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Learning and trying to be kind and living my life as fully as I can stand it.

Monday, February 25, 2019

A snippet

It's been challenging for me to write lately, for lots of reasons. Here is an unfinished piece, a snippet, written almost two months ago.


This morning I woke up alone except for the dog and the cats. It was really cold in the house. I lay in bed quietly, trying to remember what day it was and what was happening.

January 2, 2019. First day back to work in an office after a fifteen month break. Wednesday. Kids coming back from their dad's. Almost the end of winter break so still no school.

I went into the kitchen, opening the cabinets to find the coffee grinder. It wasn't there. Did he take it when he moved out? I hadn't noticed. It's been a while since I've bought whole bean and he moved out in October. I debated driving to Peets to get a pound of coffee, or at least a cup, but I knew the kids would be getting dropped off soon and I didn't want to rush. Tea, then. Hot, milky, sugary tea like my English friend Jemima made for me in Madrid twenty years ago. I held the mug in my hands and sat at the kitchen table. I opened up my laptop and tried logging into Outlook--password remembered, 5400+ emails.

My dad arrived, arms full of gallons of milk in what has become his Wednesday morning ritual, steady even as routines change around him. I let him in and we sat quietly together. I made him tea just like mine.

The kids arrived, full of smiles, Cleo dressed for summer because she never gets cold. My ex-husband and I greeted each other in the kitchen, rolled eyes together at the confusion of going back to work on a Wednesday--him after being off for a week, me after being off more than a year. I told him how many emails were in my inbox and I thought of the other times I've gone back to this workplace in the time he and I have known each other. Once after my two week trip to El Salvador. Another time after our month long wedding and honeymoon break. I was in management then so there were a lot more emails. Once after my first six month long maternity leave. Once after being laid off and then a year of working elsewhere. Once after a three month long medical leave of absence. This time after the longest leave, the longest break from paid work I've ever had since being a working person.

He left, the kids settled in with their part-time toys in their part-time house. I got in the shower. The water was hot. I thought ahead to my haircut next week as I rubbed too much shampoo into my too long but still very short hair. Six months ago I shaved my head. Six weeks after that I shaved it again, marveling at how brave and how vulnerable I felt out in the world--forty one, almost divorced, no hair. Who was I? Could I still be pretty? Would anyone ever want me again? What if for the first time in my life this is the start of not defining myself by whether anyone else wants me or not. People asked me if I was scared when I had it buzzed off and I said no, shaving my head was the least scary thing going on at the time. We were going through mediation, talking money and custody and endings. I was trying to even imagine living half my life without these kids near by. Shaving my head brought my insides more in line with my outsides. It felt raw, wild, wounded, bare. Powerful, defiant, bold, free.

This morning running fingers through sudsy, inch-long, shaggy hair growth helped bring me into the moment. A physical marker of time passed. Of easy, awkward, change.



















Friday, February 22, 2019

Happy 40th Birthday Martha

I don't remember not knowing my sister Martha because she was born a week before I turned two. If you look back at photos of our early years you see two very similar-looking girls with bowl haircuts wearing some funky outfits in 70's colors that would have matched better had we swapped pants or shirts. Knowing what we now know about my sister's fashion sense I'm amazed she let either of us out of the house back then without doing some re-arranging. I have questions about this.

My sister is brilliant. Her mind works so fast that she often skips multiple words in the middle of her sentences as she strings her thoughts together, gesticulating her elegant hands in the air and looking at you with bright eyes and raised eyebrows, waiting for confirmation that you were flying alongside of her.

In nursery school we played a game where the girls would take turns lying on a mattress pretending to be sleeping princesses and the boys would take turns trying to wake us up. Writing this now this game seems very strange and weirdly gendered in a gross way but I think at the time it was fun. One day I was winning the game by not showing signs of being awakened so a boy got frustrated and bit my calf. That woke me up. My sister responded by punching him in the nose. She was three.

My sister was an artist from the beginning, not just with her clothes but with any medium she could get her hands on. My dad still has a framed piece of art she drew in nursery school hanging on his wall. She took an art class with high school students at a museum when she was in elementary school. I was jealous but also filled with admiration for what she could do.

My sister has always been surrounded by friends and they have always seemed to be doing fun things and holding each other up and loving each other. This was true in elementary school, again in middle school with some slight variations, again in high school with a totally new group and then again in college even though she thought she could never and would never possibly meet friends as close as those she already had. I've watched these girls and women laugh and love and celebrate my sister and each other over and over again as I've watched her grow up. My sister is a bright light and the kind of friend that people find and hold on to with both hands and full hearts because if you are lucky enough to be loved by this woman you know you would be a fool to let her go.

My sister walks tall, fierce, bold with long hair streaming down her back or tied up in a bun. Her strides are long, her eyes are sharp, her mind is matchless. I can guarantee that many people who have crossed her path have been intimidated for one reason or another, unable to imagine the soft, tender heart and the artist's soul housed within.

My sister graduated with honors from an Ivy-league university and wrote a thesis on beauty pageants for her degree in cultural anthropology, rocking baggy sweats and headphones as she researched and wrote page after page and then went to party like a college student to bring all the pieces of herself back together.

My sister threw herself in the air and onto the ground thousands of times over the her decades' long soccer career as a goalie.

My sister worked in a flower shop after she graduated when there weren't many jobs to be had (it was 2001). Then she worked in PR which stands for public relations which is the business of getting products in the news which is an art I knew nothing about until she started doing it and teaching me. She is known and sought after and beloved in her field. She has elevated companies into international awareness because of how she thinks and what she says and how she understands people.

My sister ran the adult kickball league in San Francisco as a young adult without a car and somehow managed to get equipment and people to where they needed to be, including herself to Las Vegas for kickball championships which I bet you didn't know were even a thing.

My sister and I have lived together as roommates and upstairs/downstairs from each other as neighbors as adults in two different apartments in San Francisco. We loved it and were always perplexed and sorry for the many people who responded with shock saying "I could NEVER live with my sister."

My sister and I got engaged within months of one another and carried our babies at the same time, both times. Together we birthed six children in 2013 and 2014.

My sister is the fiercest protector I have ever had and could ever hope to have. When I was in the hospital waiting for my liver transplant she, among other things, crawled under a sterile paper blanket to hold it up off of my face while doctors inserted a central line into my neck because I was scared and claustrophobic and the doctors wouldn't listen to me so she took matters into her own hands. She also walked in the room after flying home across the country during finals her senior year, took one look at me and said "Can't you at least wash her hair?" leading to the most glorious hot water/hair washing experience of my life, still unmatched as of this writing.

My sister has given me 80% of the clothes and shoes I wear and anytime I get complimented on anything I'm wearing I almost always respond with "Thanks, my sister gave it to me." People then invariably say "You're so lucky! I wish she were my sister." to which I respond "You have no idea."

My sister is the most loving aunt I have ever met. My son told me once how much he loves her and how well they get along and said it was because "we're like two eggs in a pan." She shines love and delight upon my children unabashedly and unreservedly and they bask in it. Wait until she sees the bag of funny, random goodies my daughters put together for her birthday.

My sister is a loving, fun, natural mama and anytime I hear a random video of her interacting with her young sons I marvel at the sweetness of her voice.

My sister, in addition to starting her own PR company, raising two young children and two older children alongside her husband, co-oping at her boys' nursery school, creating and running one of the most successful and joyous fundraisers in the school's history, showing her friends and her family how much she loves us and thinks of us, sponsoring scholarships and speakers at women's financial conferences, and doing other daily, regular life stuff also helps run the San Francisco Women's March as a volunteer. She is badass and big-hearted and I don't know how she does it.

She is generous. She is kind. She is funny. She is quirky. She gifts me with her love over and over again even when I have nothing to give in return. She is the reason I am so grateful to have given my own children so many sisters.

Happy birthday Fanny. I don't have the words to do you justice.