never did.  The phone call simply was. 

And in the intervening years, the phone calls became more and more frequent and amicable as we actually began really talking TO each other - not AT each other.  The more my mother slipped away from us, the more I found solace in my connection with him.  He knew.  We shared that great love for my mom, each in our own way, but each as powerful and true as the other.  We finally shared that common ground, my mother being the platform upon which our relationship was sown.  It is a gift that I may have never found if we had not ever had to lose my mother.

4 years ago I wrote:

One of my aunts cares for her [my grandmother] every day and she has one of the most beautiful attitudes of acceptance about it that I've ever heard. I'm sure that she went through this initial roller-coaster of emotions, but it is the place she is on the other side that I look at and hold up as a light. My aunt said to me, when talking about it, that even though her mother doesn't know who she is, she is one of the neatest old women she knows and she loves being with her. I can't wait to reach that point, because just thinking of that inevitability - acknowledging that my mother, the woman who holds me always as her child, who knows all the countless hurts and boo boo's, the childhood triumphs, the only person in the world who holds my entire existence in her mind and heart, will look at me one day in the not-to-distant future and not see ME...

I wanted to find that place, but I couldn't imagine getting from there to here. Mom died August 8th, almost 2 months ago. And the most precious moments I carry with me are those moments when I did make it to the other side. Those moments when my mother looked at me, as I helped her in the bathroom, and said thank you. That moment when I fixed a long towel around her neck because she wanted a cape and she looked me in the eye and asked, "Does your mother know where you are?"

"Yes, she does," I replied, "and she wouldn't want me anywhere else."

"Really?"

"Yes.  And in fact you look just like my mother."

"I do?"

"I think maybe you may be even a little more beautiful than her."

Remembering how my mom lit up, as she always had when I paid her compliments, how she laughed and said, "Noooooo" in a way that meant, "Really? I am?"  Remembering each smile that I could drag out of her, every single laugh, and knowing that even though she didn't know who I was that she at least really liked me... I realize that I made it to the other side.  The side that holds the joy in each moment of being able to help her, and hold her, and give back to her even just a fraction of what she gave to me.  That moment when she curled up on the couch in my arms like one of my own children, cape intact, and finally slept, when I could just hope that my arms were giving her a much-needed sense of peace and security and wish that I never had to let go.  I realize I made it.

Dad came to visit this weekend, and for the first time in 4 years, my kids got to be with their grandpa again, even for just a short time.  And for the first time in his memory, Kellen actually got to meet his grandpa and have the gift of falling in love with him - something he has missed being the youngest grandchild shoved away by a devastating illness that he cannot understand.  And I got to hang with my dad, just he and I, and take him to visit our close friends who remind me so much of the close friends my parents had all their lives.  And when I hugged him tonight and watched him drive away, to begin the last leg of his journey north on to my brother's house, I was shocked by the tightening in my heart, not knowing when I will get to see him again.  And realizing that I am at a place I never imagined I'd be in my life - a place where I actually miss being with him.  Perhaps one might look at this and ask was the silver lining worth the cost of the cloud from which it came, but I prefer to think of it as a silver lining that ensures that the cloud was not in vain. 

And I have no doubt that I will eventually find that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, either.

RITUALS

My mom and I had a ritual when I would visit my parents in their St. Augustine home.  Every morning, early, while the tide was low and everyone slept, we would slip off to the beach near their home, to walk together, collect garbage and search for shells.  Our route, at minimum, was 2 hours long, sometimes 3 if we happened upon large pockets of shells or tidal pools to distract us.  Over the 4 years that I visited her after her diagnosis, this was our ritual, and one that we talked about every phone call in between those visits.  

Last year she stopped walking with me as it became overwhelming and physically taxing.  But this last trip, the day before we left, 2 days before she died, I went on one last beachwalk, dragging her in my heart as I followed our route and searched for her.  The picture at the top of the my blog is from that last morning beachwalk and a day like the day I describe in my poem.  It is a very rough draft, but it has been niggling at me for two years now.  I guess having the shell in the poem actually reside back with me now has prompted this need to write about the moment.

So this may change drastically in the weeks/months to come, or it may not, one never knows.  Usually the end product is very different from the original, but even an imperfect piece of work needs to be shared should the opportunity never arise to perfect it.

THE CONCH

I walk ahead a little ways, scouting,

the surf frothy as whipped cream on hot chocolate

as the wind pounds the water down towards our feet.

It is warm, but you are wrapped tightly against the chill

you cannot seem to fight off anymore,

anxious as a child and pulling back from the water that creeps up

as the tide brings in the rising sun.

This week our beach walks have been full of conchs,

the only ones that really matter now -  the holy grail

of these early morning shell hunters we have become.

This is not a walk you want to be on anymore -

I know this, but this walk is my selfish salvation,

to be filed into my archive of memories;

one last attempt to stop time and just be with you

because I know the archive will soon be complete.

I loop my arm through yours, and we walk slowly,

scanning the water’s edge

as the surf marches in constant rhythm of attack and retreat,

looking for those telltale signs of the shell.

I encourage you to look, though you don’t really know

how to find them anymore, going through the motions

perhaps because you sense my necessity.

Tiny black conch after tiny black conch, charcoal

and beautiful, our bag is full of them

and you tell me how you wish you could find one.

Though we walked this path yesterday,

there is no evidence that we existed in this place at all,

as tomorrow we will again exist anew
when we walk this path once more.

The water pulls out and I see the division of sea, water

rushing out around something substantial,

and in the brilliance of the pink and orange sun

reflecting off the sand and the object

I guess that it is what you seek.

“Mom, look, go see what that is,” I tell you,

pointing towards the edge and gently guiding you to it

as you struggle to see what I see.

You bend down, hands shaking with palsy

and pull the dark shell like a child,

eyes wide and face ecstatic as the conch emerges,

perfect, slate grey and flawless, and

larger than both your hands put together.

“Oh Mom, look what you found!” I whispered,

for it suddenly seemed a moment as reverent

as any to be found in a church.

“I can’t believe it,” your words slur as your brain

struggles to put them together in the right order

and you clutch the shell tightly to your chest.

“Thank you,” you smile and we set off again,

my arm through yours as you hold this treasure,

determined to finish our habitual route even though

the prize we sought has already been found.

And when we turn and head back we see our prints

already being erased by the rising tide,  

the shell and our memories – the ones I hold for you,

the only evidence that we ever existed here.

- C. Black Johnson

Sept. 18, 2011

Honest, constructive criticism is always appreciated!  (you english people know who you are.)

IF YOU LOOK HARD ENOUGH...

Alzheimer's Disease Culture

You can find beauty in almost everything.  Even those things that seem to have no beauty in them, at all.  If you look hard enough, if you wait long enough, you will find the beauty behind the pain, the hurt, and you will find the beauty in the journey.  

I have faith in this.

Prostate Cancer Cells Dividing

Kidney Stone Crystals

Lung Cancer Cells Dividing

SERENITY

I made a decision this week.  It has been a tough month and a half in all aspects of my life.  When I was reflecting upon it earlier with a close friend, it dawned on me that it has been one continual lesson of learning how to let go.  To let go of loved ones, to let go of the perfection I expect of myself, to let go of my expectations of others... in a way to let go of this iron grasp I have on my destiny.  It reminds of the Serenity Prayer:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference. 

It seems so simple. But for some reason, wisdom seems so hard to come by.

I failed the first two exams of the semester.  Yes, I did (I have the F's to prove it).  Two different classes, one last week and one this.  It has been hard, juggling all that is going on in my life and struggling to find some sort of balance without letting any of the pins fall (not that I could ever REALLY juggle - I always left that to my more-than-capable friend Jason).  Before this semester, a B was the lowest grade I had ever received (on any assignment/exam... heaven forbid an overall course grade).  I was devastated the first time I made one.  

Life has taken me to my knees in a way I've never known.  Once before I was taken down, when my mother was diagnosed and my best friend moved halfway around the world (quite literally).  It is so easy to evaluate in hindsight; to see with complete clarity what you were blinded to in the moment.  But I realize that the last time, I was on my knees for far too long.  It was simply easier to be there than to figure out how to accept these changes and accommodate them in my life somehow.  So much easier to hide and simply let life roll by.  It hurt so much less in my pajamas with a glass of wine.

I admit, this all came at a bad time.  That I had one week to try to get my head into a semester full of upper level science and math courses in a schedule that suddenly left me no time without children to study, after saying goodbye to mom for the last time in this life, it certainly was not a situation conducive to success.  Not to mention the loss, temporary or permanent only God knows, of my heart's closest friend.  Not to mention the child jumping out of the car.  

But when I walked out of that first calc exam, knowing that I had blown it when it was material that I know cold, I realized that I had to be ok with that.  I have to be able to accept imperfection in myself, as hard as it is for me to do.  Funny how I can be so forgiving and encouraging of others who are hard on themselves but it is so difficult for me to swallow the same medicine.  But you know what?  I actually came to peace with it.  

This weekend I realized that instead of grieving and moving forward, I have been stuck in neutral, refusing to let go of the things I need to for fear that they will be gone forever if I do, but I will be stuck forever in this pain if I don't.  And with that realization I got down on my knees, one more time, and I let go.  And I stood up.

Today, when I walked out of an exam that I could have aced if I had simply had time to study, it was with resolve, sheer stubborn determination, and more than a little anger.  I believe my exact words to a friend in a text were "Fuck this shit. I'm tired of the whiny excuses. It makes me feel pathetic. I'm doing A's the rest of the semester in all of my classes if it kills me."   (Forgive the language, but I did put it in quotes.  I read somewhere that foul language was acceptable in quotes.  Or maybe I just made that up because those of you who know me know that my writing is sanitized beyond belief.  I can rival any sailor, any day, in the language department.)  I only wish that I had stood up maybe just a few days earlier - then I could have perhaps redeemed myself in time, because when I have resolve, I don't think even the devil himself could stop me. 

So tonight, I pulled my favorite word salve off the shelf and came across this poem. And it just fit, in so many ways, for so many people I know right now, myself included.  Sometimes, I actually DO take my own medicine, dear friends.  Love to my family and friends - I couldn't have stood so quickly without each and every one of you.  

I'm back on a forward trajectory - just make sure to drag me back up when I trip.

THE REED FLUTE'S SONG

Listen to the story told by the reed,
of being separated.

“Since I was cut from the reedbed,
I have made this crying sound.

Anyone apart from someone he loves
understands what I say.

Anyone pulled from a source
longs to go back.

At any gathering I am there,
mingling in the laughing and grieving,

a friend to each, but few
will hear the secrets hidden

within the notes. No ears for that.
Body flowing out of spirit,

spirit up from body: no concealing
that mixing. But it's not given us

to see the soul. The reed flute
is fire, not wind. Be that empty.”

Hear the love fire tangled
in the reed notes, as bewilderment

melts into wine. The reed is a friend
to all who want the fabric torn

and drawn away. The reed is hurt
and salve combining. Intimacy

and longing for intimacy, one
song. A disastrous surrender

and a fine love, together. The one
who secretly hears this is senseless.

A tongue has one customer, the ear.
A sugarcane flute has such effect

because it was able to make sugar
in the reedbed. The sound it makes

is for everyone. Days full of wanting,
let them go by without worrying

that they do. Stay where you are
inside sure a pure, hollow note.

Every thirst gets satisfied except
that of these fish, the mystics,

who swim a vast ocean of grace
still somehow longing for it!

No one lives in that without
being nourished every day.

But if someone doesn't want to hear
the song of the reed flute,

it's best to cut conversation
short, say good-bye, and leave.

                  - Rumi (as translated by Coleman Barks)

ONE DOWN...

Maybe satisfying one OCD will be enough to divert attention from prosthetic leg obsession.

Pray for me.

He's already seeing better.  The Placebo Effect is alive and well.

 
P.S. Thank you, Aunt Brandy!!!

THE CONSEQUENCES OF BEING A SENTIMENTALIST

First, I have to make a disclaimer.  I am not a hoarder.  I eschew accumulation in my life and I only keep those things that have significant emotional value to me.  I do not have extra of anything (ok, except maybe books), I buy only what I need, and I find homes for those things that do not fit any longer in my life.

Having said that, there are certain things that I do not part with.  From the time I was a child, I have kept every significant drawing, letter, card, trinket or otherwise that is attached to a memory, or a feeling that I never wanted to forget.  The first time Roy threw a letter away I wrote to him, I was horrified and crushed at the same time.  How could anyone do such a thing?  Just like every journal I have, these are the things that chronicle our lives - that tell others our stories, that remind us when we begin forgetting.  They are the very fabric of our souls, these things.

Last night, as I was cleaning out the garage in some pre-prep moving rituals, getting rid of those things that no longer have a place in my life, I came across the box that holds every letter, every card, every significant thing from my life.  Well, actually, it is about 4 boxes - 5 if you count the storage tub of journals, but I don't count that.  I have every letter and card from every old love or boyfriend in my life.  I have get well cards handmade for me by the entire third grade class when I spent so much of my life in the hospital.  I have mounds of letters from my closest friend and chronic penpal growing up, Jason.  Letters from my friend Ann, so close to my heart for so long and only recently connected again.  But those letters are our foundation, the things that made us who we are today.  To see the metamorphosis, in hindsight, that makes you all you are now is a powerful thing.

I have letters and cards from my little sister, from my brother, every letter ever written to me during my year in Venezuala from anyone and everyone.  I have letters from grandparents and great-grandparents long gone.  I have the 3 cards that my father ever gave to me of his own accord, with actual personalized notes.  I have every card and love note that my children have ever written me.  And most importantly, I have every card, every letter, every treasured item that my mother ever gave to me.  Throughout my life, people have thought me silly for doing this.  My closets have always been filled with shoeboxes of letters, cards, memorabilia and small trinkets that are worth more to me than any amount of gold.  And last night, I realized just how blessed I am to have all this.  While it may take up space, I think that these boxes are the most precious things I own.  I sat and sobbed last night when i found a letter from my mom, and I know that this is how, someday, I will pay tribute to her.  If it is the only book I ever write, it will be enough.  

So for those of you who are not sentimentalists, I caution you.  Someday, these things may mean more to you than any possession you have ever owned.  They are gifts from your loved ones in word format, and there is nothing as precious as that.

NEVER A DULL MOMENT

Having a child with OCD is sort of like being stuck in some Divine Comedy.  For the past month Kellen has been on this obsession that he needs glasses.  You have never seen a child so disappointed to be told that he has 20/15 eyesight (well, I did have to explain what that meant) after his physical.  A fairly harmless and rather typical child obsession, if I do say so myself.  So Aunt Brandy to the rescue!  I called my sister up, who works for an optometrist and asked her if she had any free kids sample frames floating around with plastic lenses that she could send so that Kellen can feed his inner nerd child.  Real glasses are now in the mail, and soon I won't need to hear the glasses lament incessantly.

But there is another little OCD I've not figured out how to solve quite as creatively.  For the past month, he has had a mysterious bad ankle that crops up every night at bedtime.  His ankle has to be wrapped in an ace bandage (or, lately, a scarf as said bandage has disappeared) or he cannot sleep.  Last week he told me he just wants a fake leg.  He doesn't want his anymore, he really wants a fake one.  I've told him that he's very blessed to have two good legs, so that he can run and bowl and do all the things he loves to do.  But for some reason this is not satisfactory logic in his mind and nightly he laments his lack of a prosthetic leg.  I'm a bit stumped for a solution.

BECOMING

Last night I was talking to a friend about the mutual challenges we have faced as parents of children who suffered clinical Oppositional Defiance Disorder in their early years. It is difficult to understand the hell one finds oneself in when faced with such a child unless you have actually lived through it, especially when, to look at them, they are the proverbial wolves in sheep's clothing. There was rarely a night through those intense years that I did not cry myself to sleep and regret all the things that I had not handled as well as I should have. And in one of those low, low moments I did what I do when I need to cope. I wrote a poem for him.

The Color of My Own

Through the dusk I call to you,

watch you turn and hold up a hand –

just one more minute.

I see you now, straddling the divide

between child and youth,

spurs on your heels propelling you

from childhood with all the agony

of a first love,

striding quickly away from the little boy

that nursed so eagerly in my arms…

has it been so long ago, now?

I watch, powerless,

as you cling tenuously with knuckle-white grasp

to the bucking bronco that is your childhood

as it seeks to loose you at every turn,

the ride tumultuous and long.

Anger comes swift as a hawk from the sky,

plucking you up in its steely talons,

and you give yourself up to it with abandon.

Words fly between us like so many knives

and the tears that come afterwards, tinged

with the blood of our hurts.

As you throw your arms around my waist,

head resting beneath my chin,

the bumps of our journey steal my breath

and regret burns like acid in my throat

as I wish for the impossible –

just another chance to say something different,

to do it again, right, this time.

You glance up at me,

so fearless and sure.

I am at once envious and maddened

by your defiance.

In the dying light

I see the child I never was in your eyes,

the color of my own.

- Carrie Black

May 2006

And this child, whom I hoped would simply make it to adulthood without committing some heinous crime, dressed last week for the first time in his Jr. ROTC uniform and headed off to high school (and no, I did NOT force him to sign up for it, believe it or not), and I see him becoming all of those things that I only dreamed he could be.

"The wound is the place where the light enters you." -- Rumi.

My last chance at sleeping in and here I sit, too early in the morning to even think about looking in the mirror, let alone brushing my teeth.  So yes, the dragon breath is mine.  It seems there is no rest when the words kick up like a mad tornado in my head.  I often wish I had some sort of pensieve so that I could simply draw them out like so many strands and deposit them in a dish for later evaluation and revision.  But alas, they haven't invented that yet, so I just need to type fast and capture as many of the thoughts I can.

These posts, they come on the heels of so much grief that it is even hard for me to find the humor that typically gets me through the rough patches.  Bear with me, I am certain they will get less heavy as time progresses and I will find my voice again.  It may be a little deeper, but surely it won't have completely lost its mirth.  Life's too short not to laugh about it, I think.

Yesterday, when I started to write, I was thinking about the ways in which I have defined myself, and my life.  I got part way there when I found some other path and completely forgot where I was supposed to be going in the first place.  Go figure... it must have been the valium (and yes, it is a valid prescription which I take AS PRESCRIBED by my doctor to make sure that I actually do get out of bed in the mornings.  Just a shame I don't stay there a bit longer).

For the past month, I've found myself defining myself in terms of my mother.  I feel compelled, when I talk to anyone about my career path, to mention that I am going into Alzheimer's research, and, oh, my mom died from it.  Everything I am right now, it is from the perspective of my mother's role in my life.  It is odd - I did not expect this.  I am my mother's avenger, I am my mother's keeper, I am my mother's memory.  The only thing I could not be for her was her angel of mercy.  But that is another story entirely.

I did not know that grief could effect one like this.  I have lost people I loved and I have certainly been challenged in ways I think is really slightly unfair for just one person, if I do say so myself.  But at the end of the night, I close my eyes and I just pray for the strength to get through this - all of these things that seemed to culminate in my life in a single moment.  I will bear it, like I will bear anything I need to, because I can and that is who I am.  I am my mother's daughter afterall.  But I am simply ready for the light to enter this wound, and begin filling it with something other than this heaviness I feel.

Ann and Carrie Ann, Christmas 1971

Ann and Carrie Ann, Graduation 6/1988

I know I am not the first person to feel this, and work through this, and I will certainly not be the last.  It happens that I lost my heart's closest friend the same week I lost my mother and those two things together have dropped me to my knees.  The pain of Kellen's struggles culminating almost in unison almost seem to much to bear.  And these tears, and these words, they make me feel weak, but they are the only way I know how to find my strength again.  Even if there isn't a soul that reads them, when I write, therefore I AM.  And right now I need that reassurance.