shopko mj

I have French stuck in my head. What's that about?
My house smells like bacon.
I ate dinner at 9:00.
I wear a Michael Jackson shirt to bed every night.
Except it is from someplace like Shopko, and his face is white and his lips are red. I wish he wouldn't do that.
I ache to shoot film.
I have a Japanese umbrella atop my bookcase. It is from LA.
I have a jar with money in it for a someday trip to Japan with the boy I love.
I had a dream last night my mom was pregnant.
I am not bothered the least bit by people's baby comments.
Jared's new favorite thing is to see how long I can tickle him before he gives in and laughs. It makes no sense to me because I am female, but is hilarious.
I have a hot husband and secretly almost kind of want a dog.
I eat a lot of fruit snacks.

Underrated.

Jared had his first taste of gelato tonight; hazelnut flavor, and the working man made us say the names in Italian before he'd let us sample them.
I sampled about every flavor, because I chose wrong lots of times.
Hate when that happens, you know?
We used our coupons, laughed about politics (does Rick Santorum look like a perfect mix of Adam Sandler and Jerry Seinfeld to anyone else? Only really, really, un-funny?), and rolled our eyes at ridiculous garbage bags given out by mall stores, and talked about how easy it would be to build a table and how hard it would be to own a restaurant.

Being happily married is way, way underrated. Even when we're not vacationing lavishly, romancing glamorously, or being generally movie-worthy, it's those quiet moments when I look at him and the world is huge, swallows me, and I feel it all in the palm of my hand, in the very same instant. It's seeing backwards to that time he cut his hair in a mullet to be silly and forwards to our babies that will have personalities and being totally awake in the moment at hand, breathing in the whole earth full of bursting love for another human.
And yet, those gigantic inside things happen in regular clothes, coats, and ponytails.

Seventy times a day I talk to his ears about how I can't describe what I feel. It frustrates me, expressor that I am. (See? I just expressed mahself, makin up the word expressor. That's how it should be spelled, no questions asked.)

Only having a wimpy four letter word to account for all that hugeness feels pretty lame.

It's part of what I'll do in this life; turning words and thoughts inside and outside to find every one of the sixteen million ways I can explain how I feel about this boy. He is my dream.

Steps toward bravery.

I'm finally ready to post this--just for your reading, though, just to share, and not for a response. I believe in taking steps toward bravery and vulnerability, even if it's in a medium as small as one's little corner of the internet.
....................................

November 10, 2011

Today my grandpa died.

He was supposed to die yesterday, three weeks ago, ten years ago. They’ve thought he was leaving a lot of times; he’s just a fighter. Man of steel, mom said.

My mom has cared for this man all her adult life, when no one was really around to take care of her. You have your husband but he doesn’t care for you the same way your parents do. She cleaned out their fridge and had the cameras installed in their house to watch them, keep them safe.

The ultimate safety is death.

But that truth doesn’t often transfer well to us still here.

For mom it’s probably about goodbye; for me it’s all the things we didn’t get to do. Not in a I’m-so-gypped way, but a sad reality that’s-the-way-it-was way. That makes no sense.

I want to know him.

I want to know the whole story.

I want to know the battles my mom fought with him as her father.

I want to know the full extent of his genius, about what the patent from 1963 on my bookshelf really means. People ask me and I don’t know.

I watched him watch TV for those months we cared for them. He told us stories, but I still don’t know. I just watched him watch TV, filled up the hot water bottles the way he liked, got impatient when he wasn’t all the way ready to go to bed when we arrived, sweats-clad after long school days and just ready to sleep.

When I was driving home from a meeting in which a girl thoughtlessly joked about my grandpa’s death, I wanted to go to the house where all of that happened. Where I played with handed-down toys with dying batteries, enough to confuse the duck’s sound with the cow’s. Grandma had bright brown hair then--I never saw the gray roots.

I want to sleep, or throw up.

I thought I knew how to process death. Checkmark shebang bam alakazam I’ve got it. A lie to keep myself functioning. Plus I would be heartless—worse than selfish—if I did. 

Sad. I feel sad.

I feel sad about the memories I don’t have for writing in this moment. Just the blaring TV is coming back to me. Running into him at cougar creations in the Wilkinson center—being a little embarrassed that running into my grandpa could happen to me. Didn’t I know this man well enough not to run into him? I mean, see him often enough that our paths would naturally cross?

They did, every Thursday. Why can’t I remember more about grandpa on Thursdays? He took ages in the bathroom.

None of this is right. I need sleep and time.

I need to let my heart ache even if I feel I don’t have permission to let it.

Ache, heart. Do your thing. I set you free.

The ultimate freedom is in death.

Writing like this seems lame but I still think it’s important while it’s fresh. No judgment, just feelings and thoughts that float by in this moment—today, the day of his death. My grandpa is dead. He is gone. He is happy. I want to know him.

I am still here.

Here I am.
No grand plans for this post.
No big life events to announce, nothing out of the ordinary. No pregnancies, divorces, deaths or diamonds.
But I'm here.
And I'm finding more and more how important that is to me, for my life--I've tried to make writing my practice for a while now, and though I make excuses I keep coming back, even with nothing pressing to say. I am learning to own up to my soul needs: nurturing reading material, time to write, paper, pens. It's unglamorous and ugly and thrilling, mundane, exquisite.

Here's to this: doing things even when the genius is out to lunch, even when the glitter has settled and all you have to discover is the trudge through the dregs of those parts of yourself you'd rather not face.
My life is full, and I am buoyant and cheery despite a cold and a mile-long to-do list. I've learned to take pleasure in that mental checklist, in some twisted form.

I am still here.