• Book Info
  • Scribbles

Wynded Words

~ Home of author Sarah Wynde

Category Archives: Mom

Cedar Beach Campground

06 Monday Aug 2018

Posted by wyndes in Campground, Grace, Marketing and promotion, Mom, Personal, Zelda

≈ 5 Comments

In the distance — not so very far away at all, but obscured by trees and campers and people stuff — I can see a glimmer of blue. A lake. And I assume it has a nice beach, because this campground was, over the weekend, absolutely filled with families and kids having fun.

I, however, haven’t looked at it, because Zelda can’t really walk and she makes bad choices when left alone. Bad choices! I used to tell R, when I sent him off to do things with his friends as an early and then late-teenager, “Make good choices,” and eventually he said the same thing to me whenever I left the house. It always made me smile.

But I would scold Zelda with that phrase if I could. Alas, she wouldn’t understand. But if I leave her on the floor, she jumps onto the seats to look out the windows, and if I leave her on a seat, she jumps to the floor so that she can go try a different window. She wants to be able to see my return. So no walks for me, because every jump for her causes a yelp of agony and yet she refuses to not jump if I’m not immediately available to stop her.

I like my campsite, though. The campground is very much a seasonal place, a mix of permanent installations and trailers that look like they’ve been here for a while with some short-term spots. But there was a grassy row — I’d guess four campers could get squeezed in if necessary — that I had all to myself. With a cute family kitty-corner to me with three small kids and a brand-new trailer and very Canadian accents. They made me smile, too.

Today is seven years since my mom died. I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately, about why she is the only person I want when I need to cry. She was a brisk mother. My ex once described her as “austere” to me, which I thought was totally wrong, but she did not suffer fools gladly and his experience of her was undoubtedly different than mine. But she could be quite dispassionate. I could cry to her and she would be warm and loving and sympathetic, but she wasn’t going to take on any of my pain and she was going to stop me as soon as she decided I was wallowing.

It occurs to me that maybe I said it best in my eulogy for her, so I’ll link to that: my eulogy for my mother.

But I didn’t need to be a grown-up with her. It wasn’t about love, it was about her endless ocean of calm. She was extremely good at pulling small children’s loose teeth, because she didn’t particularly care how much you fussed. If you were ready to have the tooth out, she was going to yank it. If you weren’t ready, she was going to shrug and leave you alone. I think she was probably an excellent nurse.

There’s a line in Grace — oh, a paragraph. I’ll quote it:

She wished she could talk to her mom. Just for half an hour. To hear her mom’s voice, to let herself be folded into her mother’s hug. She could imagine the sharp, searching look her mother would give her, followed by the, “Chin up, darlin’. That’s my girl,” words of approval.

Pretty sure my mother never, in my entire life, said those words to me or would have said those words to me. That wasn’t her language, and she wasn’t a southerner. But a look, a nod, a “You’ll be fine,” the confidence in me, but the hug, too. That was my mom. I miss her.

But no wallowing! Moving on, I’m on the road today, headed to a provincial park. Did I mention that I’m in Canada? I’m in Canada. It was fun being confused by the distances on the road signs — 88 miles to Ottawa? How did I get that so wrong! Oh, right, kilometers. Sigh of relief...

And today I’m looking forward to trying out a Canadian grocery store. I’ve eaten only snacks for the past two days — healthy-ish snacks, carrots and nuts and dried fruit and jerky and turkey slices — but I am ready to buy some ingredients and cook some real food.

So those are my goals for the day: get moving, go to a grocery store, eat some real food, and enjoy Canada. And not let Zelda hurt herself anymore. I’m not happy with how the stitches look, but I’m not yet so worried that I am searching for Canadian vets. And she’s putting weight on her foot now, so that’s a good sign.

Eight days until Grace releases. I’m trying not to be anxious about it, but I am. I try to avoid reading reviews, but you have to read the first few in case there are issues with the file or problems with the download. I’m going to bet myself a container of Sanders dark chocolate caramels with sea salt — extremely delicious, not at all good for me — that at least one of the first five complains about pronouns and Avery. If two or more do, I’m going to buy myself something even nicer, although I’m not sure what yet. Maybe a sushi dinner at a good sushi place. A win! (Although if you’re reading this, planning on reading Grace, and willing to write a review, don’t let this influence you, please. I know that people are going to complain about Avery, just the way people complained about not knowing that Henry was black in A Gift of Ghosts, but that doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to it.)

Ooh, after 10 already, so time for me to get going. More about Grace soon! I’ve got some fun bookmarks to give away, so I need to think about how to do that. But check it out:

spine of book

That is one ridiculously thick book. By my standards, anyway. My sister-in-law’s review: “Oh, it’s so pretty!!!”

North Rim, Grand Canyon

24 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by wyndes in Campground, Grace, Grief, Mom

≈ 1 Comment

Grand Canyon from a distance at sunrise

The Grand Canyon looking grand.

From before this adventure even began, the Grand Canyon was my destination. I wanted to scatter the last of my mom’s ashes here. It felt like a way of honoring her memory, of thanking her for how much she encouraged me to be adventurous and to take risks.

This morning, Zelda and I took a 1.5 mile hike from the North Rim Campground, which is set in a pine forest, to the Grand Canyon Lodge, which overlooks the canyon. I sat on a bench there, Zelda enthusiastically appreciating all the miscellany of smells (in other words, being a totally non-peaceful pain) and admired the view and remembered my mom.

R gave me a candle for Christmas two years ago that said, “Home is where my Mom is.” Then he told me he hadn’t noticed what it said before he bought it and he just liked the smell. Ha.

I reread A Gift of Ghostsyesterday. I was looking up something specific — oh, my initial description of Max. I wanted to be sure that I got it right in Grace. But I wound up re-reading the whole thing. It was odd timing, I guess, because Zane’s scene at the end, where he knows he has to let go of his mom, knows he has to say good-bye… well, maybe that’s what brought up all these feelings of mine today.

But I really didn’t expect the Grand Canyon to inspire so much emotion on my part. I pictured — well, a crowded scenic overlook. Lots of tourists. Dry, sandy air. A big hole in the ground. Instead, I got a quiet bench, total solitude, the sun rising in the east, storm clouds overhead, a deep chill in the air, a happy dog, a fantastic view, and an unexpectedly intense burst of grief.

In all of my dozens of versions of Grace, I have never managed to write the ending. I know what I think happens. The path there changes, but the ending never has. But every time I get close, I go back and start from the beginning again. I want to say that maybe that means it’s time to work on a new ending, one that doesn’t involve letting go, but every time I consider that choice, it feels wrong to me.

Letting go and moving on, those are right things. Those are good things. But I need to make room for the reality that letting go doesn’t mean not grieving. Letting go doesn’t change the pain of the loss. It just acknowledges the pain, accepts it. Maybe even embraces it. I think maybe Grace needs to cry. A lot. (Not the story, the character.) I think maybe a huge part of my Grace problem is that Grace cannot get to her happy ending without really, truly facing her grief and sorrow and loss, which was never part of my plan. Huh. Well… I guess I should be working on Grace right now.

Meanwhile, the North Rim campground — more forest than I expected, quite spacious, lots of people in appropriate winter attire, seriously cold. And my generator has decided not to work, which does not make me happy. Also I am almost out of propane. No internet, too! So today is going to include a search for propane, a scenic drive, and — given the current lack of electricity — probably not actually much more writing. Oh, well. I bought coffee at the general store, because of my own lack of propane and non-functional generator and they give free refills all day, so maybe I’ll drink lots of coffee and knit. And think more about Grace’s grief.

Happy Birthday, Mom

25 Friday Nov 2016

Posted by wyndes in Mom

≈ 3 Comments

On Monday, I gave a presentation at my dad’s computer club. I was chatting before it started with one of the women in the room and I couldn’t say how it came up, but she said to me, “We knew your mom. She was wonderful.” I had a fleeting moment where I thought I might burst into tears on the spot, but I swallowed them back and agreed, “Yes, she was.”

Today would have been her 73rd birthday. I wore a necklace that we bought together in St. Thomas on some one of our family trips — I think maybe a vacation as the year changed from 2000 to 2001 — and a pair of earrings that belonged to her, and all day long I’ve been thinking of her.

I know it’s okay that she’s gone — she would have been five years farther into her Alzheimer’s diagnosis if the pancreatic cancer hadn’t taken her and she wouldn’t have liked that at all — but I miss her. She loved Christmas and the holidays. She would have been baking up a storm, buying presents, and decorating like mad already and my wishy-washiness about where I was going to be for the next month would be driving her crazy.

But I made Christmas cookies with my niece today — sugar cookies, the roll-out kind — and my mom would have liked that a lot. It wasn’t deliberate. I didn’t think, “hmm, what can I do on my mom’s birthday that would please her if she knew about it?” and then decide to bake cookies with my niece. But if I had tried to do something that would please her, I probably couldn’t have picked anything better. And there’s something truly satisfying about that.

Happy birthday, Mom.

The interesting stuff…

19 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by wyndes in Mom, Personal, Travel

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Frances Slocum State Park, Pennsylvania, Wyoming PA

I walked Zelda this morning into a scene of such stunning beauty that I was glad I’d left my cell phone back in Serenity. If I’d had it with me, I would have tried to capture the moment and I would have failed, because I don’t know how to take good photos, and it would have been just another generic pretty scenery picture. But the full moon was still up, in a sky that had wisps of sunrise clouds, a very subtle pink and twilight purple, in an otherwise overcast white. Mist was rising off water that looked a deep dark rippling green and in the distance, the hills… rolled. An artist could have drawn the classic three intersecting lines that anyone would recognize as hills in the distance and it would have been those exact three hills. It wasn’t bright, it wasn’t showy, but it was so beautiful I had to hold my breath, as if breathing would shatter it.

I’m in Frances Slocum State Park, in Pennsylvania. I came here because it was the closest camping spot to a cemetery I wanted to visit. Yeah, with the Grand Canyon and Mount Rushmore on my list of places to see, as well as the entire country of possibilities, my first destination was a graveyard. Ha.

But I’ve had my mom’s ashes sitting on my closet shelf for about four years now. She died five years ago and at the time I thought we’d get together and do some family thing with her ashes after a suitable time had passed. I don’t know what exactly — take them out to sea, maybe? On a cruise? She would have loved that, if the whole family had gotten together and gone on a cruise in celebration of her. But instead my dad remarried. There’s an interesting awkwardness to not being finished with your first wife’s business when you already have a second wife, or at least so it seemed to me, and my mom’s ashes became part of that.

Long story short, eventually they wound up with me, and I’ve let them sit, not knowing what to do with them. Her last remains. Except that they are so not her last remains. I am what remains of her. R is what remains of her. The scrapbooks she created, those are her remains. My sister, my brother, their kids, our memories… so much remains of her. And these ashes, they’re not important, not really. But I did want to dispose of them respectfully. Even, I guess, lovingly. If there is any possibility that my mom’s spirit is connected in any way to the pile of grey dust that was her body, I wanted her to be happy with what happened to that dust.

That brings me to the cemetery I was looking for. My great-grandmother is buried there, and I thought it would be nice to scatter my mom’s ashes there. She loved her grandmother and treasured her memories of visiting her grandmother’s farm when she was little. I wish I had any idea where the farm was because that would have been perfect (barring the extreme discomfort of asking someone if they’d mind if you scattered ashes on their property and/or the great likelihood that it’s some kind of housing development now…) but the cemetery was the best I could do.

It was lovely. Beautiful, green, serene. Gorgeous and old. Also surreal. I wandered through the gravestones looking for the right one — Myrtle Smith, with Paul Smith next to her — and instead finding, with vague shocks of recognition, everyone else. My grandfather’s parents. My grandfather’s sister. My other great-grandparents. My great-great grandparents. Plenty of strangers’ names, of course, but down every line, another Smith, Rozelle, Lewis, Labar, and Hahn. It was eerie and charming and sort of heart-wrenching. I looked at what I was pretty sure was my great-grandparents’ gravestone — Grover Cleveland and Jessie Labar — and knew almost nothing about them. I recognized their names but that was it.

In the end, I did find the right grave and sprinkled a handful of my mom’s ashes there. I didn’t anticipate how emotional I would feel about it, how much it would bring my grief back to me and how sharp that pain would be. The dead always outnumber the living in a cemetery, but being alone there, surrounded by my forgotten relatives, was… hard.

Afterwards, I drove into the town, West Pittston, looking for the houses where my mom had grown up. I had an idea of discreetly sprinkling more of her ashes, I think — but the streets were narrow and the idea of parking was terrifying and navigating was a challenge — Z is just not good at reading maps for me and my GPS is always a little late — so I came back to the campground and settled in.

Fortunately, the park is beautiful. The campsites are shaded by trees, with screens of trees separating one site from the next. It’s been rainy and muddy, but very peaceful. (With the minor exception of my poor neighbors not having much success handling their whiny kids. The dad’s exasperated, “What am I supposed to DO with her?” had me wincing in sympathy.)

I suspect the reason people think of the ocean when it comes to ashes is that there’s actually quite a bit of them — a handful can be scattered elegantly but dumping out the whole bag just seemed very not cool. Both not respectful and also leaving a mess for the person next mowing the lawn to be disturbed by. Maybe if you can hurl them off a mountaintop, the wind would carry them away, but my image of gently scattering dust does not match the reality of a heavy duty plastic bag with a mound of ashes in it.

Still, I’ve taken many long walks here, including one where I went fairly far off a trail into the woods and found a nice young tree that looked like it might benefit from some nutrients at its roots. I don’t know how my mom would feel about that — she wasn’t much of a nature person. She preferred her camping to include comfortable beds and flush toilets.

But I kept some of the ashes. I’m not sure why. I thought I was ready to let go, but maybe not. It’s definitely one of those times when logic is warring with intuition, though. Logic is saying “Storage! Trees, nutrients!” but my intuition is telling me that there’s something else I need to be doing. For most of my life — all of my life — logic would have won, but not today. Maybe I’ll visit my grandparents’ graves while I’m at this. Or maybe I’ll bring the ashes to the Grand Canyon with me. I wonder how many people do that? I bet lots. It seems like that kind of place. Or maybe I need to let my siblings have their own experiences with saying goodbye in that way. I’m really not sure, but what’s left of her ashes comes with me.

Anyway, at the moment, I’m sitting in a grocery store parking lot, wishing I still had a grill. Wondering if I should buy firewood. Trying to think of some food plan for the next few days and mostly eating spice drops, currently my worst food vice. Today and tomorrow I’m floating around PA and on Monday, I’m headed into NJ for the day. Next week, NY, and the week after that, Vermont.

Mother’s Day

09 Monday May 2016

Posted by wyndes in Grace, Mom, Movies, Personal, R, Randomness, WIP, Writing

≈ 4 Comments

On Saturday, I was bracing myself for the Mother’s Day blues.

Five years ago, I didn’t see my mom on Mother’s Day. I called her, I expect, but I didn’t do flowers or a card or a gift — I was in grad school, quitting my job, life was busy. I didn’t know, because we so rarely do, that it would be our last holiday. I don’t feel guilty about that — she would scoff at me if I did. But I do think of her and miss her more on the holiday. At the best of times, it’s still a teary holiday for me. And this year, R was busy with finals, so I expected a solitary day. As I said, bracing myself.

Instead, there was an after-dark knock on the door on Saturday evening. I went to answer it with trepidation, that sense of ‘uh-oh, who could that be?’ But yay! It was R, home to surprise me, and a delightful surprise it was.

Instead of my solitary day, I made us a big breakfast and then we headed off to our annual Mother’s Day super-hero movie tradition. We saw Captain America: Civil War, which was unexpectedly good. I’d been careful not to read or see anything about it — I actually didn’t want to be spoiled, because my expectations were so low. I usually don’t mind spoilers, but in this case, I anticipated that spoilers would reveal things that would make me unhappy and I didn’t want to dread the movie, if that makes any sense. But it was surprisingly enjoyable and far more fun than I expected it to be.

Afterwards, he worked on his final papers and I thought about Grace. Didn’t write a word, but did finally decide to go backwards again. R came into my room at one point and I told him I was debating throwing the whole thing away and he forbid it, very sternly, so I guess I’m not doing that. But the last six weeks of words just don’t work for me, so I’ve deleted them from my file (saving them, of course, for when I change my mind again) and am starting over again from the point where I think it stopped working. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to re-use some parts, but I’m going to work on writing it as if it’s a clean slate.

Meanwhile, a friend taught me to knit on Saturday, so I have been knitting and thinking and knitting and thinking. No words written (unless I count these) but at least I’m not feeling frozen anymore which is how I spent the last week. I’m trying to remind myself to put progress before perfection, like a good positive discipline parent.

But I’m also thinking that maybe knitting would be a good metaphor for how I should be treating writing. Because in my knitting, I’m trying really hard to focus on process, not product. I finished off my first skein of yarn, and then I ripped it all out and started over. Not because I was worried about it not being good enough, but because the point of knitting for me is not to produce usable objects, but to have the mindful meditative process. I’m trying to find flow states, not create scarves. Maybe I should be treating my writing the same way. The goal isn’t to produce an end result that follows other people’s rules of storytelling and satisfies every single person who ever picks it up — the goal is to love what I do while I’m doing it.

Process, not product. It feels right. So now let’s see what the words are like when my only goal is to enjoy writing them.

73

24 Tuesday Nov 2015

Posted by wyndes in Mom, Personal

≈ 2 Comments

My mom would be 73 today. I both wish she could be here to celebrate the day and am so grateful that she isn’t. She’d been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s about a year before she died, so she’d be five years into that diagnosis by now. It made her so unhappy — not the diagnosis alone, I don’t think, but the feeling of losing who she was. Unless something had radically changed, she would not be glad to be four years farther down that road.

That said, I miss her. We weren’t a family who celebrated much — for most of the years where I lived far away, she got a phone call on her birthday and not much more. I wish I could go back and send her more sappy cards, the kind that told her how much I loved her and how grateful I was for how she loved me. I seriously offended R once when I said that I felt like the people who loved me most as me were all dead, but the love of a parent for a child is so different than the love of a child for a mother. Some day he’ll get it, but not, of course, until I’m dead.

That’s kind of bleak, though — I am again violating my sending positivity into the universe rule! So positivity — when I was a kid, my mom was the very best in our neighborhood at pulling teeth. She used to joke that she became a nurse because when she was little, she’d been sick and she’d had to get so many shots that she decided when she grew up, she’d be the other person on the end of the needle. But she was good on the other end of the needle, or the tooth as it were, because she did not flinch. One quick yank and that tooth would be out. You could get sympathy and a popsicle afterwards, but in the moment, you got brisk efficiency and matter-of-fact toughness.

My dad doesn’t like games — of any sort, really. He says he doesn’t like the feeling that he’s being manipulated. But my mom enjoyed them. We’d play cards at my maternal grandparents’ house, pinochle mostly, and sometimes Monopoly. But my favorite game to play with her was Mastermind. We usually played that at my other grandparents’ house. (Both sets of grandparents lived in the same town, so that’s where we went on vacation most often.) Of all the people that I could play with back then — siblings, grandparents, cousins — she was my favorite because we were so evenly matched. Both of us could usually get the answer in six moves, and sometimes less, and neither of us made mistakes in scoring. I don’t know how much alike my mom and I were in general — my feeling is not very much alike — but we were in the way we approached puzzles and games.

When she was dying, unconscious, close to the end, I was talking to my dad, I think, about how magical she always made Christmas when we were little. Undoubtedly helped by the fact that the grandparents lived in Bethlehem, PA, which is a town that takes the holiday seriously, but truly, my memories of childhood Christmas are sparkling and sweet, cookies and fun and laughter and lights. She tried to sit up and her hand tightened on mine. I don’t know what she was trying to say, but I’m glad she got to hear how much I treasured those memories and credited her for creating them for us.

The last thing she said to me was a few days earlier, similar circumstances, talking to my sister, thinking she was beyond hearing, until she sat up and said, “love you,” without opening her eyes. I feel really blessed to have gotten that moment, that time. I miss her so much, but I know I was lucky to have her for as long as I did.

My sister called a few days ago and said my nephew might have to work on Thanksgiving. My dad called this morning and he’s sick, doesn’t think he’ll be healthy enough in time to come to dinner. It’s still going to be a nice meal, of course, but… eh, I should probably go buy some cheap leftover dishes, so I can send them lots of food.

And I should probably get on with Noah’s words. I was working on a scene this morning with Rose, and it was really fun. I need to get back to it, because fun is good!

Swimming and yoga

31 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by wyndes in Grief, Mom, Randomness, Swimming, Yoga

≈ 2 Comments

It’s probably global warming and I should probably feel bad about the damage we’re doing to the planet and how we’re all going to die in droughts and super-storms in the next hundred years — actually I do feel bad about that — but it doesn’t prevent me from appreciating the fact that yesterday was such a lovely day that I stuck my feet in the pool. And the water was cool, but not so cold I couldn’t at least put my bathing suit on and maybe go in a little deeper. And once partway in, it was so nice to have the sun on my shoulders and so fun to have the dogs running around happily, that yeah, I really went swimming. Head under, laps back and forth, aimless floating, the whole thing. It was amazingly nice and not really cold at all. October 30th — it’s the latest I’ve gone swimming by probably at least a month. And so worth it. A couple times I’ve tried off-season swimming and it’s been a brisk dip, a refreshing chill, scurry to dry off, kind of thing, but this was not that. This was glorious appreciation of golden warmth and luxurious floating.

In the evening, I was out and — long story short, because I don’t have a lot of time — I was upset and sad, and I realized that I was wearing yoga-appropriate clothes and that 7PM yoga would start in about twenty minutes. So I went to evening yoga.

I cried. I cried so much that I had to get up and get a cloth to wipe my face because I was going to start choking on my snot. Many tears. It felt so incredibly healthy. Lisa, the yoga teacher that I personally think has a direct and two-way line to God in her head (or maybe her heart?), warned us at the beginning of class that it was Friday and sometimes the music on Friday was a little freaky, and then class started. The first song in reminded me of something from the Internet, specifically one of the “Where the Hell is Matt?” videos. I think it might have been Trip the Light, but I could be wrong about that. But I was not really listening, it was background music, and I was stretching and trying to be in the moment.

But the next song was one that slowly made me think of my mom. I didn’t recognize it at first, but it started getting more and more of my attention, until I realized that it was Judy Collins and that my mom used to play it on the piano. I probably hadn’t heard it since then. And then I heard a few more of the words and realized it was Rainbow Connection. My mom and rainbows have a profound connection to me and to have that song, playing at that moment, when I was that mood, after that week… the tears started gushing.

Stretch, stretch, more yoga, and then the song was John Mayer with “Daughters” and eventually Led Zeppelin and “Stairway to Heaven.” I swear it felt my mother wrote the playlist to tell me she was with me and that I wasn’t alone. And yes, I’m all weepy again, but it isn’t bad crying. It was music that made me feel not just less alone, but loved.

Writing yesterday — well, I broke 1K in total words, but story words was probably closer to 900 total. But it was good work and a good day, and today will be even better. Much fun stuff is happening in my story. I have a character, Sophia, who is just taking over in really unexpected ways. She was supposed to be just a crying girl, but apparently she’s quite stubborn now that she’s stopped crying.

Goal for today: words. Lots of them!

Four years

07 Friday Aug 2015

Posted by wyndes in Grief, Mom, Randomness

≈ 4 Comments

When my mom knew she was dying — early on, like maybe three days after she knew (which was probably a solid ten days before a doctor confirmed what she’d already deduced from a radiology report) — she said to my sister and me, “Your father will find someone, you be nice to her.” My sister said, “Of course.” I said, “No. Absolutely not. You don’t get to decide how I grieve and I am going to be grieving for a long, long time.”

Today is the fourth anniversary of her death and I spent it helping my stepmother unpack and move into her new kitchen. My mother would be proud of me. I know that. I can feel it. But, oh, I miss her.

She was so good at moving. I mentioned it in the eulogy I wrote for her, that was how important it was to who she was. When she moved, it was like a whirlwind of efficiency and energy, invisible 99% of the time, suddenly popped into existence to make the move painless, to turn it into a little subtle transition for her kids instead of the disruption that it really is. We’d move and a week later, it would feel like we’d lived in the new place forever. She was GOOD at moving.

I told someone recently that I’m only good at three things: editing, cooking, and writing (in that order.) And then I threw in a couple caveats about things that I might also be sort of good at. I forgot moving. I am very, very, very good at moving. Sometimes, though, moving and running are the same thing.

Today, I wish I was moving. But mostly, I think it would be running.

Mother’s Day

09 Saturday May 2015

Posted by wyndes in Mom, Personal

≈ 1 Comment

I intend to have an absolutely lovely Mother’s Day tomorrow. I’ll be driving to Sarasota, where I will pick up R, and we will go out to some nice AIP-friendly lunch (which means it will probably be a lot more generic than our usual taste, but that’s okay for now) and then to the Avengers movie. If we have time, I’m hoping I can convince him to take a walk on the beach afterwards, but the time limit is the dogs, who will be wanting food at home. On my way home, I plan to stop at Trader Joe’s, where I will buy myself some gluten-free dark chocolate caramels, which are… oh, crack. They are the crack of chocolate. At least for me.

It’s going to be a really nice day.

Today, though, I’m thinking about my mom. About how much I miss her. About what a good mom she was and whether she ever knew that. About how my default position with good news is still that I want to tell her, first and always. When I realized how many copies of Ghosts had been downloaded, she was the only person I wanted to call. I worked my way around to realizing that there were other people who would be proud of me, celebrate with me, but it took a while. The only person I wanted was her. And I realized this week, for really the first time, that one of the very saddest things about losing her so soon, so much too soon, is that she never gets to know the person I turn out to be.

Because I’m not stagnant. I’m growing and changing still. The cook I am today is light years away from the cook I was five years ago. And my mom never gets to know the cook for whom Thanksgiving dinner is playful and daily dinner is absurd. Hell, dinner? My *breakfasts* are more gourmet than the fanciest meal I ever made while she was alive.

She never read anything I’ve written. At the time, it didn’t matter. I didn’t care. I told her when she asked that I knew she would tell me it was wonderful, so I didn’t need her to say the words. But now… well, she might actually think it was wonderful. And I will never get to hear her say those words.

She didn’t know the person who dropped out of graduate school. She doesn’t know the me who is gluten-free and prioritizes yoga above work. She never met Bartleby. And the part of me that is spiritual says that’s okay, she knows. But the part of me that is practical and lives in the material world is so, so, so sad. I miss her so much. I want her to be here. And there aren’t any words, any comforting sayings, that make up for the fact that I can’t pick up the phone and call her and tell her that I am sad.

I am out of tissues.

Yoga and dogs

27 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by wyndes in Grief, Mom, Personal, Pets, Randomness, Yoga

≈ 2 Comments

Yesterday was a seriously tearful day. It’s been a while since I grieved so fiercely, but for the day — ugh, and now this morning, too — I missed my mother so intensely that the tears just kept flowing. It has gotten easier — I used to have days like that all the time and this was the first one in months — but the hole doesn’t go away.

That’s not what I wanted to write about, though. In yoga last week, when the wonderful yoga instructor was giving instructions for wild thing (camatkarasana), I … followed the instructions. And did the pose. A year ago, wild thing was one of those poses that I scoffed at. Ha, ha, yeah, no way. No way was my body ever getting into that position. Not going to happen. Not in a million years. Or, you know, as it happened, one year.

Yoga, for me, has been a little about the exercise but mostly about the mindfulness, trying to be in the present, trying to breathe and let myself feel. If it had just been exercise, I wouldn’t have lasted more than a few weeks, because I’ve never really cared that much. Most exercise has seemed pointless to me. Run three miles? Why would I want to? But I was so satisfied last week, so pleased with myself. I want to remember that feeling.

Last night, both dogs were being snuggly. Zelda hates it when I cry — well, or possibly she likes it, because she is passionate about trying to thoroughly clean my face if there are tears rolling down it — but Bartleby was, if anything, worse. For Z, once the tears are stopped, it’s over. She heaves a sigh of relief, and goes back to chewing on a toy or sleeping or doing one of those doggie investigations of the backyard. But Bartleby appears to think that tears mean he should put his entire body on top of me and stay there indefinitely. He’s like a cat. Well, except that I don’t think most cats care if their people cry. But he was not going away and he was not getting off and that made Zelda worried, too. I finally wound up lying in bed with a dog on each arm, completely cuddled up next to me, their heads by my shoulders. And then they went to sleep. And both of them started to snore! Not in the same rhythm. Crackle-wheeze, crackle-wheeze, crackle-wheeze. I felt, in that moment, supremely blessed and very lucky. Also, eventually, ridiculously stiff. I finally slid them off my arms and rolled over to sleep myself, where I dreamed that Christian Kane was my personal trainer and that running felt like flying. It was a good dream.

Sushi with rice, wasabi, soy sauce (gluten-free), and white wine yesterday — four things I am not allowed to eat. I feel okay today, though. Okay enough to go stare at my file and wish I remembered how to write.

← Older posts

Subscribe via Email

To receive new posts via email, enter your address here:

Instagram

Just catching the sunrise
A little patch of flowers in the wasteland.
Spring is on its way. Yay!
The second rainbow on the right is a little hard to see in the photo so look close.
Pre-Epcot breakfast, made by Frisbee. Total SuperHost. All the stars!

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Proudly powered by WordPress Theme: Chateau by Ignacio Ricci.

 

Loading Comments...