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Kelsea got home late-ish last night and had left something in the truck.
“Will you go get it for me, Mom?”
“No, why? Are you scared?”
“No, but there was something in the yard when I came in. I couldn’t tell if it was a deer or a coyote.”
“They’re not exactly the same size, you know.”
“Whatever it was, it was scary. I don’t want to go. Because I’m lazy.”
“Well, then I guess it will wait until morning.”
<Pause>
“Can I take my sword?”
“Yes.”
“REALLY?”
“Of course.”
“What if I get arrested for carrying a sword?”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen. Just don’t…poke anything with it.”
“Okay.”
Armed with flashlight and sword, she starts out into the night.
And is back in five seconds.
“There are like three deer out there, just sitting in the yard, looking at me. Come see.”
Curiosity gets the best of me and I come out in pink fuzzy crocs and fuzzy heart-embellished white pajamas.
She shines the flashlight into the depths of the inky blackness.
There they are, just sitting.
The beam of the flashlight catches their eyes, which proceed to glow demoniacally.
“Cool. Do you want me to come with you to the truck?”
(After all, I’m already out here.)
“No, I’m fine.”
I head back inside.
She returns in short order, panting slightly.
“Oh my god, that was the scariest thing ever.”
“What?”
“You know that YouTube video of the Ninja Cat?”
(We while away a little time from time to time exploring humorous videos on You Tube.)
“Yes.”
“Well, I was coming back from the truck, and one of the deer got up and started coming towards me. I watched him in the light, you know, and he stopped. So I went a little towards the house and when I turned the light back, he was closer to me, you know, like he was closing the distance between us. So I kept going, and he did it again. And then he did it again. He was close enough that I could have…SPIT on him. It was terrifying!“
And she cuddled up and fell asleep on the couch next to me.
And so ends the tale of the Exploits of the Great Deerstalker. Or perhaps the Exploits of the Great Kelsea-Stalker.
No, I did not buy an alpaca at auction. However…
This weekend the Boulder County Fairgrounds hosted the Alpaca Expo. You may remember from our trip to the Stock Show this year how enamoured Kelsea and I were with the alpacas. Well, even though Kelsea chose to go to the Mall on Saturday, I decided to fly solo to see the critters.
Empty Corrals at the Boulder County Fairgrounds
O. M. G.
Hello!
There is (almost) nothing I have found that makes me smile more than alpacas. While the Expo was fairly small, I spent almost three hours there, just hangin’ with my alpaca peeps. I made friends with several of the ranchers there to exhibit and I learned a lot of little tidbits.
But mostly, I just kind of hung on the railings of the little corrals and basked in the glow of the beasts. I don’t know what it is about them, but they have amazingly soothing energy. They are calm, expressive, curious, and gentle. Kind of like me, but with more hair and bigger eyes.
Adorable Alpaca
I had such a wonderful time that Kelsea and I went back on Sunday. And as an extra-added bonus, we went to an antique auction that was being held next door. If you check out my Life List of Things Yet To Be Done (in Lists), you will see that buying something at auction was one of my life goals. Well, not only did I buy something at auction, I bought somethingS at auction – namely, two pocket knives, a sword, a miscellaneous box of vintage hats, purses and gloves and an amazing piece of folk art – a flying pig, who told me his name was Homer.
Homer In Profile
Homer From Above
My auction number was 339 and I was flapping my little card along with the other pros, aka, Pierre, George, Tommy and a lady whose shop we had visited in Cheyenne last Labor Day. Anyway, the whole thing was AWESOME! And here’s a sampling of the things that I – wisely, in my opinion – didn’t bid on.
Miscellaneous Brasses - I would have bid on this if we'd been there when it was up
Random Auction Items
Creepy Decapitated Doll Heads
Victorian Baby Shoes
Strange Vintage Glassware
As for the alpacas, well, as I said, we learned a lot. And here are a few things we learned that I’ll bet you probably didn’t know either:
Alpacas are very social creatures. You can’t have just one.
Just Saying Hello From Behind the Neighboring Curtain
Alpacas only have bottom teeth until they are about three years old, at which point they are ready to breed and get their fighting teeth.
Clinton Showing Off His Alpacas Bottom Teeth
When they get bored, they chew things.
Dishevelled Beastie Eating the Rail
Alpacas’ adorable “Hmmmm” humming noise means they are stressed. Or hungry. But I guess being hungry can make you feel stressed.
Her Close-Up
Like many animals, they like to groom each other, and can often find leftovers in their Alpaca buddies.
I Love Eating My Friends Fur
The Suri is the most dominant type of Alpaca, although it is the least common type outside of South America.
Nancy Showing Off Champagne the Suri Alpaca
But there are also some interesting Vicuna-Alpaca mixes (and all alpacas (and llamas) are part of the camel family).
Alpaca-Vicunas
Alpacas chew their cud in a figure-eight shape. And when they swallow a lump of cud (what’s that called?), they immediately bring up another one. If you watch their throats, you can see the one coming down and the other coming up.
Cud-Chewing Cutie-Pie
Alpacas sit on all four legs, but when it’s very cold, they raise their hindquarters slightly off the ground to increase their warmth.
Seated Alpaca
Alpacas are raised for their fiber and for breeding – several people were weaving and spinning at the event.
Dyed Alpaca Yarn
Spinning
They don’t always like being touched on the head because their mothers generally nudged them on their heads to discipline them. They prefer being touched on the neck.
Intertwined Alpaca Necks
And when a randy male alpaca tried to mount Perfection, he was decidedly put in his place by her spitting most firmly in his face after escaping his lascivious clutches. She is a feisty little beauty. No one can mount Perfection.
Perfection
Most importantly of all, they give amazingly awesome angel baby kisses. Storm the big white alpaca kissed me several times. (No tongue.) I felt truly privileged.
Storm the Kissing Alpaca
So it was a lovely weekend. I even tried out Zydeco dancing on Friday night. Not well, mind you, but it was new and fun and great exercise, so I think I’ll try it again. And since the auctions happen once a month, we’ll definitely be back. It will be THE place to furnish the new house!
Have a happy week!
When I was in junior high (or middle school, as we called it), “they” built a mall about three miles from my school. At that time, school was at the very edge of any commercial development – I think the closest sizeable business, aside from home-based little photo studios and woodworkers, was a grocery store. I believe it was a Piggly Wiggly.
And of course, there was the 7-11 that was just on the other side of the school property line – you could sneak down the hill through the woods to get an Icee or Pixie Stix or Nik-L-Nips if you were brave enough to risk getting caught.
But suddenly, almost within our grasp, was South Square Mall. Almost heaven.
My friends and I used to beg whatever parent was available to take us there after school and let us hang out. And hang out we did. We would shop idly – maybe buy a scarf, a record, an Orange Julius. We would mill around the food court with its orange formica tables. We would check out boys. We would yell at each other from different levels of the mall. We would play on the escalators. We would shriek and whisper and laugh and wonder what schools other kids went to – other kids who were doing the exact same thing.
An abandoned adolescent memory - South Square Mall shortly before demolition in 2001.
Ah, the mall. It provided a sense of adulthood and freedom. Except for one instance, when I found myself trapped in the seatbelt of my best friend’s father’s pale blue Cadillac convertible. It was one of those lap belts and it was completely jammed and I was completely trapped. Fortunately, I was also completely skinny and after about 15 minutes of struggle, which included shedding my jeans, bruising my hiplets and sucking my stomach in so that it was flush with my spine, I was able to slide out from the top. I amazed even myself. I felt like a teenage female Houdini.
Fast forward 32 years. Fly west 1700 miles west. Turn my brown hair blonde and my green eyes blue. And you have Kelsea, hanging out at Flatirons Crossing Mall with her friends. Guess what they do? They loaf around the food court, only this one has a fireplace. They buy little things like smelly rubber balls. They sample the goods at the Apple store. They play on the escalators. They shriek and whisper. They follow people around. They scope out cute guys. They speculate on the identity of other students. Hmmm….sounds so very, wistfully familiar.
Kelsea said, in the course of a conversation the other day, “Everyone gets thrown out of the mall once, right?” It was a rhetorical question, and one she immediately regretted. My response? I looked at her. And decided it was one of those follow-up questions best left unasked. She needs to have some things to tell me later.
I do believe that one more torch has been passed.
Last night, my nieces and Kelsea and I went to the climbing gym. Why is this a big deal for me? Well, several reasons.
1. It was something I’ve never done before.
2. I’m afraid of heights.
3. I was afraid I couldn’t do it and would embarrass myself.
4. I was afraid of falling.
Go ahead, call me a ‘Fraidy Cat. I don’t care. You know why?
Because I went. I did it. And it was awesome.
The place we went is called The Spot, an indoor climbing club tucked away at the back of a semi-industrial office park at the end of a dead-end street in Boulder. It’s not a ropes/rappelling club. It’s all free climbing. Every wall of this gigantic space is covered with floor-to-ceiling rock formations with footholds and handholds in various shapes and patterns affixed to them. There are a couple of gigantic freestanding rock formations in the center of the room with the same holds. There’s a climbing treadmill. And there’s a tightrope about three feet off the ground.
All these men and women in amazing shape are climbing all over the place, sometimes even inverted. They looked like insects crawling up and along the walls. The floor is covered with padded mats, and there are some larger, squishier mats that you can move from place to place. A little girl of about five was scrambling around like a monkey and walking the tightrope like a pro.
I started on the easy routes – and I didn’t necessarily stick to the routes. For me, the goal was to get up the wall and down the wall. Without falling off the wall. Except my niece told me I had to fall off the wall. Wait, what? Yes, that’s right. I had to fall off the wall. She said if I fell off the wall intentionally, then I wouldn’t be so scared of falling off the wall. And when I fell off the wall accidentally, I would know how to fall, and how to roll, so I didn’t get hurt. That was the hardest part of the evening for me. Letting go of a perfectly good wall six feet in the air and falling backwards. I mean, who DOES that? Oh, yeah – me.
I looked down over my shoulder at my niece, who was encouraging me to jump, and I said “No. I can’t.” “Yes you can!” she said, ‘You can do it.” I thought to myself, “I can do anything.” And I let go. And fell. I bent my knees. I hit the floor. I rolled. And I was fine. I got up and I was so proud of myself. And then I climbed back up the wall and did it again.
It was so much fun. It’s a wonderful feeling to challenge yourself like that. I really liked traversing – moving sideways across the rock face as opposed to going up. It’s more for stamina than for skill. I didn’t make it all the way across the big wall, but I did pretty well.
Today I am pleasantly sore. I can really see how people get so buff doing this. Since Kelsea loves it, we are going to go together more often. I have to admit, it’s hard to see her hanging twelve feet in the air; I’m scared she’s going to fall and break her neck. But I have to trust her and her own strength – and my strength.
And learn to let go.
Almost all of us have to experience it. It’s like going to the dentist with a bad toothache – we put it off for as long as possible because we know it’s going to be worse before it gets better. But in the end, we know it must be done.
Yes, it’s the removal of the Christmas Tree.
As you may or may not know, this year’s Christmas Tree was a bit of a late arrival. For a variety of reasons – scheduling, heartbreak, semi-insanity – I was late getting a tree this year. Kelsea and I have a penchant for unusual Christmas Trees. We will adopt a tree that might otherwise not have found a home, just to ensure that it has a loving, happy Christmas and a completely fulfilled destiny.
Our tree this year was particularly special. It was a tree that looked as if it had eaten three other trees – a short, morbidly obese tree that we named Chubbs. Chubbs was adorable. He was a little tough to fit into the stand, and there was no way in the world that his backside would be decorated. Not only did we not have sufficient ornamentation for such adornment, we couldn’t reach around him, or move around him, considering his position in the Cottage.
So Chubbs glowed happily in his corner for four days before Christmas and four days after. At that point, he became so incredibly dry, that I was afraid to turn on his lights, for fear the itty-bitty heat source would cause him to burst into flames. It’s not as if we didn’t water him (though admittedly it wasn’t enough). But no matter how much he drank, he just seemed to get dryer and dryer. I’m sure there’s an analogy here, but I can’t think of it.
Kelsea and I had talked about taking him down, but we just didn’t get around to it. She was loath to part with him. He had been her favorite tree.
So this morning, I took matters into my own hands. It was time. I was starting to be afraid to leave the house for fear he would spontaneously combust in my absence (which makes no sense, as he’s just as likely to spontaneously combust in my presence.) As everyone (except perhaps, you, Idiot) knows, the first step in taking down a Christmas Tree is removing the ornaments. That wasn’t too difficult. A few small branch tips came off along with the hooks, but that’s to be expected. The tinsel was also a cinch – came off like a greased pig. But then we came to the lights. Ah yes, the bane of existence of any Christmas Tree dismantler.
It was hard to tell where they started. I’m thinking next year of attaching some kind of tag to the end of the strand, like people attach to their luggage handles so they can easily identify them when they come shooting out of the baggage claim underworld. I struggled for a bit. Unfortunately, we HAD strung the lights all around the tree (I recall now that I had made Kelsea climb over the couch and crawl behind Chubbs to accomplish this feat.) And there was no way that I was going to crawl back there to unstring them. Needles were starting to fly as I started to tug on the light strings. Lights aren’t that expensive, I figured – if I destroy them, I can get some more next year. But it wasn’t working. They were just getting more and more tangled and the room was starting to look like a forest scene from The Lord of the Rings.
Time for Plan B. Chubbs needed to see the outside world again.
Kelsea and I had worked together to get the little fella in the house, but I knew I could take him out myself. He wasn’t that big – just wide. I reached in and grabbed his trunk (that sounds weird) and pulled (even weirder). He tipped over towards me, like an intoxicated fat man, and suddenly both hands were required to remove him from my face, as I found myself spitting out pine needles. We wrestled to the door, his whatever-you-call-the top-of-tree desperately clinging to the mosquito screen (which I should have removed once it hit 4 degrees), until I shoved it out of the way. I was aware that he was dragging things with him, but I couldn’t stop the forward momentum to see what had latched onto him.
We made it outside, me in nothing but my ducky bathrobe (another example of poor planning on my part – note to self: get dressed before taking the Christmas Tree outside) and him with his stand and draping sheet clinging to his feet. Outside, I was at liberty to yank the lights off with whatever measure of force was required until they were free. I struggled for five minutes trying to get the stand off - it was as if the tree’s base had grown fatter since we’d put him in the stand. Finally, both tasks were complete. I left Chubbs to enjoy some fresh air on the grass and adjust to his new life, and turned to go back inside. The drape is a wet, winding mess at the doorstep. How can it be wet? The tree was like a five-foot tall matchstick. Wouldn’t it have soaked up any water left in the stand? Well, apparently not.
Sizeable puddles complete with pine needles have pooled on the tile and marred the oatmeal-colored carpet. A few magazines that had been on the coffee table are now soggy and rumpled on the floor. A book that had been on the side table lies in the doorway – apparently, Chubbs had wanted to take it with him. Perhaps he hadn’t finished it yet. It is slightly moist and bedraggled. And pine needles and branches are EVERYWHERE. Couch, coffee table, carpet, my hair, my robe. At least they are not in my nearly-cold coffee which, after discouraged surveillance of the damage, I sit down to drink.
The deed is done. Our loveable Chubbs is ready for the Next Place. But he has left his mark behind, in memory and in the living room. And it’s going to take a while to clean up.
December 12, 2006:
My uncle and my brother both marked the time, the exact time – somewhere around 3:43 am.
We sat for a while with her, there in the darkness, holding her hands, holding her heart. I could still feel her. Still feel her. Someone turned on the lights, blew out the candle, started doing the practical things. Calling the mortuary people, calling my “Aunt” who had been my Mother’s oldest friend – the one who had aided in my parent’s elopement, had driven her to the hospital to give birth to me, who now lived just upstairs.
It felt wrong to have all this stuff going on. I stayed in the room with her, pulling up her covers so she might not get cold, trying to fully close her eyes. They wouldn’t stay closed. I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror and saw her looking back at me through my eyes. I saw her eyes in the mirror, in my face. I called my husband and told him, had him tell Kelsea. She wrote the date and time down on a napkin and put it in a special scrapbook that she has.
My aunt came. She put her arm around me, and I said, “I don’t want her to go.” And she said to me, “She’s already gone.” I did not know what I was going to do. I loved her so. We were such a part of each other. I just did not know what to do. As the minutes passed , her body looked less and less…occupied. I could feel it, feel her soul moving away, as the minutes passed, drifting away, flying away, floating away, soaring away, farther and farther away, without even turning to say good-bye, just excited to be free and exploring. Leaving me behind.
Things happened then. My brother put ice around the back of her head to keep her brain cool for the Brain Autopsy Study she was a part of. I knew it was still nighttime, the middle of the night, but time had become irrelevant. I just remember again the light, the brightness of incandescent bulbs all over. The night nurse had slipped out. She had been hiding in the other bathroom for hours. She never even came in the room. She was afraid of dead people. Everything just felt so surreal.
The funeral home men came, two of them, with a stretcher and a big plastic bag. Somehow, though she wasn’t a big woman, they just couldn’t seem to manage her. I don’t know why. But I wound up helping to put my Mother’s body in that bag. Wrapped in one of my sheets, one of my favorite sheets, that looked like a sandy beach with seashells on it, that we had put on her bed particularly because she loved those sheets too. I could never have that sheet back. That action was the worst part of this whole memory. I should never have done that.
Then everyone left. It was morning. I called my best friend at work. I started making calls to the people who needed to know. It was horrible. I heard her dear friend, whose wife I spoke to, explode with grief – “Oh, GOD!”, he said. I let her go to him. I lay down to try to sleep and I just cried. Cried and cried and cried as if my heart would break. But it was too late, it was already broken.
I thought about the morphine in the refrigerator. I could do it. Could do it so easily. Just take the rest of it and follow her. I wasn’t thinking about Kelsea. I wasn’t thinking. I was so consumed with pain, I didn’t feel like I could live. I didn’t want to live. I was tired and tormented. I was mad with grief and exhaustion. I wept myself to sleep.
Later, I told E-Bro about it, and he said he would kick my corpse if I did such a thing. We started to pack up her things. We went out to dinner. We didn’t feel normal. We were orphans now. At least we had each other.
Now, four years later, I have come to have some peace with her death, but it has taken almost this entire span of time. But it has happened. I still miss her. I know she’s still with me in her own way.
And I know, with all certainty, that she is having a marvelous time.
With thanks and apologies to Eugene O’Neill for the post title.
[The next three day's postings are my memories of the day before, the day of, and the day after my Mother's death four years ago. This is a difficult anniversary for me, though it seems to ease each year.]
December 10, 2006: I don’t remember what we did today. Probably not too much but talk – and laugh. Uncle George and E-Bro were with us now, but strangely I don’t remember them being there. I only remember us. Over the past week, we had spent nearly every moment together, waking and sleeping. I probably took a walk once and went out to the store a couple of times. I took showers alone and went to the bathroom alone. But you didn’t. It was as if we were merging, merging for the last time. Looking back now, I see that that wasn’t a good thing, but it wasn’t something I could control. We had been so very close for so very long that our separateness was, for most years, only a matter of a few degrees. In the last days, those few degrees simply vanished.
You had started asking for the morphine towards the end of the day. Not much, but you’d never needed it before. I can imagine how much you must have been hurting to make that concession. You always hated painkillers, hated anything that made you feel out of control of yourself, unlike yourself. It didn’t seem to affect your clarity, but it did seem to ease your pain. I remember your pain. It was in your bones. When you would move sometimes - or sometimes when you were still and it was so bad that it would make you move – your face would grimace in this expression that was indescribable. You would hold your breath until it passed. I hated to see you in pain. I encouraged you to take the morphine. After all, we knew you didn’t have much time left – why spend it in pain? But you wanted to spend it being present. I admire that.
You had stopped eating by now, but today I could still get a few Dibs into you. Water. Your beloved orange sherbet in little tiny spoonfuls. It was sunny, and the light slipped through the slats of the blinds in gentle patterns, changing throughout the day, as sunlight does. You never asked for me to open the blinds or asked to look outside. Looking back, that surprises me, as you so loved nature. But you were focused on the world inside your three rooms, the world that encompassed the people you loved most, and the small things you had around you that you treasured. The rest of the world didn’t matter anymore.
People came and went, people you’d known for years and years who loved you so. You always thought of yourself as being alone, as not having many close friends, but so many people felt like you were THEIR close friend. You were very comfortable with that, with all of it, and with being alone. I suppose that’s the mark of a person truly happy in herself. But today, people came knowing that they were coming to say goodbye, even though nothing had been said. I left them alone with you, and they usually came out of the bedroom and started to cry, and I would thank them and comfort them as best I could.
Everyone brought food. You weren’t eating. I couldn’t eat, except late at night, when I couldn’t sleep. I would eat weird things in weird amounts, knowing I just had to get something, anything, into me. It wasn’t comforting. It was a random necessity. That had been going on for a week, my eating like that. Ever since you really stopped eating. For me, that was the beginning of my thoughtless, mindless eating habits that have added so much weight to my small frame in the last four years.
I don’t remember doctors coming. I don’t remember even talking to the doctors. But that must have happened. Mustn’t it?
In the afternoon, you took a nap. As always, I stayed beside you for most of it. I would go do little things, make phone calls, shower, clean something, constantly checking on you. When you woke, I took your hand, asked you if you had a nice rest. You said yes, and looked at me strangely. I chattered at you, you responded politely, still looking at me in that odd way, patting my hand. Then you said, “Who ARE you?” And I reminded you that I was your daughter. Your eyes cleared, you looked relieved, you laughed at yourself as you recognized me. I felt a chill that I did not show.
I had been so wrapped up in caring for you. For months, I think, I had been flying across the country every weekend to be with you. Your death became my life. We had always been close, except for those nasty teenage years, but especially since Kelsea’s birth. We had talked every day. After the last diagnosis, we talked three or four or five times a day. In the mornings, to be sure you were okay. If you were lonely. If I was bored. If you went to the doctor. In the evening before bed. If I was scared. If you had some piece of news. We talked so much because we knew that soon we wouldn’t be able to talk at all, not in the same way.
And you were so happy to have the three of us there. You loved us so. That night as we were going to bed, you felt it was going to be your last night. You said goodbye to me. You told me to tell Kelsea that you loved her. You reminded me that the car keys were in the little bowl on the half-wall by the kitchen. Yes, ever the Mother. And you went to sleep.
But it was not your last night.
We’ve been here at Topsail a day and a half, and it alternates between feeling like we’ve been here for ages and we’ve been here for hours. I have always had a tendency to count days here (even though one of my favorite sayings is ‘At the beach, you forget to count the days’), being glad that I have so many days left and dreading the fact that I have so few days left. Quite a conundrum.
After Kelsea made her sleepyheaded appearance, we dressed and went on a quest for swim attire for her. Who knew that board shorts and a rash guard would be so hard to find for a person her size? We stopped at Wings or Waves or something like that – the store where you enter through the giant alligator mouth next to the Food Lion. I vacillate between loving and hating these stores – they certainly have a lot of stuff, but it’s mostly cheap stuff. All 3 stores in this “chain” are owned by one middle eastern clan who employ no one but family, and somehow the staff always seems cold, indifferent and impatient – you get the sense that they are only here to make as much money as possible off of stupid tourists and that they don’t give a crap about the stores or their customers. Maybe I’m wrong – that’s just the vibe I’ve always gotten.
At any rate, we did find something for her just as my frustration level was about to reach the boiling-over point. Then it was off to Food Lion to fight the crowds for bacon and wrestle the last three San Pellegrino bottles away from another shopper. Food Lion is always a free-for-all madhouse on the weekends. They should sell tickets.
Home at last, we hung on the porch and read, played Trivial Pursuit, talked. I cooked a chicken for dinner. Read some more. E-Bro, Bubba Sue, A-Man, Big S and Little L arrived and we headed down to their house for a visit. The boys are looking good. I’m pleased to report that Little L took her first-ever step towards me on the bed! OK, it seemed that way, but I could be wrong. At any rate, we were all happy to see each other, and we hung out on the porch, drinking wine (well, not the kids) and watching the huge pink full moon rise from the depths of the sea.
Kelsea and I walked back up the beach to our house and tucked ourselves in for a welcome sleep.
And now it’s a new day. A happy new day.
It’s off-and-on pouring rain here outside of Boulder, Colorado tonight, so the always much-anticipated fireworks are not to be – we only get what the lightning provides. Instead, I am replaying memorable fireworks exhibitions from years past in my head, and I wanted to share.
The first fireworks I ever saw were from the stadium at Duke University. That was our traditional fireworks watching spot, and to my small eyes, they were quite impressive. I (as always) had lots of questions as to how the whole thing worked, and I recall my dad patiently (as always) explaining. I always worried that the guys on the track who were shooting off the fireworks were going to blow themselves up somehow, but that never happened.
For whatever reason one year, my family decided to view the fireworks show at the county stadium. Since we didn’t like crowds, we put a blanket out in the field next to the stadium and watched from there. It was amazing. I lay on my back in the warm night and fireworks exploded right above me, creating an umbrella of sparkling lights. I felt like magic.
After I moved to Colorado, Pat and I watched fireworks from a variety of memorable locations. The rooftop of the pool hall we frequented, the top level of the parking garage where we used to roller skate, the pitch black hillside near the cemetary where we drank champagne on Sunday afternoons. We always had a good time, and Pat always remembered his childhood fireworks-viewing experiences, in particular, a lady sitting behind him once when he was small who said, “Oooooh, that’s a pretty one,” with every display.
After Kelsea came along, we spent many July 4ths with another couple we had known for years who had a daughter of a similar age. Our dogs have always hated fireworks – JT got out of the yard on one of his last 4th of Julys and we thought he was gone forever. Champ and Roscoe are now whimpering softly at my feet in response to the pops around the neighborhood. (I’m housesitting for Pat again – didn’t mention that, did I? Well, it’s raising enough challenging emotions, just like it always does, for a whole blog in itself.)
I’m still a kid at heart – I still love the lights, the patterns, the sparkles, the colors. As the cool breeze blows through the window, and I listen to the sound of the falling rain, it doesn’t feel quite like a usual 4th of July. But glancing over my shoulder at the last year or two, from this house in which I tried and failed to make a home, it does feel like Independence Day. I must remember that.
The worst thing about divorce is not being able to be with my daughter every night. I miss her. She’s 13 and she’s (still) wonderful.
The other night, I received the following text from her, at about 10:40 pm. Her dad was asleep in his easy chair and she was still up. It read:
“Thank you for everything you have ever done and will ever do for me mommy. I love you and I hope you had a good night. I miss you. Sleep well.”
That’s why I miss her.
