I See What You Meme

Here it is! My 50th year.  How do you mark a half-century on the planet?  First, I'm astounded by the many other things that are marking 50 years in our culture:  The movies  Jaws and Monty Python and the Holy Grail The Rocky Horror Picture Show Bohemian Rhapsody Saturday Night Live Space Mountain at Walt Disney World Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies Reaching this milestone also had me thinking about the many human milestones we mark. Most of these happen in our childhood, but there are some that we reach even in adulthood.  I've been walking and talking for 49 years I've been swimming for 47 years (yes, I'm a Florida baby!) ...a sister for 47 years ....reading for 46 years ....riding a bike for 45 years ....sewing a basic hem or a button for 42 years (thanks, Grandma Libby) ...playing the piano for 40 years ...touch typing for 37 years. And that started on a typewriter! ... working (collecting a real paycheck and not just babysitting or odd jobs) for 36 years...

It's been a while since I used the blog to share my thoughts. What started as some random musings turned into much more than a Facebook post. I started writing this over a week ago but it's taken a minute to actually hit the publish button. Thanks for your patience. Welcome back.   It has been a week (or two) . One of those weeks where everything happens all at once. A week where things need to happen in a particular order or everything‘s going to go to shit. A week where you just seem to go from one thing to the next thing and you’ll figure out what’s going to happen next as it goes along. A week full of work and family and rest and sleeplessness and it never feels like there’s enough time for anything. But somehow it all works out.   A plaque on the library walk in NYC My week started with a trip for work to NYC. It coincided with my birthday. Because of that, I had all kinds of feelings all week about life in general. The week ended with a trip to Florida that, unfortun...

It's that time of year when the blog musings center on my grief journey. Every year, it seems like we are busy with end-of-the-year school activities and the start of summer, planning vacations, and then (kablam)...it's almost July 9.  Grief is funny. Grief is weird. I remember very early after Charlotte died, I watched the movie Rabbit Hole.  There's an amazingly poignant scene where Nicole Kidman's character is talking with another woman who lost a child over 10 years before (played by Dianne Wiest). She talks about grief being like a brick in your pocket. It never goes away. Sometimes you can even forget it's there. But it comes back and makes its presence known from time to time. And (she says) "it's what you have of them."    I probably did not fully realize then what a powerful and true analogy that is. As time goes on, our grief changes. Yet, it is always there on the edge of things. It sits in that pocket and sometimes makes itself known.  This...

I think about Charlotte every single day. However, this time of year, I'm flooded with all kinds of memories as we commemorate the anniversary of her birth. This year feels like a bit of a milestone. Sixteen.  If cancer had not taken her life back in 2010, I have a feeling I would be planning a massive birthday celebration this year. 16 always feels like a landmark year in someone's life.  I have been thinking a great deal about the last birthday party we had for Charlotte in 2009. We didn't know it at the time, but we were halfway through her treatment journey. We had been through three major brain surgeries and a few rounds of inpatient chemotherapy. Treatments were not going well. In fact, right after her birthday, we would make the trip to Houston, Texas where we would settle in for about 10 weeks of proton beam radiation treatments and a new customized chemotherapy protocol. This was the unspoken "last chance option" to beat that aggressive brain tumor into ...

Science tells us that human memory is faulty . We want to think that we will remember certain moments forever like they are encased in carbonite. In reality, we look back on events and retell our stories to friends and colleagues. The story always shifts a little in the process and by the time we have told the story 1000 times, it has changed. It's not (usually) an outright lie. It's just that our brain betrays us. Even our collective memories of major national events that are witnessed by millions of people can be faulty. One study suggests that up to 40% of people changed certain elements of their remembrances of 9/11 as time passed. Something to seriously consider as our recent national discussions about history have claimed the center stage and we continue to live in "unprecedented" times.  Side note: anybody else yearning for some precedented times again?    Fifteen years ago this week, Charlotte Jennie was born. I recounted a lot of her birth story on this ...

As I sit here writing this, I mark 13 years since I was in labor with Charlotte. I am the mom of a teenager. And yet, I’m not. Every year, Charlotte’s birthday hits me a different way. Every year in the grief process is a little bit different. The arrival of her birthday so close on the heels of the end of the school year frequently triggers thoughts for me about how Charlotte’s peers continue to move forward while she Seriously. Kids these days... remains frozen in time as a four year old. As the school year ends, I see her peers moving on to middle school, attending dances, achieving milestones, and just plain getting older (Puberty! Eek!). It always leaves a twinge of jealousy and sadness in my heart. I try to imagine what she would be like, what her interests would be. Knowing how much she was my “mini-me” as a youngster, I lift up hope that she might have strayed from my junior high life as an awkward, frizzy-haired, coke-bottle-eyeglass-wearing teenager. ...

There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about Charlotte. She is everywhere. I see her in so many things. Most of the time, the thoughts are happy memories but they are often tinged with a bittersweet sadness and longing.  Around mid-June each year, it starts. For some reason, I'm extra sensitive to different memories or triggers. Some of these make sense. At the end of the school year, as kids are celebrating accomplishments and moving forward in time, I think of Charlotte. She never even made it to Kindergarten. I try to imagine what she would be interested in now, what her summers would look like, who her friends would be. Even with another child who has much to celebrate and keep me occupied, my thoughts fall back to her.  Bear. Just sayin' hello.  Other triggers are more mundane. I was at our chiropractor's office the other day for a regular visit and there was Bear, sitting there staring at me from the kid's play area. I hadn't tho...

"Sometimes I see your face, The stars seem to lose their place Why must I think of you? Why must I? Why should I? Why should I cry for you? Why would you want me to? And what would it mean to say, That, "I loved you in my fashion"? What would be true? Why should I? Why should I cry for you?" -- Sting   It's been a while, hasn't it? But it's that time of year again.  Sometimes I regret that I'm not writing on my blog nearly as much as I used to. It seems that my posts center around special family events and dates and I'm certainly not as prolific as I used to be. I write lots of things in my head or in my journals that just don't make it to social media and I hope those of you who continue to read my ramblings will accept my apologies for the long pauses in between my thoughts.  I suppose I'm saving it all for my next memoirs. When I'm rich and famous.  [pause for laughter] If I were to sum up my feelings right now abo...

It's the eve of my 40th birthday. A lot of people panic about forty. I've been thinking about this. A lot. In fact, if you have followed my blog for a while (at least a year) you know that it's been on my mind for...well... at least a year . I remember when my mother turned forty. It was only a big deal in the sense that it was a neat, round number. It was the first "major milestone" birthday that I remembered for a family member. Other than that, I didn't really get it. I didn't see it as "middle aged" or "over the hill" (It was 40 then. Isn't 50 the new 40?).  Now, here I am. I'm in the same place my mother was in 1987...in so many ways. Our eldest children were born in the shadow of our 30th birthdays. I was 29. My mom was 28. Within the next ten years, we would both face amazing joys and incredible challenges. For my mom, it was helping my father start his law practice and raising a family. For me, it was also launc...

The other day, as I was washing a glass pitcher in the kitchen, I suddenly flashed back to the memory of receiving the lovely gift. It was 2003 and we had recently moved into our home in Ashland; our first real home of our married life, after a series of rentals through the early days of marriage, graduate school, and 4 moves in 6 years. To mark the occasion of official home ownership, we invited friends and family to join us for a traditional house blessing. The assistant rector of our home church at the time (Trinity Episcopal in Fredericksburg) led our guests in a litany as we moved from room to room, acknowledging the blessing of shelter, recognizing the joy of community, and asking for peace, health, and security in the years to come. Then we celebrated in the most traditional way: with food, beverage, love, and laughter shared with good friends.  In the sacrament of baptism, we recognize a person's entrance into the church family. The congregation at large promises to supp...

This week, I will celebrate my birthday again.  Most years, I don't find my birthday to be an incredibly big deal.  As far as I'm concerned, my last major milestone birthday was 30. Ever since then, I have sometimes even found myself stumbling to even remember my own age. "I think I turn 34 this year.  Wait! No! How can I be 36 already?" Thirty nine feels a little bit different. I'm not going to say old. I don't really feel old. Most days. But 39 feels like something more significant. It's the eve of 40.  On my last major birthday (yes, we're still talking about 30), I had just become a mother for the first time. I was engaging in what I felt was truly "a career" (rather than "a job"), and I still felt like I had barely left college.  What a difference nine years makes in so many ways.  So to celebrate this personal milestone, I wanted to share some wisdom gleaned from 39 laps around the sun. Many of these thoughts aren'...