Friends, Roses, and the Beach Girl's Enduring Spirit

My friends, Cathy and Mike, performed a remarkable and beautiful favor on behalf of another friend, Patty, last night. That sounded convoluted, didn't it? Well, read about it here; it'll make more sense.

So I haven't mentioned this too much before, but Bug loved the ocean. When she had just turned three, we took her to Florida for the first time, and immediately headed to the north point of Captiva Island on the Gulf coast. I love that point -- it's a haven for Dolphins, Herons, Egrets, sport fishes of all kinds. The beaches are covered in shells, the waters are sparkly, and the sand is fine and soft. Bug took one look at the place and fell deeply in love with the great expanse of water that lay before her.

At three, she didn't have the skill for ocean swimming, so I held her hand tightly while she was in the water. She hated that. She longed to venture out. I longed to keep her from being carried out to sea. But she loved it. There are a lot of stories from that week. Stories that include her getting cold in the water with resultant pooping on the beach and hungry seaguls and Mommy deciding that she could no longer show her face in public and having to find a new beach after that. Stories of our needing to stop at every alcove and inlet, so she could get out of the car, feel how the water was "different" on her feet in each place, and dip her bottom in the water. Stories of first encounters with manatees, including more impromptu swimming forays. But we can tell more of those stories another time. They made her life richer, and ours, too.

Bug insisted I teach her to swim, immediately upon our arrival at a pool, and at every opportunity thereafter, so she would never again have to spend her beach time tethered to her mother.

By the time she was seven, she was "Beach Girl". Here she is, saving sand fleas in a bucket.



Have you ever seen sand fleas? Also called "Mole Crabs", they're tiny crustaceans that live on the beach, just at the breakline. They like the extra oxygen that is generated by the churning of the water as the waves break. When you pick them up, in a handful of shells, they try to burrow into the sand and they tickle your hands. This was Bug's definition of "The Best Animal God Ever Created".

Cute little suckers, aren't they?

No? I don't think so either.

But Bug loved them, which doesn't surprise me. Because she was always finding wonder and beauty in the things the rest of us found odd or even ugly. And because she was, is and always shall be a sea-loving creature.

So the favor? Cathy and Mike took a rose from Bug's funeral, lovingly saved for the last six months by Patty, and cast it into the ocean when they reached the shore yesterday. It was a beautiful gesture of love and remembrance. I'm sure her spirit was there to catch it. And I'm sure she smelled it, then smiled and laid it on the beach next to her bucket, just before she grabbed her dip net to head back into the water.

Perspective 3 -- Living in my own personal episode of Glee

I had to go in for a sleep study last night -- I've been suffering from some pretty overwhelming fatigue, and Mr. Bean says I keep kicking him at night, so it made sense to check for things like apnea or restless leg syndrome.

As I was answering questions for the technologist, she stopped and looked at me. "I know you! We went to school together!"

I get this question all the time from people; I have one of those faces that reminds everyone of someone that they know. I am almost never someone from school. At least not their school. This time, however, it turns out we did go to school together; she graduated with my younger sister.

This made me cringe a little inside.

I try hard not to think about high school. I was as awkward, and frankly as obnoxious, as any character from Glee. I had a small circle of friends, and a significantly larger circle of detractors and tormentors. It wasn't as bad as middle school -- nothing is -- but it's still not a time I'm keen to return to.

Then she kept talking. "I'm sure you don't remember me. I hung around with Jim's younger sister, Heather. You were always with Jim and Dave and the rest of the cool theater kids and the swing choir and you were always on stage. I wanted to be just like you. I used to sit in the prop room and listen to you sing."

"Me? ME???? You're kidding, right?"

"No. You just always seemed so confident and you had so many friends."

The truth of the matter was that I was always in fear of the next taunt, of losing my lines, of Jenny, and Jean, and heaven-knows-who-else, who were always waiting for me to fail so they could move in and take my part. I was afraid that, at any time, Jim and Dave and the rest of the cool theater kids would decide that I wasn't cool enough for them anymore. This would happen periodically. I was always on the fringe of the really cool, talented kids group, for all that I used to pull down the lead roles in the musicals. So I compensated by never really engaging with anyone. I didn't remember this girl, apart from her being part of the cloud of friends who hung around with Heather. For all I knew, I might have treated her like dirt, in an attempt to assuage my own insecurity.

I swallowed hard. "Was I ever mean to you?. I was a total brat sometimes in high school."

"No; you were really nice to me. You always said thank you and you encouraged me to keep singing. Gawd, I mean it; you haven't aged at all since then. It's kinda scary."

"Well I'm not so sure about the aging thing, but I'm glad I wasn't mean to you. Because you seem like a really good person." I went on to tell her about what was going on with several of the kids she had graduated with; that Heather had opened a couple of very successful cafes here in town, that Tracy was living in Phoenix with my very cool brother-in-law, that Angie had lost more than 100 lbs and was an athletic trainer.

During this whole time, she was putting electrodes on my skin, in my hair, behind my ears. I felt like I was on The Machine from Princess Bride.

It was a fairly miserable night. I couldn't get used to the electrodes or the belts or the other devices she put on me. I also had an infrared camera and a microphone on me all night long, with her in the next room. So there I was, facing a night of subjecting someone who apparently didn't recognize what a total dweeb I was in high school to my snoring, my sleep talking and the nighttime functioning of my digestive system.

I had a sleep disorder alright: I didn't sleep. Not sure what they'll learn from this.

But I'm once again reminded that every experience can be different, depending on your perspective. I'm also reminded, yet again, that it is more important to be gracious than it is to be popular. And probably some hackneyed rot about making one's words sweet or something like that.

"I need applause to Live!"

Mother

Yes, it's once again been two weeks since I've posted.

There was a part of me that wanted to post something on Mother's Day. But I struggled to figure out what to say. That I survived it? That really, I had hoped with all of my heart and soul that I wouldn't? That I got the most beautiful, heartfelt letter from Daisy Mae that both lifted my heart up and shattered it to pieces? Because all of those things were true.

I will never, ever again be "Mama". The extent to which that rends my very soul is indescribable.

But I am still a mother.

Case in point: this weekend.

Friday was Daisy Mae's 8th Grade Banquet. The days before were a flurry of dresses, jackets, hairdos and shoes. I let her borrow my good black Coach bag. She squealed and proclaimed her love for me. We jumped up and down in place to test our undergarments. We reviewed the use of proper silverware. We took pictures. We looked at pictures. We got awards. We smiled.

The rest of the weekend was spent helping Daisy with her final project for History. And I mean the entire weekend. Because, as teenagers are wont to do, she decided to expend the entire 25 hours necessary to complete the project in the last 48 hours before it was due. At 1:14 this morning, as I was gluing her reference sheet to the back of her poster, having sent her to bed -- no, you may not shower tonight; wait until morning. Just go to bed -- a half hour earlier, I thought of my own mother. Finishing the painting on Jupiter for the scale model of the solar system I had made out of papier mache'. Finishing the popsicle-stick model of a geodesic dome I had started at 2 pm the day before it was due. Sitting beside me, with the Funk and Wagnall's encyclopedia and three cookbooks, helping me figure out why a Passion Fruit was named thus and trying to find a recipe that would tell me what to do with one, for my Home Ec. class. Proofing my term papers.

These events, invariably, take place between midnight and 3 am on Monday mornings. They are what takes the place of putting SpongeBob bandages on skinned knees, pushing swings at the
playground, and re-sewing the seams on over-loved stuffed animals. These late nights, the rescuing of school projects, the borrowing of purses, the ever-present knowledge that Mom Won't Let You Fall Too Far -- these things re-define how our children depend on us, as they stop being "kids" and start being "teens".

It's been a tough jump into the deep end of this particular swimming pool. It still hurts. I still sometimes feel like I'm not a Mom anymore, but not as often as I did. More weekends like this have the potential to make next Mother's Day feel more real.

And on an unrelated note: My garden is fully planted. Glad I didn't do it last weekend, as we had a hard freeze last Sunday night. Anybody need extra tomato plants?

Antici-

Yeah, so I can't wait to get my garden in. In the last two weeks, my tomatoes have gotten tomato-like

The cucumbers are positively bursting at the seams to get outside


And the peppers are...well, the peppers have sprouted. You can't put them outside until the soil warms up anyway...


Mr. Bean, a/k/a "King of the Roto-Tiller" has prepared the garden bed


And we've recruited 120,000 busy little assistants.


Can't wait to play in the dirt. I think the lettuce and spinach, and the bean seeds, will go in this weekend. :)

Perspective 2

She sat across from me on the bus. We, the only two there so far, had taken seats across from each other while we waited for the others.

She'd spent the last two hours questioning me -- short, awkward questions that hinted at a desire for intimacy where before we had always had distance. I walked the line carefully -- trust is dangerous, even among women.

Thus far, I had been able to demure, focusing instead on the thousand tasks that needed to be completed. Now, however, it was just the two of us, trapped here by the expectation of our soon-arriving colleagues, and she saw her opportunity.

"So if you were to ask God a question, what would it be?"

Every cell in my body commanded me to pause, to think. I didn't.

"What job did you have for her to do that was so much more important than being my daughter?" I fought not to let the emotion choke my voice.

She leaned forward and removed her glasses. Her green eyes were striking against the auburn she had chosen for her hair. She chuckled.

"You are too young to be my sister; too old to be my daughter. So how to answer you...

...It may not be about her job, you know,"

"How do you mean?"

"Perhaps it's not about what her job is. Perhaps God is interested in what you have to do that is so much more important than looking after a soul he has already taken into himself."

I met her gaze and formed another question on my lips.

And then the others arrived.

Technology. Accountability. Attachment. Love.

We finally did it.

We got Daisy Mae a cell phone.

In contrast to my normal M.O., I did not hold out for her to have accomplished something momentous before she got the phone. She didn't bring home straight A's or get named "student of the week" or anything like that.

In the end, we were done in by a couple of very simple conditions:

1) She's starting to make more friends and spend more time away from home, and we came to realize that it was in the best interest of our sanity and her safety for her to have a phone.

2) She didn't push the point.

I think, in some ways, #2 was a bigger determinant than #1. Don't get me wrong; we both recognized that it was unfair and kind of a pain in the butt to have to rely on her friends and her sister to reach her when she was away from home. But in some ways, I was more swayed by the fact that, when she broached the subject in the fall, I told her that I needed to see more evidence that she was responsible enough to have a phone. She pushed back, but only for a little while, and then she let it go.

No whining. No complaining. No dramatic tirades about how we were the most unfair and backwards parents in history. No re-opening of the discussion on a weekly basis. She just stepped away from it and lived with the house rules.

Kiersten was very similar in that respect. They both would internalize rules, including their consequences for having broken house rules, without too much fuss. If you know you're going to be grounded for breaking this rule and you break it anyway, well...you live with those consequences. If mom says no; then the answer is no. Screaming about it isn't going to change anything.

It's something I respected a lot in Kiersten, and it's something I respect a lot in Daisy Mae. That was why, when S and I started discussing this last week, I realized that Daisy would follow the rules regarding the phone. If she knows that she only has X number of text messages, or that she loses the phone for using it during school, she's very likely to live by that. (It doesn't hurt that AT & T lets you set your kids up to succeed by giving you tools to shut down talk and texting during bedtime and school hours.)

So we're giving it a try. She knows that I can get a transcript of her text messages at any time, and she knows that I have a full accounting of every call and text she makes or receives. And the device has a GPS in it, so I can use it to pinpoint her location to within 30 feet at any time. She's happy to have these controls, if it means that she and her friend Abigail can text each other 15 times a minute. ;) But more importantly, I think it signals to her that there is permanence here. That she's part of the tribe. When you grew up in a household where, sometimes, no one noticed or cared if you ate or not, there's a comfort in knowing that somebody wants to know your whereabouts to within 30 feet, that somebody will be there to answer the phone when you call, and somebody will come out in the rain to pick you up at the ice cream shop.

Daisy has been pretty much on Cloud Nine ever since we picked up her phone on Friday. I hope it lasts. I love her smile. And I like sending her goofy text messages from the next room.

U look like a @(^_^)@ in that shirt.

Oh, whatever!

Cucumbers.

And tomatoes. And spinach, and lettuce and green peppers and herbs.

This year, for Christmas, Mr. Bean got me a greenhouse cart. Three levels. With humidity trays, adjustable lights, and a cover to keep all that earthy goodness perfectly moist and away from munching kitties.

He knows how much I have struggled with getting my garden plants started from seeds the last few years. We have no south-facing windows, and so invariably, my seed-started peppers and tomatoes end up leggy and small, and I eventually give up and go to the garden center for flats.

Not this year.

Last Sunday, because Easter was so out of kilter for all of us anyway, I came home from church and got busy starting my seeds out on the back porch in the 70-degree sunshine. As it turned out, several friends stopped by (Thank God for our friends. Seriously. I think we all would have ended up...well, I don't even want to think about where we would have spent the last five months without them) toward the end of the seeding time and all stood around, drinking champagne and making all the appropriate Oooo and Ahhhhh noises over the greenhouse cart.

But here I am, a week later, and I have lovely sprouted veggies. Not spindly, sickly, hung-over looking things, but hearty, thick stemmed beauties, resplendent with secondary cotyledons. Well, I was so tickled I started another two flats of flowering herbs today.

We can get lost in ourselves sometimes. We go to work, we struggle through our relationships, we search for meaning in our everyday activities. But sometimes, we can marvel at the simple miracle of plant growing from seed, the smell of wet earth, the bringing forth of beauty and sustenance from what seems to be nothing, and we can remember that the world is a remarkable place.

I'm going to go thank S. again for my Christmas present. He always knows what I need, even when I don't.

I'll update you after the garden gets roto-tilled in (amazing that I got a greenhouse and he just happened to get a roto-tiller for his tractor), and we start getting down to serious business for this year. Our neighborhood is especially hungry this year, and I'm looking forward to having our garden help sustain us all in more ways than one.

In the meantime, feast your eyes on these lovelies:

Bittersweet

Things I did today:


Gardened a bit.

Watched Mr. Bean put away two new hives of bees.

Went to a memorial for the sister of a far-away friend who couldn't be there himself.

Spent time with the beautiful and talented ClevelandK8.

Cried a little. Together.

Talked to my Dad, who is in the hospital while his new bone marrow takes hold and gives him a new lease on life.

Took a nap.

Basked in the April sunshine.

Missed my beautiful baby girl a ton and a half

Felt thankful for the beautiful girl I still have here.

Glad it's not Monday anymore

I don't know why I get maudlin on Mondays. Ellie has Taco Tuesdays; maybe I should have Maudlin Mondays.

I didn't get a chance to blog about the event I hosted last week. We had a chance to host several generals and rear admirals here to learn about the work we're doing in helping develop new treatments for wounded military personnel. I've written before about the need for these treatments; it's vitally important. They also wanted to learn about the program we have in face and hand transplant, which is a big part of the work I do. And yes; I'm being a bit cryptic for a reason. I don't want to give away too much, as it wasn't a public event.

I'll just say that the day went swimmingly. Better than super-fantastic, truth be told. I felt proud of the work the team did and to toot my own horn for a moment (you'll indulge me a little toot, won't you?), I totally rocked the whole "gather the right people in the right place at the right time and get them to say the right thing", thing.

The funniest part of the day was when the general's aide-de-camp called my cell phone.

"We're about 40 minutes late taking off. We're going to try to make up some time in the air, but we might be about 30 minutes late."

It was supposed to be a 90-minute flight; I figured they might make up 10-15 minutes, but I wasn't holding my breath.

45 minutes later, my phone rang again. "We're landing right now."

"You're what?"

"We're landing. Does the limo have clearance to come onto the tarmac?"

"Wait; you just took off 45 minutes ago. It's supposed to be a 90-minute flight. How did you do that???"

"It's the general's plane Ma'am." I could hear the smile in her voice. "I believe his exact words were, Punch this thing, Son. I don't want to miss lunch."

It's good to be the king, I guess. ;)

All of the presentations went great. The military folks asked a ton of questions and were genuinely interested in the program. As he left, the general pressed his personal coin into my hand. "You're doing good things here. You give these young men hope. I appreciate it."

Anyway, when the world looks bleak, sometimes it's good to remember that there are reasons to keep going and there are people who appreciate the effort.

Maybe next time, he'll let me ride in the jet. ;)

nothing left to hide behind

Dear Bug,

You've been gone four months now. Things here are awfully hard right now. There aren't any holidays, or milestones, or excuses to hide behind anymore. There is no shock now to make us feel like you've just taken a vacation. I'm not quietly, secretly convinced that you're going to walk back in the door, any minute now. There's just a great big hole in our lives where you used to be.

I haven't touched your room. Your bed is still unmade. In those first few weeks, I was still shocked to see that you were not there. Now I'm just overwhelmingly, profoundly sad.

I'm worried about your Daddy. He doesn't seem to want to do anything, or see anyone. I'm worried that he's going to give up, that he's not going to finish school. Baby, if you could give him a sign, any sign, that you want him to pick up and start living again, I know he could use it.

I'm scared, Bug. I'm scared that your memories are going to fade. I'm scared that some day, I will come across your Winnie-the-Pooh washcloth, but I won't be able to remember how soft your skin was, or how much you loved being SuperPidge in the hooded towel, or the sound of your laugh. I'm scared that some day, I won't be able to remember the night we sat under the big maple tree over by the school and you told be about the worst school day ever and you read me your poetry book and we figured out how to make the world better together. Those memories are all I have left of you and I'm so very terrified of losing them.

I'm sorry, sweetlove. I don't mean to dump on you. Baby, I hope that heaven is, well...heavenly. And I don't want you to worry too much. I know we're going to be OK in time. It's just that right now, it's a bit of a walk through hell down here. So if you have a bit of comfort to send to us, just a small sign that reminds us that your spirit is still here and that you know how much we miss you, we sure could use it right now.

I love you, sweet baby, and I miss you so much.