First day jitters

The N-Man walked down the hall with his new lunchbox, proudly showing it to anyone and everyone who would take the time to look.  We arrived at the fourth door on the right and slowly pushed it open.   He hesitated for a moment, grabbed my leg as he peeked around my knee.  His big brown eyes scanned the room, taking in the sights:  the children sitting and having a morning snack, the cubbies stuffed full of blankets and coats, brightly colored rugs covered with letters and numbers.  He decided the coast was clear and let go of my pants and strode in as if he had spent everyday of his life there. 

As I unpacked his belongings, moved him into the classroom, I couldn’t help but notice how many of the children had red, puffy eyes.   Then two more arrived, clinging to mommy and daddy, howling as they were pried away by their new teachers.  A lump formed in my throat as I braced myself for what was about to come.  I bent down on one knee and looked him in the eye, told him to be a big boy, and asked for a kiss.  A tiny hand shot out, flat palmed, at my puckered lips and a little voice proclaimed, Good-bye, Mommy!  Then he turned and ran to a shelf full of toy animals.  Begrudgingly, I respected his wishes and made my exit.  That couldn’t be it!  I peeked through the window for a few minutes, waiting for him to realize I was really gone.  It never happened.   Rejected, I went back out to the car and stared at the steering wheel, the only one  shedding any tears over his first day of preschool.

In all likelihood he will never remember this day.  I, on the other hand, will never forget.

Ducky’s wife

I found my inspiration this weekend in a woman I have never met, who married a boy  man I haven’t seen since I was eighteen years old. Doug, or Ducky as we used to call him (pre Sixteen Candles, thank you very much) was a cornerstone of our social circle in high school.  Anywhere any of us went, so did Doug.  Football games, weekend nights hanging out at McDonalds, awkward teenaged dances, just crusing around town.  There he was.   But as happens in life, somewhere along the way, we fell into the rhythm of our individual paths and we drifted away, not out of ill will, simply circumstance.  But Doug has always been there despite his absence.  So much a part of all of us was he that, at my wedding, we all left a space in the pictures of our clique where he should have been standing.  

I learned of the tragedy that befell our dear Ducky just this past  Sunday.  In 2004 he had a severe allergic reaction to something unknown to this day and his brain was deprived of oxygen.  He was placed in a medically induced coma for almost a month.  Following his awakening he had to relearn everything.  Everything you and do with no thought at all.  Talking, walking, eating.  Doug was functionally gone, physically and mentally.  

But this story isn’t about Doug.  It’s about the woman who fell in love with him, bore him three children, and, to this day, refers to him as the love of her life.   Doug’s wife.   I don’t know her.  I’ve chatted with her one time, on Facebook, out of a need to express my gratitude for her dedication and admiration for her strength.  But you don’t have to know a woman like this personally to understand the depths of who she is when you can so clearly see the storm she has weathered, the way she played the cruel hand dealt to her by life.  There is often discussion in the single parent blogosphere about how we each came to be solo parents and the burdens we carry as a result.   Doug’s wife took a path I could never wish on anyone, trials paving her path like land mines.  For the day Doug stopped breathing for just a little bit too long, she was  quite unexpectedly thrust into our world, all the while, her partner & father of her children still at her side. 

For years, she  stayed dedicated, true to Doug.  She was at his side in the hospital.  Later at the rehabilitation hospital.  She brought him home to the family house and became not only his wife, but his nurse, his physical therapist, his every basic need provider.  The new, sole bread winner of the family, she was forced to re-enter the work force.  She was further inspired to enroll in physical therapy school.  She received twenty hours a month of respite care from her twenty four hour a day duties.  All of this burden on top of caring for their three children with minimal assistance from family.   Take a moment now, if you will, and try to comprehend the incredible ball of entangled emotions that go into to living your life as a single mother, while all the while still caring for a shell of a husband who has left you, yet is still right there.

Doug only improved and came back, so much.   He cannot walk.   His brain is damaged beyond ever being able to care for himself.   He is now where he will be for the rest of his life, a man now a large toddler, trapped in a broken body.   Through three long trying years of devotion and daily dedication,  she watched her children grow up with a father to whom they simply could not relate and forgivingly cope with a mother who  had also all but disappeared from their lives to care for that man.  Many of us faced huge decisions, made painful choices on our road to single parenthood, but Doug’s wife’s  decision was more heart wrenching than anything I can imagine. In 2007, she moved Doug to a nursing home so that she could reclaim her life for the sake her children.  For a year she visited regularly, daily, continued to be by his side.  But as happens, despite her efforts and the placement of her heart, she found herself drifting further and further away from the life that she once knew as his wife and matriarch of a shared family unit.  With as much understanding as he could offer and a great deal of mutual heartbreak, they divorced in 2008.

Despite their legal status, she continued to help oversee his care.  She regularly took  takes her children to visit their father.  She continues to experience a guilt beyond anything I hope I ever know.   And after years of married, single motherhood and a year of legal status in our realm, she has finally re-found love with a new man who 100% supports her circumstances and accepts that, in many ways, she still is and  will always be, Doug’s wife.   They were recently married, with myDucky’s blessing.

I look at my own path to this solo performance, and despite the fact that the pain of my journey was still very real to me, I am grateful for single parents with far more strength than my own to help me keep this life in perspective.  My own world may have come down around me, but not in the dramatic fashion of one ill fated decision as to what to eat for lunch that then lingered, cruelly for years.  My hat is off to Doug’s wife.  Thank you for taking such amazing care for my friend for as long as you did.  Thank you for the strength and grace you emulate.  Thank you for reminding us all that we should never, NEVER take one single moment for granted.  I hear the guilt and heartache in your story, suspect you have faced unfair judgment from those who can never comprehend.  But please know that you will never find anything but support in this place.   Doug’s wife, you are my first official single parent of the week.

There’s one in every group

I’d like to appologize ahead of time for the catty, gossipy nature of this post.  I make it a point to try and avoid talking about specific people behind their backs, calling them out on their flaws, when at all possible.  (X excepted when it comes to this blog since, after all, it IS a space conceived so I have a place to get it out when needed.)   Heaven knows I’m not perfect either and we all have our moments.  It is not my place to judge, even though sometimes I do.   But today, right now, I don’t care about all that.  I gotta get it out… somewhere… anywhere.   I am  taking full advantage of the knowledge that the good Lord has already forgiven me for this obnoxious sin ahead of time to put it all out there first and deal with repenting later.

A wise, all knowing, third year law student once told me, when I was a lowly first year, There’s one in every class and if you don’t know who it is, it’s probably you.  How ture and globally applicable those words were and continue to be in every group situation I’ve ever encountered.  At least when it comes to the barn, I can definitely rest easy at night knowing it is definitely NOT me.  I refer you back to my little real life law school question.  First of all, let’s change “car owner’s” name to Bat Shit Crazy Lady.    The final answer to that little dilemma was that nobody paid for anything because the barn owner’s insurance kicked in and covered it all with no deductible.  But in the process of getting there, BSCL showed her true colors to anyone and everyone who go was ill fated enough to get in her way.  

Lucky for me her entire wrath, at least to my face, was focused on the barn owner.  There were repeated threats of law suits and out right blackmail of having all the barn hands deported if barn owner didn’t pay up now.   I still am dumbfounded as to what in the world the barn guys’ immigration statuses have to do with my horse putting his hoof through the fender of BSCL’s Cadillac.  All I know is they take wonderful care of the hoofed one and, as such, I, frankly, could not care less how they came to be here.  Now, I say “to my face” because, despite her insistence to me that I was not financially responsible for her drama, BSCL was running here and there complaining to everyone else that I had not offered to money up.  Of course this was only a twisted version of the truth.  As soon as I realized she was certifiably insane, I simply chose to eliminate her from all conversations and negotiated my part directly with the barn owner.  I see enough drama a work, and get a heatlhy dose of it from X along the way.  The last thing I need is to further immerse myself in it at the barn, my alleged safe haven from the real world.   Anyway, the car damage drama did finally come to an end.   I  find myself scratching my head that the barn owner didn’t give her the big boot out the door and, now,  just try to avoid her at all costs. 

However, this weekend I errantly manged to show up both days at the same time BSCL was there too.  Oh goody.  Yesterday she went out of her way to pin me down on my plans for horse show schedules this year.  She made sure I knew she was going to compete at every big show in our four state zone this year.  What about me?  I politely let her know that I was foregoing the A-rated shows and only competing locally this year because of finances and the time commitment involved in nationally ranked competition.  She sneered at me and told me, Well if you aren’t willing to make the commitment to your horse, I suppose that’s best.   If winning against bad horses  makes you happy, that’s your choice.  Seriously? 

Today, as I was having my lesson with my trainer, she was riding in the same ring, obviously scrutinizing us and our every move, stopping to whisper to other people every time we did something.  And it was not the hoofed one’s best day.  He did his best to not help me out.  Five year old horses are like that sometimes.   I’m sure we gave her plenty of fodder.   When we were done she made a point of seeking me out, all the way down to the far end of the barn aisle, as I was cleaning up, and “asked” me totally out of the blue, You do plan to wrap his legs tonight after you rode him that way today.  Right?     I can tell you,  it was all I could do to not take advantage of the fact that I still had on my spurs and heel her in the head.   Instead, I smiled as sweetly as I was capable of and let her know that the hoofed one was fine and thank you for your concern but my trainer and I have things under control with our program.   She gasped that I wouldn’t heed her all knowing advice and, as she turned curtly on her heel told me, Well to each their own I suppose.  But I would hope your trainer knows what she’s doing.  Then she stomped down the aisle to deal with her own horse.     She has 100% reaffirmed my resolve to just stay out of her BSCL way.  I definatley wouldn’t want to be too close if a house suddenly falls out of the sky and lands on her and her ruby boots.

So are these people born this way?  Is there just some defective gene that robs them of any sense of social skill development and renders them helpless slaves to their unfiltered mouths?    Have theysurvived some tremendous, horrific event in life that has left  them so terribly twisted, embittered them to the point of no return?  Some combination of the two?   I have no answer.  All I know is that I graduated from high school 20+ years ago, left those games in 1988, and it just kills me see how  many “grown ups” still live life as if not making the cheerleading squad and sitting at the right table with the right people at lunch will forever define their legacy.   As a practicing, Christian I’m told that I should  pray for them, hope  with sincerity that they find a peace within themselves that makes them happier in this world.  And really, I am a kill ‘em with kindness, high road kind of gal 99% of the time.    So, I promise, I’ll do that for BSCL eventually.    Just as soon as I get past the feeling that I’d rather wrap my reigns around her neck and pull with all my might.

Big fat F

If blogging were a classroom subject and I were back in school, I would officially be going home with a dreaded note from my teacher, informing my parents of my failure to live up to class expectations.   I have absolutely nothing interesting happening in my life this week.  No baby daddy  drama.  No love life action, even minimally, with which to tease.  Nothing about me or my thoughts that anyone would survive in full, painless consciousness.   Blah, blah, blah.

I made the brilliant decision to attend the opening Rapids home game last night.  It was thirty degrees with a wind chill of nineteen.    Note the piles of snow around the field in the highlight clips below.  Suffice to say, nothing came of that other than a lingering sensation of frostbite.  Yay for spring in Colorado.  At least the home team won!

The N-Man spent a rare, full weekend with X due to a  blizzard induced, rearranged visit.  That meant sleeping in on a lazy Sunday morning and waking up at will to a TV schedule of morning news shows, instead of Handy Manny at six a.m.   I managed to stay in bed until 8:00.   Parenthood has pushed me to a state of relaxation, sleeping in failure as well.

It’s one week since I accepted that Paisley was on her way out of my life.   I have failed in my veterinary, diagnostic skills as well.  She is still hanging on, comfortably it would seem, and proving me wrong.  I am thrilled to still have her company.

But as I recently said, I suppose no news is good news, when it comes to my life.   How many times must I ask you all to bear with me?    Apprantly, too many.

Mental Blizzard

The down side of my night time blogging routine is that my brain produces the most beautiful fluffy white thought flakes, dancing in innocent perfection through my mind.  Brilliance waiting to happen all day long.  Then the winds of my life howl through – bed time, restless sleep,  the alarm goes off, breakfast, commute in the snow, work, pick up the N-Man, nap time, dinner, bath time, repeat – and my perfect thoughts suddenly drift into a frozen, stagnant pile against the back of my mind.  No amount of shoveling can bring them back to their perfect, floating glory.

My lost thoughts from the last 24 hours include: 

New friendships and new friendships to be over wine, gourmet pizza and jazz.

Europhria and contentment.

Toxic friendships I need to end before I can no longer hold my tongue.

Toxic work relationships I”m glad I’ve already severed.

Clients.  I need clients.  I know I”m far better equipped to advocate for them now that I’ve weathered a divorce from the other side of the table.  Attorneys shouldn’t be allow to practice divorce law if they don’t understand first hand.  I’m glad I’m back in the private sector again.

The practice of law is no longer about stuffy old men in stiff, blue suits, puffing cigars behind a mahogany desk and talking down to their clients in legalese.  I want to get that point across in my marketing and practice.

The N-Man was bitten hard at day care today.  My own bubble of innocence has burst.  I cannot be everywhere to protect him from the dangers of this world.   I cannot control his pain and suffering and it breaks my heart.

There is a literal blizzard raging outside the window.  Perhaps a good night sleep and slow, snowed in day tomorrow will jump start me back to focused writing.

Silence is golden

I have come to realize that when I have nothing single parenting related to say, it’s a good sign.  It’s an indication that I”m just movin’ along, doing my thing, living my life and not getting bogged down in the label and identity of being a partnerless mom.  Of course, I am one.  And I wear that title with pride.   But I don’t want to be stuck in that mental space, with the many varying  stereotypes and expectations that go along with it, 24/7 .  I refuse to let it be my sole definition.   And today it’s definitely not.  Today I”m just me, little ol’ me.   Happy, content, nothing deep brewing inside.   Dealing with the things popping up around me as the raise their heads.   Me.   I find that the further away from October 2007 I get the more of those days I have.   I’ve manged to travel a lot of rough, rocky roads in my lifetime, so when I find myself cruising smoothly down an emotional country lane on an early summer day, the sun shining on my face, the birds singing around me, and the breeze blowing through my hair, I can’t help but stop and just revel in the perfection of the here and now. 

So what proverbial roses did I stop to smell today?

Paisley.   She has some kind of liver disease.  She’s doing a bit better for now.  Of course she is, because two days ago I functionally wrote her obituary in full acceptance that she would be gone by today.    That dog has made a habit of making me look like a fool for 15 years.  Why stop now?   But she’s not out of the woods by any means.  More blood work ahead and probably an ultrasound to hopefully, finally determine exactly what the extent of the damage is.   I am officially spending as much money on a diagnosis as I swore I wouldn’t spend to treat a dog of her age with a major health issue.  What made me take pause?  Tonight she joined us for dinner, sat under the N-Man’s high chair in hopeful expectation that he would throw her some pasta with shrimp and peas.  Just the fact that she got out of her blanket and interacted with the rest of us.  That’s all.

My new business cards came in the mail today.  I sat at my kitchen table and stared at them for half an hour.   On Sunday I move into my new office.  No looking back.  I”m going to make this work.  I have to.  Well, I let that contract go so I don’t really have a choice.  I know I will.

The N-Man learned to play duck duck goose at day care today. I discovered this while I was making dinner.  I heard him in the living room chanting duck duck duck duck duck duck duck duck. I peeked in on his world just in time to see him yell GOOSE!, smack poor Rocco on the head, and run away giggling and laughing.  Every day I look at him and think, It’s not possible to love him any more than in this moment.  And then he does something esle to prove me wrong.  Becoming a mother was the best thing I ever did.

So that’s it for now.  Nothing glamourous.  Just me on just another Tuesday.

Tara’s Lady of the Mountain

In July of 1994 I walked in to a quite unremarkable house on the far west side of Albuquerque and came face to face with the love of my life, the being with whom I have have maintained my closest, longest, not related by blood relationship.  Paisley would eventually be her name after much ado and months of debate.  (Her registered name, oddly enough, rolled off the tip of my tounge immediately:  Tara’s Lady of the Mountain.)  She was, on that hot, dry summer day, only seven days old, a mere potato that I could hold on the palm of  one hand.  Her eyes were still closed but she knew me.  She knew me from the very first moment and I knew her.  I paid my deposit and, for six weeks following, made the  80 minute round trip drive from my home on the opposite side of the city, every day, to spend time with my new soul mate, bonding, laughing at clumsy puppy bravado, smiling.  She finally came home and we’ve never looked back.

I recall those first months of her in my life so vividly.  The time she put her nose in a freshly poured glass, of ice cold, bubbling soda.  She spent the next 15 minutes running in circles, attacking those damn bubbles for their offensive assualt on her face.  Her first frou-frou coat, a red vinyl, fleece lined, waterproof cover that looked somewhat like the tacky toaster covers of the 1970’s.  Watching her unleash hell on a friend’s dinner with full determination and ferocity as we sat on the floor of an unfurnished, just out of college apartment eating an early Thanksgiving meal.  The image of her laying, spread eagle, in the middle of the overflowing plate while she gluttonously lapped up her pillow of mashed potatoes and gravy is forever etched in my mind.  I did warn him he needed to look out for the puppy.  I was right.

She saw me through three boyfriends, a three year hiatus from real life during law school, a four year relationship that broke my heart in the end, my courtship, engagement, and marriage to X, my pregnancy and the birth of the N-Man, the downfall of my vows, separation, and divorce and finally back to me.    She traveled with me from New Mexico to Texas, back to New Mexico, to Montana, and finally to Colorado.   She saved my life once.  She was the epitome of little-old-lady-wearing-floppy-hats-and-planting-tomatoes-in-the-South grace.  Her every move, gesture, look told me, with no uncertainty, that she was the reincarnation of  an old and wise, Eastern lama who knew more than I could ever comprehend.  Certainly, she was smarter than me.  She was, in a nutshell, the lone, up close, intimate witness of my entire adult life.

Today, almost fifteen years later,  I walked into a quite unremarkable strip mall store front on the far East side of the Denver metro area  and presented the vet with her frail,  failing body, a shell of the friend that I have known and loved.  Her eyes long since clouded into darkness by cataracts.  Her hearing no longer selective, just simply gone.  Her always petite but athletic and muscular, nine and a half pound frame withered to a mere 6.9 pounds.  I handed her over then went home to wait.  I watched the seconds click past, one by one, at an alarmingly grave tempo.

This story doesn’t end the way you probably thought it would.  Not today.  I broke down at the vet’s office when I went back for the test results.  Not because of what it showed, but because of what it didn’t.  No answers clearly pointing me in any specific direction.  Just more wondering.  She was treated with the shotgun approach for now: pain medication, IV fluids, and antibiotics.  Sent home to wait.  As I type, she is curled up next to me in her snuggle sack, blankly staring out at a world that, like the day we met, she cannot see.  I wonder if  she still knows me the way I know her.  I hope she at least senses I’m here with her.  I pray that come tomorrow, the blood work results will provide answers the chest X-rays failed to.  I need to know exactly how much borrowed time I have left with this exquisite little creature who has dedicated her entire existence to my happiness and comfort.  I just… I just need to know.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year

My favorite season of the year is finally upon us!!  Spring you say?  Ah yes,  budding tulips, baby birds chirping with newborn joy, lazy days in the garden.  Pffff… whatever.  I far prefer fall.  I’m talking about football season, or as we dare to call it in this country, soccer!!  It’s MLS opening weekend!   Time to dust off my inner hooligan once again and bust out the drums, scarves, and banners.  Ever since I made the heart wrenching decision to hang up my own shin guards, after 26 years of footy (getting back out on the field at 8 weeks post partum and feeling like I was going to split in half from the crotch up every time I made a hard sprint to a leading ball finally pushed me into retirement) I live more and more for my place on the sidelines of the beautiful game, cheering on, in blind but reality based faith, my beloved Rapids.  Let the chanting commence in exactly 63 minutes!!  Oooole, ole, ole, ole! Ooooole!  Ooooole!

*****

Now, about that cultural outing today.  The best advice I can offer is that if you choose to pre-educate your two year old on the workings of the symphony by watching Baby Einstein’s Meet the Orchestra five times in the 24 hours leading up to the actual event, you had damn well better make sure that when you arrive to the real deal, that the conductor is indeed a hippopotamus.  I seemed to have missed that very obvious point.   But the N-Man quickly got over his disappointment that ducks do not  play the violin  and completely surprised me with his enthusiasm for the performance!  And bless their musical hearts, not only did the musicians ignore a concert hall packed full of wiggling, wailing children as they played, they also put their instruments on the line as the crowd mobbed the stage for a hands on tutorial at the end.  Truly a group of angels from above.  The N-Man was, naturally, drawn to the most annoying section, the percussion instruments.  Oh goody!  French horns, on the other hand, are apparently terrifying tools of the devil and must be avoided at all cost.  Duly noted, my son.  Duly noted.