Back Home, in Two Ways; Christmas

We spent almost two weeks with my mom and stepdad, but the last two nights, we've been back at our house.

Slowly but surely, the damage from the burst pipe is getting taken care of and sorted out. What happened with the pipe was a fluke, not related to the cold weather as I had initially assumed. It was just one of those things that happened, a failed clamp on the sink in the attic bathroom. The fans have been running for close to two weeks now, and the upstairs and basement are dry. My room is getting there. The baseboards have been ripped off, holes have been drilled into the walls, and the industrial fans churn away, day and night.

Still remaining to be done are the replacement of some wiring, refinishing of the floors, replacement of the upstairs bathroom flooring, and painting in my room. It seems that no contractors are available to do the work this week, it being Christmas week and all, so we're in a lull right now. We'll have to move back out when that work is done, but it's nice to be home for the moment.

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We had fun staying with my parents. It was nice for me to have help in the evening and company after the kids went to bed. But going back and forth between two houses was wearing, and the commute from my parents' to preschool to work and back was exhausting.

It's always strange to be back home, to be an adult in your parents' house. My family manages that tug-of-war pretty well, but it gets complicated because I have a stepbrother who has three kids, one a new baby, and a wife who has a challenging personality. They live locally and they have their issues, and they don't have much of a support network outside my mom and stepdad. It's a struggle for me—for all of us, I think—not to get caught in a tit-for-tat tally of how much has been done for me and the twins v. how much has been done for my stepbrother's family, how much I have suffered v. how much they have suffered, who is more deserving, who is more demanding, who is more needy.

I try to be respectful of my mom and stepdad's time. I want to spend as much—more!—time with them socially than I do in some kind of babysitting/service capacity. I want us to just enjoy time together, although I know they are happy to help me when I need help and that being able to recieve that help is one of the reasons that I wanted to be closer to family. But it's hard to keep everyone's feelings in line. Maybe I worry about it too much, but a couple of weeks of walking that line was enough, and for that reason perhaps more than any other, I needed to get back to my own space.

This week, the kids are on vacation from preschool and the nanny will come to our house every day. Heaven. Maddie and Riley don't have to get dressed in the morning, they can eat breakfast when they want, the lunch has to be planned but not packed. Those things make for a small, but significant break for me.

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We'll spend a couple of nights with my parents to celebrate Christmas. John was vehemently opposed to idea of Santa, as well as to the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy. I'm not sure how he planned to handle it with the kids, but I know he didn't believe in propogating the idea of any of the Triumverate.

I am 100% Santa-neutral, so I would have been willing and happy to let John take the lead on that. Christmas is not a religious holiday for me, and the overcommercial side really bothers me, so I struggle with how to celebrate in a way that is fun for the kids, minimal on the gifting, and not too heavy on the Jesus. I like celebrating being together, for sure, but it's hard not to get pulled into the fray.

It's especaially hard this year because the kids get it. They must have heard about Santa at school because I have neither talked about him nor not talked about him; when we've seen Santa images around, I've said that it's Santa when asked, but I haven't explained who he is or what he does. But yet, somehow, Maddie is especially aware. She has a keen interest in writing him letters and in paying him a visit (although she was not aware that most often, kids pay him a visit to ask him for a specific gift). Riley is not into it. Neither of them know about the reindeer. Maddie insists that he is "a real man," and that any Santas she sees are people dressed like the real guy, not the real guy himself. It's interesting to me to watch her develop her own concept, and I find myself loathe to dispel it, preferring to let her create what is meaningful to her. If that means signing Santa's name to a gift tag, I find that I'm OK with that. I'm pretty sure he's bringing her a scooter, if I ever find time to get to the store, that is.

I am no longer a homeowner.

Let the rejoicing commence.

Thus far, my rejoicing includes bringing delicious baked treats to work and going out for a delicious sushi lunch. Tonight, there will be wine.

It's never enough.

I don't know when, if ever, I will come to a point of acceptance around the fact that John's death was not enough pain, anger, frustration, and heartache for one life. Just because I suffered that loss, a loss of proportions that my mind could not imagine, a loss that will be a part of the the remaining highs and lows of my life, I'm not exempt from other pain.

I'm not, as I have just found, exempt from burst pipes, flooded rooms, and the inconvenience of being displaced for a few weeks around the holidays.

I'm not exempt from cracked sewer pipes in the home that's under contract in another state, a home that in less than 24 hours I will no longer own, but a repair for which I am out $2,000.

And I'm likewise not exempt from real estate deals that entail huge financial losses and last-minute paperwork snafus.

I'm feeling particularly pained by the real estate situation today, which intersected with my water problem early this morning. My closing is tomorrow morning, and today, while I was at my house here in Portland assessing water damage and negotiating with insurance adjusters, I got a call from my Boston lawyer's office. My lawyer informed me that, given taxes and closing costs and payment to my broker and other such dribs and drabs, I would need to FedEx a check for just under $5,000 to the buyer's attorney for the sale.

So much for not bringing money to the table to get this place off my hands. Not to mention the fact that I don't keep $5,000 in a place where it's available for me to issue as a bank check. Gulp. So I had to get my dad involved. Luckily, he's in a position to help me with this.

In addition, I need to get one more piece of paper notarized, testifying that I was John's spouse when he died (as is clearly stated on the death certificate that the lawyers already have) and that John's "estate" was not grand enough to require probate.

It will all fall into place. It's just money that I'm losing. It's just money. I have my health. I don't live in a war zone. The real estate part will all be over tomorrow. But all of this last-minute hustle and bustle and the injustice of it all and the less-than-pleasant parts of life are suddenly making the deal very real, and that realness has an emotional side to it that's also weighing on me.

I'm selling the house where John died. I'm selling the house that was the only place John, Maddie, Riley, and I lived as a family. Talk about the very definition of bittersweet.

The stress of all of this is getting to me, and I'm not sure how to manage it. I feel the pull to eat a massive amount of junk food, but I know that ultimately, that will just make me feel worse. I have already cried quite a bit today, but for the moment, I'm at work, so I'm trying not to go there. Maybe I'll take a walk at lunch. Or go sit in the sauna at the sports center. Or take a walk then sit in the sauna.

Tomorrow morning, 11:00 a.m. Eastern time. Exactly two years and eight months after John died. If you can, think of me, think of him, and say another goodbye.

Other Days

Some days are perfect in quiet joy.

Other days, yesterday, are innocuous in their start, unremarkable in their unfolding, their errands, their meetings. On these other days, it's easier to get annoyed by the spilled smoothie, harder to get excited about the preschool potluck, even though you know it will be fun when you get there.

On this particular other day, when you open the door at home in the evening, in your mad dash to grab your potluck dish and get back to school in time for the meal, something smells funny when you get inside the mudroom, musty and damp and a little chemical. It's when you open the door between the mudroom and the kitchen that you hear water: dripping, running, pouring, gushing water, and you tell the kids to stay right where they are and you turn on lights and find that the water is flowing through the ceiling in your bedroom and down through the air return into your heating vents and into the basement and right over the furnace. And by the looks of things, this has been going on for a long time, hours, probably all day.

So you call your landlord, feeling grateful that you rent. And you discern that the living room is dry, and you get the kids set up with some puzzles, and you figure out that the water is coming from a burst pipe in the attic bathroom, because of course this is one of the coldest days that Oregon has seen in years. And you mop up water, and you try to laugh about the fact that you now have a waterbed and you take pictures for the insurance and you feel grateful that you have insurance. And you pack up bags and go to your parents' house and get the kids in bed and drink two big glasses of wine and fall into bed yourself and sleep fitfully, dreaming of insurance adjusters and wondering what the damage will look like in the morning.

When morning comes, you get up early and get the kids ready and take them to school, and you think about going by the house but you can't bear it, and you just go to work where you wait for your landlord or the insurance or someone to call with news. And you wait. And you wait. And you think about how this is life, this bad stuff, too, and that it could be worse, but it could be better, and that on balance, even dealing with this, things are better than they have been, better than they could be. And you feel grateful that life has taught you how to handle big crises and grateful that Maddie and Riley saw the whole thing as an adventure.

And then you feel exhausted by what lies ahead.

Days Like This

Some days, it's so easy. Some days, I pick the kids up from a full day at preschool, and they are happy and sweet, and they have taken a nap, and they run to me full of smiles and tales of their play. Some days, we run into the dad of Maddie's best preschool friend, and we talk about his son's upcoming birthday and how much fun it will be, and we say "Adios! Hasta mañana!" to the teachers and then when we have to go back twice for things we forgot, it's funny rather than annoying despite the bitter cold.

Some days, we listen to Sesame Street for the 50,427th time and sing along and smile like it's the first time we've heard it. And when we get home, we listen through to the end of the song, and then we go up the back stairs because the lock has been sticking in the front door, and even though we're doing something out of the norm, no one freaks out. Some days, we get inside, and coats and shoes come off and get put away, and puzzles are done while I cook dinner and we transfer laundry from the washer to the dryer together, as though there were nothing more entertaining on this earth to do with our time.

And then we eat, peas and pears and macaroni and cheese from a box, then some corn by special request from Riley, and after every bite of peas, we high five about how much they have made our bodies grow and be strong. Some days, kids practice their letters in their books from Auntie Mim while I do the dishes, and with dripping hands, I walk from kitchen to dining room to proclaim the perfection of each of the traced letters as they are made. Then we retrieve the dry laundry and put on pajamas and watch a show and read books and brush teeth and go through the endless steps of the bedtime routine.

And at the end of that routine, on some days, I want to stay in that moment, in that room, in that snuggle for just a little longer. I sniff the soft skin of toddler necks, I give one more kiss, I nuzzle one more nose, and I tell them how wonderful they are and how much I love them.

And while I do that, on some days, on this day, I think about their father. I think about how today, he would be 37 years old. I think about how nice it would be for him to be here to see the perfection of his children. I think about how nice it would be to share life's duties with a partner, and to go to bed with someone I know and love and trust, someone who wouldn't care that I put my fleece pajamas on at 5:30, someone who would spell me from packing another preschool lunch, someone who would kiss me and tell me that I'm beautiful, someone who would talk me into—or out of, depending on the night—another glass of wine, rather than to go to bed alone.

Some days more than other days, the easy days, the days like this, I miss John profoundly. Because this is what he lost, these days, these easy days, these days that are all love and earnest toddler joy.

This is what he lost.

The Giveaways

There are two things that belie the fact that I'm not a native-born Oregonian:

1. I don't like dogs.
2. I have no interest in the state of my yard or in having a garden.

As for item number one, I will tolerate dogs, but I have no interest in owning one, and I fear the day the kids start to ask for one. Is it wrong of me to hope that one of them turns out to be allergic? For now, both Maddie and Riley have a pretty strong fear of dogs, so perhaps that will persist. I'd consider owning another cat, but a dog? Stinky! Slobbery! The walking! I already have two kids; no thanks on a third.*

And as for item number two, I totally appreciate the beauty of a well-maintained yard. My mom and stepdad have a gorgeous yard that they work hard to maintain, and I love to sit out on their patio in the summer and enjoy it. But it is SO MUCH WORK to properly keep up with a yard, and I don't seem to find it satisfying in the way that many people do. And the thought of tending vegetables? I like the idea of walking outside and harvesting that evening's side dish, but I think I'll support the local economy and join a CSA.

It is thus somewhat ironic that I have rented a house with a pretty substantial yard that I am required to "maintain." It's the only thing I don't like about the house. To be fair, I just spent a rather enjoyable hour outside trimming some bushes and gathering up the resulting yard waste; it happens to be a gorgeous (if seriously windy) winter day, and the fresh air and bit of a workout were nice. But even to do the bare minimum in the yard is a big time investment, and it's time that I prefer to spend in other ways.

Maddie and Riley will turn four this spring (!), and they love to be outdoors. I'm hoping that some kid-sized yard tools will make it so that we can all be outside doing work together and just enjoying the weather and family time. That will help. The yard is one area of my life where I seriously do not ask perfection of myself, so at least I'm not beating myself with that stick. I'd consider paying someone to do minimum upkeep, and might look into that in the spring. Do tweens and teens still look for lawnmowing jobs?

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Maddie, Riley, and I are slowly integrating ourselves into a Unitarian church out here. We actually cross the river to attend a church in Washington state, lured there by a childhood friend of mine and her family, who had been sporadically attending and were looking for a reason to cement their participation.

The church is quite different from the one we attended in Massachusetts. The building itself is much more modern, the service less traditional. We attend the early service, which I suspect is the more sparsely attended of the two Sunday options, and the other parishioners are generally older couples. There is more layperson participation in the service itself. I miss Fred Small and the weekly singalongs from First Parish But I like the fact that the religious education program starts at age three, and I also like the smaller, more intimate feel of the service. Maddie and Riley miss all the singing they did in the nursery in Cambridge, but love that there is hot chocolate available during coffee hour.

It feels good to be finding a church home, a place where I can spend some quiet time each week just feeling the things I either don't allow myself to feel during the week or the things I put off feeling because I just don't want to take the time in the moment. I'm a total waterworks during service, and today I forgot my Kleenex. Eeeek! There was much sniffling and wiping of tears with my shirtsleeve. Sigh. Time to go tuck a pocket pack of tissues in my purse while it's on my mind.

*I shall now refrain from going off on how much it irritates me when people don't respect leash laws. Or when they put their bags of dog poop in my trash can. Gah.

Stay at Home Faker

I'm home with Maddie and Riley today due to a preschool inservice/nanny taking the day off snafu. As an outnumbered single parent, working has always been a bit of a refuge for me, and as much as I know they will never be little again and I should savor every moment and all of that, long weekends have historically been hard for me.

The tide is slowly starting to turn for me, though. As Maddie and Riley get more independent and more able to engage in the kind of play that I find enjoyable (let's see just how selfish I can sound in this post, shall we, mmm?), I am more able to focus on the joys of spending time with them instead of the trials. Let's face it: at 3.5, we've reached a point where for the most part, the joys far outweigh the trials. We're beyond the needy, sweet sleeplessness of babyhood, we're beyond diapers, we're often beyond tantrums (well, perhaps that often should be more like sometimes, but still, there's steady improvement). We're into nonstop verbal hilarity, amazing capacity for knowledge, boundless creativity, and surprising independence. Just last night, Maddie and Riley went into the bathroom, started their own bath, took of their clothes, and climbed right in. I even heard them adjusting the water to find the perfect temperature for the two of them. Amazing. (And no, I don't leave them alone in the tub, drowning hazard and all that, but I did stay outside the door during the process to see how far they could take it.)

Frankly, we're all able to enjoy each other more as the kids get older. They understand me better, I understand them better. Grief-wise, I have less anger and more patience.

And thus today has been lovely. We did start the day off early—we're still readjusting to west coast time, and by we I mean the kids—but Maddie and Riley were in great moods, and coffee helped my outlook tremendously. We had pancakes for breakfast. I am not a pancake person, really, but holy shit, Jason Kottke is not kidding about these being the best pancakes in the world. I'm a believer.* We played, we read books, I checked e-mail, the kids entertained themselves, we ran some errands, we had lunch, now it's naptime.** After nap, there will be more play, haircuts for the kids, something random for dinner, and bed.

For now, I'm going to enjoy naptme by snuggling up on the couch with another cup of coffee and People magazine. Ahhhhh. Happy weekend, one and all.

*And, for the record, desperate times, desperate measures and all that, I did use commercially produced "fake" buttermilk, and they were still all that and a bag of chips. I actually have no idea where to get real buttermilk . . . locals, any thoughts? Full disclosure: I have not checked New Seasons. My delivery dairy does not stock it.

**Although naptime here is used in the loosest possible sense of the word. So far, we're at 45 minutes of quiet chatter, four warnings, and counting. I refuse to acknowledge that we might be headed towards The End of Nap, which is in fact going to be The Dawn of Enforced Quiet Time.