remnants

A stuffed lamb hangs from the doorway that separates our kitchen from our dining room.  A gift from Granny Smith (wouldn't it be so great if we just called her Apple?), there are knobs on it's back to make it sound like singing whales, a mother's heartbeat, ocean waves, or rain.  Cassidy always preferred the whales.  This lone lamb signifies a time in her life when mobiles and hanging things were all the rave, which this family took to a whole new level.


I started sewing birds (I can hardly remember what it felt like to actually have time to sew!), and pretty soon they were hanging from the ceiling and light fixtures.  My husband upped the ante when he added stuffed animals and wind chimes.  We would blow or push on the elaborate menage, and Cassidy would squeal and coo.

Pretty soon it was not just for Cassidy's entertainment.  It became a great source of amusement for my husband and I.  Without ever speaking of it, when the other wasn't around, bits would be added for the other to discover.  Forks, socks, the scotch tape dispenser, sunglasses, it was all fair game.  It got to a point where I think Cassidy's parents enjoyed it more than she did.


Alas, everything has it's time, and there's a time to let go.  Cassidy started crawling and really didn't give a hoot what was hanging anymore, so piece by piece, the hanging things were disassembled.  Now the lamb is the only remnant left.


I was thinking about this a few weeks ago when I got on a spring cleaning binge.  I bagged up old sheets and bedcovers we haven't used in far too long to justify storing them.  I got rid of shoes and sweaters that I just might have worn again one day, but never did.  I tidied the knick knacks and stuff that collects on top of book cases and other level surfaces, where I had to confront the painted pot that used to belong to my dad, and held a stack of sympathy cards for the last year and a half that I just left there, dusting around once in awhile.


I don't hold on to occasion cards.  I display them for a reasonable time, and then they're tossed.  Our house is too small to save every trinket and paper memory.  The chances of me wondering who sent me cards on my 40th birthday are slim to none.  Although Cassidy has given me a new appreciation of greeting cards.  She was fascinated with the artwork on the birthday cards she received, and can be pretty transfixed over art work in general.  She has always noticed what hangs on our walls, and takes notice of what hangs on walls wherever we go.  She's particularly fond of flowers and birds.


I finally went through the sympathy cards again that I'd gotten after my father died.  These occasion cards were the exception, though I knew eventually that I would get rid of them, too.  Some had a paragraph of a specific memory shared, and those I put in a separate pile to keep for another little while.  The rest I went through and chose the ones with the most compelling artwork, and wouldn't you know, sympathy cards are full of flowers and birds.


I put them in one of baskets in Cassidy's playroom with her books.  Cassidy discovered and pored over them, studying the pictures, then tossing them on the floor.  When I tidy the room, I put them back in her basket to look at again, later.  Sometimes she carries them around with her and I find one on the floor of another room.  They feel like paper bits of love.  I know one day they will be tattered and worn and maybe even chewed on and I will get rid of those, too.  But for now, I like having the remnants around.

the country mouse and the city mouse

I recently got back from a visit to my hometown.  It's funny, the "home" in "hometown" because although it has not been home for more than half the years I've been alive, it is still the place I know most intimately.  I can navigate the "back roads" like nobody's business, and still know where to get the best pizza, bagels, sushi and Greek food.  Amityville, the south shore of Long Island, where despite the busy crazy suburbian traffic and my leaving it behind, still feels like somewhere I belong.


It couldn't be more different than where I live now, where I have lived for the past six years, the longest I have ever lived in one place since leaving Amityville as a college grad.  Here at home in Massachusetts, we live on six acres of land.  Our "yard" is the size of a football field with a gentle slope with some fruit trees and a roto-tilled garden ready for some planting (soon).  Beyond that there are woods, rocky ledges, and more woods behind the yard and the barn.  Trails weave in and out of Oaks, Maples, Birch, Pine, Mountain Laurel, dirt, rocks, acorns, moss, deer poop, chipmunks, squirrels, spiders and other insects and etc. on a floor of dead leaves.  A couple years ago I even turned around and hurried away to avoid a bear.  Cassidy and I kick through leaves, feel the textures of different kinds of bark, close our eyes and point at the direction the bird calls come from.  We smell the flowers, the rocks, the dirt.  She collects sticks and acorns.  We come inside with dirty knees and hands. 

In the yard, we go up the slope and Cassidy turns around to run back down.  Over and over and over.  We blow kisses to the baby peach tree.  We swing on the hammock.  We throw toys to Annie (our Golden Retriever) who runs around wild and pat Zuki (our beloved feline) who never strays far when we are outside.  I push her around in her little tykes car.  Daddy takes her for rides on the tractor.  She plays in her sandbox Daddy built for her, or swings on the swing he hung between two trees in the woods.  We have so much room here, so much freedom to explore.

In New York, we visited three age appropriate parks in one day, two in walking distance, where Cassidy squealed and screamed exploring the bright colored structures.  She flirted with other children.  We went to Captree State Park and watched the boats go in and out while eating clam chowder.  We went to Robert Moses and dug in the sand, watched the waves crash, collected shells and inhaled the sea air.  We held hands on sidewalks and docks, stopping to throw the ducks bits of bread.


When we needed milk, we drove to Stop and Shop and were back at our family's home in about ten minutes.  When we went out for breakfast, I met a woman with a daughter one week younger than Cassidy and told her I would meet her for play dates if I lived closer, and I totally would have.


In Massachusetts, I've yet to find the nearest age appropriate playground.  We go to the local elementary school playgrounds, but Cassidy is not quite ready for them.  The closest grocery store is 25 minutes away, which makes going shopping not just a chore, but an event.  We drive to State Parks close by and walk trails around ponds and lakes.  If we go anywhere, we drive.  We have to.  Though we often just stay home and spend time getting lost in our own yard.


In New York, the mostly small fenced in yards abutting one after the other feels claustrophobic.  The traffic on Merrick Road on a Saturday is astounding, as are the poor manners of many drivers on the Island.  The amount of things to do, places to go, people to see is almost overwhelming.


I love the freedom and expanse of raising our daughter here.  I miss the easy proximity of friends.  I love the thrill Cassidy gets carted around at the grocery store on our weekly trips.  I miss the easy access of whatever I forgot to buy.  I love the woods.  I miss the ocean.  I love the quiet, privacy and solitude of the country. I miss the hundreds of things to do at the drop of a hat.  I love that our yard hosts visits by deer, wild turkey, critters and sometimes even bears.  I miss the feeling of neighbors and community. 

Aside from the birds at the feeder, I just watched Debbie, our mail lady, drive by in her jeep and stuff the mail in the box from my dining room window, where I sit and write.  The postmaster in our town, Jan, calls me at home when a package arrives in case I want to pick it up earlier than the next day scheduled delivery.  When Cassidy was born the ladies at the Post Office sent me a card.  When my father died (and I don't even know how they knew), the ladies at the Post Office sent me a card.  And yes, I get a Christmas card, too.  From the Post Office.


The grass is always greener on the other side.  I ache that Cassidy won't grow up with the ocean in her blood as I did, with sand between her toes on boats and docks.  She won't learn to swim in saltwater or go to the city see shows or museums as much as I did.   I love that Cassidy will grow up with a love and appreciation of nature and farms and a slowed down style of living.  We heat with wood and get our water from a natural spring up the road.   I'll say it again: The grass is always greener on the other side.

It's kind of weird that Cassidy and I won't share that same sense of home with the same place.  But it's kind of cool, too.  It's also cool that I'll keep bringing her back to visit with family and the home where I came from.  And who knows, maybe she'll grow up to live on a beach and claim a new home, like her momma did.

Baby talk

I thought I would be the hip mama that would do all the cool stuff.  Organic food, natural toys, wearing her on a sling - I've done all of that.  I suppose when it came to sign language, I just got lazy.  I never bothered to look into it seriously, though I was always impressed by the idea of it.


My stepmother was telling me recently about a family she'd met who's 1 year old, younger than Cassidy, has been signing for months, and now is speaking.  At one.  She said he was just amazing.  It was remarkable.  Blah blah blah blah blah.  (What is it about that wall of defense that comes up and says "do not tell me about any baby that is smarter, cuter, more coordinated than mine because I don't want to hear it?")  After the polite "Wow, really?" I thought about it a few moments more and said, "But I love Cassidy's language right now.  I would be sad if she were speaking so soon."


And it's true.  We have the longest, silliest "conversations" that go something like this:  
"Doot doot doot doot DOOT doot doot dee dee?"  
To which I will answer, "Deet deet DOOT doot deet deet DOO doot dee."   
And it will go on and on like this.


Or there are her long soliloquies complete with dramatic hand gestures and unfathomable words that are left to my interpretation:
"What?  Are you serious?  You want to make yourself a grilled cheese sandwich and we're out of BREAD?  Wow.  That really IS a bummer!"
She cracks me up with the theatrical flair, and I crack myself up deciding what it is she must be saying.  I can't get enough of this game and this, too, will go on and on.


And then there's the "Eh! Eh! Eh!" and point.  
And usually I know what she wants.
"Oh, you want your water bottle?" 
 And when I take it off the table and give it to her, there is such a gratified glee, her smile practically breaks her face.  It could be her blanket, or a toy, or a cracker.  It's usually not hard to figure out and we are both so smitten with satisfaction when the request is delivered.


I wouldn't want to miss any of this.  And of course I understand there are great benefits and joys that must come with signing, and that signing isn't even necessarily a precursor to early verbal language.  But just thinking of a one year old who is already speaking made me feel even more grateful for this time that I find so enormously delightful.  I don't want to hurry one minute.  Of anything.

one of your own

I didn't have my daughter until I was 41.  Of course I had plenty of family, friends and peers who were procreating long before I did.   Wanting a baby of my own for years, there was nothing worse than the secret language of parents, or that refrain: "You won't understand until you have your own." It was always like the click to a lock to a club I couldn't get into.  I was surrounded by children my entire adult life, having taught preschool and elementary kids, even being a "group leader" at an infant center.  I thought I could imagine what it was like, and wanted to kick the door down to that club and insist that I could relate, and that I should have honorary membership.  Did they think I lacked imagination?

After Cassidy was born, long time members would say things like, "See?  Now do you understand?"  And though I of course I was enamored with my new baby and completely overcome with love, it was exactly as I had imagined.


When I was a kid, I landed myself in the hospital something like 9 times before I was eleven years old.  I put a paintbrush full of paint remover in my mouth sometime between my first and second year, prompting a stomach pump.  I fell off a bar onto a the rusty bucket I stood on to get there when I was two, and got 2 stitches between my eye and nose.  I ran into a book case, fell out of a tree, smashed my head on a radiator and got 50 stitches on my forehead and later, plastic surgery.  And then, perhaps most dramatically, I got hit by a car when I was nine.


I've told these stories throughout my life over and over.  I'd tell them the same way, detached and amused, adding that I must have put my mom through hell.  Recently my sister in law was talking about the antics of her son when he was a kid, and I countered with the concussion I had when I got hit by the car.


"I'd always wanted to ride in an ambulance and I finally got to after I got hit by the car, only I had a concussion so bad I couldn't see.  I didn't know where I was.  I can remember saying Mommy! Mommy! Where are you Mommy, I can't see you!"
I looked at Cassidy in the room with me, flipping through her books, that sweet little face, and I started weeping.
"And... I... (sniff) And my mom was touching my face saying I'm right here, Colleen, I'm right here...."
Sob.
"I'm sorry.  I've told this story so many times and I've never... wept... (sob) before ... (breath).  I said But Mommy, I can't see you...."  Full on tears down my face.


Oh.  Um, that club.  Maybe I didn't belong there yet.


The other day I got an e mail from a dear friend who has a daughter three weeks younger than Cassidy.  We were trying to make a date to get together.  Instead I read the story of how, turning for just a minute to get a hat, her daughter fell down a couple stairs and knocked her two front teeth out.  "The blood," she wrote.  "I nearly had a heart attack."  And,  "Those two little teeth she worked so hard for."
I started sobbing.  That poor baby.  More so, my poor friend!


So I get it now.  The exclusive rights.  You can't be in the club if you don't understand.  And unless you're in the club, you truly don't understand.  Until you have one of your own.


And I'm thinking now I might send my mother some flowers...

Grandpa, aka Black Poppy.

He was clearly dying, but he did wait to meet her.
She was only three weeks old when we drove to New York.  It was a surprise to us, but he was in the hospital with intense edema; fluids filling his belly up like a balloon.  So we snuck her in to meet him, my daughter.
My sister has three kids who always called him Black Poppy.  Her oldest daughter named him.  He had black hair, her other grandfather had white hair; Black Poppy, White Poppy.
He reached for Cassidy like a drug, and she was.  They laid in the hospital bed, she nestled in his neck, and they slept.  "Champion nappers," he'd said.
My dad was dying.  My daughter, brand new.

I wasn't sure what to call him.  Black Poppy?  Poppy?  We called my grandfather Pop.  Pop?  I sort of fumbled, averting any term, until I just asked him.
"Dad, what do you want to be called?  I don't know what to call you."
He closed his eyes for a long time.  I waited.
"Grandpa," he said.  "We haven't had a Grandpa for a long time."
And so it was.  Not that he would be around long enough to hear Cassidy call his name.


We spent good time with him, Cassidy and I.  We went back after that weekend and spent long days just sitting with him in the sick room.  They napped, I read, they woke, I fed.  We listened to music and MOTH stories, we talked and talked until words made him sleepy.
"I just want to die," he said.  "I just want to go now."


We talked so intimately, about his regrets and his triumphs.  We spoke of what he learned, of what he knew and what he didn't know.  We spoke of love and relationships, of our relationship, a sometimes painful and rocky road.  We spoke of all of it.

He wanted us to sleep over, so we did, on a bed in the same large room.  He didn't move much anymore from his chair.  I got up to feed Cassidy at 2am and when she was finished and back sleeping, my dad was coughing and uncomfortable.  I went to him.
We stayed up that night until it was getting light outside.  In those wee hours of the morning he spoke of regrets, but also of acceptance.  "I accept my mistakes," he'd said.  "I accept them too," I'd said back.


I don't even have to say how unspeakably tender and precious this time was.  The trajectory between life and death, the polar opposites in one room.  My brand new baby girl, my cancer riddled old man.  When Cassidy and he napped together, she in the crook of his arm, there were moments when electricity would fill the room and the hair on the back of my neck stood up.  I imagined them, communing.
"Don't worry, Grandpa...  I'll tell you all about where I just came from..."
and he, responding;
"Alright, baby grand daughter ... here's a few things I know about life..."
I just knew.  I just knew their meeting was meant to be.  I just knew, right then, that they needed each other.


They had that.  And I am so, so very glad.


Back at the hospital when they'd first met I'd caught sight of a woman wearing long maroon and golden robes.  She was there Saturday and again on Sunday.  My husband, Cassidy and I were leaving just as she was, and we shared an elevator ride.  She cooed over Cassidy.  She explained that she was a buddhist nun, visiting her sister.  I told that my daughter had just met her grandpa for the first time, and that I was so happy they'd met.  We had both come from the cancer ward so there was no need to explain, but she looked at me with such kindness and said "This must be hard for you."
No kidding.  And because I'd been thinking about it, I told her "It is.  Yes.  But what I'm really fearful of is when he passes.  I'm afraid I'm going to be so in my grief I won't be able to take care of my daughter."
"THAT is the most SELFISH THING I've ever heard in my LIFE!"  this stranger buddhist woman blurted out.  "Excuse my french, but that is BULLSHIT!"
Talk about a memorable moment.  And she was completely right, and I needed to hear that.


As it turned out, all that time we'd spent with him the four remaining weeks that he was alive, the four and five day stretches we'd packed up and spent with family in New York, eased my grief.  We had made so much peace.  Together and alone.  We had come to so much peace between us ("Dad," I'd told him, "I think we've transcended the father/daughter relationship and now it's more just like adult to adult."  He nodded, eyes closed, squeezed my hand and said "I know what you mean").  He had come to so much peace with himself (can't beat acceptance), and I had come to peace, as much as I could, with his pending absence in my life.


When he died, I was really okay.  I was really, really okay.  I still am.  I miss him, of course.  Some days, terribly.


Not too long ago I had a quintessential day.  It was beautiful out.  Sunny, a perfect blue sky.  My friend had just opened a restaurant and Cassidy and I drove 45 minutes though back roads, passing farms and hills, cows and horses.  Beautiful.  We had an outstanding breakfast, went to a baby Gap across the street and scored a sweet little Easter dress, and then to a park down the road from there.  Cassidy watched all the big kids, ran up and down a grassy hill, squealed and screeched and laughed and pointed.  I wanted to put her in a bottle.  I wanted to save her in that day forever.
As we drove home, all was well and right and good in my world.  Pure happiness.  Simple joy.
And I wanted to call my dad.  My dad would have appreciated that moment more than anyone I know.  I wanted to call my dad and once again that huge presence of his absence.
So I called him anyway.  I pretended to call him on my cell phone.  I said "hi, daddo..." and burst into tears.  And I told him how happy I was, what a great day, how joyful and delightful Cassidy is.  I glanced at Cassidy in the rearview mirror, sleeping in her car seat.  I rambled on and on.  I told him what I was worried about, what I wished for, what concerned me.  I told him everything.  I watched the rolling farms go by, the red barns and the blue sky.  I told him I miss him, but that I knew he was hearing me.  When I pulled into my driveway and shut off the car, I said, "I do believe you hear me, dad.  But do me a favor and give me a sign.  A little sign would make me feel a lot better."


Later in the afternoon my husband came home from work.  My 13 year old stepdaughter came home from school.  I was still feeling joyful from a beautiful day, and wanted to take her out and maybe buy her a dress or something.  Chris stayed home with the baby.  Charlotte and I drove to the store and found a couple of things for her to try on.  One of them didn't fit so well, but the other was perfect.  She handed me the reject dress and the hanger to sort out while she changed.  I dipped one sleeve to fit the hanger and noticed the label on the dress:  BLACK POPPY.
"Oh my God!  Oh my God!"
What?  Charlotte asked.
"Oh my God!"
What?? Charlotte asked.
"Black Poppy," I said.  "It's my dad."
I laughed and I cried.  And I smiled. xo