Going To The Chapel

For the past two weekends, we have been fortunate to have been invited to two weddings. The first was a long-time friend of our son, the second was a graduate student in Mark’s lab.

Each wedding was different in style and feel. At the first wedding, we knew many people and met long-time friends of our son. Friends that he had gone to college with and has talked about for years. At the second wedding, we knew the bride and another graduate student who could only stay for the wedding. For that reception we were on our own.

The first wedding was in a church, the second in an event space. A minister did the first wedding, a brother-in-law officiated the second. There were many examples given of love. What is it? Can you find a clear definition in books, songs, movies? The brother-in-law rattled off examples from Beauty and the Beast to Titantic. Why, he asked, did Rose not just scoot over on the door to make room for Jack and change her whole future?

I wanted to jump out of my seat in the Amen Chorus and yell, PREACH, internet ordained preacher. Why did Rose hog the whole door?

During each wedding the bride and groom recited their vows and promised to be true to each other in good times and bad, in sickness and health. Thirty four years down the road, I thought about those good times and bad. How sometimes they blindside you. How you can look across the table at your husband on an ordinary day and wonder how you got so lucky. Or when you tell that same husband three times that you have to go to West Elm before the wedding to get a gift card for the couple because he keeps asking you what we are giving them. Let’s be generous, he says, they’re good kids. And you snipe back that you are not known for cheapness, and he says “what” for the third-times-thirtieth time because he blasted Pink Floyd relentlessly in his youth and now his hearing sucks.

I thought about both of our dads dying before they enjoyed much retirement. How we aren’t that much younger than either of them when their circle closed and what is that like? To be the one left to go on? I thought about the fight we had a few weeks prior, a screaming match that in the end was about two people worried about one kid in two different ways.

At the second reception we introduced ourselves to our table and it was filled with amazing, interesting people. Mark’s end was about gastroenterology, protein folding diseases, teaching medical students, bbq, the best Kansas City restaurants. Mine was hearing about the Spinach Festival that day, Denver, housing prices, closeted nut jobs on Facebook, a brunch to attend the next day with one of those closeted nut jobs.

Before we left, we had a long chat with the parents of the bride. While Mark and the dad were talking, I told the mom that this was the second wedding we’d been to in as many weeks. You forget, I said, how beautiful it is to hear two people pledge their love to each other, to throw caution to the wind, to look in the eyes of each other and go for broke.

An honor, I said. It’s an honor to be at a wedding.

It is, she said, and there we were. Two women with decades of marriage between us. Two women who could fill hours with stories of the good times and the bad, stories of the ones we saw around us that we were so sure would last but didn’t, stories of love and honor and joy and despair.

Two women quietly standing next to each other in a hallway, giving all those leaps of faith an overdue moment of silence, while just inside the doorway the music played and the dance floor filled.

The Costumes

How did you do it, she asked. How did you ever get dinner on the table with a baby?
I don’t remember, she answered back. I know I did but I don’t remember.

******
In the midst of an overhaul of closets in a bedroom that the great and magnificent Oz of an air conditioner has deemed less worthy of the cool air that the rest of the house enjoys, I found my sweaty self sitting on the floor in the middle of a disaster I created.

I was having a bit of a problem finding my mojo for this bad idea.

One pile at a time I told myself. One foot in front of the other and one ridiculous pile at a time, right? Isn’t that how all hard things start? I began to sort. Yearbooks from this kid, posters from that kid, a pile to donate, a pile for the garbage, the biggest pile reserved for I Have No Idea. It was a slow process and after many hours it might have looked to an observer that I had accomplished nothing, but a plan was starting to take hold. The closet got painted, the chaos go its marching orders via black, plastic bags and the end of the day and my ambitious plan was coming together.

In the midst of this mayhem there was an actual plastic tub – the premiere organizational tool that has its own aisles in Target and the preferred method of storage for a million Martha Stewart wannabees. Where did this beauty come from? Who thought to put anything in here protected from the dust that layered everything else? I opened it up and the inside contents were reserved for one thing – the dance costumes that the third and last inhabitant of that room had stored. One by one I pulled them out, held them up, sighed, smiled, felt my eyes fill with tears. Each costume carried its own memory – tap, ballet, hip hop, solos, group dances. I remembered every dance that each costume was for. At the bottom of the tub were the head pieces that went along with the tutus, the sparkling, wow-them-from-the-stage earrings, the box of stage makeup that had long dried up, dozens of hair clips and bobby pins.

Years of memories carefully stored in a single plastic tub.

Like her siblings and their interests, I remembered everything about these first solo flights of bravery. Sitting on the bleachers for a track meet – the last being the state competition that the girls 4×400 qualified for, on the sidelines of cross-country meets at the crack of dawn- the ending being the senior banquet where the one who hated public speaking the most eloquently thanked everyone who helped him across every finish line, or the final recital where years of training ended on a stage with a bow and a wipe of tears. I remembered them. I remembered me watching them.

As a witness to these events over the years, my posture was always the same. Leaning forward, feet propped up, elbows on knees, fingertips resting on my lips, the same mantra on repeat over and over. C’mon kiddo, you got this. C’mon kiddo, you got this. C’mon kiddo…. I always knew that mantra was for the benefit of my jangling nerves and not theirs.

In a closet full of the accumulated messes of three kids who had all taken their turn passing through the biggest bedroom in the house before heading off on their own, the best had saved itself for last. I wiped out the bottom of the tub and folded each costume and headpiece and put them back inside. I ran my hands over the sides of the lid to make sure it was snapped on tight so any lingering dreams that preferred to remain with the tulle and the sequins wouldn’t fly away.

*****

How did you do it, she asked. How did you ever get dinner on the table with a baby?
I don’t remember, she answered back. I know I did but I don’t remember. Ask me about the good stuff. I remember all of that.

Ch-Ch-Changes

Though I have been doing my best least to let this blog fade quietly into the sunset, it would seem that the universe clearly had other thoughts about that idea.

So where have I been?

A perfect storm of changes happened within a short spring season and I continued a long established pattern of using as much energy as I could to fight every one of them even though I knew going in that the outcome would never claim me as the winner.

After nine long months of not having a boss (or at least a readily available one) that changed mid-March and it has been good. I like him a lot but there is the dance of “what are his expectations of me” that I am still figuring out. A week after he started my work buddy left. He and I worked on the same things in different capacities and so my paper moving daily work changed to what are we supposed to do with this contract, how do we book student travel, how to do we pay for this $20K bill. I used to refer to Richard as my “work husband” for many reasons. He and I talked and problem solved all day long and all of it was conversations about money with a couple of recipes and current events thrown in – not unlike my real husband. His leaving left a void in many ways and my work life got inundated with more responsibilities and emails. Oh my the emails.

A few weeks after that, our wee bird left the home nest for a grand adventure and we did our best to make that happen for her in the most positive of ways. She is an adventurer. I am not and would find that kind of move intimidating so the challenge was to remind myself that she is not me and must do what she thinks is best for her. It was easier said than done when my own baggage was bulging and begging to be unpacked. Six weeks later it is clear that our wee bird is happy and thriving and made the right decision.

Our nest had fluctuated for years with the comings and goings of kids after college. I loved when they came back and loved when they got to start off on their own. The difference this time is that there are no more kids to move back. We have reached the end of the line in daily parenting and getting used to that has been harder than I thought. Our house got terribly boring and quiet with only the drumbeat of Russian interference and impeachment in the background which has not been exactly helpful in staying upbeat.

In the midst of all that was our last Listen To Your Mother show. The work of doing the show kicks into gear after the first of the year and by spring is a daily juggling of details. With everything else in a state of flux this gave me the chance once again to throw myself into something bigger than myself. I got to meet a dozen new writers who quelled their public speaking fears and stood on stage and told their stories. The friendships made and bonding before, during and after the experience has has been invaluable.

And with a final bow on the stage of a historic theatre, all the changes that I was in the middle of for months ended on a Sunday afternoon.

I know that I am a person that always needs a project and what to do next is the big question. I have some ideas that are simmering so I will wait and see what bubbles to the top. In the meantime, I finally painted the banister that was installed fifteen years ago but that I could never make a commitment to as far as color. I went white and lord have the mercy…why didn’t I do that at least a decade ago? I painted the hallway and convinced my very skeptical husband that a birch branch was the perfect handrail.

None of this has filled my empty house, satisfied a new boss, or provided the direction to a new path to wander down, but it is one foot in front of the other and that is a start.