Cherish Studios

Author: Cherish Studios

  • Forgiveness

    We humans have a tendency to stumble through our emotional lives, staggering between our selfish desires and our longing to guard the soft vulnerabilities of the people we love.  Sure, there are monsters among us.  The Hitlers, the Bundys, the Khans.  But they are not us.  Their dark souls will never know what it is to carry guilt.  Their hearts will never feel the pain they press upon others.  We do, sometimes intensely.  It is what give us the power to forgive.  We are more empathetic than we give ourselves credit for.

    I was promoted at work.  This week I jumped in with both feet.  People have come and gone, interviewed for the job, and along the way – they all let me glimpse into their lives.  I’m full of stories now.  A grandparent who fought in WWII, a mother who had to bury her son, a man soothing his toddler by playing a Boss Scaggs CD in the car.  And a woman who shyly shared with me that she did a foolish thing in her youth.  I told her there was nothing to be ashamed of.  I had my share of youthful foolishness too.  I just never got caught.  She thanked me for not judging her.  How could I judge her?  Not passing judgement is our way of sending forgiveness to a stranger.

    Thrown into the middle of my glimpses sat two apologies.  One last night from my far past.  He had no idea I had long ago forgiven him but he still needed to hear that.  He didn’t know that the damage was now a scar neatly knitted closed over the course of my life.  Then came another apology this morning from someone so deeply close to me, and it came so quickly that I was still in shock and holding the wound tight to stop the bleeding.  But it didn’t stop me from forgiving him.  Right there, on the spot.  Time to move on.

    It doesn’t matter what the wrongs were.  It doesn’t matter when they happened or how.  We all find ourselves occasionally knocking on that door to selfish acts.  If it opens, If we dare to go in,  we run the risk of calaterial damage – to ourselves and to the people we love.  It’s ok.  We are human. As long as we remember that when we drink in the forgiveness offered us, we need to forgive ourselves.

  • Voted Most Optimistic

    I was voted most optimistic by my senior class in high school.  None of you who have come to know me in my adult form would even bat an eye at the nomination.  In fact, most would say that it was a given.  Once the glass is half full, it’s always half full.  Right?  But truth is a far stranger tale than fiction.  Not only did my 17-year-old self see the glass half empty, I saw that glass precariously balanced on some slick surface seconds away from crashing to the floor, shattering into razor-sharp bits and pieces with its half empty contents running away from its protective vessel.  If I ever did see it as half full, I was convinced that it was poison.  I was the queen of emo before emo’s existed.  I was the harbinger of ill tidings with a dash of poor me. Chicken Little and Eeyore all rolled into one cubby, ocular challenged, morose square peg.  Always looking for a passive-aggressive fight, I was notorious for deciding it was down when someone said it was up.  It didn’t even sway me when they presented the flow chart confirming the facts and statistical analysis in support of “up”.

    So how on earth did I manage to win the vote?  Ah – you see – I fixed the election.  I stuffed the ballot box.  Lacking in optimism never stopped me from being opportunistic.  Now that’s a trait I’ve had my whole life.  From early on, I’ve been very capable of using charm and wit and a big chubby cheeked smile to go after the things I want.  Sometimes with a dash of “be careful what you wish for” – like the time this little toddler poured on the Shirley Temple charm on a train till I was given a Halloween’s worth of treats and an equally painful little belly ache.

    In my teen geek-phase, curls and chubby smiles gave way to the power of debate and persuasion.  And so it was the day the ballots were handed out.  It was during my College Prep English class and seated with me were another 20 or so of my fellow classmates, mostly seniors.  I wanted to be voted for something, anything really.  I knew I was way out of the running for most beautiful, smart, athletic, school spirit, cutest couple, likely to succeed . . . as I read down the list I started to see that half empty glass until I heard the whispers.  Those around me saying “Most Optimistic?  Whats that on there for?  Who’s optimistic? That’s silly.  Why bother.  They shouldn’t have that one on there.”  Bingo!  I had my “in”.  I piped up to the whispering masses with my best smile “I’m optimistic.”  There was almost a collective sigh around the room.  As if I were volunteering to be this year’s harvest festival sacrifice.  Yes! they all agreed.  Cherish will save us all from the one title that was not already preordained. I watched as they scribbled my name in the blank, not caring one lick that I was about to carry a title unworthy of popularity advancement.  All I cared about was being voted as Most Something or Most Anything.

    So the votes were tallied and all the most beautiful, smart, athletic, school spirit, cutest couple, likely to succeed, and most optimistic seniors were gathered together in front of the school.  It was one of the few moments of my high school life where I was standing shoulder to shoulder with the most popular kids in our class. Each Most, one girl and one boy, were photographed in front of the brick wall under the awning leading into our great halls of learning.  There I was, standing next to our class president who towered over me.  As the camera was raised, he put his arm on my head and I threw two thumbs up in the air with my best cheesy smile.  The kind of smile that charms chocolate out of the pockets of fellow passengers on a train.  In the click of a shutter, for one split second, I was most optimistic, and then I returned to my natural half empty existence.

    Somewhere, somehow, over the years I evolved and the glass became half full.  Not only half full, but half full with the promise of being filled to the brim.  When Keith got sick, that never changed.  When Keith died, it never changed.  When Dad was sick, it didn’t waiver.  When I lost my job, not a drop was spilled from that glass.  Sure, I’ve had my stress, my fears, my doubts, my worries.  Who wouldn’t?  But my resolve to remain optimistic never wavered.  And now I have before me my latest truth stranger than fiction.  The breast biopsy results have returned – I have invasive ductal carcinoma – breast cancer. This blog, originally named “Keith’s Updates”, was started to keep everyone we loved informed on Keith’s progress.  So it follows that I have added a new category – “Cherish’s Updates” – and this is the first one.  All I can say right now is to check back again soon.  All the information I have is the diagnosis.  What I can update you on is this – that glass will never be half empty again.  I’ve earned every drop in there.  Struggled and strained to keep it half full, more than half full for three years now.  I can do it till my last breath, if need be.

    Sometimes, a camera captures in a split second what’s inside of us all along. Those two thumbs up and that candy smile that sits in my yearbook? Maybe my teen self knew I’d need to see them now.  Maybe, just maybe, she knew something beyond her young age. Maybe she took advantage of her foolish youth to expel all the darkness and negativity from her soul back when that ugly behavior could be chalked up to teen angst. Maybe she knew that if she could add just one drop of opportunity to that glass, tip it over to half full, she would be giving her future self all the strength necessary to move gracefully from one challenge to the next.  That by fixing the vote to snatch up a worthless title in high school, she gave herself the most important one that can be bestowed upon her as an adult.

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  • “Now is the Winter of Our Discontent” . . .

    . . . to quote Shakespeare, the master of  words that often define our modern day human experiences.  A pretty impressive feat considering he hasn’t written a thing in over 400 years.  Its fitting that I would have this particular quote in my gray matter since our first snow blanketed cold snap almost two months ago.  It seems to have taken up permanent residence in my mind while watching the mercury fall and the electric bill rise.  I have gone into mental hibernation in the spirit of those smart woodland creatures who know that if you truly want to survive the cold, sleep through it.  Even my creative writing juices seem to have been iced over in the north wind.  At each moment of feeling inspired, seeing that poetic phrase just within reach, it would melt away like window pane frost under the hot breath of a child straining to see out into the bright winter night.

    It was 3 years ago this month when Keith’s body started to betray him and it seemed so much warmer than today.  The start of a battle against the enemy within.  His own cells mutating and altering and shifting into violent soldiers, hell bent to take him down at the cost of their own existance.  All I could do was patch up his spirits and send him back to the front.  And yet, he found ways to laugh at it all.  After his colonoscopy, he drove the nurses crazy because he kept putting his oxygen reader on his nose.  He looked over at me as they rolled him into recover and told me that they had to go back in because the doctor left his watch in there.  We looked forward to the day that he could have the port removed so he could go shooting again.  He’d sit in the chemo chair, blaring Led Zepplin, toes tapping on the foot rest, chatting it up with his neighbors in their chairs as they were getting their treatments, a wee bit loud over Robert Plant belting out lyrics about squeezing lemons.  But no matter how loud you crank the Zepplin, some battles are destined to be lost.

    This winter, my son was hit with an emotional blizzard.  My steadfast and stoic child was snowed into his own mind, overwelmed with stress, grief, regrets, and unable to sleep.  I tried desparately to blow on the window pane, to be able to glimps past the frost, to see him in the bright winter night, happy again.  Maybe even more so, to see him at peace.  Again, another fight against the enemy within.  This one hiding right behind the eyes, in the thin delicate eletrical connections that guide our senses and sensibilities.  I spent the evening with ageless friends Saturday night and Zach was with me.  I could almost connect to him again.  He’s always been poker faced and I’ll never truly know what cards he’s holding.  But I can see under the disguise enough to know that his demons are starting to waive the white flag.  Maybe because they know that Spring is right around the corner and you can never win the fight with daffodils blooming through the snow.

    It was 29 years ago that I first encountered my enemy within.  It was in the summer so receiving the news that I had questionable pap test results was never upsetting.  As a recently minted driver, I was able to drive myself to the doctor to have my cervix frozen in an effort to remove the questionable cells.  All I could think of was how cool is that I can drive to the doctor’s?  I paid no mind to the possible seriousness of any of it.  As I started college, my breast started to develop those pesky cysts.  On the advice of my doctor, I cut back the caffeine and lightened up on the deodorant, much to the dismay of my roommates.  No one likes to bunk with a grumpy stinky person with lumpy breast.  Shortly after Zach was born, there were more questionable pap test results and I had a biopsy done on my cervix, which came back negative. While breast feeding him, only the right side worked.  Desparate to be a good mom, I reached out to Leleich and spent a fortune on these fancy plastic cones to help express the milk.  The only success I had with them was a Madonna (the singer, not the saint) appearance to my bust line.  Zach decided that he’d let me off the hook by letting his teeth come in at the tender age of 3 months.

    As I got into my 30’s those pesky cyst came back with a vengance, so I cut out the caffiene and we were right as rain again.  I proudly and painfully squished the girls for my first mammogram in 2010 and was told they were dense but otherwise normal.  Figures that my chest would mimic my occasional lapses in intelligence.  Then in the winter of 2011, I could feel a lump in the one breast that never failed to provide nurishment to my growing baby.  In the mist of Keith’s treatments, I got the girls squished again and followed up with a sonogram on Ms. Right.  The doctor reported back that they were harmless little ol’ cysts.  The following year, from down below, another questionable pap test rolled in the door and another biopsy was done and the results again came back negative.  At least the breasts were unchanged although still lumpy.

    And now we reach the Winter of my discontent.  As you can imagine, with all my girlie parts in a constant state of flux, I’ve gotten really good at sensing changes.  Or maybe I’m really sensitive to changes.  Ms. Right has been complaining the loudest in this cold weather.  I’ve been perfectly happy hibernating on the couch, curled up under a blanket after munching on hot fat comfort food, watching TV with Gary’s feet in my lap.  In fact, I’ve been enjoying it.  But I couldn’t ignore what she was saying any more.  So, a visit to the doctor and pit stop at the mammory mushing machine, followed up by a little sonagramming has lead to the very first biopsy above my waist line.

    The nurse and doctor and sonagram technician had me feeling like I was hanging out with the girls at the most unusual luncheon.  The Mad Hatter in me could almost see the tea cups set on the table. For those of you who don’t have the need to wear a bra or who have never undergone a breast biopsy, I’ll fill you in.  You’re awake, they cover you in orange antiseptic and then they numb your breast.  Then you’re asked to shuffle over that way, turn this way, and put your arm over your head like this, all without disturbing the drape and staring at your bright orange breast peaking out.  While the technician leans over your head with the wand, the doctor pokes away asking “Can you feel this?  Can you feel that?”.  Then a few samples are taken, one of the bigger cysts is drained, and then the nurse gives you a little styrophoam cup full of diet Pepsi, those little ice cubes I’ve only seen in hospitals, and my favorite part – a bendy straw.  The whole process was akin to being at the dentist except I didn’t have to wrap my mouth around that sucky tool and I got to watch them drain the cyst on the sonagram.  The upside to a biopsy is the swelling makes you look really chesty afterwards so to go with my Madonna left, I have a Dolly Parton right.

    So now I wait.  As I have waited three times before.  As I have been waiting for 29 years.  My enemy within has been hiding away in the recesses of my molecules, sneaking around and attacking once in a while like terrorist.  They sit back and build little cell shoe bombs and microscopic back pack bombs and wake up their sleeper cells to call them to active duty whenever it seems my body has dropped the red alert.  All I can do is stand guard and push back.  Proactively fight the fight.  I’ll have the results on Tuesday.  And in the spirit of that 16 year old girl who drove herself to the doctors, I’m maybe not as worried about any of this as I should be.  

    Because sooner or later, its going to hit.  I know its shocking to hear little Miss Sunshine say that.  It seems so fatalistic somehow but I’ve had too many abnormal test to deny what my possible medical future may be.  If my micro-terrorist have chosen to go malignant, then I fight back.  If they choose to remain benign, I continue to stand guard.  Its what I’ve been doing for almost 30 years.  I imagine that I will be doing it for 30 more.  Getting through this brutal winter, seeing my son step back from the edge of his sorrowful cliff, carving out a happy space for Gary and I to live in, reaching out to those that love me so that I can love them back – these are my joys and challenges for today.  And tomorrow. And after the results get back.  In the meantime, let me listen to some Led Zepplin, wear the oxygen reader on my nose and press my breath againt the window pane.  It sure to melt the frost.

  • I Don’t Get It

    I have a confession to make.  I don’t get it.   Well, I should say that I don’t get all of it.  Every February 14 rolls around and I get caught up in the trappings of all this pink and red and fluffy feel-good stuff.  That’s quite a feat for someone who doesn’t actively participate in warm fuzzy feel-good sports. Despite the illness I feel at watching the fleece footie pajama commercials played back to back with the four foot Vermont Teddy Bear spots, I still woke up this morning compelled to wish Gary a happy Valentine’s Day.  Afterwards, I made a dash to my Facebook wall to see all the goodies that were doled out to my fellow females, “liked” every “Happy Valentine” status I ran across, and posted a few of my own.  There was a sign of relief that none of my friends were wearing those pepto bismol pink footie pajamas while snuggled up to a giant teddy bear.  I think I’d have to un-friend them.  My Aunt did hit a home run when she posted a photo of a leaf with a little heart shaped hole in it, sporting the caption “Happy Veggietine Day”.  Meanwhile, back in the real world, there are dozens of Valentine colored, heart shaped balloons festooning the drive to the floral shop next to my office while the steady stream of flowers roll out the back door and into their fleet of happy-vans with less than happy looking drivers.   The whole scene made me want to stay out of sight, in case there were little cherubs hiding inside those balloons and flowers who wanna stick it to Ms. Valentine grumpy-pants with those pointy little arrows.

    As a child, I’d go to school with my stack of valentines and hand them out to my class mates.  One year we decorated shoe boxes, covering them in pink, white and red tissue paper, little heart stickers, and glitter, complete with a slit for the cards to go in.  And every year, my mother would pick up enough Valentines to give each kid in that class one.  And every year, I would sit at the table addressing envelopes and saving the icky ones for the kids I wasn’t crazy about.  At the time, I thought I was the bee’s knees and that all the other kids couldn’t possibly be putting me on their icky card list.  But as soon as I hit middle school, the light bulb came on – I’m sure I got as many icky ones as I gave.  Every where you went, you’d find those sickeningly sweet chalk candy hearts with feel good words on each one. As I grew up and grew awkward, I was faced with an allergic reaction to those school dances to celebrate this romantic holiday.  There never really was much of a place on the dance floor for a chubby freckle faced geek in glasses and braces. 

    So began a long standing tradition in my life of just sort of glazing over this time every year, regardless of my romantic status.  When my son was in school, I continued my Mom’s long standing tradition by sending him off with his cards, and on occasion, baking some sweet confections to deliver to the party.  A mother’s love comes with blinders sometimes.  I never saw an icky card in the stack he brought home and those candy hearts he handed to me spoke profound beautiful words and didn’t taste like chalk.  

    Keith and I never really celebrated this day in the traditional sense either.  He always wished his first wife a happy Valentines Day via email since this was their wedding day.  Then he’d wait till after Valentines and raid the candy aisle to take advantage of the half price sale.  That was about it.  That was all I wanted from someone who showed me love every day.  My first Valentine without him was spent doing two things.  Emailing his first wife to wish her a happy Valentines Day and then sitting in my office with a box full of cards I’d made, sifting through them to pick out what I would have sent him if we had been the sort of couple that celebrated.  All the while, I was asking myself why was it now that I wanted to send him a card?  Simply because I couldn’t?

     Basically, Valentines Day started off as a violent Roman fertility festival which morphed into marking the anniversary of St. Valentine’s martyrdom and eventually evolved into Hallmark doing the happy dance.  If you’re alone, you are reminded of it.  If you’re partnered up, there is this nagging sensation that you have to do something or buy something.  As always, I look to my parents as the supreme example on how to survive a commercial holiday.  They are among the millions currently without power from this recent storm.  So for Valentines Day, they are keeping each other warm by the fire.  Dad’s managed to use their generator to give Mom hot showers, refrigeration, and enough power to visit the internet so she can see my Happy Valentines to her.  Now that’s romantic.  The kind of romance that can’t fit on a card, or on a candy heart, a balloon, a sparkly piece of jewelry, or even on a flower arrangement. 

    Of course that’s the way to do it if your a couple.  If you aren’t a couple, then have some fun with it any way.  There’s a boat load of balloons right next to my office itching to be set free.  Bet you could find the same kind near you.  Then randomly select a fellow single from your contact list and send them one of those giant bears and flannel pajamas.  They’re either going to laugh which means you made their day or un-friend you on Facebook which spares you having to give them the icky card next year. 

    A second chance at love may be my one warm fuzzy feel-good sport.  Well – that and puppies and kittens – maybe.  As for my plans for celebrating Valentines day, I’m wrapping up the work week and heading home.  There’s this guy there now, waiting for me to arrive so we can start our evening, and who shows me love everyday.  Even without a generator or a compulsive urge to buy candy on sale.  That part I get.  That part I am grateful for.

  • The Brackets Wrapped Around Life

    It was spaghetti sauce making day in my house.  An age old tradition dating back to the days of Chef Keith banging around the pots and pans, chopping the onions, browning the meat, and simmering a laundry list of ingredients together all day on the stove.  He’d sample it over and over again, sharing each taste test with everyone in the house until when it was time to actually accompany the sauce with pasta, we were already full.  Then we’d pull out the freezer bags and load them up for later dinners.  Strange how some things can change and still remain the same.  I’m the one fusing over the sauce, stuffing the house with it until they are full.  Everything else about the ritual remains the same. 

    One thing that has changed and still remains the same?  Keith’s birthday.  It still rolls around every January 12, regardless of the fact that he is not here to celebrate.  He would have been 57 today.  He will forever be 54.  So it seems fitting that it was spaghetti sauce day today.  There was a part of me that also wanted to rush out and buy one of those Carvel ice cream cakes.  It is what we did for every birthday under the Nielsen roof.  But of all the markers that tick by from the moment he left, this one is the hardest.  The cake would have felt so wrong.  How do you smile through the one event that started a life that no longer exists?  I’ve survived holidays, our anniversary, and the anniversary of his death with only brief moments of the darkness that rushes into the void he left behind.  Not so with his birthday.

    Birth and Death are the brackets wrapped around our life.  My Pop-Pop’s birthday was Friday.  The same day as my sister-in-law, Chrissie’s.  His brackets written in cold hard dates on a tomb stone and her story still being written.  Still a dot, dot, dot after her birthday.  Yesterday, a friend also turned 57.  Born just one day before Keith – dot, dot, dot – the days and years still ahead of him, unwritten.  We breath our first as a question and we breath our last with the answer.  Everything in between is who we are, where we go, what we do, who we touch, what we dream of.  The story between the brackets.  As hard as it is to think of Keith’s would-have-been 57, as often as I think about brackets only spanning 54 years, I also remind myself that 57 years ago today, Keith breathed his first question.  The answer he breathed at his last can only be shared in bits and pieces.  By all of us telling the tale of a man that lived life the way we all should between those brackets.  He never compromised, he did everything full tilt and in technocolor, and he loved and gave unconditionally to so many.  A man who managed to sneak a Carvel cake into the house for every birthday and who would proclaim after each batch of spaghetti sauce that this is the best one he ever made.  For all of us who still have dot, dot, dot – a moment of silence – no wait – a moment of singing happy birthday.  Somewhere, out there, there’s someone who knows we miss them that can hear it. 

     

     

  • My Christmas Story

    There are two great truths about me when it comes to Christmas.  The first truth is that I’ve never been fond of this time of year.  The second truth is that as I’ve gotten older I’ve masked it well, except to those closest to me, with an abundance of planning and prep work.  At least this second one was true until 2011.  All that prep and planning I had done all year came to a screeching halt in October.  In the day or two after Keith passed away, I reached into my closet to pull out all the gifts, still unwrapped, and quietly handed them out.  There didn’t seem to be any need to dress it up.  None of us felt it.  I had a tool bag embroidered with his name on it and handed it to Brandon, unsure if it was truly a gift or some dark inheritance that never touched his father’s hands.  I had a matching tool bag made for my dad, also with his name embroidered on it.  I had visions of the two of them, diligently working away on installing equipment for the company they both worked for as they both carried their matching tool bags with only the names on them to keep it straight. My first Christmas spent without Keith was spent planning his memorial service that took place just 4 days later and I tackled it with my usual planning and prep, if for no other reason than to keep busy.   I even went Christmas shopping for a new dress – black, mind you – to wear to the service and to sit shiva.  The Klinglesmiths threw their usual Christmas Eve bash which has always been the pinnacle of the festivities every year.  The one event I’d relish regardless of my given scrooge status from year to year.  And if not for being in their presence with all that awesome Klinglesmith vibe that they carry with them always, I fear that I may have grinched out on an epoch scale and done a whole lot more than take the who-hash.  All the Who-firefighters in Whoville couldn’t stop that who-fire.

    But I survived.  And survived the Christmas of 2012 with a little glimmer of planning and prep by having quilts made for the kids out of Keith’s tee shirts.  And watched both nieces’ Christmas concerts with delight. And attended another Klinglesmith rocking-eve bash.  Just like how I survived all those years ago, when the angst of the holidays became the norm for me sometime in my late teens.  I stopped analyzing the “why” or “how” of this annual funk.  There have been so many magical moments over the years that I did embrace.  My parents were the supreme superheros at surprises almost every year that I’m convinced they were hired by Santa as consultants.  I credit my mother for leading the charge on planning and prep.  She would wrap magnificent presents with elaborate bows that almost – I say almost – made you want to leave them wrapped up.  My father knew how to create yule tide ambiance like none other.  The house was filled with the scent of pine and fresh baked cookies while Christmas songs filled the house from Dad’s reel-to-reel player.  Back then, before the age of digital music, it was the only way to get 8 hours of play time without a song repeating.  We had this nativity scene carved out of the darkest wood and a yule log my parents made.  My brother and I would go out into the woods to collect crow’s feet to fill it.

    So imagine my surprise, now that I’ve reached my mid-life Christmas crisis, that I find I’m feeling something different this year.  Something that is erasing those two great truths.  I’m not grooving on the grinch and I’m not looking over my shoulders to see if those Christmas ghost are going to finally catch up to me this year.  I’m also not doing any planning.  I haven’t done any prep.  I was briefly inspired to put together a few photo presents but as I started to root around in my digital image library, I got the brilliant idea to organize them instead.  So now my photo program is jammed up doing a sort command and I can’t even see those darn photos.  And you know what?  That’s just fine.  Christmas will not be tied to purse strings, shopping lists, decking the halls, hustling and bustling.  All I really want is to selfishly give myself my own gift – I just want to be in the presence of the people I love.   I want to see them smile, bask in their joys and silently share their sorrows.  I want to hear that idle chit-chat around the table about days gone by while children run and play and start weaving their own tales here and now to share with their children when they are older and hopefully less tainted than I, at their own Christmas of their own making.

    And I’m realizing right now why this is different.  I’ve had Christmas already.  At Thanksgiving with my family in my parents’ new home in South Carolina.  We sat by the fire and watched movies.  I shared the ride down with my father and son as they chatted about mathematics and statistics and the science of space and soil.  My youngest niece decorated her face with rhinestones and eventually, two of them made their way to my boots.  I still walk around with a little silver gem on the toe of each foot.  My uncle deep fried his famous turkey and talked about hunting, showing off a gun he recently restored.  My mother covered the house with magnolia leaves and candles.  My brother and I kept sneaking into the kitchen for turkey sandwiches and her famous sweet potato pie.  My cousins joined my son and I to watch a beautiful indie film filled with imagery.  My sister-in-law kept us on the edge of our seats with her fandom while watching the football game.  All the kids piled onto a gate and we grownups took turns swinging it back and forth to give them a ride.  The morning of Thanksgiving, I ran around with the camera and uploaded the images for all the family to see.

    There is was – Christmas.  As it should be.  Which means I’m off the hook for my lack of planning – right?  Maybe I’ll go shopping tomorrow just for the rush of it.  Now if I can figure out how to skype the Klinglesmiths tomorrow so it will be like I’m there this year, I’d have it made.  And for Christmas day, my son and I will carry out the age old Jewish tradition of eating Chinese.  Any one want to join us?  Last minute?  No planning or prep necessary – and yes, Cherish, there is a Santa Claus – its a wonderful life – and we can all have a Miracle on 34th street.  If we can let go, let it happen, and just live in the moment and spirit of the season.

  • Letting Go

    On a particularly warm sunny day in February of 1991, I stepped out of a women’s clinic with the news that I was expecting.  I was so young then.  Fresh out of college,  I was an energized naive 22 year old woman who had just been told that everything had changed.  With each day, each cell dividing and changing and growing in my womb, I found the courage to embrace that fierce protective love that a mother has.  I knew that I could put my own selfish desires aside for this one life.   While he grew inside, we grew together – he and I.  I first felt those little butterfly flutters deep inside long before there was any physical signs of him.  My heart raced with his every time I’d hear his heart beating through the stethoscope.  He kept hiding from the sonogram so I would only catch glimpses of him as he’d turn his back – a fetus who just wanted to be alone in his own world, like his mother who often enjoyed just sitting in the still of her moment with no one else interrupting that peace.  He’d roll back and forth inside, poking his foot out from under my ribs and I’d poke back – our first game – and we’d play it for hours before bedtime.  I’d waddle down to the local market and buy a tray of fresh baked cinnamon rolls, waddle back to the apartment and eat the whole tray, washing it down with a tall cool glass of milk – just he and I indulging in our sweet tooth.  My water broke on the morning of September 28,1991. I ate a breakfast of scrabbled eggs and bacon cooked up by his father, taking bites between contractions.  Then we rushed to the hospital where he as born at 10:40 AM.  Jimmy stayed inches away from him as the nurses cleaned him up, swaddled him tightly in those little white blankets with the blue and pink stripes, placed him in my arms, dimmed the lights and left us alone with him.  And the first thing Zach did was open his eyes and look around as if to say “this is cool, I’ll stay a while”.  And I played with his feet through the blanket, just like all those evenings when he was a part of me.  Then they took him to the nursery and it was the first time we had ever been apart.  I wanted to eat lunch with him in my arms.  I never wanted to let him out of my arms again.  Every moment I had in the hospital, I held him, until the nurses insisted I needed to sleep and swept him away to the nursery.  It was the start of learning to let go.  The hardest lesson a parent will ever have to learn and the most selfless act that they will ever need to do.

    My son is now the same age as I was when I was pregnant with him.  That same precious energetic naive age that we all cross through.  An age of angst and promise all rolled into one.  So ready for the world and so afraid to fail it.   He is at that age where I have to truly let go and believe that even if I don’t see him every day, talk to him every day, text him every day – that I have handed him all the building blocks to chart his own course.   I’ll hold the history of his life in my heart.  His first step, his first words, his first day at school, his first bad grade, his first bully, his first dance with his first date, his first day on his first job.  He learned to drive in his mom’s little stick shift Mazda and I would test him on his shifting smoothness by getting in the car with a full cup of coffee and telling him his driving better not spill it.  And how I marveled over his senior band concert when he wailed on that baritone saxophone for the Star Wars canteen song.  I followed him to Las Vegas for his 9 ball tournament, where I got to watch him lean his full frame comfortably over the pool table to make the winning shot.

    From that first moment that we separated, I knew I would always have to let him go – again and again – but letting go doesn’t mean I have to stop being witness, feeling his sorrows with him, sharing his joys, embracing all that is quintessentially Zach.   It means I get to watch him walk the path that feels right for him on his own two feet – the same little feet that would poke out from under my ribs so I could poke them back.    (And Nickel Creek sings it all for me – When You Come Back Down)

  • A Simple Life

    All I’ve wanted is a simple life.  It seems like another life time ago that I had it.  But then I lost it.  The moment we knew Keith was sick, life suddenly became complicated, or more precisely, complex.  Yet our reaction was just as simple as our lives had been before.  Doctors appointments, organizing pills, keeping the germs away, paying the bills, keeping the household running – all simple actions in a complex situation.  Then Keith slipped away, creating a simple void that I filled with complicated thoughts.   Once you’ve lived a simple life, you become addicted.  A maddening craving that never goes away.  So, just like an addict, I’ve spent over a year running after it – running from the thoughts, running to adventure and travel, running into an overloaded schedule of work and then more work, and actually flat out running across the finish line of a half marathon.  I even ran away from home.  Moved just a handful of precious chattel down the road 50 miles from the town I thought I would grow old in.

    But you can only run so far and fast.  On the day I moved the last of my things out of Easton, there could be no more running.  I had it again.  By every technical definition, I was once again living a simple life.  I had a quiet house in the country. I found a new career in a beautiful little office right around the corner.  A handyman and his family became my tenants and take better care of the house than I ever could.  And yet – what was this rumbling?  This sound in my head and the pound in my heart?  I was so focused on running towards that shiny dream of simplicity that I never saw the wave of pain, confusion, grief, doubts, fears, and shaken faith that had built up so slowly at my heels.  Built to a monstrous level that could do nothing other than crest and crash over me at that precise moment that I had stopped the chase.

    I had everything.  My life was better than good.  I lost it all.  And yet, I found it all over again.  It should have been glorious.  I wanted to sing and not cry.  Instead, I spent a month of sleepless nights and started to find myself wide awake and restless long before the birds would sing to the rising sun.  I would wander the house like a ghost, my stomach knotted up and leaving no room for sustenance.  On October 18 I couldn’t sleep at all.  That morning, I stood before Gary in the kitchen – a simple man willing to share a simple life with me – and I disintegrated right there in front of him.  Imploded and melted into that blinding love for Keith, sobbing madly, with every inch of my body and soul.  I couldn’t stop it.  I couldn’t calm it.  The crest of that dreaded wave of loss and pain and grief.  And I’ve been riding it ever since – until last night.

    I’ve only heard of moments of clarity, brought on by meditation, prayer, drinking through stupid and into numbness.  And yet, here I was – sitting on the front step of Anita’s house last night while her daughter handed out candy to trick-or-treaters.  The guys were hanging out in the kitchen dining on chicken and dumplings.  We idly chatted about our own trick-or-treat adventure growing up while sipping on our lime-o-ritas.  The night so delightfully warm for Halloween.  A bee and a cookie monster paid us a visit.  Two Cleopatras enchanted us.  One visitor couldn’t see through his head-to-toe tied-dyed body suit so he had his sister escort him from house to house.  Every time Stella handed out candy, she’d fluff my already, as she called it, “poofy hair”.

    And I wasn’t thinking about all I’ve lost, all that’s changed, what the future holds, my job, what I needed to do tomorrow.  The only past conjured up in that moment was my childhood memories.  I wasn’t running.  I wasn’t filling a void with complicated thoughts.  I wasn’t looking over my shoulder at the deadly wave.  There was only the calm waters of my soul.  Peace.  Everything changed in the blink of an eye.  I left the ghosts that have haunted me on that doorstep in the dark of night on all hallows eve.  This morning, I woke at my usual 4:45 AM.  Kissed Gary on the neck and slipped out of bed at 5:00 AM so I could start the coffee, started slicing venison for jerky by 5:15 AM while infused with the spirit of my early rising love, my beloved Keith.  Infused – yes – not haunted – by that infectious Tigger that would bound into the bedroom to bother this night owl’s restful sleep because he had already been up for hours.  He is here.  He always has been.  Are you proud of me, Keith?  This is all we ever wanted for each other – a simple life.  I will live it for both of us.

  • Would Have, Could Have, Should Have

    Over and over, the scene plays out in my mind. Just beyond my eyes, I see Keith lying on the giant sectional couch, frail and pale. Just a shadow of his former self. The vibrant man with a face that could speak volumes was buried under mountains of blankets. Only the top of his head could be seen peeking out of the covers. I sat at his feet, watching TV as I layered on the nail polish when his soft voice floated out from his resting spot. “I love the smell of nail polish” and he was asleep again. Here we were, me wanting to rub his feet like I used to in his healthy days and knowing I couldn’t because of the pain he would feel so I chose to keep my restless hands busy with painting them. Then he made that small statement in the final days of his life, reveling something about himself that in all the years we were together, I never knew. I though, this is something I should have known. What else do I not know about him? I think that frequently – what else would I have learned about him, had he survived the cancer? What else could we have discovered about each other?

    Any one who has walked this path, laid to rest someone they love, can attest to the would have, could have, should have. It infects your brain sometimes. It makes you stare at the ceiling in the late hours of night, desperate to close your eyes and make those questions disintegrate into the inky dark.

    The would have, could have, should haves don’t start until they are gone. In the moment, you are just the referee making the call from the field during this sorrowful game. Then you watch the instant replay – almost obsessively – again and again and again, until it becomes its own kind of cancer. Your friends and family watch the replay with you. I am witness to a few friends who are going through the death spiral of their sick loved ones. I was witness to a few who recently paced through those harshly lighted hospital halls, trying to make the calls that would let the game end peacefully. All I can offer to them is this – if the would have, could have, should haves strike – take solace in knowing that they are not whispering in our ear out of regret. They whisper to you that you would have wanted them to stay forever, you could have loved them for that long, and you should have faith in the fact that they are with you always.

  • Plans are Subject to Change

    It’s been two years now since we got the news that Keith had cancer. Right before the Labor Day weekend of 2011. I was such a different person then that when I try to look back, I can’t remember what I was like. I do remember that we had plans, dreams, a bucket list, and that sparkling naive idea that we would be together through our golden years. But plans are subject to change.

    And change they have, on a grand scale at a rapid fire pace. By December of 2011, Keith was gone. By February of 2012, my dad was on the road to a full recovery from the gall bladder issues he was going through at the same time Keith was being treated. By May of 2012, the bulk of our financial fallout from Keith’s cancer had been resolved. When summer rolled around, Zach and Brandon were both finally set for college. My parents moved in that November and Christmas found me at the Klinglesmith house just like I used to do years ago.

    By March of 2013 I had realized that I was capable of loving again. It’s another leap of faith that I temper with the hope that if he isn’t destined to walk with me together into our golden years, I can once again conjure up the strength to say goodbye. What a strange notion that Keith and Gary could meet on the other side. They could shake their heads at this crazy girl’s maelstrom of thoughts and adventures. There would be endless discussions about politics, the state of the economy, our military men who fight for our country, and the nation’s current status. They’d share their love for their children with each other. Keith would give Gary a tongue lashing for taking his wife on a motorcycle. Gary would chuckle at Keith for his brief run as a guppy farmer. But that day isn’t here yet. So today, in this moment, my heart will hold all the love from both the one who is gone and the one in my here and now. As if I have found an endless treasure in the depths of my grief.

    In April, I lost the same job that afforded me the opportunity to work from home to care for Keith. By May, I took on a seasonal job in Ocean City which shook off the cobwebs, got me out of the house, and gave me a diversified caring fun group of coworkers whom I now call my friends. Yesterday was my last day and they sent me off in style with pizza and homemade ice cream cake. I’m going to miss our small talk between phone calls. The way we all ran around at a mad pace on Saturdays to handle all the guests checking in and out, until the pizza showed up and we’d take turns slipping into the conference room to scarf up a slice. We’d play Pandora radio and whenever the station stopped, one of them would turn to me and say “I’m still listening” so I’d go to the website and promptly click the “I’m still listening” button to start it up again. I have an overwhelming urge to call them right now to ask if they are still listening and should we order pizza for lunch.

    But like the job that kept me home ended at just the right time, this job ended at a point where I need to have time on my hands. Time to move. It’s this weekend – the two year anniversary of Keith’s diagnosis- that everything leaves the house we once shared. The family homestead where 3 kids grew up. This same house my parents lived in before moving to South Carolina in July. After all of their own moving, they still found the time to move my stuff to Salisbury. Dad and my brother Lance loaded up my washer and bedroom furniture, then the whole Lankford gypsy clan made their way to my new abode. My oldest niece held open the door so we could let all the flies in. My youngest ran around the house counting Gary’s parrots and eating cheezits. When we got down to the heavy furniture, we stood on the brink of defeat. We had already spent the whole morning moving things and now faced with the big heavy dresser and wardrobe, it seemed like an impossible task. Then Lance figured out how to take the drawers out so the frames were light enough to handle. We all laughed at ourselves for not being smart enough to do that when we moved them out of Easton.

    And so it will go this weekend. Christie is driving down in a rental truck tomorrow night. Everything must go. We plan on getting all of the furniture loaded and then off to its new home. That’s the plan as it stands now but the last two years have taught me a few important things. You have to sway and give with whatever the wind brings to you. You have to know that nothing is written in stone. You’ll never cross life’s finish line with a victory smile without adjusting as you go. It isn’t a race – it’s an obstacle course. The only constant we can count on is plans are subject to change.