Thursday Thoughts

I had 1/2 a blog post written yesterday but I disliked it so much that I deleted it and didn't attempt to rewrite it.

My thoughts lately are broad and deep. Lots of pondering, lots of serious thinking about issues both personal and global. Lots of thinking about my present and my future and how to create the bridge that will get me from where I am to where I want to be.

And also... how to bridge where my family is to where I want my family to be, which is clearly a related and interconnected but actually somewhat separate issue.

So, yeah, I've been in my head a lot. So as to not drag you too far into there with me, here are some random things that won't draw me in to a longer, rambling post:

1. I'm surprised by how sad I am that Steve Jobs has died. When he stepped down as CEO of Apple a few months ago, I told the hubby that I was sure that meant Jobs had maybe six months to live because I couldn't see him stepping down in any other situation. It's a time when I hate being right. He truly has changed how we live and it is difficult to imagine what the world might look like now without his innovations.

2. In all the tributes to Steve Jobs from professed "business and technology leaders," I'm disheartened to see that all but one of them are white males. (The exception is Meg Whitman.) We need to do a significantly better job of supporting people of color and women in getting to leadership positions, which ultimately means we need to do a better job of supporting them throughout their education. Lisa shared the TED talk "Why we have too few women leaders" by Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg, with me and I agree, it is a must-see.

3. A poet I am a fan of, Tomas Transtromer, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature today. It's not often I recognize the work of someone awarded such a prize, so I am really thrilled for this today. I have been moved by his work for years and feel obligated to share my favorite poem of his with you today:

Answers to Letters
~Tomas Transtromer

In the bottom drawer of my desk I come across a letter that first arrived twenty-six years ago. A letter in panic, and it's still breathing when it arrives the second time.

A house has five windows: through four of them the day shines clear and still. The fifth faces a black sky, thunder and storm. I stand at the fifth window. The letter.

Sometimes an abyss opens between Tuesday and Wednesday but twenty-six years may be passed in a moment. Time is not a straight line, it's more of a labyrinth, and if you press close to the wall at the right place you can hear the hurrying steps and the voice, you can hear yourself walking past there on the other side.

Was the letter ever answered? I don't remember, it was long ago. The countless thresholds of the sea went on migrating. The heart went on leaping from second to second like the toad in the wet grass of an August night.

The unanswered letters pile up, like cirro-stratus clouds promising bad weather. They make the sunbeams lustreless. One day I will answer. One day when I am dead and can at last concentrate. Or at least so far away from here that I can find myself again. When I'm walking, newly arrived, in the big city, on 125th Street, in the wind on the street of dancing garbage. I who love to stray off and vanish in the crowd, a capital T in the endless mass of the text.

~~~~

And so off I go, a capital C in the mix of this day.

Monday Five Countdown, sadness and gratitude

It's rarely good news when the phone rings at 5am. The hubby's brother called at that time this morning to let us know that the hubby's grandmother, Nana, passed away last night/this morning. So obviously she has been on my mind for most of the day and a lot of what I feel grateful for and am thinking about today is inspired by her.

Five Things I'm Grateful For

1. Nana lived long enough to not only meet Nate, but to see him feeding himself, walking, and saying a few words. She absolutely adored him so I'm glad she had that time with him, even if he's not going to remember her.

2. Baba, my maternal grandmother. She is now the only grandparent between the hubby and I (the only great-grandparent Nate has left). She's a kick-ass eighty-six years old, but those years are catching up with her and I know our time is limited. I am grateful she has lived this long and I have learned so much from her.

3. The day after our first date, I went to the hubby's house (he was then still living with his parents and Nana) and ended up hanging out in the kitchen with his mother and Nana. I immediately felt like family, like they had been welcoming me into their kitchen all my life. To this day, almost six years later, I remember exactly what that felt like and I will forever be grateful for that feeling.

4. Nate continues to acclimate well to daycare. Dropping him off today was almost tear free, almost. For a Monday, that's incredible.

5. The hubby's job is going really well. He's enjoying himself, doing well, and seems to be fitting in. I am a worrier by nature, so I probably won't even fully relax when he's past the three-month probationary period, but all signs point to this job being a good development in our lives.

Four Things I Can't Stop Thinking About

1. Nana. I don't have any details yet on how her last days were or what happened, but I hope she went peacefully. (To be somewhat light about it, though, Nana never went peacefully about anything, so the peace I hope for her is relative, in a way.)

2. Money. We are near the bottom of our reserves and need to get some money coming in just to make ends meet. It's getting very tight because of that lag time between the hubby's last unemployment check and his first paycheck.

3. I want to bake something. I have all sorts of random things around my kitchen - blueberries, apricots, two types of chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, pecans - and I don't know what I want to do with them.

4. Did I mention money?

Three Things I Want To Accomplish This Week

1. Finish a book. Right now I'm reading NurtureShock (and looooving it - I'm even getting my sister to read it) and a student lent me Jay-Z's book, Decoded. The Jay-Z book is definitely outside what I'd normally read, but Oprah said it made her understand the world of hip-hop and rap and that intrigued me. But either way, I want to finish one book this week, at least.

2. Clean the bathroom. (Yes, this is nearly always on the list. Such is the life of a bathroom.)

3. Bake/cook something to bring over to the hubby's family. Cookies? Casserole? Both?

Two Things I Am Working To Be Positive About

1. Hey, did I mention money yet? Daycare ain't cheap, y'all. Seriously. (And the one we go to is actually relatively inexpensive while still being excellent in the care it provides.)

2. This one is more something - well, someone - I am being positive for. Nana was the hubby's maternal grandmother and so his mother is taking this very hard (and this is just after his paternal grandmother passed away just a few months ago). I really love my mother-in-law and I know this time is going to be very hard for her so I am going to do everything I can to bring positive energy.

One Random Thing

1. And by random, I really do mean kind of random for today. It's summer time, so people are wearing lots of wedges and slides (shoes). I can't wear shoes that don't really hug my feet because my feet just slide right out - and if they don't, they end up cramping because I'm scrunching my foot up to hold my shoe on. Anyone else out there with this silly issue?  (I felt like ending on a note of slightly silly.)

So, anyone out there doing the Monday Five today? Let me know. :)

I'm going to bum you out now.

I hate aging.

I hate everything about it. Except the alternative, as the joke goes, except that aging leads to that alternative anyway so it doesn't exactly make it feel like an alternative.

My uncle is undergoing treatment for cancer and while he's doing really well (he has his good days and his bad days, of course), the situation is still pretty serious. He's not a young man and all his condition does is remind me that none of us are getting any younger.

He's my dad's oldest brother and his condition serves as this aching reminder, for me, of my dad's mortality. Of the undeniable fact that one day not only will I have to face a world that my dad no longer inhabits, but I will have to explain to Nate that Pop-Pop has left us... and that someday Daddy and I will also have to leave.

My god, thinking about having to have that talk makes my heart feel like it's shattering into hundreds of pieces. I would rather give the sex talk ten times a day to an angry teenager than the death talk once to a sad and possibly confused child... all while dealing with what will be my own massive grief.

I guess if this was one of those "Tell something about yourself that no knows" directives, my statement would be that no one knows that my biggest fear is my father's death and that I've feared this for as long as I can remember. (Except, I guess, there's a pool of you that know this now.) I won't get all shrinkazoid on you and theorize why this is my biggest fear, but I will point out that it sucks to obsessively fear something that you know is inevitable. If I don't outlive my father, that means I will pre-decease him, which is not exactly a sunny alternative.

It's a no-win situation. And I think about it far too much, always have. I don't have nightmares often, but I had some whoppers when I was pregnant and two of them involved my father dying. I woke up sobbing and gasping for breath each time. And now that I have Nate, my breath practically seizes when the thoughts come up again. Now my biggest fear would have to be losing Nate, but it's not the same. It's not inevitable. It'd be unnatural. I have to prepare for the fact that one day I will live in a world that my dad no longer does. And, really, when I word it like that my initial reaction is to say, "No. I don't want to."

My cousin emailed an incredibly sweet picture of my aunt and uncle today since we all have been asking how he's doing and I guess some people asked how he looked with no hair. Looking at the picture, I wouldn't even know he was undergoing treatment, which is great. He has light in his eyes and brightness in his skin. He doesn't even look his age (76). But we know. We know that's the exterior isn't all that's going on. But we hope for the best.

I often wonder if it's just me that's this morbid - or if this is morbid at all, even. Does anyone else think about deaths they dread? I'm always careful not to say things like, "Mommy will never leave you" to Nate because I feel like that sets up something terrible. Or maybe I'm just being superstitious that way. If you're a parent, do you think about the day you'll have to explain death to your child(ren)?

Thinking About Grief

A moment of levity following a funeral:

My brother-in-law: "Man, my face hurts from crying."
Me: "Oh, see, that's the good thing about being someone who cries all the time.  My face feels fine right now."

Everyone laughed.  It's not quite gallows humor, but it's nice to let the spirit smile and laugh for a few seconds in the middle of an otherwise somber day.

I mentioned the other day that one of the times in the past year that the hubby wasn't wearing a t-shirt was for his grandmother's funeral.  That funeral was actually recent, the week before Christmas (when I was finding no free time to write blog posts).  His grandmother had been sick for a few weeks and was in her late 80s, so the grief around her funeral wasn't the sort of desperate grief you see when people aren't ready to let go of their loved one.

That grief was saved for the grave of the hubby's Aunt Judie.

I've heard about Aunt Judie since I met the hubby but it wasn't until this bitter cold December day in western New Jersey that I was finally able to put together all of the pieces and see why her death has left an ongoing hole in his family.

Aunt Judie was my father-in-law's baby sister.  She was my mother-in-law's best friend.  She was thirty-five years old when she died of breast cancer, fifteen years ago.

Thirty-five.  My age.

Aunt Judie is buried at the same cemetery that the hubby's grandmother was to be buried at, so I wasn't surprised when I overheard family members making plans to go visit her in the mausoleum.

What I was surprised to hear was people say it might not be a good idea for my father-in-law to go.  I couldn't fathom why.  If you're already there, why wouldn't you go?  Wouldn't you feel bad about not going?

And then I was told - my father-in-law had never visited his sister's grave before.  Not once.  And all of a sudden, I understood why he didn't know how to get to the cemetery earlier that day.  I had thought it was odd that he got lost because, I figured, didn't he come here once in a while to see his sister's grave?

No.  He didn't.  Never.  Not once.  He couldn't bring himself to.  But we were there.

So upstairs we all walked, through this large mausoleum building.  We wound through some hallways until we found the rest of the family down a corridor, all looking up at the same marker.

My father-in-law walked in, crumpled with grief, and walked out saying, "I can't.  I can't."

It was quite possibly the most palpable display of grief I have ever witnessed, unlike any grief I have seen or felt before.

And I began to think about how unfair this all was.  And how I think I would crumple like that on a daily basis if I lost either of my siblings, especially so young.  And how it's so unfair that just because I didn't meet the hubby so long ago, I never got to meet Aunt Judie.  Everyone told me how she was the best person in the family and how I would have liked her so much.

And I started to get angry.  This was unfair.  It was unfair to my father-in-law to lose his baby sister.  It was unfair that my mother-in-law lost her best friend (who she really could use these days, for sure).  It's unfair that the hubby's cousin lost his mother when he was a small child and almost eerie that he looks so much like her. And yet, of everyone there, he was crying the least - I think because he probably dealt with this loss so much more directly than the rest of the family.  He had more peace than the others.

I stood in the mausoleum corridor next to my sister-in-law.  We both have a younger sister who's a mother and we stood there in tears, barely able to imagine, "What if... what would we do..."

We don't know how our own deaths will affect the people we know.  Sure, we can imagine.  When I was a terribly unhappy high school student, I would often wonder what life would be like if I wasn't around anymore.  I wasn't actually suicidal, but there were many days I simply wished I stopped existing.  What stopped me long before ever actually thinking about it was thinking about how sad my parents would be.

What I never considered before was the people I don't know who might miss me.  I never thought to ponder that the hubby was out there somewhere and if I didn't exist, he'd be someone else's hubby and there'd be no Nate.  I'm sure Aunt Judie thought about her son and his eventual wife and children.  But did she ever think about her then 15 year old nephew getting married and having a wife and son who wouldn't get to know her but would miss her anyway, somehow?  I wonder if that kind of thinking is simply too overwhelmingly sad to even approach in thought.

I've always been one to cry fairly easily and not shy away from the sadder parts of life (hence the earlier joke), but since Nate was born, it's not like I newly wear my heart on my sleeve.  No, it's like I hold my beating heart outstretched in my hands daily, leaving it open to stings and barbs and terrible worries.  It's one part of motherhood that has truly surprised me.  You read about the depth of emotion that being a parent opens, but for me it was indescribable and unknowable until it happened.

For some reason, over the past few days I've had some serious moments of sadness wash over me.  It's not a post-holiday letdown.  It's not related to some new event.  There are a number of stressful situations going on right now (money is always one) but there's just been something hitting me when I hear a song from high school or read a blog post about someone who lost a child.  It's hitting me harder than it usually does, but I'm rolling with it.  Sometimes I have days where I'm happier for no apparent reason.  There has to be a flip side to that.

While walking Buster one recent morning, I randomly thought, "Wow, when Buster dies, I'm going to have to explain death to Nate."

And then I realized Buster's only a year old.  Nate will probably be in high school by the time we're saying goodbye to Buster.

And then I really wanted to cry.

(Okay, not really, I love Buster . . . most of the time.  He's just . . . challenging.)

The day of the funeral, I felt like more a part of the hubby's family than I had before.  There's something about being together, sharing the most raw of emotions, that unites people.  I realized at some point in the day that this is the first family death either the hubby or I have experienced since we got married.  It certainly won't be the last or the most difficult, but it was different to go through this with a spouse.  It sounds cliche, but it made death feel less lonely.

It's probably one of the greatest benefits of marriage or partnership, but also one of the more terrifying because, of course, that partnership and support will end one day.  But until then, it is quite a gift.

The Post Where I Bury the Lead

I was in the same room as The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond.

I know!  I KNOW!!!

Sitting in a session at BlogHer, I check Twitter on my phone and notice that @thepioneerwoman has Tweeted about the session I'm sitting in.

I do manage to avoid whiplash by not instantly whipping my head around to look for her.  She can probably walk down the streets of NYC pretty anonymously, but at BlogHer, she certainly cannot so I was fairly sure she would be sitting near the back.  Once the question and comment part of the session began, though, and someone was walking around the room with a microphone, I used that time as an excuse to look around and, lo and behold, there she was.

But here's the thing: while she is lovely and wonderful and a great blogger, the session panelists were still the focus of my attention.

The session we both sat in was titled "Grief, Loss, Tragedy and Community on the Internet."  Even though this is not a topic I have firsthand experience about, I knew of several of the bloggers on the panel and was interested in hearing their stories.  You can click on the title link above to read the live blog of the session (it would be well worth your time).

I applaud the bloggers on the panel for sharing their stories, first online and then in this session.  There were few dry eyes in the room; I, for one, was nearly sobbing at some points.  I bought waterproof mascara for the weekend because I was sure I'd tear up about missing Nate.  That mascara earned its keep during this panel session alone.

But what was so heartwarming was the discussion about the community they have all found online.  While her husband, Peter, had us all crying, Anissa Mayhew was particularly funny in describing her reaction to the 12,000 emails and huge Facebook and Twitter explosions she returned home to after she left the hospital following a stroke that had put her in a coma.  Another blogger, Loralee Choate, talked about how she wished she was blogging and had an online community when her three and a half month old son, Matthew, died of SIDS.  Her story, in particular, has stuck with me since Nate will be three months old this Tuesday and the idea of that happening is easily the most horrifying thing I can imagine and I've actually cried about it several times since the panel ended.  Loralee has all the admiration from me that I can humanly muster and then some because I can't fathom what it takes to go on from there, to simply scrape yourself off the floor and even manage to breathe.  It's been far from easy for her, but she's doing it.  She and the other bloggers all stated that the support they get online helps them - that some days, it's what saves them.

That morning I attended the International Activist Blogger Scholarship Recipients Keynote, where several women who use blogs as places to fight for human rights and freedoms many of us take for granted spoke about the work they do.  Their work is so important yet dangerous that no video or pictures were allowed during the session because revealing the women's identities could be fatal for them.

What power those commenters have.  What power those activists have.  What power we all have as readers and as writers.  Can you imagine your life being in danger because of what you publish daily?  I barely can.  It really made me question the purpose my blog serves.  What greater good am I achieving?  Am I achieving any?

The blogosphere gets mocked as a slushy sphere of navel-gazing, but in reality it's this amazing place where real people reach out to and support other real people.  This is what I've taken away from BlogHer.  It's a crazy, overwhelming experience, even when you're used to attending large conferences, but somehow I managed to come home feeling a renewed sense of peace and purpose and motivation in my writing.

I feel renewed that even though I can and do love my son enough, I can keep trying to love him more because you have to treasure every single moment.  And if I just want to hold him sometimes and not put him down, that's fine.

I feel reaffirmed that I can recognize good people when I meet them online, especially when they're even more wonderful in person.

I'm proud that I can spot one of my favorite bloggers and only squee in my head while remaining composed on the exterior.  (Okay, most composed.  There may have been some whispering and extra glancing.  Here's where I add that Danielle and I spotted The Pioneer Woman again later in the Hilton lobby.. with Marlboro Man!  Sure, you might get to meet Ree at a book signing or something, but who gets to see Marlboro Man??  And here is where I add that Ree is tall and stunningly gorgeous and so is Marlboro Man.  Together, they might be the most handsome couple I've seen in real life.)

I might not be The Pioneer Woman, but I've had readers send me emails thanking me for particular posts or certain topics I've covered because something I've written helped them through something or understand something or think about something in a different way.  Unless they tell you, you really never know who you're helping - or even who's reading.  And even if you only know you're helping yourself by writing what you like to write, that's enough.