Saturday Morning Tidal Wave

As I wake up, the light come through the blinds which I didn't completely close.

My fingers are twisted into hers and she rubs her thumb on mine, awake already.

Zack is sleeping across the top of the bed on a pillow, his belly button above my forehead.

I had a bad dream, she starts then I remember mine

. In hers, she went on some roller coasters, it was scary; she wanted me.

I dreamed that I brought my Abuela somewhere - shopping? the mall? maybe the beach? -- and then I left her there.

My last thought as the sun streamed into my face was that I had to go back and find her, or she'd be lost.

"I lost Abuela..." was all that I could say, then Zoe nodded and added, "I lost her, in my dream, too."

And there we sat, almost drowning under the tidal wave of grief that crashed invisibly from the sky, twisted and quiet between blankets and pillows, sobbing on a beautiful Spring morning.

As I wake up, the light come through the blinds which I didn't completely close. My fingers are twisted into hers and she rubs her thumb on mine, awake already. Zack is sleeping across the top of the bed on a pillow, his belly button above my forehead.

I had a bad dream, she starts then I remember mine. In hers, she went on some roller coasters, it was scary; she wanted me.

I dreamed that I brought my Abuela somewhere - shopping? the mall? maybe the beach? -- and then I left her there. My last thought as the sun streamed into my face was that I had to go back and find her, or she'd be lost.

"I lost Abuela..." was all that I could say, then Zoe nodded and added, "I lost her, in my dream, too."

And there we sat, twisted and quiet, sobbing on a beautiful Spring morning.

Saturday, Bloody Saturday

The kids joined me on the kitchen floor where I was putting the finishing touches on the magic wand I've made for my friend Barb.

Zoe ooooh'd.

Zack ahhhhh'd.

Then Zoe warned me, "Be careful, you might stab yourself."

I'd thought the same thing (repeatedly) and figured I was due for a nice scar soon.

Still, I reassured her, "I'm fine, I'm being careful."

"I just don't want you to bleed...."

"And so if I do?"

A light beamed from her face. "Can I have your blood?"

"OH MY GOSH, Zoe! Have you been reading Twilight? Anne Rice? Do you want to drink my blood? Because REALLY I can get you some V8..."

No, she shook her head, "I want it for the microscope. But just the blood you're not using..."

"Fantastic, I'll let you know if there is any excess..." I replied, dismissing her, falling back into my crafting trance.

"If I put my finger here will you cut me?" Zack asked, holding his thumb out right behind where my needle plunged it.

"I wouldn't put my thumb there... but yes, that would be a great way to get cut, or at least stabbed."

He nodded his head solemnly.

"Then I would cut my finger, and die. And Zoe, you can have all my blood. Forever."

She stood up, hugged him, and the two of them left me alone on the floor, still piecing together a magic wand.

We Broke Up. Please Delete Me.

Dear Pizza Chain,

I used to love you.

I used to look forward to your thin crispy crusts and your cheap child pleasing cheeses.

You were cheaper then, easier then, convenient and cheerful.

Then during last summer's gas crisis you raised your prices, and I said nothing, but I started exploring my options.

That same week -- you would not know this, but it's time I told you -- I joined Costco and I found dinners far cheaper and more interesting than you ever were. (Can you say "Tilapia?")

Also -- you would not know this either, but it's also time I told you -- I got this amazing sharp knife from my father this past Christmas, and I now I love cooking. Or at least, I love chopping. I'm looing for good pots and pans, maybe some glass bowls. I don't know exactly what I'll buy, but I know I can't get what I want by turning to you anymore.

I can't say this any clearer; I've shown you with my actions by not ordering from you since before Christmas, and now I'm telling you with these words.

I don't want you to cook my food, I don't want you to bring me food, I don't want to eat what you cook. I want to cook my own food.

Please, please, stop texting me and emailing me and sending me mail bragging about your specials, promising me satisfaction, delivery, warmth.

Maybe you haven't changed, but now, to me, you seem greasy and actually kind of desperate.

I would be ashamed to place your box on my corner in the recycle bin.

If you have any dignity at all, please don't text me any more, don't email me anymore, and don't bother mailing me any more of your brightly colored flyers.

I am immune to your charms.

Delete me, Pizza Chain, forget we ever knew each other.

Two Years Ago: My Date with Barb

I think to understand exactly how mentally and spiritually exhausted my friends Barbara and Rob must be, you have to understand the rollercoaster of grief and hope they have been riding since losing their children, Ryan and Rachel, in a car accident ten years ago this summer.

For now, let's look back at where she was, two years ago, when we had one of our best friend-dates.

It’s 6:45pm, Tuesday, March 13, 2007

I'm in the same seat, the same row as before, in the half-full auditorium filled with students taking a course which I think is called Death and Dying.

This time, I didn't pack kleenex. I don't think I'll cry.

I know the story, I'm immune, and anyway, we found parking so quickly this time, I just feel happy energy all ove the place.

When Barb talked at the Death and Dying class at FSU last November, the class started about two hours earlier, and parking at FSU was much tighter. We ran a bit late tonight, but she was cool. We each had a cold soda, we had gum, we had dinner plans for after her talk.

*******************
Rewind.
5:00pm, Tuesday, March 1, 2007

Zack is standing in the living room, no underwear on, crying because he has cut his knee on a yard ornament.

The doorbell rings. It's Barb.

I hoist the howling three year old under my arm, trying to keep his knee-blood and boy-dirt off my suit.

Barb isn't worried about running late. She floats into my house, a breathe of calm steadiness in a whirlwind of whining. She stands next to him and distracts him with her purring voice and silly teasing.

After his boo-boo is cleaned, she finds a ballpoint pen (a pen! in my house! miracle!) and writes smiley-faces on his band-aids.

He is hopelessly in love.

Things are calm, I can leave. I swoop down to kiss Zoe. She hugs me and murmurs "Bye Miss Barb, I sure miss you."

I pull back. "I'm your MOM not Miss Barb!"

Zoe laughs at her mistake, a little embarrassed for being caught starry-eyed, and kisses me on the cheek.

*******************
Rewind Again.
Thursday, March 8, 2007, afternoon

It's the Thursday of Spring Break, and Barb picked me up to go to lunch. She drives us in the milf-mobile, which feels ridiculously high compared to my old small Hyundai. I clown around, pretending to be a rock-climber, checking for my safety ropes.

After sushi, we go to Wal-mart. I had just gotten a new pond, I wanted to look at yard decorations. I've never actually had the impulse to even consider yard statuary, so Barb volunteered to chaperone me.

While I was sorting through the statues of bunnies, turtles, and other silly yard-creatures, Barb stood in front of something else.

"We need to get a new one of those for the graves." I stood completely still, head cocked like a friendly dog.

She continued, "Well, things outside wear out."

They do, I nodded.

I didn't really want to actually buy anything, so we kept meandering, past Cape Cod potato chips, through wallets and socks, through the fruit scented body sprays.

I think she bought cat food and paper plates.

You know, Wal-Mart stuff.

************
Fast Forward
7:10pm, Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Before we entered the auditorium, we went to the cramped florescent-light bathroom. I'm used to rotten lighting, so I just wash my hands, smile at myself while I gloss up my lips and leave the bathroom to make a call.

I waited about five minutes then returned to the bathroom on a search-and-rescue mission. Barb was standing in front of the mirror, pulling her blonde hair back, scowling at herself in the mirror.

She was beating herself up, focusing on perceived flaws.

Maybe she does that when she's scared. I don't blame her one bit.

Barb is sitting up front now, cool and calm.

Looking more gorgeous than she probably should, given the topic and situation.

****************
7:20pm, March 13, 2007

The professor spent the first 35 minutes of class taking roll and answering questions. I cannot decide if he is a saint or a fool, but given his line of work -- grief counseling -- I have to lean toward saint.

He introduces Barb in these exact words, which I know for sure, because I am sitting in the back row, writing them down.

"This is Barb C. She is here to talk about her life. It is a sad story, a tough story, a story about resiliency."

He pauses, and I see about sixty heads turn slightly toward Barb, probably nodding, smiling, checking out her gorgeous dress.

And then, before Barb can tell the story herself, he tells the class how and when Barb's children, Ryan and Rachel died. I understand that he wants to prepare them for her story, but I resent it the tiniest bit. It's her story. She's earned the right to tell it.

As she starts to ask the audience questions, warms them up, builds her credibility as a speaker, my mind goes back to the reason she brought me here tonight.

It's my job to figure out what we will have for dinner.

Yes, it'll be a late dinner, since this Death and Dying class doesn't end until almost 9. I am sure we won't leave the building until almost 10.

By that time, after telling about the accident, answering student questions, and walking a room full of strangers through the darkest days and years of her life, Barb will be elated and exhausted. And hungry.

When it's all over, and she's through bearing her soul, we will eat.

No, we will not just eat.

We will have a mini-feast, celebrate life, enjoy being happy and healthy today, and -- I am sure -- laugh loudly together.

Spring Break & Barbara

More days than not, I choose to not write the stories which perpetually march across my mind.

I stare into space, watch TV, eat too much ice cream, mindlessly surf the web doing what I can to keep from uncorking more stories, pulling them from the dark into the sunshine.

I sit down to write more, then check online at a site dedicated to the condition and situation of Sean Connelly, my friends’ baby who is 3 months old but hasn’t spent 12 hours out of the hospital yet.

Instead of writing, I call Sean’s mother, Barbara, whom I haven’t seen since Sean’s baby shower back in November. They drove up to Kentucky to adopt him in December, and only returned to Tallahassee this week.

Yes, Sean would be going to surgery on Tuesday, March 10.

Sure, I could come hang out and wait, she agreed.

“Fantastic,” I tell her. “I’ll be there for you, and I can keep myself busy… I also I’m writing that stuff I told you I’d write for Sonja’s friends.”

The next day, after an uneventful early morning of packing the kids off to school, I find a great writing spot in my big empty jacuzzi bathtub.

Alone at home, I lock the door the front door, lock the garage and the garage door, bolt the sliding glass door, then lock the door to the bedroom, and finally, lock the door to the door to the bathroom, just to be safe, just to make sure I can write unmolested.

At almost exactly 10:30, Barbara calls to tell me the surgery should be at noon. I get out of the bathtub, fix my frizzy hair, toss on lipstick, pull on a bright blue dress and pack my computer. I am suddenly excited to finally meet Sean.

As I pull up to the Tallahassee Memorial hospital, my stomach turns over. I hate parking, hate garages, hate strangers, hate crowds. My ideal Spring Break would be in a solitary confinement, maybe in a condo, on the beach, with internet access.

I don’t need a lot friends, and don’t make them easily, but I have loved Barbara like a sister and soul mate since the day I met her, the day I moved into the house behind hers.

Her first question to me when we met across the fence that separated our yards on the day I moved in was “What branch?”

“Branch?”

She nodded her head, smiling. “I couldn’t help but peek at your mail and I saw USAA, so fess up to me, which branch did you serve in?”

I shook my head, disappointing her. Chuck’s dad was shot down in Vietnam, we inherited the membership.

She had been an army cook, back before the accident that happened when she and her husband were both being deployed. As the months unfolded we learned we both laughed at the same things.

By noon on the day Sean was going to have surgery, I had coughed up the $3 to valet park my new car, gotten lost (and had a nice lady tell me, “you can’t get there from here” and hug me), and finally found Rob and Barb in the dark room by the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.

I am completely and absolutely sure that nothing bad will happen to Sean, that he will thrive, and that we will all one day chide him for scaring us all so badly for so long.

She brings me back to meet him, and there he is, a tiny thing in a darkened room surrounded by paintings of smiling butterflies and fairies.

Tubes and straps surround him; his eyes look dark and focus nowhere in particular, but yes, he is most definitely a baby. A cute one.

After we coo over him for a few minutes, I say it again. “This isn’t what you’d signed up for. This is really hard. You’ve gone through enough, more than anyone else….”

“I know,” she growls back at me. “I look awful.”

No, no she doesn’t, and I tell her that.

I’ve seen her go through several rounds of hormones before devastatingly invasive and disappointing IVF.

I’ve seen her tired, sad, frustrated and hopeful.

Right now, leaning over her son, she didn’t look bad at all.

“Your makeup looks great, your hair is wonderful, and you even have the perfect eyeliner on,” I point out.

She refutes me, arguing her eyeliner isn’t straight.

I laugh. It is perfect, smudged and sexy and somehow warm.

“You look fantastic,” I say again, still leaning over Sean’s crib but not touching him. There’s a certain tone in her voice and presence today that makes me continue, modifying my sunshiney statements, “and I think you could shoot someone and kill them right now.”

She laughs.

I nailed it.

Minutes later I slip out of Sean’s room in Pediatric ICU, leaving her alone with Sean and go back to the waiting room.

Before settling down, I stop by the vending machine for pretzels, the singular permissible vending machine food for Weight Watchers Lifetime Members (or at least in my sacred branch of it).

The bag dangles then falls awkwardly, catching and sticking on the top corner of a bag of microwave popcorn.

I get nothing.

Eying the machine top to bottom, I wonder what lunch-substitute will be both low fat and not from a row directly above the offending popcorn bag.

Remembering I was craving a Twix bar since seeing Barbara slip half of one into her purse earlier, I bought one.

The crash the of the chocolate covered cookie bars is so strong it causes the stuck pretzel bag to jump up and free another pretzel bag, both sliding smoothly to the black tray. Bonanza.

I settle back into the waiting room and feast alone, tucking the wrappers into each other, reminding myself to destroy the evidence rather than bring it home where no doubt a child would find it and protest loudly about the unfairness of life.

About an hour later, Rob joins me. There are other people in the waiting room now. A teenager with a blanket thrown over her is doubled over on the plastic sofa, her face buried in a pillow. Two women older than me, whispering to each other about something I don’t strain to hear sit next to me, one on a chair, the other crouching near her.

Our attention turns to the TV, tuned to TLC which is playing a Baby Story. Rob shakes his head at how fat a baby turns out. He tells me how tiny Rachel had been, I tell him my kids were both 7 pound something. Boringly normal.

“But I was so happy when I was pregnant,” I blurt out, drawing the attention of the hushed women in the corner. “I ate so much! I crossed 200 pounds, and earned every bit of it.”

Rob chuckles and my attention weaves backwards, remembering how good it felt to finally eat freely and happily after a lifetime of dieting.

Rob shakes his head and our conversation meanders to shoes, orthodontists and the general state of Marina, their other daughter, the one they adopted from Russia. She’s growing like a weed, we concur. Zoe is wearing a bra, and she’s not even two years older than Marina, I warn.

Then, at about the time that another Baby Story begins, Barbara comes to get Rob from the waiting room. She gestures at me to stay put, she’d be back to get me.

I stay obediently in the dark waiting room, and minutes later hear a rattly crib going down the hall, then see them as they cross in front of the narrow waiting room door. Rob walks in front of the crib, protectively. Barb marches behind it. Both of their chins are up, both of them are looking straight ahead.

She comes to get me minutes later, and I follow her to smoke outside.

She laments noone is helping, that she really needs someone to help, and that she would remember this if anyone asked her for help.

“People ask you for money? Still?”

She nods, blows smoke away from me, then her lips got a little tighter. “Yes, people do still keep coming to us for help. And how do you think that feels? With what is going on….” Shaking her head, she pulls her cigarette back up to her mouth, looks away, and takes a long drag.

Barbara looks so skinny to me, I tell her and she agrees.

Two girls who look like teenagers come around the corner, ask for a lighter, use it then disappear again. We stare at the traffic going by on Centerville Road, at people in tightly sealed squares, moving through the same space and time, oblivious.

“Oh!” I remember I have something for her, and pull two heavy solid smooth rocks out of my shoulder bag, then hold them up to her in my palm.

Barb reads them aloud. “Peace? Hope? You’re giving me that? I could use it.”

“Yes, well, you gave them to me first.”

I don’t know if she slipped them into her pocket or not, but they disappeared, absorbed almost into her like she had taken a big gulp of water.

The old Barb, the well-rested one I knew only recently, would have said, “This is what friends do for each other.”


**********
To follow Sean's progress and send support to the family, please visit
http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/seanbusbyconnelly