Contentment

I've been in Mexico since last Friday afternoon. I'm headed home today. I went on the same trip last year. I'm lucky enough to have a friend who owns a townhouse on Baja, and she is generous enough to invite a small group of us to come down and stay here for a kid-free rest/recharge/getaway. We had so much fun last year that we decided to make it an annual thing, and lo, here we are again.

Last year, I really felt like I *needed* this trip. I was in the midst of finalizing the purchase of my house (we went in April last year) and work was stressful (that hasn't changed). I'd never had a true vacation from parenting; I'd had nights here and there and longer stretches away from the kids, but always when I needed to be attending to my real life. Being down here in Mexico is a true escape. The weather is perfect, and there is nothing to do but read, eat, sleep, walk along the beach, chat, sit by the pool . . . in short, there is nothing to do but be on vacation, and it is glorious.

I realize how privileged I am go get this experience. Many people don't have the resources I do to be able to afford the plane ticket down, the kinds of job where they can get away (or a job at all), a way to make arrangements for their kids to be taken care of in their absence, a free place to stay even if everything else fell into place. I am very lucky.

I think about this a lot. I think about how grateful I am for what I have in my life, and I think about how much of it is luck and how much of it is what I've made. Much has been handed to me along to the way, to be sure. I grew up solidly middle class and had access to educational opportunities that not everyone gets. You can't choose the family you're born into, and I got a good one. I grew up somewhere safe, in a place where children were valued and encouraged and where there was time and space for me to be supported in the things I wanted to do and learn, even if those were things that didn't really resonate with my parents. As an adult, I had help paying for my first house, and I've had help making downpayments on cars and such. I've had emotional support from family and friends.

There's been bad luck, too. My parents divorced when I was five. We moved quite a bit when I was little. My dad is a recovering alcoholic who went through treatment when I was in college. My spouse died.

All of these things are things I can't control, and are things that have fundamentally shaped my life. So much of the framework seems like a crapshoot to me: your family of origin, the big events that you can see coming, plan for, or avoid. But what of the choices I have made? The hard work I have done? The papers I wrote in college, the years I spent in the Peace Corps, the jobs I applied for, the hours I spent practicing the oboe, the friendships I have nurtured, the children I have whose creation I actively pursued, the house I looked for and bought?

In the end, it doesn't matter. I like to think that I've taken the opportunities that have come to me in my life and I've made the most of them, most of the time. When John got his diagnosis and during the years of his illness and death, my mindset shifted and I had an extremely difficult time feeling grateful for what I had and finding the good in my life. I felt victimized for a few years, and while I recognized the support I was receiving and the goodness that was there (the twins, my friends and family, my job, etc.) there was an undercurrent of thanklessness that I look back on with distaste and embarrassment.

It's been almost five years since John died. I don't think there's anything magical about that date or that amount of time passing or that I'm supposed to feel one way or another now that five years have gone by. But the decidedly nonlinear trajectory of grief has had an upward trend for me and I like where I am at this moment, both this specific moment and this general point in my life. The sun is shining, I went running this morning and drank a cappuccino on the beach, I'm rested and have that delightful feeling of being ready to reconnect with reality after a nice break. Maddie and Riley are healthy and thriving, our home is just right for us, we have the best au pair in the world, I have an amazing and fantastic boyfriend (I hate that word, ack), and a stable job.

I'm just gloating, really. I should stop. I'll stop. It's nice to be happy.

"Let's go out for Korean next Wednesday."

That's what he suggested.

I'd been talking about Korean food a lot since my return from visiting John's family. One of my favorite things about taking the kids to Michigan is eating lots and lots of Korean food, both home-cooked and in restaurants. John was the Korean chef in our house and I never picked up his skills, so I use our time with the in-laws to get my fill.

And so, either tired of or inspired by my gochujang-laced sighs and daydreaming, the suggestion was made and it was decided. Next Wednesday, what is settling in to be our usual mid-week date night, we'd go out for Korean food. Who was I to argue? Most people I know--myself included--need more Korean food in their lives, and his interest in trying new restaurants and new cuisines is one of the many things I find endearing and appealing about him.

What I neglected to note is that tomorrow, the appointed day for the Korean food outing, is John's birthday. My Korean chef would be 39 tomorrow. And now it happens that I will find myself eating Korean food with another man, one who reminds me in many wonderful and meaningful ways of John.

In fact, in the important ways he could not be more like John. He is the embodiment of kindness. He is thoughtful and generous. He brings out in me the things I like most about myself, and being around him encourages me to be the person I want to be.

He's not Korean, not by a mile. Not by a million miles. But there's a bittersweet, unintended symbolism to the fact that he'll have his introduction to Korean cuisine tomorrow. And even better, that tomorrow, as the banchan arrive, I can explain to him the significance of the day and he will appreciate it and value it and understand it.

***************************

John's birthday has since his death been one of the hardest days of the year for me. Much harder than the day of his death. The day of his death seems more of a celebration to me, the end of a struggle whose time had come, even if was not welcome. His birthday, though, marks the days he didn't get to have. Birthdays are for thinking about the year that has passed and the year that's to come, reflections that in this case are hollow.

I'm not very New Age-y or metaphysical, but coincidences around dates and events don't seem entirely random to me, either. I feel John with me this year in comforting ways. I was shopping over the weekend and one of the stores I was in was giving away Charms Sweet & Sour lollipops, a favorite of John's before he had cancer and a help during his treatments as they kept the nausea at bay. I would buy those things by the case and stash them in his briefcase, coat pockets, and car so that he'd have them at hand if he felt queasy. I don't think I'd had one since he was sick, and then there one was, days before his birthday. Last Friday, I learned that a neighborhood friend shares John's birthday. Then I made the realization about the Korean food date. I don't take any of these things as a sign of any type, per se, but as . . . something.

I ate my lollipop today, I'll eat Korean food tomorrow. Maddie and Riley asked about baking John a cake, but he didn't really like cake, so we're not going to do that. I'm going to take Maddie and Riley to school, go running, go to work late. He valued time; I will give some to our children, take some for myself.

Happy 39th, Goose.

Back to School Night

I loathe back to school night. Loathe it. Last year, my loathing caught me by surprise; I was quite excited by seeing the classroom and going to the book fair and being courted by the PTA. Seriously! I was! But then I went and it was mayhem. No place to sit for dinner; crowds and lines and stuffy libraries; crazy activities; utter and complete chaos. I do not say this to fault anyone involved in organizing the event as that was all done well. This was the usual chaos of an elementary school, and it's the kind of thing that makes me totally nuts.

This year, I felt like I went in with the right attitude, but I was still snarly by just after dinner. Really snarly. Like, I'm-the-mom-who-yells-in-public kind of snarly. Maddie got separated from me and Riley on our way to the book fair, which made her sob (who can blame her?), but she found an adult who helped her find me and what do I do? Neglect to thank the adult and lay into Maddie about how she needs to stay with me.

Really. I did that.

Then, as we crossed the playground to the kids' classroom, Riley turned sharply and without warning directly in front of me, causing the both of us to flail our arms, teeter unsteadily, and regain footing (me) or do a face-plant (Riley). Here's what I said, in this order:

"Riley! Don't walk in front of me like that! It's crazymaking!"
"Are your new books OK?"
"Wait, are you OK?"

Once at their classroom, I was irritated by the relatively small number of conference appointments available at hours that work for working families, then realized that we're out of town the week of conferences anyway. Got that worked out with the teacher, who was very accommodating. But don't even get me started on how generally working-parent unfriendly public school is. Wow. I mean, I know there are lots of issues to fix in the U.S. educational system and this is not a top priority, but it is a problem.

After my rant regarding conferences, I managed to calm down. The chaos in the classroom was at a manageable level, and I enjoyed being shown around the room by Maddie and Riley and meeting the other parents. We had fun reading the new book club books before bed, and it all turned around. But there were some moments there when I was about to lose my mind.

I'm rarely bothered by being a single parent anymore. Oh, sure, for a bunch of reasons, I'd like to have a partner. But it used to be extremely hard for me to attend events where two-parent households were the clear majority. That's much easier for me now. But somehow, tonight, with two kids talking nonstop and parents talking to me, too, and only one me to take it all in, I felt overwhelmed. It doesn't help that work has been utter insanity. Sigh.

But my best friend will be here soon and we shall have mojitos and debrief, and a big event that has been consuming much of my time and energy at work will take place tomorrow night and then it's OVER and work can go back to normal levels of crazy, and we have fun stuff planned for the weekend.

It feels so wrong to feel so bad about back to school night. I've got lots of years for it to get better, I guess. I hope.

Kindergarten

Tomorrow is Maddie and Riley's first day of kindergarten.

I feel like I'm less nostalgic about it all than most parents. I have many fond memories of early grade school, and I've always loved order and routine, so even when the teacher wasn't great or I struggled with the lessons, I remember feeling comforted by the routine of it all. I often find as a parent that it's hard for me to move past my own memories and expectations, so now, as Maddie and Riley prepare for this new adventure, my instinct is to assume that they are eager for it to begin, as I was. They give no sign to the contrary; frankly, the seem completely ambivalent.

It's true that they are going to the same school they went to last year, but now for a full day instead of a half. Still, I think going to a familiar place with some familiar faces makes the idea much less novel. We met their teacher on Tuesday; she is all business. To her factual statement and no-nonsense delivery of, "I have 28 kids in this class and no teacher's aide. I need parent helpers." all I could reply was, "I'm a single working mom; it's impossible for me to commit to a regular volunteer schedule, but I'd be happy to help with any kinds of tasks that can be done at home." I felt guilty, that working mom guilt, but it passed pretty quickly.

The working mom guilt is strange. I find that my guilt relates less to not being with Maddie and Riley, who have been blessed with excellent caretakers and seem to take my working in stride. My guilt comes when I think of all the parents that are in the classroom once a week, twice a week, maybe more; the parents who run the PTA and teach after-school classes; the parents who host Maddie and Riley for playdates. There is a vast array of unpaid, underappreciated volunteers who have a significant impact on Maddie and Riley's daily life and learning. I take full advantage of that—not in the sense of abusing it, but in the sense of benefiting from it—and yet I rarely give anything back to that system. This is not something I can change right now, and my guilt is overwhelmed by my immense gratitude that others can pick up that slack mixed with frustration about our school system and the fact that there is so very much slack to pick up. Alas.

I remember when Maddie and Riley were babies, when John was so sick and then shortly after he died. I remember thinking how very far away this day was, this day when Maddie and Riley would be in school full time. It was impossible to imagine. I won't say that the time has flown. In some ways it has, but in others, not at all. I think the difficulty of the first two to three years of our lives together makes it easier for me to be less nostalgic about this rite of passage that so keenly marks the end of baby, toddler, and very early childhood into this age of the school years. That is not to say that these years will be easy, or even easier. But it feels significant to say goodbye to a period of Maddie and Riley's life during which it was often hard for me to appreciate all that we had together, and when I was often sad and frustrated and feeling alone despite their presence.

Tomorrow morning the kids are allowed to wake me up at 6:30 a.m. There will be baths and showers and new clothes. There will be a choice of lunch to pack or buying lunch at school. My mom and stepdad will come, and we will all walk to school together. Pictures will be taken, the milestone noted and celebrated. Kindergarten. Dios mio.

Struggling

John's dad has said of John's birth, "He had a hard time to come out." It hardly seems like a memorable quote, those ordinary words, so slightly syntactically off. But something about the expression on his Dad's face, his eyes squeezed shut, his head shaking slightly no from side to side, his hands squeezed into fists at his sides, made the difficulty of John's 10-pound, large-headed entry into the world so real. John and I used to say that to each other when we were dealing with something difficult, "This is a hard time to get through," "I'm having a hard time to deal with this," and so on. I wish John were here today so that I could say it to him, so that he could help me with my hard time, because I am, indeed, having a hard time of it right now.

I make no excuses for my hard time. Plenty of other people out there are having harder times, or would at least like a change of pace in the difficulties they are experiencing. I have my health, I have Maddie and Riley, I have a gorgeous new house, and I have a great job. I have lots of friends, I don't struggle financially, and the sun is shining.

Things are just hard lately. Work is overwhelming. There are projects and people and changes, to the point that it is hard for me to focus when I'm there and it invades my brainspace when I'm not.

It affects my parenting. I don't feel like my best self. Maddie and Riley continue to not sleep enough; they have dark circles and crabby attitudes and whiny voices. Melatonin has been a mixed bag; it seems to help Maddie go to sleep, which is good, but it has no effect on how late they do (or don't) sleep. I'm tired, too. We're all tired, and we take our crabby attitudes out on each other with our whiny voices.

Riley is engaged in an experiment called Truth versus Lie. More accurately, it's called Lie All the Time about Totally Dumb Stuff. Some of it is funny, like when he talks as though he's an expert on some totally random subject, but all of it is disturbing on some level. It's crazy frustrating to me to say, "Riley, did you dry your hands on a towel?" get the reply, "Of course, Mama," then look up and see that his dripping-wet hands by his sides. To my knowledge, he hasn't lied to me about anything big, but I feel like I can't trust his answer on anything, and it's an awful feeling. I've tried to talk to him about it, but he's unable or unwilling to articulate why he is doing this, and I'm flummoxed as to what it's all about. Attention-seeking? Maddie does tend to dominate my time, by sheer force of will. Normal, five-year-old experimentation and button-pushing? Maybe. Something else entirely? Could be, or a combo. It's exacerbated by the fact that my reaction to it appears to be out of line with what is happening, insomuch as it makes me fly off the handle and completely lose my cool.

Meanwhile, Maddie is very clingy and demanding with me. Despite the fact that, to my knowledge, I have never given her reason to doubt that I will return from anywhere I have been, she is obsessed with the idea that I might leave or not return. After she went to bed the other night, I took a bag of trash out to the can outside our back fence; when I got back inside (after an absence of under a minute, with the door left open) she was downstairs, panicked, looking for me. She'd heard me unlock the door and thought I was leaving her and Riley alone. She can't get enough of me; Riley, too, to a certain extent. After spending their whole lives in daycare and/or school, they both in the past month or so beg me to stay home every day.

I don't think it's any coincidence that all of this behavior coincides with our trip to family camp almost a month ago. We spent a week up on Orcas Island in the San Juans, doing nothing but spend time together. We slept in a sweet little cabin, ate meals in the dining hall, went to the beach every day, played games on the lawn, did crafts, stayed up late for campfire, and took naps every afternoon. We'd never in our lives had time like that together before. No work, no chores, no obligations. The night we got home from camp was miserable; I had a migraine, we were all super-tired, and on some level, we all knew that the next day was back to the endless logistical machine of life that seems to allow us little time to enjoy each others' company.

As a person, it can be hard for me to be in the moment; I'm always thinking about the chores that need to be done, what's coming next, what appointments need to be made, what food needs to be cooked, how I can prepare for what the next day will bring. Being a single parent exacerbates this tendency as I'm, for the most part, the only one who can take care of these things. Don't get me wrong: Zulma, family, and friends help out a lot. But the logistics of life fall to me, and Maddie and Riley get the short end of the stick. I'm constantly multitasking and trying to make chores fun. While this is not inherently bad, it does mean that I rarely feel like I give the twins my full attention, and often the attention I do allocate to them is not my best self.

This is not me beating myself up. This is simply an acknowledgment of our imperfect reality. And, to a certain extent, my wish that I could shift to an alternate, if equally imperfect, reality. I'm at a point where I wish I could be home more. As the kids start full-time school, I wish I could be the one who dropped them off and picked them up each day. I love the thought of taking them to their lessons and sports practices, of having more than 20 minutes to cook dinner together on the nights we don't have something else scheduled, of just getting more breathing room than the two hours at night and the two hours in the morning. I don't doubt that part of the reason they get up so early is that they want to spend more time with me. It saddens me that they crave that time even though I'm not much fun at that hour, despite my best efforts.

It's just a hard time to get through. We all seem to be unhappy with our current arrangement, but I haven't taken the space to see how I can try to fix it. My hairdresser said to me last night, after acknowledging similar struggles with her kids, that her mom has called this age the "I hate you, don't leave me" age. Yes, they can be sweet as pie, but they also seem to simultaneously not want you to go anywhere, but want to use you as their outlet for negativity. The literature would say that this is because they feel safe. Great. Age appropriate, perhaps. Combined with other forces, likely. It's just a hard time, a hard time.

Shiny and New

We have a new house.



(Sorry, no pic with the kids, but more to come.)

It's not the brand-new, LEED-certified home I blogged about months ago. Instead, it's a new old house, with bones from 1910 but delicious, recently added modern amenities. It has four bedrooms and three bathrooms (SO POSH) and a freestanding garage and a castle playground in the backyard (why did I not mention that first?) and best of all, even though we've only been there a week, it feels like home.

I obviously didn't blog about the buying process, and I only minimally mentioned it on Facebook. (I never mentioned it on Twitter because I still can't figure out why I should want to be tweeting.) The short explanation for my silence is that I was overwhelmed by writing about it. I could not figure out how to start, so I never did. And now it's done.

It's not that there wasn't anything to blog about during the process of buying the house. I don't think any home purchase is without some drama. There was elevated radon and contaminated soil and shenanigans with mortgage lenders and city permits that had not been closed. Then my landlord went off the deep end and I had to have some heated negotiations with her around renters' rights. As I am awaiting the return of (some? all? none?) of my deposit, those negotiations may not be over yet. Dealing with my landlord was the most frustrating of any of this ordeal because I think she and I both felt hurt and hoodwinked, and each of us felt in the right. So icky. But mostly over.

So, yeah, the stress of the whole process played into my silence as well. But I also felt, for the first time in a long time, like keeping this one close to the vest. This was a huge thing for me, buying this house. It was an emotional sea change to want to own, a huge financial step, and a logistical mountain. I've never felt so much like a legitimate grown-up as I did when I signed those papers, got those keys, and walked in the front door for the first time. I did this myself, for my little nuclear family, and while I certainly talked about it quite a bit with my nearest and dearest, I wanted to make this decision and see it through on my own, for me and Maddie and Riley. As I write about it, it sounds selfish or fearful or something; I just don't know how to explain it. I was so fully present it getting it all to happen, and so focused on how it was going to change our life that I wasn't able to write about it and evidently I'm still struggling.

Nothing I have done since John's death, even including moving back to Oregon, feels so much like the start of a new life as buying this home does. Nothing made me feel so trapped as owning my condo in Boston, and it's shocking to me that buying this house has given me the opposite feeling. Well, no, not the opposite exactly; I don't feel free. But I do feel grounded. Settled. It's a choice rather than an ensnarement. It's happiness.

Blessings

[Scene: I'm in bed with Maddie; it's her turn to snuggle with Mama until she falls asleep. All is cozy, warm, and dozy.]

Maddie: "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. I am counting my blessings."
Mama: "Oh, that's a nice thing to do. Do you want to tell me what they are, are or just think about them in your head as you count?"
Maddie: "One, my money."
Mama: [?????]
Maddie: "Two, my daddy, who is already dead."
Mama: [heart busting into a thousand pieces; brain wondering why he comes after the money]
Maddie: "Then, my toys, my school, my window, my breath, everything I like in the world. That's not ten. Wait! Sleeping with my mama. The girls at school. Some of the boys at school. Being outside."

I'm not actually sure where she was introduced to the concept of blessings, or counting them; if it's something I taught her, I do not remember doing so. And it's curious to me, that on that whole largely random list of things, her dad is such a real and prominent feature. I stand by my assertion that she remembers him, and not just the idea of him. The real him. That is indeed a true blessing.

Four Years

John died four years ago today.

This is the first year that his deathiversary snuck up on me. I have been preoccupied with other things (buying a house! work! general life!), and it was not until yesterday at church that I remembered. Last year, I shared the three year anniversary during joys and sorrows at our church service; I was a weepy, emotional mess, but there was no better place to be in such a state. As I sat in church yesterday, it came back to me, and I realized that today was The Day.

By this morning, I'd forgotten again, and it was not until I had to write the date on a paper at work that it came back to me. It felt good, in a way, to be caught unawares, like some sign of "progress," whatever that's supposed to mean. I wrote about it on Facebook, asking for people to share memories of John. And as the memories rolled in, so did my emotions. People had the sweetest, funniest things to share. It's not just 20/20 hindsight that casts John in such a flattering light; he was a truly great guy who was loved by many.

I was pretty useless at work today, weepy a few times and forgetful and unfocused otherwise. Frankly, for the past few weeks, I've been in a similar state. Not so much the weepy, but the forgetful. I have forgotten a bunch of things lately: birthday parties and gatherings with friends and bill payments and meetings at work. I'm generally a much more forgetful human as a parent and since John's death, but the past weeks have been particularly acute. Coincidence? Likely not.

Upon arriving home, I ended up yelling at Maddie and Riley, really yelling, about something mostly trivial. I hadn't yelled at them in a long time. It felt horrible, yet freeing. That rage still lives in me about John's death: rage that he's gone, rage about how he went, rage about the injustice of life, rage about not having something I want. It's totally inappropriate to take that out on Maddie and Riley; I know that, and I berate myself mightily for it. Afterwards, when the rage had died down, we talked about it, and we all cried a bit, me more than them.

I miss John when I don't expect to. In general, I miss him more now that our life is, relatively speaking, so steady and even keel. I'm content with my life. I'm sure things would not be perfect if John were here. But he'd be here, and I miss him, and when I imagine what it would be like, it's happy.

Past

I'm in the past a lot these days. Some people I know through the Internet—I like to think of them as friends; I hope they feel the same way—have ill spouses who are approaching end of life, and reading about their experiences and thoughts takes me back with startling clarity to the last few months of John's.

I'm not going to look back on what I wrote then; I have a feeling that I was overly optimistic and measured in my tone. But I have been honest with these women who are staring down the barrel of the gun, albeit a gun pointed at someone other than themselves. And so I shall be honest here.

I remember the day—the very day!—that I understood that John's death was on the horizon. It turns out the horizon was further away than I thought; he died four months after this day I recall. But it was on that day, the day I knew John was done fighting (and I say that with no judgment about his decision) and the day he had truly accepted what was to come, that my emotions changed, too. It was on that day that I started to fervently wish that he would just die right then.

Yes, I thought that. It sounds awful, but I did. And I then went on to be at times full of rage that it took him four long months to go.

Of course I wanted him to live longer, but not when he was a shell: exhausted, ravaged by disease and medication and side effects, uncomfortable, restless, unhappy, disengaged from life. He was done, and I was done.

There's not a lot of room in the culture I grew up in to accept death, especially a death not your own. I used to get so mad at people who put pressure on John to fight harder, fight longer, not to "give up." And yet, what I said to John back then was, "I love you. I need you. Stay with us." Yes, part of me felt that way. But the bigger part of me said that because I felt I was supposed to.

I wish I had had the courage to say this instead: "I love you. It's OK. I'll be OK. We'll be OK. You can go now." Because by the time I did say that, I'm not sure John could even hear me.

Overshare

I still share too much, sometimes. I started learning about not sharing so much when I first started in Al-Anon, where wise women helped me learn how to say no. "All you have to say is no," they said. "You don't have to explain why, or sound guilty, or talk about how you wish you could say yes, or apologize. Just say 'No, that won't work for me.'" I'm still not very good at saying no, but the idea that I don't owe the whole world an explanation of every decision I make was liberating and instructive.*

When John died, I had much to learn about a specific kind of oversharing. I've written about that here before, about the need to explain where Maddie and Riley's dad is even when no one has asked, about elaborating on my single status when no such elaboration is needed. When I keep things to a Need to Know basis, I'm more comfortable as are most people to whom I'm talking. I don't mean close friends here, but just the people one encounters in everyday life: the checker at the grocery store, the librarian, the customer service agent on the phone.

It's that kind of oversharing about John that I still sometimes can't avoid. I want so much for everyone—even those people with whom I intersect in only the most incidental of ways—to know that I had a partnership once, with a person who was a devoted father, an individual full of ideals and character, good grace and humor, and love, so much love. I don't feel unworthy on my own, or less than, it's not that. It's just that it was such a pleasure for everyone he encountered to know John, and such a pleasure for me to have him in my life. I miss sharing that with everyone I know, and even with the those I don't.

I was on the phone yesterday with a mortgage broker. He was really nice, and we soon discovered that we are both parents of twins. We did the twin-parent bonding thing. Then he asked me bunch of really personal questions because that's what people do when they need to get all up in your credit. I mentioned that I had some money available in the form of a life insurance policy that I could liquidate. He asked me the cash value of my policy. Instead of simply telling him how much was left in the account that I got when John died, I said, "Oh, the policy isn't on me! It's on my husband. It was on my husband. Then he died!"

TOTALLY AWKWARD.

We quickly moved on to a discussion of the other places I stash my vast sums of spare cash, and the moment was gone, but yeesh.

As I reflect on this particular moment of oversharing, however, it's clear to me that this was not one of those times when I wanted, needed to tell a stranger that I had once had a partner. This was a moment of fear and vulnerability. I'm thinking of buying a house. This is scary business! It's a huge decision and a life change, one that I was not sure I ever wanted to make again. And while it feels right to be strongly considering the option and I have all my ducks in a row and I'm perfectly capable of doing this on my own, it's still scary.

On an emotional level, I miss John. On a practical level, I miss shared risk. I am lucky to have many good friends (including one who acts as my stand-in spouse when I need one; I'm looking at you, Erk) and a supportive family who are happy to discuss things with me, help me work through things, make pro and con lists with me, and gently tell me when I might need to consider another point of view. But at the end of the day, they are not there to enjoy the daily ups and downs that are the result of that decision making process. There's a simplicity and ease to always getting my way in life's big decisions, but all the responsibility can also feel like a burden.

This is not to minimize unpartnered life or glorify marriage. It's just to say that my marriage was good to me. My partner was good for me.

*The conundrum of then writing about that on a blog—home of more oversharing than any other form of communication—is not lost on me.

Snapshot

I was gloating a little bit inside when the gate agent invited families with small children or anyone else who needed a little more time to board to go ahead and get on the plane. I was unencumbered, kid-free, able to loiter around the gate area, admire the desert hills through the plate-glass walls, soak up warm, soothing air that blew through the open doors. I saw the gaunt man in the wheelchair get pushed through the doors onto the tarmac, and I felt a pang of sadness, even pity, as I quickly looked away and resumed my daydreams.

I don't think I noticed that gaunt man and the companion who had been pushing his wheelchair—a woman who at a glance appeared to be at least fifteen years his junior—right across the aisle from me as I settled into my seat. I fished my book (that smug, overachieving fourth book in as many days!) out of my bag before shoving it under the seat with my foot. The cloudless sky, the cactus-speckled landscape, the heat through the window, the glow of vacation, the anticipation of heading home, the headiness of sanctioned self-absorption, such are the things that were on my mind.

Sometime during the ascent into that bright blue sky, though, I caught the hint of a gesture out of the corner of my eye. I brought into focus the caress of a hand across a bony back, then the look on her face a mix of compassion, fear, and knowledge of something still present yet already lost. He was dying, I'm sure of it, of cancer or some other ravage, his body mostly gone. He had a different, equally familiar look on his face, the look of one who knew this was his last vacation, of determination to make it appropriately great, to enjoy it despite it all, but an acknowledgment that mind can only triumph over matter for so long. He slouched forward over his tray table, eating one of the very same protein bars John used to eat, without gusto, just the way John ate them. He was probably no older than she after all, just that much nearer to death. Her hand was still on his back.

Did she feel the way I did when I was on that vacation? Did she feel resentful of the caretaking? Guilty about having moments of sheer joyful fun when her spouse couldn't? Tired of pretending that it was all OK? Unbearably sad that her life as she knew it was literally crumbling before her, the progressive decay visible to the naked eye? Did they talk of funeral arrangements over dinner? Did she just want it all to be over, to move on to the inevitable if painful catharsis of Next?

Because I took that vacation, and that's what I felt. Those are the things I did. I took that vacation four years ago, and most of the time, I forget that I even had those feelings, did those things. But it took only that one caress to bring it all right back.

It's not a vacation, that vacation. Under certain circumstances, it's better than no vacation. But when four years later, you take a real vacation you realize just how deeply you can deceive yourself when you have no other choice. It truly did feel like a vacation at the time, but I can see now that it was not. It was the best we could do, and I have no regrets. There's just not much best in death.

Compassion

I'm flummoxed when I encounter homeless people. I was raised with the idea that money given to the homeless is just wasted on booze and drugs, or that somehow people need to earn money, not get by on handouts. My parents do not have hearts of stone, nor did they ever explicitly say such things to me, but somehow I managed to become a young adult who felt saddened by the plight of those who had nowhere else to go yet stymied by their seeming inability to better their situation.

My thinking on this has progressed. Now, I'm mostly simply sympathetic. I mean, who wants to ask people for money and food to survive? But I'm not here to preach about how we should all be more charitable or engage in debate about giving money to panhandlers. Homelessness is a complex issue, and people can make their own decisions about what they can or can't do to help. I'm here to tell a story about compassion and parenting and about the kind of people I want to raise Maddie and Riley to be.

I took Maddie to the grocery store with me on Sunday afternoon. Riley stayed home with my dad, so it was just me and the Mads. I really enjoy the times I get to spend with either Maddie or Riley one-on-one; it's a rarity, and something I should be more mindful about making happen. As Maddie and I walked down the sidewalk to the store's entrance, I saw a man sitting out front, makeshift cardboard sign reading, "Homeless and hungry, anything helps" propped against his knees. "That man doesn't have a home," said Maddie, in the matter-of-fact way of a four year old. We've seen enough people with such signs and she's asked enough questions that she knows what's going on.

We went in the store and did our shopping. The guy was still there on the way out. "Would you like to give that man some money, Maddie?" I asked, on a whim. She lit up. "Oh! Yes! Then he could eat something!" I handed her a dollar and she took it right over.

"Here you go," she said, extending the money.
"Thank you, little one," the man kindly said in return, with a huge smile.
"I hope it helps a little," I added, somewhat lamely.
"It sure does. Take care of your beautiful family," he said.

And with that, we were off. Maddie clearly felt like she had changed the world. She talked about how next time, we could just buy him some food while we were in the store and give him that instead. Or how maybe some of the people who don't have a place to live could come stay at our house, or how we could give them some of our sheets and blankets.

I don't have an answer to the problem of homelessness, but I can say that it made both me and Maddie feel good to make one small gesture of compassion. I don't care if that guy spent that dollar on an apple or on cheap beer: he's doing the best he can, sitting there in the rain with his sign, and if that dollar helps, I'm glad to have given it. And I'm glad for Maddie to see that little acts of kindness matter, and for me to be reminded of this, too.

John was always the first person to open his wallet in these situations, and his generosity changed my thinking a lot. I am not often clear about what specific things John would have done as a parent, or about how I can honor his presence in Maddie and Riley's lives. This is one area where my footing feels sure.

Pow! Bang! Kerblam!

I feel like everything is exploding these days.

Work is a total disaster zone. I don't like to blog about work, so I'll just say that I have too much to do, too little time to do it in, and too many personnel issues keeping me from the tasks at hand. Why can't we all get along? Sigh.

My immediate family is in good shape, thank goodness. Going home each night is a joy, even when the kids are not joyous. In truth, the kids are often defiant these days, testing limits and struggling with the transition to having another person live in our house. The Z situation is without a doubt to the good, but it's a change, and change is hard, and when you're four, when things are hard, you whine a lot and pitch fits about things that to an adult are totally inconsequential, and you save all of your crappy emotions for your safe person, which for M&R is, of course, me. Sigh. But still, being home is truly a refuge for me right now. Z is lovely and helpful and I'm beyond thrilled that this situation that I had so long desired is everything I had hoped it would be and then some. Maddie and Riley are completely hilarious, sometimes even when they are pitching fits. The home front is keeping me going right now.

Outside our little nuclear family, the broader but still pretty immediate family struggles. My stepbrother and his wife are on the skids, which has repercussions for my mom and stepdad. I feel for all of them. We're gearing up for our annual pilgrimage to see John's family in Michigan, which is searingly emotional every year, and although it's ultimately positive, it's certainly intense and draining.

An old friend of John's called me the other day out of the blue. He and his wife are people I have always admired and enjoyed, although we have not spent much time together. They are just good people, the kind of people who upon meeting, you know you can immediately trust and respect. His call was a ray of sunshine, but from behind a dark cloud: his brother has metastatic pancreatic cancer. It's like a knife to the heart. To make it all even that much more intense, his brother just got married a month ago.

My whole body aches with empathy. I gave John's friend—my friend, our friend—the URL to my blog to give to his sister in law, with the warning that it might be too much for her to deal with right away. John's friend is a doctor, so they don't need any medical advice, not that I'm qualified to give it, but John had access to some (at the time) pretty cutting edge chemo that not everyone could then get, so when I've heard from others facing a pancreatic cancer diagnosis, I've often shared that information. These friends don't need that. They need friends. I'm glad they felt they could reach out to me; I hope I can give them some of what they need.

These are not the only friends dealing with cancer. They are just the most recent. We're too young for this. Or are we? Is this just a part—the crappy part—of being in your late 30s? Is this when you suddenly wake up to find that your parents are not young, just young for their age, and that you and your friends are not immune to the scourge of disease and the tolls of time on the body? When does it stop being a fluke, a mistake, and when is it a horrible but unavoidable part of life? In the end, no matter. It's not fair, and it's devastating.

Maddie and Riley are reaching a point where it's a real challenge for me to pick them up and hold them for any length of time. I have not been sentimental in bidding farewell to babyhood, but this transition feels as huge as the weight of their cumbersome bodies. To pick them up and carry them, this is to be the mother of a small child. To no longer be able to do so is to be the parent of a big kid, official. Like so many other things in life, this is a painful if ultimately good transition.

I'm nostalgic these days, for my old body, for small children, for John, for the invincibility and endlessness of life in my 20s. I don't want to go back; what was difficult and painful on that journey to where I am now would be too much to bear again. I would make the same choices. I am without regret. But I am overwhelmed by the fullness of it all, and how that fullness it seems to be bursting out in uncontrolled and uncontainable negative ways. We were reminded in church on Sunday to slow down, and there is wisdom there, I think. I am walking rather than running these days, doing less in the evening, sleeping more, getting by on the minimum. I feel a need to hoard my reserves; each day draws on them in unexpected ways.

Looking Back

I've been thinking about the past a lot lately, about the time that John was sick. A coworker's grandson has leukemia and is getting ready to start chemo. Another friend has had surgery to remove a tumor on his kidney. Another is preparing for surgery as the first step in treatment for breast cancer. When I hear about these things, my stomach flips and I can smell the hospital, hear the beeping of the IV machines, feel the adrenaline that powered me through those crazy 2.5 years course through my veins.

I was selfish back then. Maybe I'm still selfish now, but I was certainly selfish back then. John got his diagnosis three weeks after we got married. We'd only really known each other for sixteen months before that. Most everyone else in his life had known him longer, some I'm sure loved him as deeply if not deeper than I did. When he got his diagnosis, I was overwhelmed by emotions, one of the main ones being jealousy of everyone who had known John longer than I had. Everyone who had had the chance to spend more time with him when he was healthy and vibrant. Many, likely most, of them appreciated that time when they had it, just as I appreciated the time John and I had, healthy or well. But so many people got so much more than me, and I was envious and angry about it.

That jealousy made me selfish. Since I had not gotten that time in the past, I was going to get as much of it as I could until he died. Not that it was my decision; I respected John's wishes, of course, and I think we worked together to find a balance of time for each other and time with family and friends. Lots of people loved John. There was much about him to love, that's for sure.

Part of moving on in grief is getting the perspective of the passing of time. I can look back now and see just how blindered I was by our situation, how completely immersed I was in our cancer world. Once the twins came along, it was the cancer and parenting world. And then it was the grief and parenting world. It was all so much to bear. I wanted to be grateful to everyone who helped me through those times, and I thought I did a decent job of it. But I can see now that I often had the energy to think only about John, Maddie, Riley, and myself.

The conversations I've had relatively recently about things being all about me, all the time, have had me thinking about all this. Both of those conversations were with people I respect and love, and so they have stuck with me and I've been working them over in the back of my mind more than I even knew I was. I see where both were coming from, I do. At the same time, I also know that I did the best I could—that I've been doing the best I can—in situations that have ranged from Completely Shitty to Pretty Good, but Still Damn Hard. At times, my best has been lower than my own standards, and often it's been lower than the standards of others. But it's been the imperfect best I can do.

Maddie and Riley and I rode our three bike through the darkness tonight to the ATM so that I could get money to pay the three people who have been caring for them this week. It was a short ride, just a quick after-dinner jaunt that centered me and brought me some moments of calm and of knowing that I'm doing the right things. I'm taking care of Maddie and Riley. I'm taking care of myself. I'm trying to do better at those things when my emotional and physical resources allow. I write this post over and over, a broken record, the same refrain, the need to say it enough that it is real.

Crazeeeeeeeee

I'm here. I'm consumed by work at my job and work at home. Everything is insane at my 9–5; I'm revising/reworking/rewriting a big piece, dealing with some really ugly personnel issues between two people who report to me, and trying to keep pace with the usual demands and tasks. Home is also nonstop as we prepare for our au pair to arrive. We've had unusually busy social times, too, with visits from my brother-in-law and my dad and lots of fun family and friend events. Things feels especially relentless right now, a balance of welcome business and undue stress. As the saying goes: that's life.

In social news, it seems perhaps stating the obvious to say that a surefire way to put an end to a relationship is to blog about it. Since my last post about dating, things have fizzled out between me and the guy I was seeing. It's OK; it wasn't serious and nothing dramatic happened. We both just got too busy to find time to see each other. If we really wanted it to work, we'd find time. I find that I'm too overwhelmed to really miss him, and I think that says it all. It was nice, but it was not IT, and that's totally fine.

I'm consumed lately by thoughts of little Maddie and Riley, baby Maddie and Riley, toddler Maddie and Riley. Many of my friends have second babies who range in age from infant to two-ish, and I'm stunned at every turn by how little I remember of those first couple of years of Maddie and Riley's life. I'm awed by the sweetness and utter dependence of these tiny people, astounded that I can't recall with any real clarity that time in our lives. It's not surprising, of course. We had more going on in our lives during that time than the average middle-class American family, and the fog of sleeplessness of that period robs all parents of sharp focus around those years. In most instances, I think that works to advantage. It's human nature to recall even the most trying of times with a rosy glow. I'm sad these days about how that's not true for me when I look back on the first couple of years of the twins' lives. Yeah, I recall some good things, but I also remember a lot of drudgery and work and crying (from everyone) and stress. I remember not sleeping. I remember feeling utterly crushed by responsibility.

I remember good stuff: friends, visits from family, weekend trips and meals out. But details of Maddie and Riley? How it felt to hold them when they were small? Not so much.

Bah, this is all maudlin, not sure how I got here. Not sure what my point is. It was hard, back then. It's better now. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's all. It gets better. I've been really moved by all of the it gets better videos circulating on the Internet, offering encouragement to GLBT youth and letting them know that while they might be suffering now, better times will come. It's true: things get better, sometimes through effort, sometimes just through the passage of time. But things get better.

This post is kind of a mess. How about those Chilean miners! What a story that has been. Riveting.

On that note, I'm going to bed.

Loving Kindness

I feel like I should have a post, but I'm not sure I do. Life's been busy enough for a post, but it's pretty much the same stuff it was a week ago, all still in the same limbo it was before. I do think we've found an au pair; I had a couple of great calls with a woman in Bolivia, and then the kids and I Skyped with her over the weekend and we agreed to be "matched," but since then I've not heard a word from her about what her preferred arrival date is, so I'm getting nervous. I need that lucky childcare star to keep shining, please.*

One of the blogs I follow is Sam's. Her mother and older brother died in the 9/11 attacks, leaving her and her two younger sisters. Her posts about grief often ring incredibly true for me. Sam's doing a 30-day themed writing exercise, and day one was to write about something you hate within yourself. She mentioned her rage. That sure struck a chord. Sam didn't tie her rage back to her grief, and for her, it might not be as grief-tethered as it is for me. But still, the loathing of that aspect of personality hit a raw nerve as I struggle mightily with that myself.

At church on Sunday the service was devoted to the practice of loving kindness meditation. Loving kindness is designed to clear negative thoughts towards others out of the mind, to focus on love and compassion instead. In the Buddhist practice, you start with directing loving kindness toward yourself, the idea being that feeling compassion for the self is the easiest place to begin. Ha ha ha ha ha. The minister recognized that Americans tend to have a very difficult time being kind to ourselves and let us begin by focusing on someone we love, then someone to whom we feel neutral. We skipped focusing on someone toward whom we feel hostile; that is a task for us to work out on our own. Instead, we ended by focusing on ourselves, on choosing an aspect of self that we have trouble loving and accepting. For me, it was anger, making it all the more striking to read Sam's post yesterday.

The loving kindness practice was moving for me and has been much on my mind since Sunday. It's inspired me not so much to treat myself with more kindness, but to treat Maddie and Riley with more kindness. I haven't been such a nice mom in the past few weeks. It's easy to blame that on the stresses in our lives and at my work right now, but that doesn't excuse my behavior or make me proud of it. Sunday was really healing for me, and has had a positive impact on our lives in just a few short days. I've gone back to one of the few parenting books I like and have been using some of its strategies to manage behavior and focus on finding compromise solutions rather than turning everything into a win/lose scenario. For any of you who have read/enjoyed this book, were you as taken as I was by the motto "We are a problem-solving family!"? I must have said that ten times today, and wouldn't you know it, it worked. It got us through a few tough moments cooperatively.

I'm hoping to keep at least some of the Zen. I went for a run today during lunch for the first time in a week and a half; work is getting back to a state where I should once again be able to do that more regularly, and that is sure to help. I'm eating relatively well, if too copiously. I'm certainly getting enough sleep. The stress is exhausting me and I'm often asleep by 9:30 p.m. these days. I like the love rather than the hate, the peace rather than the anger, the flexibility rather than the rigidness. I keep it, thanks.

*Heard from her today! She is scheduled to arrive in the U.S. on November 1. Hooray!

Preschool, the Public, Day 1

The nanny arrived promptly at 8 a.m. Before 8:30, she, Maddie, and Riley were headed to the park down the street. They didn't return until close to 10 a.m. She is kind and sweet and I think she'll be great.

We all walked to school together. On the way, we ran into a friend of Maddie and Riley's from their former preschool with his parents. The kid was wearing a tie. It was adorable.

At preschool dropoff, Maddie and Riley walked in like they owned the place. This Spanish immersion is serious business, much more so than at the kids' former place of education. I need to ramp up my Spanish language skillz.

My amazing friends who are kind enough to be taking care of M&R after school until I find an au pair were kind enough to post a pic on Facebook of after-school glee. Everyone looks to have had a good day.

Not at all surprisingly, both kids FREAKED THE FUCK OUT when I picked them up from their friends' house. Yeah. Uh-huh. We made it home, then made it through dinner and stories and then they were off to bed with little dark circles under their eyes. In bed at 7:25 p.m., asleep at 7:26 p.m.!

Then it was time for me to breathe a sigh of relief, prep lunches for the next day, dinner for the next night, eat leftovers for dinner, pour a glass of wine. We'll get through this. We've gotten through so much, and more is to come. Such is life. It's funny though—funny-strange, that is—how this unexpected significant change feels more emotionally fraught to me than the instance of John's death. I saw John's death coming, and I was somewhat prepared for it. Yes, the life-changing instance of losing a spouse was devastating, but it was the aftershocks that were harder, that continue to be harder, than the actual event itself. It's the reverse now, the shock of the upheaval, that I'm having a hard time with; hopefully the reverberations will be soothing rather than a jarring reminder of the initial event. I don't mean to overdramatize the emotions around shifts in school and childcare, but I've been surprised at how visceral it's all felt to me. Sudden change and anything that has a visible effect on the psyche of one's children is tough stuff. But day one is down, and day one was about as good as I could have hoped. May day one be predictive.

Transitions

First of all, a big thank you to the internet. The nanny situation is on the cusp of being resolved, and for that I am grateful in no small part to the computer.

Nanny situation aside, there's so much going on right now that I don't even know where to begin.

The twins and I went to Kansas! How's that for a place to start! We were out there for five days, in Kansas City (well, we stayed in Leawood) to see my mom's side of the family. My cousins and their kids had not met Maddie and Riley, and while I'm sorry that it took four years for that to happen, I think it ended up taking place at the ideal age for M&R. We had a great trip. It was wonderful for me to reconnect with my aunts, uncles, and cousins and after not having traveled by plane for almost a year, it was a revelation to discover how much better Four travels than Three. Two thumbs up to the heartland!

Upon return, life descended into chaos. I found out that Maddie and Riley had been awarded spots in the public school Spanish immersion PreK program that is literally across the street from our house, which is by all measures awesome except for one very important measure: logistics. The twins' current private program is a morning program; the public school option is afternoon. I had been looking for an afternoon nanny; all of a sudden, I needed a morning nanny. Oh, and yeah, "afternoon" means noon 'til 3 p.m. So I also needed someone in the afternoon, just a small part of it, until I get home at 5:30 p.m. Oh, and yeah, the public school is, of course, free, but guess how much the private school is keeping for pulling the kids at the last minute? Yes, a month's worth of tuition we paid as a deposit plus the already-paid September tuition. Which is a lot of money. And I understand why. But. Still. It's a lot of money! ANNOYING!

Cry me a river, blah, blah, I KNOW.

I've had a week to revise my nanny search to a morning job, lean on the kindness of friends to take care of the twins between when PreK lets out and when I get of work, and, most exciting of all, apply to become a host family for an au pair! Yes, color me Even More Bourgeoise Than Previously Thought Possible, we're going to have live-in help! Turns out that the live-in help is less expensive than private preschool + afternoon nanny, so voilà! I feel so, uh, I don't really know. Spoiled? That's not it, exactly. I just know that in eight weeks or so, we'll welcome a live-in nanny to our home for a year and that she'll work 45 hours/week for us and OMG I'm not even sure what to do with that much child care but I think I'll figure it out. ULTIMATELY GREAT BUT CURRENTLY FRUSTRATING!

Meanwhile, my home computer has decided to die. Or at least suffer from a serious illness. I'm not sure yet. But something dire is happening, and I'm posting this from a work laptop. POORLY TIMED, COMPUTER (as if you had any control over the situation, inanimate as you are)!

And speaking of work, all hell has broken loose! Massive amounts of projects! Personnel issues! Apathy due to all the crap going on in my personal life! GLORIOUS!

For those of you thinking, "Childcare woes + a dead home computer are not enough to qualify as a personal crisis," let me assure you that I have the same Buck Up Already kind of attitude. But wait: there's more. Only I can't say much because I feel uncomfortable blogging about Family Crap. But there you have it: there's Family Crap, capital letters much deserved. Remember that conversation I had with a friend not too long ago about how it's not all about me? Yeah. I got to have that conversation again. With someone in my family. Only this time, it didn't feel cathartic or purposeful. It felt yucky and unresolved and messy and accusatory and one-sided. I'm still not sure where things stand. The family member involved seems to believe that I'm self-centered, without morals, and unworthy of trust. I'd be cavalier about this, but it's been a blow, and I'm hurt and angry with the anger winning most of the time. AWESOME!

I have been going to bed at 9 p.m. most nights, utterly spent by the overwhelming nature of it all. I'm getting tons of sleep, but I still find myself tired and short tempered. I'm not eating well. I'm not exercising as much as I want to or should. I remind myself constantly that the end result of the live-in nanny and the pass in to the public school language immersion program are worth all the short-term child-care headaches, that I'm not immune to technical difficulties because I have a busy life, that as a manager I will have to deal with personnel issues sometimes, that family relationships are difficult for almost everyone. I'm not precious. I'm just in a stressful time, like many people.

A theme from the conversation I had with my wounded family member was where the tipping point was between self-care and selfishness. I have never been as inattentive a friend as I have been since John died. I have to take care of Maddie, Riley, and myself, and there are times when I'm doing a poor job of just doing that. Even when I'm doing a good job at that, I'm usually not doing a great job of being a good friend/daughter/sister/etc. I'm finding that three years out, everyone seems frustrated by this. I'm annoyed that I can't find the time or motivation to do better. My friends and family are annoyed, too. When is taking care of myself—which includes M&R—selfish and when is it self-preservation? I don't know how to answer this, I truly don't. And now I find myself in a period of transition where I certainly won't be working on a better balance between take and give.

Au pair placement will take around eight weeks. Then we'll have a period of adjustment there. The transitions never end, although this is a particularly intense period. Back to school seems to be that way for many families. My eyes are on the prize. Halloween looks like a time when things might be getting back on track, a new track. Life: why must you be so relentless?

Truth

"It's not always all about you, Stacey."

I can't get those words out of my head.

**********************************

On Saturday, the Saturday just over a week ago, the twins and I headed north. We spent three nights on Hood Canal in Washington, a canal that is actually a fjord, a stunningly beautiful site with a rocky, oyster-covered beach. Every year since graduation, with only a couple of exceptions, a group of friends from my undergraduate years has gone on a long weekend trip together, usually to the Oregon coast but sometimes elsewhere. The trips have changed over the years from fairly wild booze-fests to family-friendly escapes. It's a tradition I've been amazed that we've been able to continue.

For the past few years, I've declined to attend. The year John and I got married, we spent an afternoon with my friends as part of our post-wedding getaway.* The next year, John was sick and I don't think I went but I actually can't remember. Then the next year the twins were just born, and we didn't go. Then John was dead, and we didn't go. Then last year, I went for one night, without the kids. This year, the kids were more grown up and I was more emotionally stable/mature/something and the setting was more conducive to families, and so we went.

I was filled with trepidation. There were logistical reasons I had not attended the trip for the past years, but the truth is that a lot of the reason was my emotional state. The year after John's diagnosis, there was no way I could have handled being around couples and families when I felt like life was cheating me out of much of the good in that experience. After John's death, I felt the same. It seemed beyond unappealing to me to be surrounded by families, dealing with the twins, surrounded by reminders of my loss.

I'm not saying this is all rational, and I'm certainly not saying that coupled life is all unicorns and rainbows and single parenting is all drudgery and despair. But I knew myself and my triggers well enough to know that I would not have enjoyed those trips at those times, and so I stayed home and that was all well and good.

This year felt different, though. I felt ready. I was ready. Overall, things went well. My friends were kind and generous with their help, allowing me to go on a run one day and a walk on another. I was actually able to help out with cooking and cleaning because Maddie and Riley were often off cavorting with the other kids in the attic or backyard, sometimes under the watchful eye of another adult, sometimes on their own; they are growing up. I was able to visit with my friends and relax. I got quite a bit of one-on-one time with both Maddie and Riley, which was rewarding for all of us. Maddie and Riley had a blast, and have been asking to go back ever since. Success!

These trips, though, never go off without some drama. You put that many people in that small a space with that much history, add in a lack of sleep and an extra glass of wine, and something's gotta give. And it did.

A tip: having six kids ages four and under share a bedroom is not actually that big a deal once they are all asleep. Getting them to sleep can be tough, and then disparate morning wakeup times can cause stress, but the hours in-between are surprisingly peaceful.

Let's get back to those going to sleep hours, shall we? Monday night, things got a bit rough. Long story (not very) short, I asked a friend if she could take her baby out of the room for a bit to allow Riley to go back to sleep. I could have offered to take Riley out of the room instead, or I could have just explained to Riley that he needed to wait a few minutes for the baby (who was making happy sounds, just loud ones) to settle down, but that's not what occurred to me in the moment. My request was met with some tension, and I reciprocated with some tension, and then the baby was fetched and things felt kind of unsettled and weird.

Some fairly short time later, I saw my friend outside on the porch swing with the baby, and I thought I'd go hang out with her. I was surprised to find her with tears in her eyes.

"I'm sorry if I upset you," I said.

And her reply was the quote that started this post: "It's not always all about you, Stacey."

I was totally caught off guard. And I was really hurt, and angry. My first reaction was to storm off. But then I turned around, because this person who said this to me, this is my best friend. She's really nonconfrontational. And if she was saying this to me, it needed to be addressed.

I don't know what to say about the conversation, really. The most tidy summary of the end result is that we're both too busy to help each other in the way we'd like. That's my biggest takeaway, in any case. I think it was important for my friend to have me acknowledge that I'm not the only one whose life has challenges, that we all struggle and that we all need a hand, that tragedy does not mean that I always get my way.

What made this conversation so difficult for me was this idea that she could truly be harboring this feeling that I think and act as though it is all about me. I have moments of self-pity, it's true, and I suffer a lot of raging jealousy about the logistical simplicity that the presence of another adult would lend to my life (yes, I know, with attending complications, too). And my loneliness of late is well documented. But I am quick, I think, I hope, to acknowledge the much that is good in my life and I try not to make comparisons and I try to be supportive and helpful and a kind friend.

Perhaps I am failing, or at least failing this particular friend. I've been turning it around and around since Monday, wondering if I really am so focused on me, so quick to compare the perceived relative simplicity of my friends' family life, too quick to judge others to have more global happiness than I do. Is that the impression I leave with those close to me? If so, I have a lot of personal work to do.

Over the past few years, I have not been the kind of friend I'd like to be, that much I know to be true. I'm not the kind of parent I'd like to be, either. After lots of talking on the porch, many nose-wipes on shirts and eyes wiped with hands, it was painful for me to acknowledge that doing my best still leaves some people in my life with times of discomfort in my presence, with a sense that my pain trumps anything that might be going on in their lives.

I keep typing away at this post, trying to express what happened during that conversation—a conversation that left me feeling better by its end, in that cathartic, let-it-all-out kind of way. There was no clear resolution to what we discussed, no specific changes to be made. But it's certainly given me food for thought on my behavior and actions. It's made me think quite a bit about asking for help, and the line between asking for help and being selfish. I try to be willing to take one for the team when need be. I have always tried not to wear out my welcome in terms of asking for help. I try to think of others. I do try.

Maybe I need to try harder.

*I realize that this is typically called a honeymoon, but we took what we call our honeymoon trip months after our actual wedding.

Reminders

I've thought about cancer a lot lately. I've been watching DVDs of the TV show Breaking Bad, in which the main character is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. The writers really nailed the realities of treatment. Unpleasant, and unpleasant memories. Riley got a bloody nose the other day; I wasn't even home for it, but hearing our nanny talk about it and then worrying about whether or not it would start again made me really edgy.

In general, I've been off my game for a week or so. I'm distracted by and disinterested in work. The kids have eaten pasta with red sauce for three dinners in a row. I can't seem to focus on getting chores done once the kids are in bed, nor can I concentrate on reading a book or much on watching TV. Running doesn't feel good; my legs hurt and I feel like my body is made of lead. I haven't been eating particularly well. I'm very much adrift.

The drifting feeling has been more acute during this short holiday week. I can't seem to complete tasks at home or at work, have dropped the ball on a few things at the office, feel disproportionately annoyed by how bad traffic has been, and just have a feeling of not being able to cope, like at any minute the tenuous grasp I have on things could be lost and it could all spin out of control.

There's no telling why I feel this way during an otherwise even-keel time in life, but I think a contributing factor is how perfectly lovely the July 4 weekend was. The glow of the weekend was unexpected given my mindset going in. I didn't feel all that great in the week leading up to it, the same disconnected feeling I have now, but less acute. And I entered the weekend with some trepidation. A Peace Corps friend of mine, someone I hadn't seen in years and am really only in sporadic touch with, spent the holiday with us from Saturday morning through late Monday evening. While our contact has been infrequent, this friend has been important to me in small, meaningful ways. For one thing, she is the one who created stuffed animals for me and the kids out of John's clothes after he died. She writes a culinary newsletter that has inspired my cooking for years, and from time to time, I've recieved lovely little packages in the mail from her containing spices or other edible treats. She's unmarried, no kids, and is extremely independent in all senses of the word. I was a bit concerned that the logistics of sightseeing and visiting with kids would drag her down, or that Maddie and Riley would be crabby about having to divide their mama time with a visitor, or who knows what. I was a bit apprehensive, in any case.

All for naught. From the moment we picked her up downtown on Saturday morning, everything just worked out. The kids adored her. Adored her. She didn't talk down to them or try to curry their favor, she just let them come to her and she treated them with respect and kindness at every turn. They responded in kind. We did a very little bit of touristing, driven by A's particular interests—artisan chocolate shop, food carts, coop grocery store, berry picking—but we also spent a lot of time just being. She integrated seamlessly into our life. We cooked, we played in the yard, we attended dinner at a friend's home, and a BBQ with my parents. We walked and biked, we talked about all kinds of things. It was completely relaxing, or as relaxing as any mostly-structured time can be with kids. It was, quite simply, nice. The kids and I were all sad to see her go on Monday.

I've been thinking about it since she left, and I've realized that the weekend made me miss all of the good, idealized things about being married. It was so calmly pleasant to enjoy shared interests in someone's company, to keep track of the kids with two sets of eyes instead of just one, to let the kids take turns getting one-on-one interaction time with us. What a novelty to only field one question at at time, rapid-fire as the questions might have been! It was the ease of it all that struck me, the comfort, the effortlessness. It's not always like that, I know. But sometimes it is. And I can't remember the last time I experienced that for a sustained period of time.

I liked it. I miss it. I appreciate my life as it is now, but I do miss that companionship. Not enough to actively look for it right now, but enough to feel happy that I had it for a weekend and wistful that for the moment, it's gone.