“Do you think our love can take us away together?” 
​
 “I think our love can do anything we want it to.”*

We are back on the East Coast for a double funeral. My in-laws had a way of living large (they had seven kids in eight years plus one more for good measure), so it shouldn't shock the sentimental that in death, as in life, they did it their way. Both died with dignity, in their oldest daughter's home, surrounded by loved ones. Their oldest daughter happens to be an RN, which made it easier on everyone else and harder on her. In the end, their divine, parallel journey was straight out of *The Notebook.*

As one, then and now. 

My mother-in-law died first, a few weeks after a fall. She was picking Black-eyed Susans and lost her balance. (They were in season! She ended all her sentences with exclamation points!) For years, she had been waging a silent battle with early-onset dementia, partaking in a long-term research study, leaving herself post-its everywhere and providing the USPS with the windfall that was extra postage -- she was known to send a few thank you notes for the same gift (each beautifully written).

My father-in-law took his tumble, breaking his hip, just five days after she passed. He'd been beside her -- holding her hand and singing to her -- for a couple weeks while her morphine was administered. His hospital bed had already been moved to my sister-in-law's house so he could be side-by-side with his bride 24/7. Six days after his fall, he drew his last breath, just eleven days after she drew hers. Our thinking is that he simply was not up for living without her. 63 years of marriage will do that to a person. 

63 years was the length of my parents' marriage before they passed away in rote succession, my mom first even though she, like my mother-in-law, was five years younger than her mate. My mother and mother-in-law shared the same birthday, the same selfless disposition, and the same dogged determination when push came to shove. 

Grief is complicated. Layered. Compounded. We live 2000+ miles away from immediate family which makes it especially challenging. My husband thankfully got on a plane between deadlines to be at his mother's bedside, to watch The Martian with his dad ... to say his goodbyes. 

(To get away from my gentle reminders as he plowed into yet another assignment, "You have to feel to heal, babe!") 

It feels better to be back East, within the warm embrace of our sprawling Irish Catholic family. Their love language is levity. The soaring eulogy my husband wrote and delivered for his parents was unsparing in this regard. He had people laughing ... and crying ... on repeat, having done the impossible task of distilling two exemplary lives and one magnificent love story into 20 minutes. His point being: lives filled with quiet, heroic daily deeds, sidesplitting laughter, and unwavering dedication to faith and family, should not only be consecrated, but celebrated. 

Together.  

Always and forever. 
​


* Damn right, I'm quoting The Notebook. 

  

Dispatch from a Turkish cafe in Portsmouth, New Hampshire by way of Boston by way of Quogue, NY by way of Shelter Harbor, RI by way of NYC ... en route to Portland and Stonington, Maine. (Are we tired yet?)


She is complicated, crackerjack smart, full of sass and dry wit. As she prepares to flee CA (aka leave for college), though, my third and youngest daughter is mostly filled with mixed emotions. Her friends, for example, are amazing until one of them plans a road trip without her and she is crushed. "But you're out of town!" I counsel, to no avail. Her family is a pain in her ass until she sees her sisters for the first time in a month and is awash in the security blanket that is their love ... when they are not viciously arguing about borrowing clothes sans permission. She's entirely "over" the privileged, boring boy-men in her county but unsure as to how to approach relationships on a campus of 30,000 undergrads. She's 100% ready/not ready. 

She's not alone in that circumstance. 

​My pre-grieving happened when I took her to check out the college she eventually chose. So I'm all set. (Not.) Having just spent a glorious nine days with her on the East Coast (she returned yesterday; my husband and I have another week), I'm now situated firmly in the deep denial phase. I'll finally finish my passion project! I'll learn to crochet! I'll sign up for Spanish at the local community college! I'll reconnect with old friends! Stated directly, I'll be so busy doing that I won't need to feel ... which never works.

Alternatively, I can exhale and accept, viewing this time as a period of growth vs. loss. Or better yet growth by way of loss. 

The inevitable mother-daughter split will heal over time and is as essential to her journey as it is to mine. Having had to previously "let go" of my two older daughters (who now happily reside together in New York City), I've had some practice. That path -- to healing wholeness while separate -- is unpredictable, uncontrollable and, often times, intolerable. But we got there. 

My tale from the edge of the empty nest, then, becomes one of survival and recovery (of Self), while theirs becomes one of survival and discovery (of Self).

There's beauty in that dovetail ... right alongside the tears.  

We'd been in Valley Ford for a week on account of a sewer backup (#real). When we returned to new floors and an empty house, it was my job to reassemble our lives. "Unpack" the boxes. Too many layers to count here. 

I've been around my share of OCD people, so I tried to resist the urge to clean my mother's shells -- the ones that live in a Cost Plus World Market glass vase. I'm weak, however, so I succumbed. Upon picking up the prominent, yet dusty, cowrie shell on top -- I remembered that one, so smooth, so soothing -- I saw that she had labeled it with a perfect little "62" sticker that somehow lasted for half-a-fucking century. "62" coincided with her shell-type list: "Cowrie Shell, Captiva Island." 

So we could learn and remember. Each shell, ever-etched into a vivid memory. 

​Her handwriting, my tears. 

They came out of nowhere. One day, our front porch is a nonevent. The next day, two mourning doves (male and female; they mate for life) commence taking turns atop two perfect eggs in a nest they seemingly and secretly built overnight. A dove family! On our porch! They acted like they'd been there all along, as if they owned the place. Their new address, hidden in our burgeoning wisteria snug up against a 4x4 post which doubled as a predator-shield, was an ingenious spot to keep their offspring safe. It was from this perch that they commenced their campaign to coo-coo, coo-coo their way into my heart. 

It would not be an exaggeration to say I spent upwards of 90 minutes a day researching how best to support them.

Things I learned from The Google:

"Don't approach." Check.
"Don't touch the nest." Of course not, what am I 12? 
"Do understand that not all eggs are viable. If this happens, the doves will abandon the nest ... and the eggs. They will also do so if they sense danger." Since I knew intrinsically that our porch was the safest possible coordinate on the planet for this couple's baby birds (and had immediately ceased taking our dog out the front door upon their arrival), this was not a remote possibility. 

Conditions were perfect! 

Thus began my 13 days and nights of nonchalantly checking on them through the window every hour or so (upside of teleworking: you get to monitor everything, all the time, by way of procrastination). Not in a scary, stalker "You will not leave!" kind of way, but rather in an "You've got this and I've got you" kind of way. Mostly. 

You know where this is going. On day 14, two tiny baby doves were born. Mama and papa took turns feeding and cleaning up after them and I video'd each FIRST FLIGHT moment! 

Not. 

It went more like life. It went more like this: on the second Thursday, I tiptoed downstairs with my coffee because their cooing didn't wake me up per usual. They weren't there. Probably getting their breakfast together for once! A day date! 

When they had not returned by dinner despite me quizzing my husband on the topic half a dozen times throughout the day—he especially loves my catastrophizing and/or futurecasting when he's on deadline—I was still in the throes of suspended disbelief.

"Some eggs are duds," he said (unthinking!) right before bed. "If so, it's just nature doing its thing." 

"Um, I think NOT. They will be back by morning," was my riposte, just before staring at the ceiling for six hours. 

The mournings (cruel name) were not back by morning. They had bailed. Probably in Cabo. Their one-way ticket to Their Next Nest did not preclude more magical thinking on my part. Maybe if I continue to monitor the eggs, they will still hatch, for example. Or I can feed them worms from the pet store when they hatch. And because they were so close -- Day 14! -- they will be fine. 

By Sunday, the eggs disappeared. No protective, much less remorseful, parents in sight. 

This development did not sit well. I thought about the abandoned, would-be babies. A lot. Vanquished. Some flippin' vermin's dinner.

It was still early in the season. I considered the power of my thoughts to bring them back. After all, some dove couples have up to three broods a season and it was only March! 

Then April. 

Then May.   

Smash cut: I'm sitting in an Authentic Relating Birthday Circle for a dear friend when it hits me. 

I'm the damn egg. 

And I've got some sorting to do around that. 

More tk. 

The week we learned that a mayor in our county is an unapologetic, serial sexual predator.

Clients, victims, survirors, coworkers, everyone in my orbit including me, triggered.

Directly and indirectly. 

Retraumatized.

He's unrelenting.

Offensive as he goes on the offense: gaslighting, embodying white male privilege, demonstrating the hard truth that narcissists have no soul.

But they do have videos.

Videos he shares with his "friends." 

He's our local Trump, only worse (if that's possible), and for that we are triggered comprehensively and anew.

Again. And again.

Make it stop. Hold him accountable. Put him behind bars. Alone. Forever. Or at least until he can no longer hurt women.

In a place where he will have ample time "to pray," as he says. 

And, with any luck, be held to account by his fellow inmates.

Fair is fair. 

​#fuckyoufoppoli

The insufferable Marin Power Mom, bedecked in high-end technical fabrics and $200 running shoes, is doing plyometrics while barking orders at her two sons playing their iteration of something approximating bocce ball. Rather than play with them or join them in the merrymaking, she does burpees, cardio kicks and squat-knee-slap jumps (there's no doubt a better descriptor), demarcating her Self-Care. This exorbitantly overpriced 48 hours is her time too! Her Apple Watch and premium Fitbit Versa securely adorn her wrists, measuring her steps, her successes, her self-worth. She monitors her metrics more than her children, one senses, not just now but most hours of most days. 

"Yes, Bryce!" she shrieks (oblivious to the post-vaccinated person, namely me, 30 feet behind her on a patio attempting in vain to meditate, having carved out a corner of should-be silence in a sublime setting at 7:30a for the first time in what feels like ... eleven months). "That's a great strategy -- you want to knock his ball away from the yellow** ball, so your ball is closer!" 

It's never too soon -- her boys appear to be four and six -- in this privileged pocket of the world to foster an unhealthy sense of competition. To show who's who is boss. Ignoring the gyrating mother's coach/control/ing, the boys eventually start throwing the balls at one another. I'm admittedly pleased enough with this inevitable turn of events to pause my Insight Timer so I don't miss the teaching moment (for the mother of course, not the boys). With this development, however, she is perturbed, not because they aren't properly mastering the sport by heeding her helpful tips but because she has to cut her workout short. 

Stomping through the wet grass, she grabs the older one's sleeve and frog marches them to the resort office where she loads up on "complimentary" coffee, continuing to fill the hole that is her soul with something outside herself, having long since cordoned off the funny, engaging chi within -- along with the perfectly imperfect human that created these two beautiful children. 


​
**She meant pallino ball. 

#great/survival/strategy 

/// Flip side ///

How's That Working For You?

She'd been up most of the night again, unable to quiet her monkey mind. Her younger son had crawled into bed with her at some point, a no-no at home but she was too exhausted on this, her first "vacation" as a single mom, to object. Instead, she stared at the ceiling, afraid to move lest she wake him up. Limbs akimbo. Frozen and fretting. After 10 years of sleeping/not sleeping with her sons' father, she was not yet accustomed to sleeping/not sleeping without him.

This weekend respite was designed to offer solace to her boys, to let them know they could and would be okay because mom could and would be okay. Her therapist had repeated the research findings gently -- if the mother tanks post-divorce, the children will follow suit. The word behind the words, that she was beginning to hear everywhere, was that the children of non-intact families irreversibly swerve off into some trajectory other than overachieving student athlete and this, too, would be her fault. Everything would be her fault.

Never mind that her soon-to-be ex had been depressed for ten years. Never mind that he had not initiated sex for the last two years of their ostensibly perfect union. He was too tired, too sad, too stressed, too ... self-absorbed. He could take it or leave it. She could not. Leave it, that is. She had her theories, including but not limited to his eggs having been scrambled by a controlling, nightmare-of-a-mother, whose addiction to painkillers and elder anorexia were topics not to be discussed. Ever. That his mother treated his father like a servant (a pattern he was destined to repeat in their marriage) was likewise off the table, even during their half-hearted attempts at couples counseling. 

Last week during EMDR, she was instructed by her therapist to imagine him as a young boy, afraid and alone despite being the youngest of five brothers.  Imagine being raised in a family incapable of conveying warmth, vulnerability. In the movie in her mind, they were the cast of Ordinary People. 

This helped her feel compassion towards him for up to 24 hours, until he would invariably pull a prick move, like refusing to pay his half of their sons' therapy. 

"You were the one who left," he texted, "You pay for the mess." 

Her range of possible responses to that text were obsessively occupying her thoughts when her older son, Auden, who had just turned six, wandered into the bedroom from his assigned pull-out couch. It was before first light, but she again gave in. She felt like she'd been hit by a Mack truck, despite assiduously abstaining from alcohol and sugar -- which didn't mix well with her cocktail of antidepressants and psychotropics designed to drag newly divorced people through the morass that would be Their Lives for at least three years. 

The only way she would survive this day as a single parent would be by way of a lot of caffeine and what had become her half-assed, pathetic workout, a kind of Jane-Fonda-meets-Richard-Simmons routine she was relegated to doing for 20 minutes while the boys, God willing, occupied themselves in a way that didn't involve turning household objects into weapons or someone losing an eye. 

She managed to belt half a cup of truly horrific coffee, get the boys dressed and herd them out the door into the pristine resort property, replete with Buddha statues and olive trees. They sprinted to the bocce court before she could object. Yes, it was early, but this was yet another battle she would forgo that day, saving her limited stores of energy for later, when they would be hangry, overtired and overtly hostile, missing their father.

She was sure they were alone when, about halfway through her one-armed burpees, she noticed the pinched, older woman shooting daggers at her -- no small feat, given that she appeared to be meditating. 

How's that working for you? her sardonic self wanted to ask. 

Instead, she was formulating her apology when Auden pelted Bryce in the chest with a ball, point-blank range. 

Glancing over her shoulder as she ushered them quickly to the office, having remembered the free life force that is more and better coffee awaited her there, she hoped to make a connection by way of contrition with the meditator, whose eyes were now covered with a sleep mask. 

"If you want to be a true professional, you will do something outside yourself, something to repair tears in your community. Something to make life a little better for people less fortunate than you. That's what I think a meaningful life is -- living not for oneself, but for one's community." 
-- RBG 

Preparing a "go bag" is an exercise I highly recommend. Edifying. Illuminating. All the things.

We get to do it annually in Sonoma County (or so it seems).

We don't need much, it turns out, to live our best lives. 

In fact, shedding that which we don't need is not only healing but liberating. Goodbye to the ... 

More tk ...



Also p.s., 
Week 5 Artist's Way w/ 20 beautiful souls, most of whom are from SoCal and know from fires and evacuations. It's the week of "The Art of Possibility" when all things in our world seemed less possible. I'm using the same book I had in 1995 when my marginalia included notes from my ex. We did it together. It was integrating and healing to remember there was a time when our dreams, our marriage, our lives were limitless. And still we are coparents, doing our level best. 

Also, this is the night before my middle daughter launches to NYC ... her true north. I'm feeling a confluence of emotions to say the least. She won't sleep tonight. She will be okay. And for THAT, I exhale in gratitude. 

Week 8 prompt: "Design a t-shirt. What would it look like and say?" asked our mentor, mining for story gold.
 
Mine, it turns out, has already been designed. Three stripes. Blue on top, yellow in the middle, red below. C’mon. You know the one. Say it with me. The Police: Synchronicity Tour, 1983. July 23, 1983 in my case. Comiskey Park, Chicago, Illinois. 
 
It was the zenith of my high school experience. I was a junior. I had nice, if not semi-unhinged, friends. I had inconceivably big hair. 
 
We got dropped off by our relieved, unsuspecting parents at 9a – “See you at midnight!” Whitney Drury's mom called out, parade-waving.

“Excellent!” we responded, stolen alcohol from the adult’s cabinets buried in our purses to be consumed by 9:30a before entering the park. 
 
What WERE we thinking? We were thinking we were on top of the world (despite our unfortunate, just-above-the-knee acid wash cut off shorts, sequins headbands and aforementioned bad hair). We were thinking we could dance inappropriately with boys we would know for up to 14 hours. Mitzvah. 
 
The park was so packed that we moved, shoulder-to-shoulder as if underwater, soothed, held. We’d found our people. We’d endured the trials and tribulations of high school, made mistakes, large and small … but we were HERE. 
 
Ensconced. Embraced. Loved. By Sting. 
 
His current ran through us, electrified us  -- a coaxial cable from his voice to our starved, adolescent souls.  He knew we knew ALL the lyrics and were feeling ALL the FEELs. 
 
We were that delusional. And delirious. Deliriously happy. 
 
This was before we may or may not have dabbled with doing mushrooms in college for live shows. 
 
Before our fantasy bubbles burst and we lined up jobs, husbands, mortgages, adaptive coping strategies. Before we had --- then curated and very likely helicopter/snowplowed over and under-parented -- our children, only to then have to set them free in this brave new hellscape world. 
 
Yesterday, while running to my favorite Police radio Pandora station, Every Breathe You Take came on. Metronomic music and footfalls marking time. I was doing my monthly 10k in honor of my coworker who died from COVID-19. She was only 43, a mother, wife, friend and public servant who spent the lion’s share of her days and nights serving domestic violence and sexual assault victims. She asked to have the COVID test twice and was denied … she took her last breath in March. 
 
The co-worker who organized the virtual run set it up so we could raise money for the cause, get a medal and a Run Fierce tank top, which, alas, has become my new favorite. I think Sting would be okay with the synchronicity of it all.