4 posts tagged “birthday”
Husband is in geek ecstasy using a seal-o-meal to prep all the food for our camping trip. Keeps bringing me little packages & bouncing.
@gapingvoid Were you an outdoorsy kid when you went? Previous interest or experience camping, hiking, kayaking? Just curious WRT my brother
Have returned from my adventure in the swamp. Was beautiful and grounding, inspiring and awesome. Oh, yeah, and filled with bloodsuckers.
My husband and I ended up in Florida because it's where my mother and brother were, and they needed our help. Mostly, we miss being up North (closer to his family, more connection to the cities and life there), but it's pretty damn hard to complain when it's the first days of April, you're cooking out on the grill in bare feet, a skirt, and a sleeveless shirt.Shrimp are in the marinade; going make skewers on the grill tonight. For a moment, living in Florida = bliss
I expect my brother is only child in country who got a mentos geyser in his Easter basket.
This Easter basket brought to you by Mythbusters, for sure. Followed by much bouncing up and down, shouting, "It was higher than the house? Did you see that? Higher than the house!!"
Okay, so that was me. But the kid was impressed, too.
I turn thirty on Thursday. Last year, my birthday was a pretty depressing affair, in fact I don't have many strong memories of it, just the overwhelming sadness. My mother had died less than three months earlier and I just didn't know how to process anything in the absence of my mother. I don't know how much I've learned in the subsequent year except I know I'm still here. I know I've been happy and can still be happy. I know I make her proud by continuing to make my way, by raising my brother into an good man.four more days to my birthday, squeeeeee!!!
I've experienced a few things in the first thirty years of my life I wouldn't wish upon anyone else, but those experiences continue to form me into a woman I'm proud to be. In the next years, I hope to come to grips with myself as an "adult." I hope to be successful in my career and to support my husband in his. I hope to continue growing an inspirational, creative life. I hope to inspire and encourage my brother. I hope to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Okay, so this tweet and reposting it here is just utter gloating. Ever cook a meal and feel its execution and presentation were just dreamy? That was Monday's dinner.soaking maple planks for tonight's mahi mahi Dinner: planked mahi mani with roasted red pepper sauce, mushroom risotto and grilled asparagus
Random thought about my morning routines. In yesterday's case, I was reading new content at nonprofit.alltop.com and was inspired to write last morning's post (please read if you missed it :). Today, bowl of oatmeal in front of me, I decided to wrangle my tweets into this post. If you wish to be similarly fueled, consider Alton Brown's overnight oatmeal recipe. We've been making it in a triple batch with craisins and dried blueberries, then just reheating up a bowl each subsequent morning. Soooo delicious.my blog is fueled by steel-cut oatmeal and coffee at this point, me thinks
You think you're normal. You think you're having a normal night, doing normal things. You chat with friends, kiss your husband goodnight, and think you are contentedly working on a sewing project. In the midst of this project, you realize a specialized sewing foot would solve some problems and go digging through the sewing supplies, trying to find said sewing foot.
Instead of a sewing foot, I found my mother's purse. The bloodwork from her last doctor's appointment, the funky coin purse she loved so much were inside. I discover she had $2 in her wallet when she died, a plethora of credit cards and a blank personal check (just in case). I find grocery receipts, shopping lists, and a receipt from the craft store visit when she bought a jewelry kit to make for her best friend. That project was never completed, like many others, and my mother isn't here to help me find the sewing machine foot, to teach me how to handroll a hem. And, like so many strange and unexpected things, it makes me miserably sad. Like the typically thick book she was reading around the holidays, her bookmark still in place. I found that, too, along with memories of reading the book aloud to her in the hospital when I had run out of other things to say.
Like I love you.
I miss you.
I found birthday cards your friends sent to you at Hospice and, finally reading them, see how many of them were trying to say goodbye in those inadequate Hallmark vessels and admire those who could see what I could not. What even now has the ability to bring me to my knees, to feel a primal pain and render me speechless.
Like so many things in the last week or so of your life, this is something we only share with each other. No one else is around to see me on the floor, clutching your purple bag and just sobbing. Your name is on my lips and you fill my heart, but it is nothing compared to having you here, to even be able to take your assistance for granted. Such a simple, yet impossible wish.
When my mother was diagnosed with cancer, she started using the phrase "the new normal" to represent her acceptance of how the disease impacted her life, but also wasn't going to stop her completely in her tracks. Instead of struggling against changes beyond her control, she embraced them--the new normal. And that's what I have now in my life--moments of fun, even happiness, but also the acceptance that these things can come from nowhere, filling my eyes with tears and stinging my chest with sorrow. Laughing and crying, missing you and yet picking myself up and moving into a new day--the new normal.
There's a sort of cult of positive thinking that revolves around those who have cancer, those who take care of them, and anyone on the fringes. It manifests in pink TicTacs and platitudes. And maybe that's well and good for some people, some of the time. But there are some ugly truths about cancer and, before I lay my head down for the night, I'm going to recollect a few for posperity. So, if you like everything to be all sunshine and lollipops, please read someone else's blog today.
There's an oft-repeated mantra about what cancer can't do:
Cancer is so limited
It cannot cripple love
It cannot shatter hope...
While there's an uplifting sense about the whole thing (last line: It cannot conquer the spirit.), it's hardly the whole picture.
Cancer can be the logistics behind when you celebrate an eleven-year-old boy's birthday. You can look at your calendar to determine when your good days are, when you'll be riding the no-pain rush of steroids, and when your "hell week" will begin and end. You can, for once, want your disease not to be the bad guy and make the necessary accomodations so your kid can enjoy his special day.
And then cancer can come along and fuck it all up anyway. You can spend the weekend of his birthday trying to walk the tightrope between drugs so intense they make you a zombie and pain so severe you can bearly walk. If the pain weren't enough, there's more:
- the understanding that your attempt at providing your kid with a smidgen of normalacy has failed
- the frustration at being betrayed by your own body, in matters large and small
- the stupidity of trying to "bargain" with a sickness trying to destroy you from the inside
- the gut-wrenching fear that this is the last birthday you'll see
There's a scene in the movie Beaches, where the character Hillary (Barbara Hershey) gets upset because CC (Bette Midler) is able to play and do things with Hill's daughter. I always felt the emotional set-up of that scene was to make you empathize with Hillary--her despair and frustration--only to have CC win back your attention and affection by saying, "You're not dead yet, so stop living as you are!" I thought a lot about that scene this evening when I took my brother out to play laser tag with his friends, while my mother had to stay home. As with most things in the movies, nothing's that easy, and I've come to understand that there are no winners in this scenario.
My mother wishes things were different, but no amount of sass from me is going to change things.
It's impossible for me to do right by my mother and my brother here; I can only attempt to mitigate how much any one person is ticked off by my efforts.
Even my brother would prefer to have just one normal mother and one normal sister, not a sick mom and a sister in over-achiever mode.
Maybe I should be acknowleding and cherishing everything cancer can't do--and maybe I'll be in that mindset later today or tomorrow, but in this moment I'm just gnashing my teeth over what it has done to this relatively minor celebration.
