Looking Back

It's always difficult (in a mind-fuck sort of way) to imagine what our fellow bloggers were doing on certain days that we too can recall. A year ago yesterday, I started a blog. A year ago this morning, I was probably somewhat giddy and taken aback and perhaps a bit freaked out that people commented on my blog.

A year ago today, Charmed delivered P@ige. On her due date. Please go remember.

Frazzled

A year ago this week, Bella went to school for the first time.

A year ago, I got off my antidepressants.

A year ago, finally granted with 7.5 hours/week to myself, I decided to try and regain a grip on my rapidly snowballing life. 7.5 hours isn't so much when you think about it, and so I made what I thought was a wise decision: Instead of making a mile-long to-do list and going ape-shit in my small window trying to get things done, I would prioritize my list, and focus on chunks. So. First priority? Get back into shape, lose weight. I would spend the majority of my 7.5 hours doing that. In any free time I had left over, I'd do something for me. Something mentally healthy. Something to put some definition on my grief.

A year ago today, I started a blog.

**********

Last week, Bella went back to school. I now get 20 (!) hours a week to myself.

And I realize, I am exactly where I was a year ago: a list now five miles long, in need of prioritization, that sadly, reads exactly like last year's: firstly, get back in shape and lose weight. And sometimes, like last Friday, where I went from a tile appointment to a lighting store to a deli in order to buy lunch for my contractors, to picking up Bella and then hustling out to buy gifts for two birthdays this weekend, to preparing dinner so she could eat by six because she was looking a bit peaked, to treating myself to an after-dinner glass of wine only to have Bella wake me up at 1:30 a.m. and never really falling fast asleep again for the rest of the night . . .

I think, Why bother?

Here we go again. We all know how well last year's number-one flab busting mission went. (Not.) And here I am, finally running again in tiny little chunks with walks in-between a la my carefully crafted program by my wonderful PT staff, and I'm developing blisters on my arches where the orthotic hits. Podiatrist appointment set for my "free time" on the 15th. I am still overweight (18 pounds to be exact), and I'm fucking depressed by it. I haven't run in almost a year. And all those things that were supposed to happen after I lost a few pounds and got back in the swing of running? The playroom still isn't painted. The groups I wanted to check out last year, the job possibilities, the yoga class, the incredible list of house projects, the restaurants, the movies, all remain un-checked off, un-crossed out, looming at me, laughing.

Time to myself lately has been hard to come by. After the whirlwind family visit of almost a month, we barely had time to recoup when other family arrived for a three-day tomato jarring extravaganza. With nary an inhale between cleaning the pots and stashing the jars in the basement, Mr. ABF disappeared for four days on business pleasure work-related entertainment. Bella was dropped off at school on her first day, and we immediately went out for coffee and pastry and finally had a meaningful discussion together for the first time since June went out on a fruitless search for a kitchen faucet.

Some of my August bills are unpaid and I'm nearing their September due dates.

I still have a plethora of health-related appointments I need to make for myself, that got shoved aside while I dealt with my foot and its myriad of podiatric, orthopedic, and physical therapy appointments.

To massively mix metaphors, it's like ground-hog day while putting out fires. I'm on a hamster wheel with a wee hose. Just yesterday, while looking at tile in our gutted kitchen, Mr. ABF brought something up, which illicited a now-typical "Crap, I don't know when on earth I'll have time for THAT I barely have time to shower or think anymore," and then two hours later I went to him and said:

Um, you don't happen to remember what the thing was that was so important that I needed to find time to do it? The thing we discussed when we were downstairs?"

Mr. ABF couldn't remember.

I'm sure we'll remember and have the same exact conversation with zero activity and no memory until the next time whateveritwas comes up.

sigh.

But before you whip out the tiny violins and join me in the chorus:


I've been blogging for a year. And while I feel terribly that my bloggy life has suffered miserably in the last two blenderized months, when I look back on the past year it really remains my singular accomplishment:

I started a blog.

I started writing on another blog.

And in the process, I met (what to me comprised) an unimaginable number of empathetic friends who've made me think, ponder, cry, shout, act, feel comforted, want to meet them, and perhaps most importantly, laugh. I talk about so many of you now as though you lived down the street: "This woman I know? You'll never believe what happened . . . . " "So my friend in Canada? You know what she said?"

My body and my to-do list may be stuck, going round-and-round on the squeaky wheel whilst dodging the brush fires, but my mind is active. My brain to a great extent feels unfettered and worked over (minus the occasional and still-panicky lapse in short-term memory). My spirit is comforted and strengthened, and I know when I come here to speak -- and I don't mean about how no one makes an aesthetic, integrated-spray gooseneck faucet -- about how my grief intertwined with my day, whether amusing, frightful, or despondent, that someone out there in the computer will respond. Even if I feel so mashed out, a human ink-stain in need of paper towels, unable to cobble together my own thoughts, one of you will write a post that will tweak a synapse and suddenly make my fingers move, my eyes focus, my mind inspired.

I'm sure if at this birthday party yesterday (where, incidentally, I tried out the phrase "only living" to answer the "is she your only child?" question with a new mom. She quitely said "Oh," there was a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, and while she didn't follow up on that, she did keep talking to me and even sought me out to talk to me some more later on. So maybe someday?) I announced that my singular achievement last year was starting a blog, that the party would've ground into silence, and people would've stared at me somewhat forlornly, and someone would've muttered under their breath something about blogs being egocentric vehicles, and another about how the web spurs unsocial behavior. But I'd be smiling. This experience has been better than a support group, better than a writing workshop, better than a crossword puzzle. It has undoubtedly saved me, improved me, and given me confidence.

Admittedly, part of my current to-do-list angst is blog-related: I have two big writing thingies that have been mothballed since, um, early July; my blogroll and reader are horribly out-of-date and lack symmetry (there are some provocative new reads out there, people); those with private blogs have fallen into the black hole of my memory. (I'm hoping to carve time to put all of you in a tidy (neon, blinking, screaming) button somewhere obvious on my dashboard.) My email is unanswered. My comments have been a bit terse.

But it's all good. This was the second thing on my list last year, and I've accomplished it.

And I owe you all a thousand thank-you's for abiding with me on this journey.

Sauced

Inspired by a few of you from a few posts ago who suggested using the camera as shield to hide behind (brilliant!), two weekends ago I bravely ventured into a big family situation and distanced myself. There was a just-turned one-year-old there who I could avoid because people, camera! It's difficult! It has all these dials and shit! And when my MIL came screaming across the yard trying to get Mr. ABF's attention and he whipped out his cell phone ready to dial 911 only to be met with, "Look! The Baby's WALKING!" -- I am confident, confident, that my big ass camera stiffled my "Well, LA-TI-FUCKING-DA." Totally. Need to talk about BIL's kid's first birthday party? I need to find better light. You may be on to something.

The story of a few weekends ago actually begins eons ago, when Mr. ABF was a boy. Every summer, his Big Italian Family would get together and jar tomatoes. No, scratch that, they would jar sauce. His grandfather set up enormous army-issue pots on an old gas stovetop that he picked up at the dump, and they'd cook down bushels of Jersey tomatoes. (What exactly constituted a "bushel" was a hot topic that weekend.) Once cooked, they'd run the tomatoes through a press, a Rube Goldberg contraption his grandfather set up with a grinder powered by an old wash machine motor and belt. Finally, they'd cook it until hot again, and then jar hot in order to skip the boiling-to-seal step.



When I met Mr. ABF many moons ago, he had in his possession numerous mason jars of red sauce. And when an evening called for it, he'd saute some garlic and parsley in olive oil, add a splash of wine, and the dump in a jar or two of his family's tomatoes. (To this we have over the years added anything from homemade meatballs to live lobster.) And it's seriously the best thing you've ever tasted.



His grandfather was sick for many years, and finally died in the Fall '06. The tomato tradition, however, died years ago. At some point, in our last house, we finally used the last of the good jars and were left from that point to use store-bought tomatoes. Which we discovered really aren't the same.



Someone, probably after a few too many glasses of vino, had the bright idea that maybe we should revive the tradition. Inspired by memories of watching his grandmother sweat in the August heat as she sat on her stoop slicing tomatoes into a pot that came up to her waist, Mr. ABF deicded this was exactly the tradition he'd like to revive for Bella's sake. One of the old pots was located, another one ordered (who knew they made gumbo in such big vessels?). Portable gas burners and an electric mill e-tailed. Tomatoes and basil picked up at market. And finally, family amassed in order to go through the process again, and hopefully for at least another generation more.



This was the year to get the kinks out we kept reminding ourselves, and good thing, because batch two (clearly marked with a big "2" on the mason jars) got a bit toasty. We sorted through the problem, chalked it up as a learning experience, and vowed we'd at least use the jars for chili and failing that, decoration.



But batches 1, and 3-6 looked and smelled wonderful: deep red, thick, fragrant. We figured out how to avoid burn (pulverize the tomatoes a bit with the enormous wooden stirring utensil before turning on heat), and how to get the mill operating smoothly (send things through HOT).



And while I was dubious that simply reheating the sauce to near boiling and jarring hot would provide a substantial seal, I was proven wrong. Rubber gloves donned to fend the heat and help with grip, lids quickly twisted and the air filled with the sounds of metal popping as the lids sealed.



After three days of solid work, we had enough cases to send a few home with everyone there (we split up batch #2 so no one got stuck with a bunch of them). Pots cleaned, cars loaded, good-byes said, and hopes that next August we'd all amass with our notes and try this again. In the meanwhile, once a month or so, we'll take out a pot, saute some garlic and parsley in olive oil, cook down a bit of wine, and then pour in two jars from this year's enterprise. If we're lucky, it will taste delicious, and take us a bit into the past, and re-establish a tradition for the future.

Just Thinking

It came to recently, reading some of your writing (and I'm not going to point and gawk and stop traffic -- you know full well who's who, and there's more than one) that in many respects, I'm thankful things went down the way they did. No, not the unknown cause of lethal defects and actual dying part, sillies -- the rest of it. The surroundings. The milieu. Where the edges of the nightmare stopped.

Actually thankful.

I've got a post up at GITW today.

Lessons Circa Four

Bella: Let's play the dolls are dead.
Me: Are you sure? You don't want to play that they're very sick?
Bella: No, dead. You be the doctor.
Me: Um, ok.
Bella: (places dolls lying down on pillow)
Me: (in very serious voice) So Bella, why are you here today?
Bella: They're dead.
Me: Oh, I'm so sorry.

(Long pause as she studies dolls.)

Bella: This is not a very fun game.
Me: No, no it's not.

Me: Come here. (Hugs Bella.) You know, we can talk about being dead any time you want, ok? It's ok to talk about.
Bella: Ok.

************************

Me: Wow, your nails are long, let's them cut them.
Bella: No! I like them long!
Me: Why? (anticipating some answer about some hot-chick's long nails that she espied)
Bella: I can pick my nose better with them long.

Picture This

I was somewhere recently, packing something, dusting something off, getting the dog to quit eating something, can't remember really, when I ran across the above photo.

Pictures -- especially portraits -- are just weird for me now. My techno/shutterbug husband with his swank new digital camera started up a website for all things Bella literally moments after she was born. The site is crammed with hilarious and poignant photos (like the one above: Bella's first experience with an ocean, Muir Beach, 09/05), and there are bazillion others that didn't make the cut and now chew up space on a spare hard drive. Cunning works in depth-of-field, and brilliant color compositions. Did I mention my daughter was in them?

The last pictures I remember coming out of the camera in this fashion were a series of Bella splashing in puddles on New Years' Day, 07. (In some, you can discern a shadowy, very pregnant figure hovering in the corner.) The last website photo shows Bella ripping Christmas paper off a tambourine.

And then it stopped.

Bella's website is still parked in cyberspace, frozen in time, like a clock at the moment the earthquake hit. I never go there anymore. Looking at Bella prior to two-and-a-half is an exercise in torture, because all I can do is wonder what her sister would have looked like at that age. And I have a seemingly infinite quantity of jpegs portraying exactly what a one and half year old girl should be doing, and exactly how many pixels should've been utilized by this point in time on a sibling. The above picture used to represent sheer joy to me, and now it's just a loaded bomb: When on earth was the last time I smiled at Bella like that? Or she laughed like that? Would Maddy have seen the ocean by now? Will I ever experience joy like this again?

In part because looking at old photos hurts, I quit taking them.

I realized looking at this photo that I don't have any current pictures of Bella, say, Bella at the beach just a few weeks ago. None. And frankly, I'm not that broken up about it, except that I know in a few weeks her school will ask for something to put up in her cubby and send me scurrying through envelopes sent from attentive relatives for something not too cheezy. I grudgingly dressed her up one day last fall and sent her off for school photos, which turned out remarkably well, and they're still lying in an envelope on my desk. Unsent, unframed. Really, the only photojournalistic evidence of the past year and half lies on my iPhone -- decent, though somewhat blurry photos of Bella in various settings and states of dress, that usually simply get passed on to Mr. ABF -- or not. Why do I even take these? They're not good, I'm not thinking "wooo boy, this is going on the desk when I get home," so are they simply evidence to Mr. ABF that in his absence I'm doing ok by her? Are they proof to me of the same? At some point in the future, after Bella holds up one too many liquor stores, will her therapist finally land on this period in her development only to have me whip out the alibi? "I took her to the zoo! She rode ponies! She climbed trees! Her hair was combed! (Usually!)"

I certainly don't capture Bella any more with any notion of remembering the moment. Because she's right here, and I want to be in front of the lens undistracted by the focus features and to whom this needs sent to upon finish. Mr. ABF snapped a few photos in the delivery room of Maddy, and then set the camera down so he could just be with her. I think we've learned that we don't want any more distance between us and and our children than is necessary. I want to experience her as she is, and soak up what she's doing and what she looks like, and just be with her beautiful, obnoxious self. Taking a picture seems somehow redundant. Like birthstone jewelry or tattoos honoring your living children seem redundant to me any more. Do we really need to remember the living? Do I need to frame and litter my television room with evidence that Bella is evolving (and Maddy is not)? Seems kinda obvious to me now.

Finally, there is this: I'm not yet in a place where I want to remember now. Now still kinda sucks. I'll be honest: it's much, much better than it was a year ago. But I'm not yet in a place where I can smile on demand, or even smile and mean it. I haven't posed for a picture containing the three of us in eighteen months, because it rudely encapsulates the incomplete. Not to mention I'm still overweight, complexion mottled by two pregnancies, with dark circles beneath my eyes. The only picture of me at the beach I've seen thus far is one my mother took: Bella's posing in the foreground, and I'm trying hard to sneak away and leave her with a clear shot -- back to the camera, hat on, trudging toward the beach. I run from the camera, and refuse to turn it on my family.

One of my daughters remains perpetually trapped in two dimensions; she'll always be six days old, a flat surface underneath my finger who never answers no matter how loud I raise my voice. Why on earth would I trap the other there when she's right here? I know our families clamor for photos of their grandchild and rue the sudden cessation of Belladotcom, and I should be a dutiful daughter (in-law) and point and click and send. I'm grateful for the start of the upcoming school year (in more ways than I can express) in large part because a professional will take a (hopefully eyes open, nicely posed) photo of Bella that I can throw into an envelope so that others might appreciate her smile, features, and maybe some residual personality if we're lucky. I no longer see the point, because when I want to remind myself of her I run my fingers through her hair, smile at her, or tell her I'm counting to three. For the last time.

Images of a past life that seem a million years ago, emotions that strike me as foreign. I seem so young. The pictures seem so flat. And I have yet to find anything that I want to capture and hold in this manner. I'm still wandering around with my hands outstretched hoping someone or something will make me feel that way -- the way I felt that day on Muir Beach -- again.

Gives a whole new meaning to "still life," doesn't it.

Since We Last Spoke

Family, all of it, the last remaining dregs, left Friday afternoon. That marked 3.5 weeks with various permutations of family sleeping and eating in my house on a daily basis. My house, which frequent readers know currently has a gaping hole where my kitchen once was, and a 3-story elevator shaft where the (rarely-used, narrow, servants') back stairs once were. (We removed this "wall" in order to expand the kitchen, and the stair-case-hole will be closed on the second floor for a new laundry and on the third for guest quarters. NOT an elevator. Sadly, because running to the third-floor kitchenette is doing wonders for my calves but not so much my patience.) So I guess if you want to be technical, the day we had 10 for an impromptu lunch we also had approximately 8-10 contractors and subs in another part of the house. Did I tell you that I walked out into the hallway one morning to find my dog chewing on a Bella toy, began bitching him out only to look up and see my architect emerging from my second floor bathroom? It's been all shades of crazy.

The OBX were fun but not remotely relaxing. Not remotely. With big family dinners every night, followed by children waking up at 6:30 a.m. demanding to go hunt for seashells, I arrived home a sleep-deprived mess wondering how on earth I ever considered that week would be a vacation. I believe my parents were pleasantly surprised by the availability of good food products at the local stores, thank you for asking. And unlike last year where the repetitive rush of waves was an appropriate meloncholy backdrop to my mood, this year we all braved the riptide, got soaked, cracked jokes about my uncle's fishing prowess, and went crabbing. On the last day, I made all the small second cousins sit on a ledge, and constructed sand mermaid tails for the lot of them. It was only getting stuck in traffic on the way home due to a fatal accident about a mile ahead of us that I grew distant, and remembered how last year I insisted on taking Maddy's remains to my aunt's during this very trip so they wouldn't be alone. How far I've come, I thought, and made sure I walked directly into the family room after our 13-hour odyssey in order to say hello to the zip-lock on the shelf.

There were Bella birthday parties (no less than three of them), dinners composed of either take-out or stuff cooked on the grill, negotiating car usage, blistering heat, the occasional water or electrical outage thanks to renovation. The second car got a flat, a head cold cum flu symptoms is making it's way through the family that amassed last week, and in the free 20 minutes I had to weed over the last three weeks, I seem to have contracted a case of poison ivy.

Bella and her cousin (who is a year older) had a typical, heartfelt, and hilarious love/hate relationship: They exchanged clothes freely, played marvelously together, and only came close to blows once. "Want to play a game?" "THAT'S MINE!" "I'll push you on the swing!" "SHE HAS MORE THAN ME!" They slept in the same room, and did so marvelously save for one night (well, early morning if you must know), and of course the whole thing gave me much pause to consider what might have been. Ultimately, I'm so relieved she has a cousin, who will hopefully remain a confidante even if they do feed on each other's worst attributes: whining, and wearing age-inappropriate clothes provided by MIL's.

Because this 3.5 week time-suck was preceded by getting the kitchen ready for demo, I really feel as though I'm emerging from a six week business trip abroad. A lot has been left unattended during this lapse: our yard desperately needs weeding, our architect needs some final decisions on faucets and sinks and powder room tile, our car still has flat, my blogging life is in disarray. My family doesn't know I blog, so it was damn near impossible to carve out time for surreptitious "bill paying" or even reading/commenting without someone looking over my shoulder.

Blog time is Maddy time anymore, and as such, I feel as though I've rather left her memory on a back burner in the past six weeks as well. Save for a couple quick posts here and there, she didn't come up much: there was an odd discussion about how much auto-insurance companies suck during which "the incident" was mentioned. And of course on the last night with her cousin, with both of them curled up on the air mattress, Bella selected "I'm a Big Sister" for her book of the evening. I hate reading that book, even though I know it's her right to hear it. I really hated reading it to the both of them. In sum, I simply plowed from one activity to the next, one meal to the next, one evening to the next.

So it came as some surprise when my SIL sent me the following thank you note. My SIL is one of those people, one who wrote me daily and then weekly during my social time-out last year simply to tell me she was thinking of me without asking for anything in return. She has been nothing short of supportive and kind, and apparently, aware and unafraid of the subject (let's hope she doesn't google her own email):

I can't believe how much Bella has grown and I love her old soul. Maddelena's spirit is strongly present in your home and in all of our hearts. We all think about her all of the time but being there, I found myself thinking about who she would look like and what her personality would've been like. You and [Mr. ABF] are amazing.

As relieved as I was to go to bed Friday night, QUIETLY, with my husband, daughter, 2 dogs, and 2 cats, knowing the mason would be arriving for a rare Saturday work day promptly at 7 a.m., it's reassuring to know that family like this exists.

I hope you all are well, and haven't written too horribly much over the past few weeks. Thank you also, all of you, who wrote me to make sure I hadn't fallen off the edge of the earth. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some pendant lighting to consider.