And Then...

My last posting ended in an embrace with my long-lost sister. I haven't been able to bring myself to write about those next few days until now. My reluctance isn't because the few hours spent with her were traumatic or painful or unpleasant in any way, but because that was all they were: a few hours.

I'll try to share what I can:

The embrace ended only because my sister wanted to introduce me to her boyfriend. We walked into the apartment number I had been looking for and found him stretched out on the couch next to the fan. It had been an incredibly warm few days and heat had become trapped in the little apartment.

The living room and the kitchen formed an L, and the bedroom door opened to the living room. I noticed furniture that was all fairly modern. The television and DVD player sat on an entertainment unit next to a small table that held a cordless telephone. Some of the furnishings looked like things I would own, or had at one time. I assumed that the mild clutter belonged to the couple and was pleasantly surprised that some of it was newer. I found out later that my sister and boyfriend were sharing the apartment with his mother and his son. Five people were crammed into the small, but charming, space.

She was excited to show me off to her boyfriend. "Look, it's my sister!" To say he was stunned would be an understatement. He had encouraged to her to find me, and here I was. Once we had met and chatted a bit he left us alone for awhile, then proceeded to tell everyone they knew in the apartment complex that I was there. For a short time I was a celebrity. My name was repeated over and over again in a reverent tone.

She and I settled on the couch and spent some time in silence holding hands. Her hands were rough. Mine would be as well if I didn't put lotion on them several times a day. Her skin was clear and was missing the caked-on foundation that she used to wear as a teen. On closer inspection she looked a great deal like her father. We were two sisters who knew very little about each other. What do you say to a sibling you don't really know?

She asked if I liked movies, which I do, and we compared notes about genres.

I asked if she likes to read, and she does. The best revelation of all: She used to write poetry. My sister is a writer!!!! That was perhaps the best moment of all, knowing that she enjoyed writing, especially as she writes in a genre that I can't/don't.

We spent some time talking about where her life had gone and how she came to be in this little apartment and where she wanted to go. We talked about her kids, and she spoke many times about owning her own problems and choices. She was very clear that of the three of us siblings, she had fallen the farthest down some sort of awful hole. My fears that she would exhibit our mother's tendency to blame others were unfounded. It was very clear to me that she planned on staying outside of and away from the hole she had finally managed to climb out of.

When it was time for me to leave, she walked me to my car, and we kissed and hugged.

Two days later we had coffee. I think maybe the timing of our coffee date is why she has disappeared from my life again. I can only speculate because I don't know why she stopped returning my calls.

I wanted to see her regularly, weekly if possible. I wanted to spend a few hours a week or so slowly getting to know each other. I wanted to give her love and support. I suppose that what I wanted was not what she needed. We managed to connect with one quick phone call the following week, but she was doing laundry and promised to call me back outside of the laundromat. She didn't. I called the apartment a few times, but she was never there.

I didn't go looking for her again. She may or may not still be living in the apartment. Her need to pull away was a defense mechanism that I can understand, and I want to honor her needs.

My sister and I are both abandoned kids and survivors of childhood traumas of varying kinds. I have spent several years of my life in therapy working through my issues so that I can be comfortable enough in my own skin to function in a way that I want to. She freely admitted that therapy would likely do her some good. I understand that when confronted with old feelings and memories, retreating is often the safest thing to do. My sudden presence in her life brought up many old and painful feelings for her. She admitted as much while we sat on the couch holding hands.

I know that even as a healthy adult, there are times when I can't continue to move forward with a relationship. It can be a personal or business relationship, but if I feel put off or overwhelmed emotionally, I will pull way, way back and metaphorically disappear. I am aware of my emotional limitations enough to work through them, such as when I was abandoned by a graduate school mentor. Instead climbing into myself and quitting the program, I complained loudly enough that the school assigned me another mentor, and I was able to move forward and complete the program. Another time I was working for a friend and found that the friend was not a great boss, to the point that I felt emotionally abused; after repeated attempts on my part of rectify communication problems, I quit the job.

My theory is that my sister needed to pull back from a relationship with me for her own emotional health. I sent her another message through Facebook, this time telling her that I love her, and that I am here when she is ready to have a relationship.

My fears were unfounded, but so, it would seem, were my dreams.

Part 3: A Premonition and A Push

I don't claim to be truly psychic--cause I'm not--but I do on occasion experience a form of premonition. It doesn't happen often, but I have learned to share the occasional odd thought out loud as a kind of fact-checking. If I say it out loud and it happens, I feel safer calling it a premonition.

That being said, in January the following occurred:
I often share familial stories with my community college students. I use them as a way of modeling how our lives do actually have connections to the literature, and to each other. At the beginning of the Spring 2011 semester I was teaching a class at the Santa Rosa campus of the junior college on Mondays and Wednesdays. I was about to share some story about my strange family configuration and where I am in the sibling line-up (see Storyscape Journal archives for the whole story) when it suddenly occurred to me that if either my brother or sister were on campus taking classes, they might hear a bastardized version of a story that isn't terribly flattering when told first hand. I jokingly asked the class if they knew any of my family; they laughed and shook their heads. It nagged at me for a bit and I even told the hubby about it. I wondered if either sibling would ever take college classes. Then I wondered if I would recognize either of them if I saw them on campus. When I saw my mother for the last time in May of 2004, she gave me a picture of my grown brother. At that time I hadn't seen him since he was 17 years old. In the picture he was in his mid-thirties. I cried because I would not have known him had I seen him on the street. I don't even have the benefit of a recent picture of my sister.

Six months later:
I am trying to decide what to do about contact with my sister. I have experienced a pretty wide range of emotions. I responded to her invitation to call her by asking when was a good time to call. She didn't answer.

I asked for advice on Facebook and the overwhelming response was to do a background check. So I paid the $19.99 to an online company (there are a ton) and got back very little information: A couple of phone numbers (one of which matched the one I had), three different addresses (all in Santa Rosa), one hit from criminal background (with very little information). I was about to give up the idea and not call her when I decided to take one more look at her FB page.

She had 9 friends listed so I checked out their profiles. None of them seemed particularly scary or off-putting. A couple seemed interesting, some even seemed like people who might be in recovery. This was a hopeful sign.

Then it occurred to me that if my sister had a Facebook page, then she also had some access to computers and that could be a very good sign. It has been my experience that as ubiquitous as computers and the internet are, not everyone is online. Many of my students struggle with the technology available to them. A surprising number can't quite get the hang of email. Many use their cell phones for only texting and phone calls, not for Facebook or Twitter or email.

So I made some calls and did some web crawling and found a page of information that said my sister had been a student at Santa Rosa Junior College. IN JANUARY!! She had had classes on campus when I was teaching. One of her instructors was my friend Anne Marie whose class was on the same floor and building and at the same time I had been on campus. I called Anne Marie, but realized that my sis had dropped the class after the first two weeks of classes. My friend had no memory of her. But the fact remained that my sister and I had been on campus at the same time I was wondering about her.

This was a very good sign and all the push I needed. Suddenly all of the reservations and fears that I had about seeing or talking with my sister fell away. I was compelled to see her.

Immediately.

The feeling was so strong, in fact, that I did a new online search to find her most recent address, confirm that the phone number she had given me was a land-line and was off the couch changing my clothes and getting ready to head out the door before my poor hubby had any idea what was going on. I took a few minutes to retrieve her earrings.

Haven't I mentioned the earrings?

My sister was a flower girl in both of my first two weddings. For the second I bought her a pair of faux gold and diamond earrings. After the ceremony was over I offered to hold onto them for safekeeping. The guilt at keeping her earrings from her was kind enough to stay within the confines of the jewelry box most of the time, only coming out when I came across them or the handful of times I wore them myself. It's as if all of the remaining guilt I had carried with me as a child had clung to the earrings. I cleaned them and found a tiny decorative oval metal box to put them in. If I was going to see my sister, I was going to return her earrings. All the while I was getting ready, I felt a really strong sense of urgency as if I had a finite amount of time to accomplish my mission.

The earrings and box went into my front pocket with my phone, my wallet was locked in the glovebox, and I was on my way. I left the house alone and drove the 18 miles to Santa Rosa. I tried to imagine what she would look like. She is ten years younger than me. She was always slender, her hair was a dirty blonde when we were growing up. She loved sweets and I wondered if that had changed her metabolism. Had she inherited the body type from Gram's side of the family (who I favor physically) or retained the slenderness from youth? After giving birth to three babies, anything was possible.

The closer I got, the more I envisioned a reunion from a movie. I imagined parking outside a tiny rental house with young children playing outside. A woman would happen to walk out of the door to check on the children and would look up at me, a seeming stranger on their quiet street. We would lock eyes. I would say "Bambe?" and she would say "Ginger?" and we would run into each other's arms. The fantasy didn't go beyond the hug but it did repeat itself over and over in my head as I inched closer to her street. It was occasionally interrupted by the voice in my head that would point out that the simplicity of that reunion was highly unlikely. Impossible in fact. I needed to stop that nonsense and focus on finding the street and the address.

Just as I reached the street she lived on, my phone rang. I jumped about a mile and answered my phone as I pulled over. It was my son who was quite intrigued when I told him that I was stalking my sister. My siblings are a bit of an abstract concept to my children. They are aware they have an aunt and uncle, but apart from a few pictures, a few mentions in my writing, and the very few stories I tell about my childhood years, they have only fuzzy pictures of the reality of these two people. The phone call required me to pull around the corner and ultimately drive around the block to return to the house numbers where I thought she lived. Once off the phone I found a parking space closest to the spot I believed I would find her house.

As I pulled up to the curb, and a woman walked out from between two buildings toward the street. I noticed then that the two buildings faced each other creating a kind of long courtyard between them, all doors face toward that yard. The address I had for my sister could easily be marked on one of those doors. I looked back at the woman and saw how slender she was; her face was very thin which was highlighted by the long pair pulled sharply back into a ponytail/bun. At first I only saw a brief profile and her back. She had on short black shorts and a tank top. Her arms were lightly tanned beneath various tattoos that were scattered on her arms, back and neck. She disappeared momentarily behind the backside of the building farthest from me and reappeared to speak to someone in a small pickup truck who pulled up after I parked. I wondered if I was witnessing a drug deal when the door opened and it looked like something passed between the woman and someone in the cab. I looked away.

I took a breath and decided to find the address. I stepped out of my car and walked behind it to the sidewalk. I looked back at the woman who had moved back again toward the far building and was holding a cigarette. Ah, no drug deal; she had simply bummed a smoke. Logically it would make more sense to ask where I could find the address than to wander into people’s yards.

The woman was watching me so I walked toward her. I wondered if it was Bambe and searched her features for something familiar. It was in that moment that I noticed the haunted look pass over her face. Her eyes were wide and only mildly frightened, as if the ghost in front of her was a welcome sight. And I suppose that I was.

I carry many of our mother’s features on my face; there are only a small number of people alive who react to me in the way she did at that moment. But I wasn’t sure yet if she was my sister, so I walked toward her and said, “Can you help me?” Her reaction was too close to the fantasy that had run through my mind on the drive.

“What are you looking for?” was the reply I heard. She may have asked who I was looking for.

“I’m looking for 492.”

That was when we knew.

“Ginger?”

“Bambe?”

She dropped her cigarette and ran to me at full speed. I moved toward her as quickly as I could. The impact our bodies made is not the sound you typically hear in the movie scene. It was very clearly the sound two bodies make when they hit; less noisy than the impact on a football field, more so than two lovers meeting in a field of daisies.

We held each other through that impact. Tight. Hard. We stood there with our arms wrapped around each other. And stood there. Neither wanted to loosen her hold or let go.

“How are you?” She said as if making regular conversation with someone she had seen the day before. Neither of us let go.

“Good. How are you?” I answered.

Part II: Reluctance

According to two converging pieces of family lore, after my mother left me with at my grandparents’ house (I was somewhere around three years old), my grandmother tried to take me to the doctor to get my immunizations updated. The doctor kindly informed Gram that because she had no legal rights, that they could not give me any medical attention no matter how well intentioned she was.

So a lawyer was contacted and temporary custody papers were drawn up. Gram drove to a house in Sonoma or Boyes Hot Springs where my mother was staying. My father was also in the house, although they were long since separated and the divorce was in full swing. The house was apparently full of people they both knew. He was willing to sign the papers and felt that is was important that my mother sign them also. She refused. My father told her that he would beat every person in the house until she signed the papers. Yes, he threatened her and coerced her into signing away temporary custody of me. There were no contradictions years later in their separate accounts of the details of that day. He felt strongly it was for the best. She disagreed but ultimately acquiesced. She insisted for the rest of her life that she did not agree to completely give up custody of me. She only agreed to a temporary custody situation.

My mother’s version of this story was told over and over while my siblings were growing up. They heard it far more often than I did, but we all understood the moral of the story. The implication was clear: signing even a temporary order will guarantee loss of custody. You will be cheated out of what is yours. I suppose on some level my mother felt both complicit and cheated. For her there was an underlying truth that she could be cheated out of her own child simply by signing one piece of paper.

From my perspective, that piece of paper had little or nothing to do with the where I grew up. I lived with Gram and Grandpa because my mother left me. A piece of the custody story that my mother perhaps didn’t tell my siblings is that she dropped me off at my grandparent’s house for another long weekend of babysitting. My grandfather told her not to bother coming back for me: the implication of course was that he wouldn’t let me go. My mother protested and a verbal argument ensued. But, and this is an important piece, she left me there. Instead of walking back into the house and taking me with her, she left me. Instead of going directly to the police department and telling them her father refused to hand her daughter over, she left me. Instead of contacting a lawyer, she left me. Presumably she left on her weekend away and followed Grandpa’s advice not to return for me.

Fast forward a generation. My sister has given birth to her third child. When the baby is born my sister is an inmate at a women’s prison. My mother and her husband are there and take the baby home with them. My sister refuses to sign any papers allowing my mother any legal rights of guardianship. The state did have some authority and gave my mother temporary custody of the baby anyway. Later, in argument between mother and daughter, my sister told my mother that there would be no signing of any papers and that my mother had better not take the baby away from her mother, although my sister did not claim her daughter once released from prison. Sometime before she died, my mother obtained legal custody of her granddaughter. Upon her death my brother became the baby's legal guardian. So the cycle, punctuated by great irony, continued.

These stories and many more began circling through my brain as I attempted to decide how exactly I wanted to proceed with contacting my sister, or if I really wanted to proceed at all. I had learned very different lessons from the stories of custody papers and signatures than my siblings had. I believe that they had learned how easy it was to become a victim and that perpetuating that sense of victimhood somehow gave them a sense of justification for their actions.

Over the years I had several arguments with my mother about her life choices. There always seemed to be something else she needed in her life in order to make it better or to be happy. She needed a new place to live, or a new husband, or a new boyfriend. She spent her life wandering from situation to situation led in large part by her addiction to alcohol. Because both women gave up custody of all three of their children, it seemed logical to me that they would have the same attitude about those choices.

My first impulse was to call my sister. My second came so quickly on the heals of the first that there was no time for impulsive actions. And I was driving, I had no headset and a bad signal, so I only had time to wonder what she was like. That took me to a very uncomfortable place. I attempted to reconcile the little girl I had known who desperately wanted love and was terrified that people were angry with her with the woman who had ended up in prison. The conversations I conjured didn’t go well from the onset. It was easy to imagine the stories about how she had been wronged by the system, or her son’s grandparents, or her oldest daughter’s father, or our mother and brother.

I live my life so vastly differently from the way my siblings live theirs. I live in a nice house and drive a fairly nice car in a town less than an hour’s drive from San Francisco. My brother lives in a double-wide in Lake County. I have been pretty happily married for more than 20 years. Neither of my siblings has married. I can go to the grocery store and buy steak whenever I want. My siblings grew up on food stamps, and so far as I know their incomes haven’t improved much in adulthood. Most importantly, I raised my own children.

When I was a kid, I carried a fairly heavy burden around: I felt guilty that I lived with Gram and Grandpa and had a better life than my siblings. I believed it was better because we didn’t move often; we had nice things; my grandparents didn’t drink to excess; my clothes were often new and didn’t have stains or cigarette burn holes in them. Our house wasn’t furnished with remnants from the garbage truck my step-dad worked on. In my school pictures my hair was always combed and I looked clean and well dressed. I somehow felt responsible for what my siblings lacked because I was the one who ended up living with Gram and Grandpa.

I eventually came to realize that I had no control over the situation and was able to shed the coat of guilt I had made for myself. But shedding the fear that they resented me was much more difficult. This is really the crux of what made me balk at calling my sister right away. That and the fear that she was as immersed in her own victimhood as our mother had been.

Part I: First Contact

I began my day bewildered. Roughly two weeks before my birthday, which historically is about the time that a black cloud begins its yearly formation above my head, I found the back of my office chair resting on the top of my head. The fattiest part of my bottom suddenly ached and it was several moments before I realized that I was sitting on the floor, my legs straight out in front of me, the seat of the chair at my back.

I belatedly remembered hearing the crash as the chair tumbled. It came back to me like an echo. I felt disoriented and confused. Disorientation is an interesting word. It amply describes the feeling of not knowing which way is up or down, yet it is so subdued a word as to be inadequate as a descriptor. In a way I knew where I was, the familiarity of the place and the space had altered enough that for a moment I questioned my understanding of my little world, and for a briefer instant I questioned my sanity.

Not the best way to begin any day at work. Certainly for me not a great place to find myself in the middle of June. Sitting under the umbrella of my chair suddenly, I wondered if this was an omen of things to come.

I had been stretching my legs out in an attempt to soothe some back muscles while sitting in front of my work computer. The desk is much too large and deep to comfortably use while typing on a keyboard that won't move more than a few inches away from the monitor located at the back of the desk. The result is that in order to type or use the mouse it is necessary to hunch forward in the office chiar. Apparently the stretch went too far and the wheels of the chair rolled out from under the seat’s bottom as well as my own.

A few hours later the feelings of disorientation returned.

My drive home from the community college I am working at this summer is actually quite a beautiful way to spend an hour. The stretch of pure freeway is only about ¼ of the drive; the rest is over or beside water or rolling hills or a road whose eucalyptus sentinels hold their leaves protectively over the road.

Like many people who live in this age of technology, my email, twitter and facebook updates arrive on my cellphone accompanied by a small icon. So at stoplights I usually glance at my phone for a very brief update. I wasn’t surprised to see a Facebook message. I was, however, stunned that it was from my sister. A sister I have not seen or spoken to in twenty years.

This particular sister is not family by choice; she is family by birth. We share the same mother and the same abandonment issues. I was a toddler when my mother left me with my grandparents. My sister was eight when Mom left her. We also share a brother; he is the middle child of the three of us and so was equally abandoned.

The three of us were fairly close when we were young; as close as kids can be who aren’t raised in the same house and who see each other irregularly. I already had my two children when her son was born a few months after her eighteenth birthday. She came by our house to borrow money several months later. That was twenty years ago.

I know a bit about her life, although not a lot. Her son ended up with his paternal grandmother. She had two other daughters. One lives with the father. The other lives with our brother.

The FB message was in response to one I had sent her three weeks before. I have been searching for information about her on the internet for several years. I occasionally find a tidbit of information on sites such as MyLife or Spokeo. I don’t trust most of the information (such as one site listing her as male) so I don’t bother to follow up. The last time I did a FB search, I came across a number of women with her name. For some reason I fixated on one person who had no picture posted and less than a dozen friends and sent a message that said, “I'm looking for my sister who is originally from Sonoma, CA. (or Boyes Hot Springs, CA). Could that be you?” It is easy to become conditioned to nearly instant responses when communicating online, so when I heard nothing in the first few days, the attempt at contact floated quickly and easily to back of my mind.

The response was clearly sent that afternoon, “yes its me call me its me bambe your sister.” It was accompanied by a phone number. I have a strict personal policy that happens to align with law enforcement: I don’t text or email while driving. My head set was lost so I couldn't call as I drove. So I had to put my phone down as soon as the light turned green. My first impulse was to cry, which I managed to stuff down. My second was to pull over and call her immediately. This was stuffed down as well.

Instead I drove home while a very large and growing cloud of thoughts and feelings swirled around me; it surrounded me and wrapped me in a blanket of emotion. Old pains and memories filled my head and my heart as I tried to imagine who the little girl I once knew had become. I ended my day much like I began it, disoriented, bewildered and not a little lost in my own body.

I have a story to tell

I experienced, and am still experiencing, a fairly major life event. It began in mid-June, and I suppose it hasn't ended yet.

I am writing about it. My plan is to blog about it. Every time I sit down to work on the posting, I find that the story is too simple, too short and way to complicated to be told in just one posting. So I am working on a series of posts that will tell the entire story.

I'm not trying to be difficult or too mysterious. Rest assured that I am healthy and everyone in my life that is important to me is healthy as well. There are no worries about impending catastrophes or that kind of thing. This is important to my personal life, and I think interesting, but not life threatening. I don't think.

But I want to write this. This teaser post is a way to making a public commitment to writing the story.

I'll be write back.

-Ginny

Good News & Bad News

When given the choice, I always want to hear bad news first. It softens the ultimate blow, and even after hearing something I don't like, I know that I have something to look forward to.

So the Bad News:
The last 6 months have been heavily focused on finding a full-time tenure track teaching position at the community college level. Of all the applications packets I completed and sent off, none resulted in either an interview or a job offer. (I heard from the final one last week.) I sent a total of 6 out. That means six separate applications, supplemental questions, copies of my CV, letters of recommendation and transcripts. The average paper count was roughly 23 pages for each. As of now I do not have a full-time benefited job for fall.

Of the six schools, two rescinded their job openings. So in full there were only four true rejections. In all honesty the first three didn't bother me at all. After each I could easily see all the reasons why I didn't really want to work at that particular school or that particular district. It was very easy to look optimistically forward for the next potential school and interview.

The consequence of pushing disappointment aside for the first three rejections was that this last one really hurt. I pretty quickly fell into a metaphorical pit of despair (with no six-fingered man to watch over my suffering). Really old, old, icky feelings of worthlessness bubbled to the surface. My confidence level feel dramatically. I was embarrassed that my application packet could be so bad that no one wanted to meet me. Other feelings that I couldn't identify felt a lot like grief. I suppose in a way I was grieving the loss of the life I had imagined for myself at each one of these schools.

My wonderful husband consoled me with flowers dinner out. I couldn't bring myself to post my usual Facebook Job Hunt Update, so I waited. Then I discovered the good news.

The Good News
Now that the uncertainty of scheduling interviews and knowing which school to become an overnight expert about are no longer percolating under the surface of my thoughts every day, I feel revitalized.

I don't have to worry about a new commute, getting up to speed at a new campus, finding the primo parking spots or where the most reliable copiers reside. I don't have to learn a whole new set of course outlines, revamp my syllabi and struggle to make the books I like to teach fit into another curriculum.

I am really excited about teaching summer school at a college that I know and love. I am still employed part-time at two community colleges, so I do have work--work that I am very, very grateful to have. All the while I was putting together application packets I was also laying the ground work to make sure I have classes in the Fall at these schools. Although I only have two confirmed classes (when three or even four would be optimal) I can pretty clearly see more on the horizon. I have chosen a few new books for my classes, begun my reader for summer school and am well on my way to being very organized for the Fall.

And best of all I am excited about returning to my book project.

And yes, I realize that my initial reaction was really about old buttons and old issues. Logically I know that this is a lousy time to be looking for full-time teaching work. I was up against (literally) hundreds and hundreds of other applicants and that some of those colleges really wanted to hire from their adjunct pools.

So although I was initially disappointed, now I am quite relieved.

Renewal

Here we are in late April and Spring is finally upon us. The plants in my yard that survived the record freezes and deluges of rain are blooming or offering new leaves for me to gaze upon. Our renegade peach tree looks as though it might have a fruit or two slowly developing in the growing warmth.

I have no idea what the weather outside was like a year ago. I could easily check, but I choose not to. I do know that the inside of the house had been plagued by a long-term chill. It had been growing steadily colder over the course of at least three years, my husband would argue that it took longer, and had finally become unbearable. A sudden heated discussion shattered the ice that had grown between myself and my life partner and we were left to wonder if there was anything left to salvage or if we wanted to make the effort to rebuild our life together.

I would never have characterized my marriage as unhappy. Even in the midst of misery I most ofter prefer my husband's company to anyone else except my children. But suddenly we realized that the life we had built together was potentially not what he wanted. He had long standing issues within his own heart and his own head that he had worked around for so many years. He didn't like himself very much. He didn't believe he was talented. I don't think that he believed that he deserved to be happy. There were some deep, dark secrets that he was keeping, not just from me, but from himself. He had pulled inside of himself so deeply that he wasn't sure if he wanted to come out and participate in our life, or start a new one without me.

A year ago I was working on a book project. A memoir and research book that was meant to look outside my own experience at the historical and factual realities that surrounded my story. Unlike many of my writing colleagues, I can't write my way through my problems. I don't feel compelled to take notes or journal during crisis. I shut down for the most part and focus so mightily on surviving that I simply don't have enough energy left over for creativity. So when things fell apart at home, the book project stalled. As time went on it became clear that my story wasn't ready to be told in part because my husband's was still unfolding as well.

So when the ice was shattered, he had to decide. and he had to do it without me. So he went away. We had no contact except a few text message conversations. He said he would be gone overnight, but the next day he wasn't ready to come home. This went on for what seemed like weeks and weeks of waiting and wondering. I began planning my life without him. I was forced to look seriously and honestly at how my life would look and how I would move forward. I felt quite ill most of the four days he was gone. Those were the longest four days of my life.

This past Saturday was one year since he chose to come home to me and our life. The past year has been filled with a lot of work and a lot of pain and a lot of tears. He has worked very hard in therapy and with me. He is certainly not done with his work, but his growth has been tremendous.

To celebrate the journey behind and the road ahead, we renewed our vows on the anniversary of his coming home. It wasn't until after we chose the date that we realized it was the actual anniversary. We went public and invited our closest family and friends to witness the exchange of new rings (that he made), a restating of our original vows (and a few new ones). Then we had a party.

I've always enjoyed Winter in large part because I like cocooning in my house, wrapped in the warmth and listening to the storms rage outside while I am safely inside. More than ever I appreciate the necessity of the work that is done indoors when the weather outside is inclement.

This year I am reveling in the welcoming weather of Spring. As it brings a renewal of life, I feel blessed and thankful. The flowers look especially beautiful this year. The new leaves are brighter and the vibrancy of the days surprises me. I feel like writing again. It is suddenly clear to me that my book project needs to move forward, but with a different structure and focus.

Most importantly I am moving forward in my personal and creative life with the man that I love and he is, at last, comfortable enough in his own skin to go with me.

An Affair with Controlled Chaos

As I type this my dogs are playing. At this very moment they are downstairs; only a moment ago they were at my feet. Remarkably I didn't have to ask them to leave; they simply moved the action along to another spot as their play dictated.

At one point Max (the younger of the two) was running back and forth between my bedroom and my office. I am sitting in my office and so was mere inches from his fast braking, quick turning and launching back across the carpet to the hallway and the bedroom beyond. It is a manic movement because he goes back and forth and back and forth, his butt pushed up into the air as his hind legs wind up for the launch each new step requires. He runs the same way when he is outside. At the dog park he takes off and runs at full tilt until he is exhausted. Surprisingly that takes only about 10 minutes. When he runs full tilt indoors it is reminiscent of a cartoon dog winding up his hind legs, the whirly of his feet a blur just before he launches towards his sister (Molly the slightly older dog).

I really love being close to this manic display. I love the feeling of energy crackling off the two dogs as they run and wrestle. I enjoy the repetition of movement back and forth and back and forth between rooms. Even as they wrestle, taking turns dominating each other, there is a rhythm to their movements, their panting. I suppose it is a form of music that my body responds to.

They do no damage to property or each other. Occasionally someone mis-bites and a quick full-tilt snarl and bite fest ensues. It rarely lasts more than a few seconds, and I usually allow them to finish it themselves. If they don't, I yell once and they stop. In less than a minute they forgot what they were fighting about and resume playing.

As chaotic as the play is, it has a very consistent feel to it. I know they will play, maybe even tussle, how they will run and that eventually, as they are now, they will lie near my on the floor, panting and resting. I crave consistency; I always have. My life in the last several years has seemed like anything but consistent. It seems there is always a change in progress, a big change. One year it was several deaths, then my attempt at finding regular work meant accepting temporary positions one semester after another. Then a graduation, a wedding, a baby, a couple of surgeries, a revamping of my expectations of my marriage. I'm a grown-up and coping just fine overall, but I'd like a little more boredom.

The chaos of the life that surrounds me is so often beyond my control. Perhaps that is why the play of the dogs is comforting. It certainly brings to mind the chaos of children in the house. I miss having my kids around. The dogs help that a bit I suppose. Their controlled chaos offers me a predictable and comforting balance to my days. It doesn't hurt that they are darn cute and fun to watch.

Easing into Nana

It's only been eight months, but I think that I am finally getting a handle on being a grandparent.

As I have mentioned over and over again to any ears that will listen, I've been having difficulty grasping what my role as a grandparent is. In my own life a grandparent was a parent, swooping in and doing parent things: cooking, cleaning, playing, changing, feeding, losing sleep, etc. But my kids are really wonderful people and they take very good care of Memphis, so my expertise is rarely needed.

Although I do find that I have a knack for getting the baby to sleep. I think it is because I have been through babyhood already with my own kids, and know for a fact that a baby will eventually sleep. That knowledge is very powerful, once you believe it, and so I know that a few minutes walking around the house rocking him in my arms and whispering the occasional song in his ear will ultimately put him to sleep. Whether or not he stays that way is hardly my problem. That is one of the advantages of being a grandparent. I can put the baby to sleep, but I won't be there in the night when he wakes up.

When Memphis first came home I tried to give my kids some space. I wanted to see the baby, sure, and hold him and coo to him, but I didn't want to intrude on the cocooning that their new family needed to do. Then my son mentioned to me about six weeks later that they felt that I was giving them too much space, that I wasn't coming by enough. That of course kick started the old parent guilt (that apparently never goes away; I suppose it goes hand-in-hand with the ability to get a crying baby to sleep). But I am working more now than when my kids were growing up, and let's face it, there are reasons why I stopped working full-time as a young mother. I simply didn't/don't have the capacity to balance small children and a career. Back in the day I had to make a choice. Today it is not my choice to make. Today I work because my focus is different. And I have to remind myself that I am Memphis' grandparent. Not his parent. If I only see him once a week, I am damned lucky that I live close enough to see him that often. Although I do feel guilty that I am letting my kids down; that I am not helping them as much as they need. So I go back to square one, wondering what my role is.

Then this last week it occurred to me that being a grandparent has very little to do with my kids. They are adults after all, and have the verbal and mental capacity to ask for help. And they do ask. We babysit fairly often. I go to doctor's visits when invited. I feed them or give them money or rides. I have not disappeared; I'm just no longer available to be on-call for everything 24/7. And there are many other wonderful family members around that love and help take care of Memphis and his parents.

I think that my role as Nana has everything to do with my relationship with my grandbaby. My relationship with my kids has not changed, and I supposed that it shouldn't. I think what is important is that I let go of my guilt and embrace my special relationship with my very special grandson.

That I can do.

So I'm thinking that Memphis and I need to go on some adventures together. I think we should run errands and go to the park, and go to my work and show each other off. I think we should go shopping, and enjoy long walks together in the sunshine. I think that we will find special toys and books that we like to play with together, just the two of us.

Yeah, I am finally beginning to ease into being Nana to Memphis. And it is a wonderful feeling.