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The End is Near

11/29/2016

The lady at the liquor store asked for my ID, then looked closer at me and said, "No."

Then she peered closer again and said, "Yes."

When I started to laugh, she looked like she was going to change her mind again, so I handed her my driver's license just to be done with it. That was weird and fun.

In other words, I'm white knuckling my way to the end of the semester. Witness my research paper misery:

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Giving thanks

11/22/2016

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A collection of random thoughts:

My husband is out of town for work and I have no assurance that he will make it home in time for Thanksgiving. When he's home, I irritate him and he irritates me, but when he's gone, it's like the sun has gone missing from the galaxy.

My college girl arrived home from Kentucky last night. My heart is full. At one point last night, six of us girls were crammed into the bathroom while my daughters modeled all the formal dresses they had worn over the years. Girl stuff. And at another point in the evening, my college girl gave a conceptual lecture -- complete with diagrams -- on astronomy to her 11 year old brother. I think his brain started to melt.

Today we're going to have lunch and do some shopping with my father and stepmother who are visiting from Texas. It's much colder here than they're used to, so mostly we're going to be looking for winter coats and some hoodies. Bonus points will be awarded if we can score Ohio State gear from the Goodwill. Dad is going to the OSU v Michigan football fame on Saturday and needs to dress the part.

The holiday season contains hundred of landmines for grieving parents. Angela Miller wrote an excellent essay about what it's like to be both grateful and grieving which you can (and should!) read here. "Gratitude is great– really, it is– but it can’t fix child loss. Nothing can. The only fix for my pain would be to raise my child from the dead."

Happy thanksgiving, friends!

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Cross maintenance

11/15/2016

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Within days of Maxwell's death as a result of the devastating injuries he sustained from what happens when a 20-wheeler plows into the side of a tiny car at a terrifying rate of speed, we had erected a small wooden cross at the site of impact. Like so many decisions I made during those early days that are shrouded in the fog of early grief, I can recall only very dimly my thought processes that led to a cross. Nevertheless, two days later, there was a cross where hours earlier there had been wreckage.

If you've driven anywhere in this country, you've seen them. Perhaps you never gave them much thought, but you've definitely seen them. Tragic crash + grieving family = the cross by the side of the road.

Eventually the wooden cross was completely overgrown with grass and not visible from the road. Not having any experience in Roadside Memorial Construction, we had no idea to what scale we should build it. So we scrapped that cross and built a new, larger one, this time made from white plastic that we got from Lowe's made to look like wood.

It's virtually indestructible. And the road maintenance crews of the state of Ohio (or whoever maintains the mowing schedule for that section of road) kindly mow around Max's cross, which means it's always visible to passersby.

This gives me a strange kind of satisfaction. My son died. But his cross is there to say that his life matters and you should SLOW THE EFF DOWN. Also, hug your loved ones. And watch out for semi-trucks traveling too fast. Just be careful. I mean it.

But one of the things about maintaining a roadside memorial for your son is that the atmosphere does terrible things to it. The flowers that you carefully select from the craft store in his favorite colors of red and black will fade in mere weeks. The black ink that your husband painstakingly hand draws will soon be unreadable. The very nature of a roadside memorial is its inherent temporariness.

And that shit kills me: That time still moves, that everything tends toward entropy, that I have to agonize over silk flowers in the middle of holiday shoppers at Joann's. It's just wrong.

On the way home from church this past Sunday, Roger and I set out to spruce up the cross. The old flowers were sapped of color and the letters that spelled out his name and dates were faint. It was beyond time to fix it. Usually, it's just Roger and I doing this while the kids wait in the van. It's a busy road and rough walking terrain to get to the site and honestly, I can't imagine why anyone would want to spend time there unless they had to.

But this time, instead of waiting in the van, Lucy asked if she could come with us. We're indulgent parents of the last baby, so naturally we said yes. She watched as we gathered the faded silk flowers, replacing them with new ones, and as Roger slowly inked over the faded letters of Maxwell's name. Then she asked the two questions foremost in her mind: What kind of car did Max drive, and what kind of truck ran into him?

She's six years old. This shit kills me.

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Vote Goat!

11/8/2016

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Vote. Or don't. Honestly, I don't care who you pick for president and really don't want to hear about it. The thing is, your one ballot decision will probably not significantly change the fate of anything that you care about.

On Wednesday, it will be over. And then the real work begins: living in harmony with the people who disagree with you.

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Post Halloween

11/1/2016

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When my older kids were little, we didn't really do the whole Halloween thing. Part of the reason was due to a misguided pseudo-religious conviction, but mostly I was just lazy. Or overwhelmed. But probably both. (Just to give you some perspective, there was a time when I had 5 children under 6 years old. I loved that period of my life, but boy howdy, was I ever exhausted!)

By the time Halloween 2008 rolled around, I was finally ready to do costumes and candy with my kids. (And again, for perspective, I had 9 children ranging in age from 15 years down to 1 year old.) I don't remember what costumes my kids wore that year, because I am pretty sure I had very limited involvement in the decision process. Instead, I had farmed that out to the teens and tweens as part of their well-rounded homeschool education.

However, I recall with much fondness the costume I created for the one year old and me. I dressed up in a blue turtle neck with coordinating blue jeans and also dressed the baby in a matching blue onesie. I affixed cloud-like clumps of white batting to each of us and carried her around on my hip like usual. I also carried a squirt bottle full of water and randomly spritzed into the air. When people naturally asked me what I was dressed up as, I sprayed a fine mist of water in their direction and told them with a very straight face that I was -- wait for it -- Partly Cloudy with a Chance of Rain.

Then there was Halloween 2011, when I wore my beekeeping gear while holding the newest Romeo child on my hip whom I had dressed up as a bee. (My forte seems to be mother and child combo costumes.)

Fast forward to now.

My 18 year old daughter is keenly aware of how quickly time is passing; next year at this time she will be away at college. As if to make up for all the lost years of not carving a single pumpkin as a family, she set out to carve six unique pumpkins by herself. There's probably a lesson in this, but I'll leave it up to you, dear reader, to find it. (Because I'm still lazy that way.)

The Romeo child I dressed up as a bee in 2011 is old enough now to use my cell phone. I had given it to her while I was making dinner and her sister was carving pumpkins, assuming she would play a game on it, like Goat Simulator or Angry Birds. Nope. She recorded videos instead. I think she's lobbying for her own YouTube channel.

You can watch her cute video and running commentary of the pumpkin carving below.

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The End is Near

Giving thanks

Cross maintenance

Vote Goat!

Post Halloween

Who's that?

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