Surfacing

Uncle Walter stopped by to see Mom, too, today

I have been under the weather for so long I had almost forgotten how it feels to be functionally human. Today, finally, I caught a glimpse. Although I am now fully spent, having made up for lost time by filling my day to the gills:

Taking Ethan and the neighbor's kids to school (because their little sister puked just as they were getting ready to head out).

A quick coffee with school-mom-friends (need caffeine!)

Picking up the car from the repair shop (poor old thing).

Driving out to visit Mom, and all that that entailed (heart wrenched in a thousand different ways). Yet another conference with nurse manager on how to get and keep her on track, moving forward.

Driving back to pick Ethan up at school, and oh holy hell the check-engine light comes back on again (our car's resident poltergeist not fully exorcised), so back to the shop and then flagging down a cab to get to Ethan on time.

Dragging Ethan off to an appointment way East in midtown (1 bus, 1 subway, and a 4 block walk away). And if you know the U.N. is in session right now, you know this means closed streets and roadblocks and checkpoints and police everywhere.

Meanwhile, and threaded throughout: Emails and phone calls about Jacob's bussing situation. Which is bad. He's been getting to school AN HOUR late every day. Because the bus has twice as many kids on it as it should, with multiple schools to drop off at. Because the City of New York is trying to save money at the expense of Special Ed kids, the most disenfranchised citizens to start with. Don't. Get. Me. Started. (I will burn a hole in your computer screen with the white-hot lava of my wrath.)

Then back uptown and West to our 'hood for dinner at Shake Shack because it's near the...

Big meeting at Ethan's school about the middle school application process.

(If you don't live in New York City and send your kid to public school you have no idea of the hell that this means. Middle school is the bottleneck. There are many good elementary schools. There are a lot of good - and even great - high schools. There are very few decent middle schools, and NOT ENOUGH seats in them for all the kids who apply, thus making it a tough and very competitive process to get your kid into a one. Shoot. Me. Now.)

Finally HOME, a full twelve hours after having left.

(And then homework to go over with Ethan, but oh dear God he rushed through it, wanting to play his DS, so it all has to be redone, give me strength.)

Diving back under, not expecting much humanity tomorrow. I'll keep you posted.

This is Not a Post

This is not a real blog post.

I just don't have time for that right now. Neither the time nor the energy. So I'll just sketch things out. You can fill in the details.

I thought things would slow down after Listen to Your Mother had come and gone.

Not hardly. There's always something. All the little things I didn't do in those last frantic weeks of preparing for the show? Still needed to be done.

Mountains of laundry. Sinkloads of dishes. A living room that looks like a toystore threw up in it. The house elves did not come in and magically take care of all that shit.

And in the midst of it all I decamped for an overnight to Philly to hear THEIR own LTYM.  A one day road trip with my producing partner Holly, the Culture Mom, which couldn't have been more fun.

The wonderful LTYM - Philly Producing Team

But I returned to the same workload I had left, and then some. (Dad in charge. Need I say more?)

And then there was Mothers Day. More work. A brunch in New Jersey with the in-laws.

If this were a post I would tell you how tough it was this year on Mothers Day, being with my mother, who is a mere ghost of herself. She has forgotten who nearly everybody is. She could barely walk, gets less steady on her feet each passing week, yet won't use the rollator walker - of which she has THREE - out of stubborn pride.

Mothers Day

It makes me really sad to be around her. I want my Mommy back. Even the befuddled, filter-less mom I've been taking care of these past few years was still feisty, funny. I'll take her.

This subdued old woman who just sits and vaguely smiles with nothing to say and no idea where she is or why she's there? Just breaks my heart.

She appreciated the sunshine and greenery on the backyard deck. She smiled at our niece's toddler twin boys who so remind us all of toddler Ethan & Jake, simultaneously so long ago and just a blink away.

But she no longer plays with my boys. Doesn't know how to talk to them, their interests incomprehensible to her now limited comprehension.

If this were a post I would tell you about how Jacob has developed a whole new panoply of annoying habits this spring, including a frequent maniacal loud giggling laugh that we call "the silly laugh" because calling it "the maniacal creepy laugh" is just too... creepy.

I would tell you how the medicine that was helping Ethan to focus all year started to make him paranoid and angry so we had to stop it, and now we're back to square one.

I would tell you.

But I'm too tired to write that post. You'll have to fill in the blanks. I'm sure you can.

Now, sit down here and take a little nap with me. There, that's nice. And when we wake up we can fold some laundry. And I will tell you...
 

I am linking this up with Just Write, because this was ... just written.

SOC Sunday: reallyreallystreamofconsciousness

This one is really really stream of consciousness, folks, not those fake SOC posts that I;ve been thinking about for hours and planning in my head so only the actual monkey-typing part is real. Let's pretend it's really Sunday and not wee early in the morning Monday and I'm going to back-date this sucker, okay, just pretend with me. I am flat out flat out right now between producing Listen to Your Mother - show goes up on SUNDAY - yikes! - and then trying to actually BE a mother, and a care-taking daughter. and feeling like I'm failing miserably at BOTH right now - haven't seen my mother in a week too busy busy busy. Got a call from my aunt Marilyn's nursing home yesterday morning that she'd had another toe infection - nothing to be alarmed, just keeping me in the loop - and I'm all stabbed with guilt because I haven;t brought my Mom to see her sister in over a MONTH now but it always makes her so sad to see her sis so far gone, but then she feels guilty when she doesn't go, dilemma, dilemma.

Jake acting up a lot lately repeating "Timmy is a Stupid Kid" over & over (his own lovely take-off on the cartoon show Fairly Odd Parents theme song). I think he KNOWS it annoys me - because he's looking right at me and smiling his "I got you" smile while he does it - & is doing it because he's not getting enough positive attention from me as I am balls to the walls (yes metaphoric ones) with this LTYM show which is way more work than I had bargained for in the beginning but it feels so good to be working and being more than just mom but I know I am not being a quite good enough mom while I am so busy and mostly just DISTRACTED.

And thank GOD for wonderful neighbors who actually took Jake for 3 hours yesterday when my sitter had to leave early and my rehearsal was still going on and my husband was working at a convention and couldn't leave early because he was on a late panel. They're actually the most amazing people on the planet, kind and generous and smart and funny and fun to hang out with and I don;t know what I did to deserve them but whatever it is THANK GOODNESS. and then I feel guilty because I don;t know what i can ever do to repay them for all the slack they pick up for me other than occasionally picking their boys up at school.

ANd the LTYM rehearsal was today and so fabulous and the show the show is going to be WONDERFUL and I wish the theater were bigger because we are so sold out and so many of my procrastinator-y friends didn't think to buy tickets until it was too late even though I TOLD them it would sell out a month ago. le sigh.

And my poor neglected blog - I tried to do Momalom's 5 for 5 linky but only got to 3 for 5. even started the last post - "Listening"  - really wanted to write that one & had a lot to say there, but only got four sentences into it when had to put out another LTYM fire. lesson learned for next year - expect very little elsewhere in my life during pre-show month of April. But April April April is Autism Awareness/Acceptance month as I was supposed to be writing writing writing about autism all month long and I so didn't. I stared with a bang and then fizzled out and don;t let me get started on how that's a metaphor for so much in my life. And now I need to go try to get a little more sleep so BAM it's over, stream shut-down. goodnight.

@@@@@@@

 
New to SOCS?  It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump.  Want to try it?  Here are the rules…

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spell-checking. This is writing in the raw.

You can do it, too!  Click on the picture link and let's hear your 5 minutes of brilliance...

March is the Cruelest Month

I am so very, very happy to be incredibly busy this month. So busy in fact, that I don't have time to ponder and wallow.

Because March, the last two years running?

Has nearly done me in.

This time last year, even though my body was officially "healed" from my first ever surgery (goodbye, gall bladder!) my spirit was still struggling. I was not yet nearly "myself" again.

And suffusing that whole winter, laying over it entirely, were ghostly tendrils of the previous winter when my father had been busy dying, and I had been completely consumed by caring for him and supporting my now widowed mother.

So last March was the final crushing end of Year One Without a Father. That year of sad first anniversaries, of remembering and reliving so much awful.

As I was grinding through it, trying to keep my head above water, everyone told me I would be astonished at how much better it gets, with time; that year two would be nothing like year one.

And they were right. Thank all the powers that be, they were right.

Two years ago, today, was four days out from Dad's passing. I was witness to his emaciated, worn out body, fiercely clinging to the last shredded remnants of life.

His incredible strength that I had admired throughout his life now a liability, he was really ready to go, longing for release. But his stubborn, fighting, never-say-die spirit won out. Over and over.

Until it didn't.

March to me is my parents' anniversary on the 1st. My father's death on the 13th. And my father's birthday on the 25th.

Two years ago, he nearly made it to 93. This year, it would have been my parents 53rd anniversary. He would have been 95.

And yet thoughts of him, of my Annus Horribilis, bubble up momentarily to the surface, then sink back below.

I am busy.

Busy with life.

Rising with my children. The thousand tasks involved in their care and feeding and shepherding throughout the day.

Laughing at their jokes. Supervising 4th grade homework. Cheering at their basketball games.

Busy preparing for Jacob's annual IEP meeting, for which "the letter" came in the mail yesterday. Always giving the shortest notice legally allowed, it's in two weeks. Scramble. Scramble.

Busy producing the New York City Listen to Your Mother Show. an amazing endeavor that is heating up white hot in my life, now that we are cast and less than two months out from showtime. (May 6th - mark your calendars!)

Busy doing everything that needs to be done for my nearly 90 year-old mother.

It's good to be busy. I am grateful. I complain (it's my nature). But I'm not REALLY complaining, you know?

Two years ago, I was in the thick of death. There is such a surreal quality when I look back to that time, the awful and beautiful of it, all wrapped up together.

And while "beautiful" seems a strange word to be found here, describing death; now, two years out, I can see that part, too.

It was a gift to be able to be there with my father, and for my mother. To lie beside him and gently, so gently, stroke his back so he could continue to sleep, comforted by the last simple human connection of touch.

At the end, at the very, very, very end, there is no future. The past is a distantly receding dream. There is only the bright white light of NOW. And then it goes dark.

Sitting in my father's light, at the end of the end, was a gift, with its own beauty. And now, two years out, I am beginning to see that, beginning to treasure it.

And so I run about these busy March days, grateful for the life that flows through them. 

Starting year three.

And waiting for April, and true spring to come.

I'm linking up to Maxabella's I'm grateful for... because I so am.

Looking for comments? To read or leave a comment, click on THIS post's title, or HERE, to bring you to the post's page view. Comments should appear below.

February Round-Up: What I Loved on OTHER People's Blogs

Photo by Neil Kramer, my FAVORITE instagram photographer, by far

Welcome to the SECOND edition of "What I Loved on OTHER People's Blogs" a regular monthly round-up of what has caught my eye (and brain, and heart) on the internet. (Now that my period is no longer "regular & monthly" I figure SOMETHING in my life should be!)

(OK, I'm 3 days late, but let's just pretend this was a NORMAL month with 31 days, okay? Because I really needed those extra days. Not fair February, not fair!)

And this month I am adding another feature, a favorite instagram photo from another photographer, too. Though I have to tell you, I am guessing they are ALL going to be by my friend Neil Kramer, who blogs at Citizen of the Month.

Neil is the most amazing photographer who doesn't believe he is a photographer, thinks he's just "having fun" with his photos. However, he has "the eye" - something that as the daughter of a celebrated photographer, I do NOT say lightly.

And now, a handful or so of wonderful posts from February, 2012, presented for your edification and enjoyment... And I tried to keep it light this month folks: sweet, uplifting, and/or funny posts. And I was mostly successful, see...

And now, starting with a perfect post from the aforementioned Neil:

The Perfect Couple from Neil of Citizen of the Month

That's What I Wanted from (The Empress) Alexandra of Good Day Regular People

Somebody give the tooth fairy a double espresso. And some gratitude. from Eden of edenland

YOU’RE RUINING NATHAN FILLION FOR ME, NATHAN FILLION. Alternate title: But I forgive you. from (the Bloggess) Jenny of The Bloggess

Some days it's not even worth trying to chew through the restraints from Jillsmo of Yeah. Good Times.

The Transcendent Familiar 7: Choking on the Ashes from Adrienne of No Points For Style (yeah, this is not one of the light ones, but so moving)

Losing Sleep. from Tulpen of Bad Words

There are places I remember from Ellen of Love That Max

And ending with a second photo from Neil, because I couldn't decide which one I loved best:

Photo by Neil Kramer. Salt shakers or Daleks - you decide.

Note: Once again, this is an idiosyncratic, and very incomplete list. There is always more wonderful out there, but these are the particular ones I have chosen this month. Next month? Come back again and see what has struck my fancy.


Looking for comments? To read or leave a comment, click on THIS post's title, or HERE, to bring you to the post's page view. Comments should appear below.