You Are a Writer If...

You Are a Writer If...

• The coolest thing you could think of to do in fourth grade was to make your own dictionary  (And you weren't ashamed)
• Books count in your mental list of dearest childhood friends
• You find yourself teaching your kids a new word every day without even realizing it
• When disaster strikes, one of the first things you ask for is a blank journal
• You wake up in the middle of the night with the overpowering urge to jot down a thought
• Your best ideas are scribbled down on the back of a paystub from your real job

My Hat's Off to You

My mother could not have loved my daughter more.  She and my father were a huge support during Cory's illness.  I could not have taken such good care of her without them.  While my mother's heart was filled to the brim with love and compassion for Cory, she wasn't completely convinced that a well loved, slightly ragged winter hat was the finishing touch to a girl's Sunday best dressy ensemble.
Cory had taken to wearing a slouchy winter had whenever she was feeling low-indoors, outdoors, awake, sleeping, in private, and in public.   Cory told me it made her feel better.  I was all over anything that made her feel better.  Seeing my beautiful daughter dissolved into a weeping puddle on the floor made my heart ache.  Cory battled her illness everyday.  And that's just what it was- a fight.  Cory was so much stronger than she ever gave herself credit for.  I saw it every time she got out of bed when she could have stayed in.  I saw it when she tried something she wasn't really comfortable doing.  She told me once the voices in her head were like being in Cracker Barrel on the busiest Sunday morning you can imagine- all the tables full, everyone talking at once, silverware and plates clacking to beat the band.  Now, she said, imagine not being able to leave the room, no matter how badly you want to.  And on the really bad days, those voices berated, cursed, and screamed.  Still, my girl smiled; she laughed; she loved.  This was one 5'4'' powerhouse, and the voices better know it.
Cory said she felt like the meds were strong hands helping her hold back a growling, gibbering monster locked behind a door.  She said she could never let her guard down.  And even when she and the meds were spot on, that wretched thing sometimes came busting through anyway.  Then she'd have to work twice at hard to get it back behind that door where it belonged.
So, the hat...
I explained to my mom that the hat was a comfort object.  After all, the baby had carried her crib blanket through most of elementary school.  Of all the ways she could find comfort- alcohol, drugs, indiscriminate sex- this was a healthy and graceful choice.  And the fact that it was given to her by her beloved Papa was a testament to his well known ability to sooth children and adults alike.  I never asked her, but I've often wondered if she heard his gentle shushing sounds when she settled it onto her head.
My mother and I haven't always seen eye to eye on fashion.  The more I tried to convince her to accept this hat wearing as a coping skill, the more she tried to convince me that Cory would feel better leaving the hat at home, and spending some quality time with her curling iron.  We were at an impasse.
I appealed to a third party by explaining the situation to our pastor's wife.  Word spread.  By the time Cory returned to evening service that Sunday, a touching surprise had been planned.  When she walked into the sanctuary, every head of the congregation was wearing a hat...including my mother.
The pastor's wife stood up and announced that the hats were being worn to support Cory in her mental health.  Everyone loved her dearly, and they wanted to show it in a way that made her feel comfortable and accepted.  Can you think of a better way?

Ghosts of Christmases Past

Ghosts of Christmases Past

When it was just Cory and I, there wasn’t much money.  I had come up with the odd tradition of snapping a picture of her presents laid out by Santa in the night for her to find in the morning.  Always, there was a doll.  Those first few years, maybe not much more.  Some plastic toys from the dollar store.  Playdough.  Always books…I knew the secret, you see.  You can go anywhere and do anything in a book.   And she got plenty from my family to subsidize what I couldn't afford to give her.

So when Tim and I got married, and there was a double income, the piles under the tree grew.  Excessively so.  It seemed I thought I had some making up to do.  I wanted to be sure she had everything she could possibly want.  So silly of me, really.  What I should have realized back then is that she already did.  She had a dad, and a little brother on the way.  She was living the Miracle on 34^th street remake dream, all except the fancy house, anyways. 

Nineteen Christmases seem like a lot, but they passed in the wink of an eye.  When she was two or three, I got her a Barbie horse that walked.  That thing scared the crap out of her.  I remember her startled expression as the horse clomped across the linoleum of the house on Broadway.  On reflex, she put her arms up to be picked up and made a beeline for the safe haven of my knees.  By the time I had rescued her from it, she was convinced it was chasing her and wanted no more to do with it.  Priceless.

Next came the procession of Barbies and Barbie homes and luxury vehicles- dream houses, Grandparents’ cottage, the tour bus, the airplane, and everything in between.  Then the year Jake was three and she was twelve, Santa left a yellow Hummer riding vehicle next to the tree, fully charged.  Tim and I woke warm in our bed to hear Jake excitedly shriek, “Cory, Santa pimped my ride!”  When we stopped laughing, the grinding of the two gears –forward and reverse- began, along with hoots and hollering.  When we ventured a look in the living room, there they were snuggled into the Hummer in the ir p.j.s  riding for all they were worth back and forth across the length of our modestly sized living room. That was a great year.

One year, I hit up Hot Topic and bought every My Chemical Romance t-shirt they had, rolled them up, and stuffed them into a My Chemical Romance messenger bag that she carried the rest of her life.

There was the year of the art easel.  She was simply delighted, dancing from foot to foot until the thing could be properly put together.  She said, “Now, I feel like a real artist.”  Silly girl.  She was an artist since she could lift a crayon, marker, or paintbrush.

Last Christmas was the year of the pearl necklace.  Cory loved everything Audrey Hepburn inspired, and longed for a simple and elegant strand of pearls to wear with whatever she’d thrown on that day.  She had the best girly- meets cool- meets comfortable vibe going.  So the entire Christmas shopping season, she reminded me it was the one thing she really, really wanted, even if she got nothing else.  Alone at the Macy’s counter, I upgraded from the strand  I had originally set out to purchase.  I wanted something every bit as lovely as she was.  When the saleslady commented that they were beautiful enough to be worn at her wedding, I surrendered my credit card without a whimper. 

For the next couple weeks, whenever we ambled through Macy’s, Cory would try to sneak over to the jewelry counter to sneak peeks at their selection.  I would laugh and say, “Ah, ah, ah, oh no, you don’t , young lady, come away from there.”  and pull her jokingly by one sleeve as she giggled.  Christmas Eve night, I was overcome with an impish, evil impulse, and buried the small box at the very bottom of her stocking.

Christmas morning- unknowingly, the last I’d ever spend with her- she sat cross-legged in her monkey footie pajamas across from her brother, going over her haul.  She screamed in delight over the Pepe the King Prawn stuffed animal I’d ordered over the internet, and snuck into the house.  Cory was the best receiver of gifts.  She did not hold back in showing her excitement.  Those were the moments that made the shopping, wrapping, and tedious putting together of toys at 2 a.m. when you are really wanted was to lay your head on the pillow worth every single moment.  She smiled, she ooed, and she aahed appropriately.  When I asked her if Santa had brought her everything she wanted, she diplomatically responded, yes, she loved everything.  When she finally dug into her stocking and discovered the box, her hands were shaking so badly, she had to have help to open it.  She looked at those pearls and then looked at me, eyes brimming, and mouthed, “Thank you, Mom” so her brother wouldn’t hear, and then declared what great taste Santa had in fine jewelry for the rest of the day.

Well then, that's ok

I saw the lady walking off the playground as I walked through the gate, beginning to scan the area for Jacob’s bright blue parka with the neon green stripes.  She immediately started trying to make eye contact with me.  I took in the frizzy hair and slightly confused gaze before quickly returning my eyes to the ground.  Please do not speak to me. 

But of course, she did.  “Hi there, hon.” She smiled, her voice full of the type of goodwill and holiday cheer I will never know again.  “Hi.”  I answered quietly, no hint of a smile or encouragement to continue this interaction.  Jake ran up just then, and I hugged him automatically to my chest.  Something in my mannerism must have smacked of motherhood to her.  “Is he your son?”  she asked, fuzzy eyebrows up and a look of utter surprise on her weathered face.

“Yes.”  I said, thinking to myself, no, I just like to hang out in random school playgrounds for no reason.

“Oh, so you still have one baby alive, then…well, then, that’s okay.”  She responded, her words indicating I should be grateful, and thrilled with this arrangement.

I stood, speechless.

Is it?  Is it, okay, lady?  Would it be okay if one of your children were taken viciously and unexpectedly from your world?  She’s not a damn cupcake.  It’s not like you just move on to the next and think nothing of the one that fell on the floor and is now covered in cat hair, inedible.

            I bowed my head before she read my eyes that were full of everything I was feeling- shock, disbelief, disgust, and a deep harrowing pain that I truly hope she never knows.  I shepherded Jake quickly to the car before she could say something even more inappropriate, but thought if I were ever crazy enough to sit down for a cup of coffee with this chick…how would I go about trying to explain to her the vastness of her ignorance and the sting of the salt she just massaged into my gaping wound?

            I think I would start by telling her that having your son standing beside you while you regard your daughter’s final resting place, at age 19-  a mound of dirt, that becomes covered with new grass struggling to take hold, then a confident blanket of green grass looking true and right in its place, then a scattering of dry and crackling fall leaves,  then frost-doesn’t take any of the pain away.  If anything his presence reminds you that you are vulnerable to this loss again.  And if you go whole hog with him, like you did with her, you could feel this exact same way again someday. 

            I would tell her that it’s hard to even go to the cemetery after you stop going for awhile.  That in the beginning, going every day may even desensitize you to the horror of what has happened.  You are, after all, resting wholly in your shock.  You expect every time you turn the car into the narrow lane that everything in her spot will look exactly the same.  If anything has changed, it is traumatic.  Most people would think bare dirt would be hard to bear, that a mother would feel better seeing the grass grow over her space, green and full of life.  Nope.  If anything, that grass made me want to rip my clothes and pull out my hair like they did in times past.  That grass said time was passing and she wasn’t ever coming back.  It said she belonged to the earth now, and not to me.  For the first time ever, since I was a teenager myself, not to me.

 As the seasons change, and her spot changes subtly with them, the fact that my time with her is over is trumpeted throughout the hilly countryside cemetery.  Anything not done is done.  Anything I forgot to tell her, or wish I would have told her more… any plans we put off till we had more money or more time… gone.  I will never hold her little hand again.  Or hug her.  Or hold her on my lap, all 110 pounds of her, to comfort her when she is frightened.   I will never hear her call for me or scream for me in the middle of the night.

            For this lady to think that Jake’s presence can combat those type of feelings, that type of loss…she is sorely mistaken.   Sure, we will comfort each other as best we can.  I will love him and he will love me.  But he can no more be my daughter than I can be his sister.

            In this imaginary coffee date, I would drain my cup, and rise from the table.  I would look down at the frizzy top of her head, and say, “So no, it’s actually not okay.  And if we see each other again at the school, a simple nod will do.”

            I would pay the bill, and sweep out, carrying my images of Cory, my firstborn laid out on the road, the confusion of the responders on the scene, the words of the man who told me she was gone.  I would carry the sound of her voice, the way she said my name, her laugh.  I would carry the sounds of the songs that played at her service.  I would carry the good and the bad, every day, for the rest of my life, whether Jake was beside me or not.  Because that’s the way it goes.  Each person, truly, is alone in their grief.  There may be moments of understanding or comfort, but they quickly fade, and you find yourself sitting alone, starting into space …as Whitesnake so eloquently put it...here I go, again, on my own.