kim versus the volcano

so a few weeks ago, i was getting ready for the annual cookie exchange at work. last year, my contribution was pans of brudgies, which are a cross between a brownie and fudge. very tasty and very simple to make.

this year, i once again had delusions of the food channel and decided it would be ever so grand if i made something with more panache. or just something fancier.

i looked through my copious amounts of cookbooks but ruled out pretty much everything because what i learned was: FANCIER COOKIES = MORE WORK.

and there's enough stress during the holidays to boil easter eggs...so i scaled it back a bit.

what about my grandma's refridgerator cookies? mmmmm, made with almonds...ruled out due to nut allergies at work.

fudge? too sloppy.

snowball cookies? nah, over done.

i made a rash decision to go online and search for something simple, tasty and with flavor that could be found no where else.

this is what i got:

Gooey Bars
1 pkg cake mix
1 egg
1/2 cup butter

mix it all up, press into the bottom of a 9x13 pan.

toss 2 cups chocolate chips over this and press into dough.

THEN mix together:

3 cups powdered sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 8oz bar cream cheese

pour this over the rest and bake for 30-40 minutes at 350.

i know what you all are thinking: this sounds messy. with a name like "gooey bars" i should have known better.

shoulda, woulda, coulda.

i was already having a rough-ish day when i started baking. i'd bought a lampshade at ikea that didn't work on the intended lamp. in the upstairs bedroom, the venetian blinds behind the roman blinds had tangled the cords to hell and back, a knot worthy of time i didn't have. i was pms-ing and annoyed, and i had to bake 90 bars to package neatly in groups of 6.

and due to genetic procrastination, it was the 9th hour.

i press dough into greased pan. i press chocolate chips into dough. some for pan, some for kim. i mix eggs and vanilla and cream cheese with my handy little mixer. i slop it into the pan.

at this point, i'm already considering the goop factor of the bars. i'm also considering the fact that the pans, which were purchased at the dollar store, are the right dimensions...but not the right height. they're like a 8.5 x 12.5 x 1.5...not a 9x13x2.

but in the hopes that they'll turn out amazing enough to turn martha stewart a lovely shade of envy, onward i bake.

and then i realize that i've forgotten to add the sugar to the top mixture. i'm ready to bawl over baked goods.

at this point cari calls. i'm so wound up and feeling defeated by domesticity that i'm not even sure i want to talk to her, my phone-chat soulmate. i get on the phone and i'm trying to be un-cranky, while balancing the phone on my shoulder and tipping my pan back towards the bowl, dumping the top layer back into the bowl, adding the fluffy sugar that doesn't want to go into the bowl and mixing with a spoon.

"i hear from dan that you're having a hard time," she says.

"yes in fact i am." i start to tear up a little, because i'm so frustrated by the day and all the things i perceive as so tiny that have added up and are now drowning me. i start to explain why i'm on the verge of running screaming and bald into the night, and as i explain, the entire situation becomes more amusing. by the time i've got the bars in the oven, i don't care if they work out or not--everything seems more manageable.

the bars are spilling over the sides of the foil pan (bought for ease of use, and so i can just recycle them when i'm done baking the multitudes of cookies...) and i have to find a cookie sheet to put under the pan. by the time the bars are done, they look like this and are a complete disaster:

unfit for cookie exchange! unfit! unclean! messssssssssssssssssssssssssssy!

part of me is embarrassed, even though it's cari on the phone, because she's staying with her dad and brother at the Sheraton or Marriot or something equally fancy, with pillow top beds and luxurious down pillows and soft, dove-colored walls. cari is classy; i'm feeling like the barefoot contessa without the valium i'm convinced keeps her so calm.

i finally pour a glass of wine, stop my own whining and ask: "so, what are you up to tonight?"

and cari says: "i'm washing my underwear in the sink because i forgot to pack any."

***

after laughing until i weep i feel better. but the bars are still taunting me from the stove, and the 9th hour has become the 10:30th hour. it's down to the wire: what can i create that's going to be worthy of my coworkers, who have been discussing for weeks what they're elaborately going to be creating... ? what, i ask you, what?

i pore over my cupboards and go back to the cookbooks. i finally decide to make my most basic weapon in the arsenal: chocolate chip cookie bars. i bake four pans of bars within half an hour, and by midnight they're neatly packaged and red-beribboned.

and i'm feeling like i should have done more--that these aren't going to be good enough.

the volcano, in my mind, has won the day.

dan gave me a pep talk about how everyone always loves the cookie bars, and how they're the best thing i make, and how simple is often the best option out there.

i go to work the next day with my basket in tow. i bring the volcano with me, in the hopes that the syrupy sweetness will be devoured by my teammates. if nothing else, i rationalize, i can just toss it, pan and all.

i email my friend amanda and commiserate about the flashingly busy week, and how i was so defeated by the eruption of mundane baking and lampshades. i tell her about how things got better after i talked to my classy friend cari and she was washing her single pair of underwear at 1030 pm in the Hilton bathroom.

***

everyone loves the brown bags of cookies. point for me.

everyone loves Sugar Lava, which is what the pan resembles, in my mind. point for volcano.

cari goes home and calls our friend amanda, who immediately asks, "how're your underwear holding out? still going commando?"

the circle is complete. truce has been attained. the volcano, for the moment, is dormant. (;

o night divine

O Holy Night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of the dear Saviour's birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining.
Till He appeared and the Spirit felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!
O night divine, the night when Christ was born;
O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!
O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!

***

this is the first verse of a song that my father and his four brothers sang years ago at christmas, when my parents lived up north. they stood in the dining room, jed wearing a santa hat, and they all sang.

i don't know that they'll ever all sing together again. jed is learning to talk again, and walk, but in my heart i doubt that there will be a miracle that will allow him to return to minnesota or sing again, like they did that christmas.

everything is making me weepy. i'm having trouble digging up the spirit to keep a smile on my face. all i keep thinking of is the boys, happily singing that song.

fall on your knees--oh hear the angel voices. jed got down on one knee, i remember.

so many years ago. grandpa w was gone by that time, but grandma margaret was still there. this year she won't be, either. no matter how much i bitched and moaned about taking her to church--she could be a little whiskey-scented rascal--i will miss it this year.

i want to linger in my house today, i want to curl up in the bathtub and emerge sometime in march. hell, i'm not sure i ever want to emerge. it's not going to be a glorious emergence, like the bright butterfly unfurling from the cocoon. it's just going to be mundane and boring--my skin will be all pruned from sitting too long in water, and my hair will be wet and dry and scraggly.

i am trying to muster spirit for this weekend. i'm trying to buoy myself up--thinking of the glee of dan's nephews, opening gifts. thinking of the hotel with the large bed. of sharing cookies and hugs, of relating stories and watching the children grow before your eyes.

and then i think of my father--in a strange way, orphanned for christmas. i think of cari, motherless. i think of dan in pain, i think of eero lonely, i think of serena, isolated by her own hand.

i think of my uncle jed, still trying despite such hardship, still smiling and still laughing--and i think of his inner gourmand being unable to taste the food at any table, unable to swallow, fed by a plastic shunt.

i think of my self--the stakes holding my tent down, tugged free by the winds. i am bare as a babe on wet stony ground, overwhelmed by the sky.

my thoughts roll down the hill, into the swampy area at the bottom--dark and misty and dank. you have to coax with words. you have to offer verbal bribes back up the hill. you have to leave a trail of breadcrumbs, by which to find your way.

***

when i was a kid and we stayed at grandma and grandpa's house in the far, far north, we always slept in the room with the angel picture, in a gold frame. i don't know who painted it. all i know is that it now hangs in my parents' house, and you'll recognize it when you see it.

i'm not a believer in winged angels, or cherubs, or saints. i believe in spirit, that the 21 grams of your soul has to go somewhere, when you pass, and that you share that weight with others every day. sometimes they carry that weight for you, until you can pick it up again, and sometimes you do the same for them. we are all the caretakers of each others' souls.

i believed, when i was a kid, that the picture on their wall kept me safe in the night. that my progress was witnessed. that even if i do not feel as though i have shared or burdened others with the carrying of my soul, generous hands are held above me as i pass over dark bridges.

this year for me has been a dark bridge. this year has been filled with bright stars in the sky and some days of unsurpassed joy, but it has also been a time of pain and a time of darkness, for me.

i think of depression as the dark night of the soul. as me, lingering on that dark bridge, no candle to light my way, just one scared child in the black.

i think of my uncles, singing that song--o holy night.

this feeling being lost, of not hearing the searchers call your name--this sorrowing of soul is just as holy and just as beautiful as joy.

it is difficult to honor that feeling, in your self or in others. i get impatient when faced with it--in me or in dan or in anyone else. i want to turn on the lights and flood the indecision, scare the pain back into shadows.

but the darkness in which i linger is just as filled with light as i allow it to be. i can turn on the lights, just a little, like nightlights. i can cross the bridge. i can still be in the dark--and that can be just fine.

i have to search out the searchers. i have to learn the woods of my soul until the dark no longer matters. i have to know my self. the pattern of my forest is not that dissimilar from dark areas in which others pace. i have to keep that in mind.

today the road twists and turns, feels insurmountable beneath my feet. fog so close that i cannot see the end of my nose. if i keep walking forward, perhaps i will learn to call this night, this year, this life--holy.

cats. i'm being nibbled to death by cats.

this is henry as i see him in the morning: up close and quite personal. usually he's chewing on my hair.

and just because she would despise being left out, here's shiva koja.

i'm posting them because last night before i went to bed, i took a variety of pictures of dan for his blog--and at one point he joked that we should use henry instead of posting dan's own pic of himself. it looks like he's had it doctored some by maggs, but it's a good pic of him. the boy's always moving so we had good pictures in which he was actually minutely leaning back as i clicked...and therefore looked like he was rendered by an impressionist painter.

which i never mind, but he wanted something more clear. fine, sit still, man! (;

I'm supposed to be upstairs showering right now but had to come and check out his pic, and then decided that it'd been a while since i posted kitties...and now it's twenty after 7 and i'm going to be quite late, but i just don't care.

there's been a lot on my mind this week--this weekend we see dan's parents for the first time since last year, grandma's passing, the cookie exchange at work (about which i will post eventually, if for no other reason than to show you the first batch of disastrous bars), shopping for the holidays, work, etc. it goes on and on.

the thing i keep coming back to is serena. it's the holidays, her birthday was back at the beginning of december, and she had the courage to email me in november. i didn't actually check that email account until about two weeks after she first emailed. her first letter was apologetic and reminded me of the first few weeks and months of this ordeal--shaking when i thought about it, talked about it, so on and so forth. course, i've talked about it a lot at this point, with whoever i choose. it didn't sound as though serena had. i am hopeful that she will be able to approach our mutual friend, teresa, or if nothing else, go to a professional and find respite there.

anyway, i emailed her back and said, go for it--no harm, no foul. she emailed back and said that she knew i would have questions and that she was afraid her answers would sound like lame excuses--which they might. hell, dan's did too, but he just stuck to his guns and answered, and i had something on which to chew.

i emailed back with a few questions. that was on december 5th. i've heard nothing since.

i understand that she was back in st cloud recently, for her brother's graduation. and last saturday, as close as uncle hugo's in minneapolis. it made me wonder if she thought about stopping by, or if she thought of me or dan at all.

in conversation, my cari said that i was one of those people who would give cookies to their enemy. that same night, we watched a family guy in which quagmire cheats on cleveland with cleveland's wife, loretta. at the end of the show, cleveland has the opportunity to beat quagmire up with a baseball bat--which he declines, saying: "i just can't cause harm to anyone, even if they've caused harm to me."

which is the truth. i'm angry, yeah. but i don't want to maim serena. it just doesn't seem like it's worth the effort. it's frustrating, because for me, i've found a reason for this to have happened--honesty between friends and family, seeing a therapist for my depression and ADD, being aware of my own limits and learning how to work within and without them, and the gift of truth from dan.

i'd like there to be some reason for this for serena, too. people go through these things for reasons, i think. there were of course many many ways in which this could have played out--but between the three of us, we chose messy over honest and ordered. i feel like dan and i have been working on the mess, working on re-organizing and re-figuring.

i'd like to be able to do the same with serena, but the ball's in her court. i have trouble remembering that. and i keep shoulding myself--i shouldn't have asked her questions, i shouldn't have said anything, i should have just allowed things to go back to normal.

but realisitically, i cannot. in the books about affairs that i read, the prevailing idea i took was that questions need to be asked. which means that my asking the questions was fine. besides the fact i don't think i did so maliciously or with anything other than polite intent.

the first beast at the top of my post is currently playing with the key hooks. and the second one is staring at me in the hopes that i will give her the morning canned food, and soon. i do need to go to work, at some point, as well. so i suppose i should cut this short and feed the felines before they just join forces and chew off my ankles. (;

icicles

i know that our townhome's not adequately insulated because:

1. the furnace runs all the time.
2. it's still chilly in the house.
3. and there's icicles that sice of nuclear carrots hanging off our patio-side roof, which means that heat is leaking through the ceiling and melting ice, and voila!

not that i mind the chill. it's winter, it's supposed to be chilly. no, what i mind is the gas bill. and seeing those icicles reminds me that when i open it up next time, it's going to be fifteen shades of lovely. (;

yesteday we spend the day moving things around upstairs, in an effort to see what we could do with the rooms we have. we put all the bookshelves, including the new one, in the smaller room, which now looks much bigger because there's floorspace. dan even hung up his dartboard, although i'm no good without just one beer to take my Must Toss Perfectly Right edge off. without beer, he hits near center, and i'm off along the edges. *sigh* i suppose with practice, all things are possible. correct? i certainly hope so.

he also put together this contraption i had my heart set on--a peice of exercise equipment i bought at *shudder* wal-mart. it was cheap, but i need some way to exercise in my home during the week, and i'm not getting nearly enough right now. so i paid like 94 clamshells, dragged the box home, and dan looked at the instructions and set it up. there was a ton of cursing involved due to the fact that the instructions and the actual contraption were two different birds--but it's up and running now, and kudos to dan over and over for battling with it. i just hope we both get to use it now! (:

meanwhile in the kitchen...tossed meatballs and sauce in the crockpot. my sister and brother in law came down for dinner and a movie. they brought their dog, who is about 7 months old. the cats were quite insulted, and maura's still a puppy enough to not recognize that they're ticked; she just keeps barking and treeing them in various areas of the house. we ended up watching from hell, and by the end of it i realized what bothered me about that movie:

1. heather graham sucks.
2. heather graham's dye job is atrocious.
3. it doesn't have a happy ending.

the rest of the movie i like--ian holm is good, johnny depp is easy on the eyes, and there's lots of fake blood. mmm, minty fresh!

today must be the day for lists. i have a great deal to accomplish--need to run a quick errand, and then drop back home to see if dan's up for lunch, and then bake 90 cookies. yes, 90. i signed up for the cookie exchange with nary a thought of how many other people were going to. last year i only had to bake like 40 or something. i've got all my ingredients out, but i want to run my errand before i begin. in the end, it's only 4 pans of bars, provided i slice each pan into 24 squares. so we'll see.

dan's still sleeping and it's noon, so i'm assuming that he was up fairly late blogging and playing wow (which is quite addictive, but eventually i do get bored. go figure...) i often wish that dan wasn't such a night owl. i used to be, but as i get older, it's more and more difficult to sleep past 730. this morning was an exception, as i had a glass of wine last night after dinner and then took a sleeping pill about six hours later because i just couldn't fall asleep. i slept very well, but much longer than i normally do, and woke up feeling like i'd slept in the same position all night.

which i think i did...oops. but the idea is that i actually slept, which was a problem on friday night when i only got 4 hours of sleep. functioned fine yesterday, but i always doubt my reflexes when i haven't gotten much rest.

so it's off to the races for day two of Kimmy Does Domestic Duties. (;

the pits of despair

dan was talking on his blog about how he felt like sometimes people take glee in hurting others, and referenced the prisons in which saddam hussein's sons and "minions" (so to speak) happily tortured their neighbors. he spoke of how the fingers were not simply amputated, but were actually mangled.

i really took that as a symbol--the mangled fingers--and have been sitting here applying them to what i learn slowly about cognitive behavior and the writings of epictetus--then i am the one mangling my own fingers.

i think back to when i was a kid, teased relentlessly and bullied. my dad had a series of things he'd say that would make me feel like i should be able to cope with the teasing and hitting, etc: "Like water off a duck's back." "Sticks and stones, Kim--words can't hurt you." "Why are you crying? I'll give you something to cry about." (which he never actually did...)

do i torment myself, in a prison of my own making? have i mangled my own feelings, using the words and actions of others as the tool to inflict wounds? yes sirree, i have and i do.

can someone hurt me? yes. but in the end, i get to choose the degree to which i'm hurt.

the question becomes, now that i know what makes me stay in my internal drama pit, torturing my self until i'm too broken to breathe, is whether i want to stay here.

i think of epictetus and of what i've learned from the book "how to keep people from pushing your buttons." it's not something instantaneous. the answers don't come in a flash of insight. they come slowly, painfully sometimes. like pulling slivers out of your fingers--hurts like a sonofabitch, but when it's out, you can heal and not avoid touching everything.

in the book, they talk about the 4 ways you can think--awfulizing/catastrophizing, should-ing, and rationalizing are the bad ones. the good way is realistically thinking--something that is difficult to focus on, when you're depressed.

when you're in this dark pit, there are a whole series of ropes waiting to haul you out. (at least that's how my pit looks.) sometimes i yank on one i think is solid and going to "save" me, and it just dumps water on my head. or rocks.

realistic thinking, in the pit, is this tiny thread of thought, totally obscured by the other, thicker, flawed thought processes that are all much more familiar to me.

if i think catastrophically about what's going on in my head, it goes a little bit like this:

"what if my letter to serena was too mean? that would be horrible! what if dan never is able to heal? that would be awful! what if i am never able to heal, what if i'm always depressed? that would be terrible!"

(and it does sound horrible...and more horrible...)

if i should myself:

"i should be happier. i shouldn't be so depressed all the time. i should have asked no questions of serena. i should have been more polite. i should exercise tonight instead of going shopping. i should go home so i can make sure dan's okay. i should go shopping for the ingredients for the bars i have to bake on sunday, not for bras."

(and then i feel overwhelmed and guilty because i know i'm not going to be able to do all that tonight and i should be a better person.)

if i rationalize:

"i don't care about how dan's doing, it's up to him anyway. i don't care about why serena hasn't written back, it's up to her. i don't care about how i'm doing, because i'm not worth a whole lot. and i don't care when i bake those godforsaken bars, they're just bars anyway, so who cares if they taste like ass?"

(i don't want to eat ass-bars. do you?)

so on and so forth. it's a whole ton of ropes hanging down that look like they're my salvation. but i keep ending up on my ass at the bottom of my pit again. over and over.

is it because someone threw rocks at me? nope. what about the water? nope, not that either.

it's all about my reaction to being hit by the rocks. and my first reaction is guilt: what did i do that made them throw rocks at me?

realistic thinking goes something like this:

"i'm hurt by the fact that serena has not written back to me yet, but if i don't hear from her, i'm not going to perish. i'm hurt that dan's depressed, but i am doing all i can to be of assistance. i care about dan enough to be concerned, and caring is okay. are there parts that are is it awful, horrible and terrible? some parts. but i can feel this way and not allow it to dictate my behavior. if i don't buy the ingredients for the bars tonight, that is okay. i have more time than i am allowing myself. and my boobs deserve some flashy support."

it's just hard to do that all at the same time--recognize what you're doing, and curb it in a healthy way. especially when the fog rolls down into the valley and you're just reaching out and grasping for help by touch. you can't even see what you're reaching for--so when the snake bites you instead of the helpful rope, all you can think of is how much that hurt and why the snake was there. you're not even considering the idea that there is another rope, or that if you climb out of your pit, there's ever going to be another one.

rome wasn't built in a day.

not everything slides off a duck's back. sometimes the duck just has to avoid the rocks. or go sit somewhere and heal before the next truckload of rocks gets dumped.

before i get further into metaphor-hood than i'm qualified for, i'm going bra shopping.

unhinged

i've been
unhinged
i've wandered the dim hallways of my own
skull
pondering existence
and worrying about centipedes
i am that woman
laughing alone loudly
in the movie theater
when all of you are silent, incomprehensive
of the comedy onscreen
i've been out past dusk
stumbling through the woods
little red riding hood
without directions to grandma's
i've quaked in my boots
i've shuddered to think
i've run from
myself
for a while

does it make a difference
now
that someone else
with a degree in gray matter
points it out?

*********************

i've been thinking a great deal about the shooting in miami this week. it's hard to keep your mind off it when you live with someone who's bipolar, and moreso, you're considered mentally infirm yourself.

if no one had known, there would be no attachments made, no lines drawn. it would have been "man shouts bomb on plane."

i've got a big, big problem with drawing lines. it defines something that, to me, remains indefinable: the human capacity for change.

even if that nice gentleman who is now mourned by his family was on meds, would that have made a difference? if he hadn't been diagnosed, there of course would be speculation by the media of his being mentally unstable. i'm sure that his family has survived episodes and occurances on a daily basis for years; they're aware of an instability.

my largest issue with this has absolutely NOTHING to do with the fact that the victim was bipolar. it has to do with the fact that when it comes down to brass tacks, the man was a human being.

was it based on his mental illness? how the hell do i know. i can't do much but speculate. but i live with a bipolar fellow. i can tell you that sometimes, yeah, it gets bad. sometimes you're the line between sanity and insanity.

but i can only be that line so much of the time. some of the time, he has to be his own line. i'm not his keeper. goddess or god, The Someone Upstairs--that is his keeper. and if the flint strikes stone and he makes a decision, i cannot always be there to prevent it leading him down some dark road that skewed judgment tells him is bright.

one of the things i'm trying to do is let go of the idea that i can be responsible for his actions. he knows he is not responsible for mine. i've just got a dependency problem that spills over and makes *me* feel responsible when there's no way i could be.

this dead man's wife probably is thinking about what she could have done differently--could she have yelled more loudly, could she have tackled an air marshal--what could she have done, just by herself, to save the life of the man she called husband?

the answer, folks, is nothing.

and it sucks to think that is the answer.

i read on another blog that someone heard, amidst a group of bp people, that perhaps they should start wearing jackets that said "BIPOLAR" across the back, much as marshals wear coats that state their occupation.

people wear identification to show what they're doing--you recognize a police officer, a doctor, and so on, by their clothing.

you can't see someone who's mentally ill. you can't see someone who has a new heart. you can't pick out of a lineup someone who has syphilis.

i have a problem with this because if you define your self and your group so boldly, people will start to make value judgements--they can't help it. if you see a doctor strolling through the mall on his lunch break, and someone falls over in a seizure, you'll probably wonder why the doctor just keeps walking. he's a doctor, right? he's supposed to save lives? you get the idea.

let's say i wear my jacket to the mall. my jacket's going to say: DEPRESSED AND ADHD WITH ANXIETY DISORDERS. first of all, that's kind of long. so let's shorten it, shall we? we'll just say ADHD. i go into a store. do i suddenly get preferential treatment? i'm wearing a jacket that states that i'll probably either buy a lot of shiny, glittery objects, and get directed to said area, or will i be ignored because there'll be too much to choose from and i probably won't buy anything?

yeah, it's simple, but i'm a shopper, so keep it simple.

push it a step further. leave DEPRESSED on the back of my jacket. does this mean i can't go to the top of the empire state building now, because i've been labeled as a possible jumper?

wearing a jacket that said bipolar wouldn't have changed anything any more than the man's wife yelling it at the top of her lungs changed anything. anyone could have a jacket that says "bipolar" across the back in big yellow eye-catching letters--does that make that person exempt from having the knowledge and wherewithal to create a bomb and detonate it on an airplane?

as dan pointed out in his blog--he got scared, because he does know how to put together a weapon of quite destructive capabilities. other bipolar people got scared. i can understand their fear--they don't want to be the one shot at an airport, at least not at the moment.

but then again, who the hell does? i sure don't.

in these days of heightened security everywhere--i'm waiting to be frisked at the grocery store, it'll come--anyway, i think the idea is that you can't be too careful. i ADORE the idea of law enforcement carrying tasers and such, something non-lethal, in order to preserve the life of a perceived wrong doer. or nets that just stop the fleeing suspect. that'd be super. that'd be humane.

something else that i took umbrage to, while reading the same jacket-idea blog, was that this was the first victim of the War on Terror.

again, erase some lines. there've probably BEEN other people who are bipolar gunned down, beaten, etc. since the war on terror began. they just didn't have a doctor's note saying they were bipolar.

i could start taking offense to every depressed person eliminated since the war on terror started; but that would take a long, long time, and be totally counterproductive to mourning the loss of just plain all humans whose lives have been cut short.

again, lines are being drawn that i just don't think you can draw. having high blood pressure, being diabetic--it certainly can affect your thinking, but that doesn't define the fact that you're going to be the one shot in an airport.

what defines that is YOU. it's like adding things to cookie dough. you've got your basic dough--mental instability--and you can add to it a variety of things. all of them will not give you chocolate chip cookies unless you add chocolate chips.

ie, just because you're depressed doesn't mean you're going to jump off the empire state building.

i'm certainly not trying to hide what i am. i know the cliffs of insanity that my brain hits. i know their shape and their size. it doesn't mean that someday while shopping i'm not going to be seized by cells, and overtaken with the desire to just pick up the giant, shiny, glittery christmas tree in the mall and run out the door with it.

i fully expect to be halted.

she laughs at the days to come

it was a completely and utterly lovely day outside, yesterday. i took the opportunity to tromp around in the woods, camera in tow. i felt kind of alone; dan had gone up to visit friends and see a movie. but in the end, it was exactly the balm i needed--being alone in the snow.

The Wake

thursday was the wake. as usual, technojoy overtook my uncles and they had photos on stands, as well as TWO slide projectors of old pictures. it was entertaining to see how my brother looks like my dad, when dad was young. in fact at one point i had to ask someone for claification because i thought, what the hell is david doing in that picture?

there were a lot of pics of grandma, fishing. and the one of her giving me a ride on her schoolbus, which she drove for 14 years. i doubt i was 3 at the time. i remember that after i had my ride, grandma gave me the pick of the lost and found and unclaimed--i got a few brushes and combs that i think are still in my mother's drawers at home. mom was suitably appalled and all utensils were soaked in some kind of disinfectant before i got to keep them.

my uncles thought that perhaps they would have time for a few prayers, but everyone was laughing and commenting and having such a good time that they never interrupted or bothered. it's interesting how your perception of a person can be changed, based on the views of others. i always thought my grandma was kind of cold, and that booze was a substitute for love. but the people giggling over pictures did not share that sentiment.

i was fine the whole evening, until i saw my uncle paul. my uncle paul is actually my grandfather's brother; they look enough alike that, although my grandpa's been gone for well over a decade, when i saw my uncle paul, my whole chest clenched. he and his wife, vernie, are both getting up there in years. they were never able to have children, so i think my uncle dan, who was my grandma's keeper, is also keeping an eye on them. paul still drives, and is quite capable of cooking and everything, but vernie's blind. apparently she relates the recipes from memory and paul just follows direction.

paul got a bit overtaken when he realized that him, vernie and another sister-in-law, florence, were all that was left of his generation of family. he counted them off on his fingers--all his brothers and sisters and in laws, gone. a tear rolled down under his glasses. my sister and i exchanged glances; she asked what pies they had recently baked, as they still do a lot of baking.

we did some mingling and re-meeting, reminiscing. at around 730 the receptionist gently kicked us all out; she wanted to go home and of course we were running late. had some ice cream at my sister's, watched a biking dvd that had footage of my brother, and turned in for the night.

The Funeral

friday morning i got up and according to my dad's direction, left the house at 9 so i could be at the church by 10, for the funeral at 11. i figured with traffic, i'd make it around 10 but not before.

silly me.

i got there around 940, grabbed some caribou coffee (caramel high rise, so delicious!) and headed into the church. uncles dan and tim were there, as well as tim's wife and my two cousins. eventually we tracked down the gal in charge of the service, a petite, soft-spoken, lavender-suited woman named jerry. she went over when to come up for the readings (which my cousins did) and the intercessions (which i did). then we just stood around talking for an hour and meeting relatives and friends who'd come for the occasion, some from quite a distance.

my dad's brother bob was still in hospital; he had his other hip replaced dec 1st, so missed wake and funeral. and my other uncle, jed, is still in palm springs, rehab-ing from strokes. tim and anita and their kids and dan sat in the front row. mom and dad sat in the second row. my cousins therese and her husband sat in the third row. fourth was empty, fifth was my grandma's side of the family, and sixth row was my family's children.

(we'd gotten a bit confused; sara and i had to get up and do things during the service, and wanted to sit on the edge. but dad was also supposed to do things, and would be exiting the pew...so we sat separately. halfway through mass, i made the executive decision that after communion our row would decamp and move to their row...which we did. it was kind of a feeling of solidarity.)

the first reading was the one that made me think, i haven't read the bible in years. (which i did do, at one point. i think i skipped kings or leviticus...can't remember. the one about how to build the tent that housed the ark. and i don't remember reading revelations...) anyway, there was a line in the reading that is my title today--i liked it so much. it really summed up for me who my grandmother was--the parts of her i knew, and the parts i did not. she laughs at the days to come--even in her dementia, when she felt abandoned and betrayed by her own memory, she kept her humor and spirit.

as most of you know, i'm nowhere near a practicing christian. i'm mainly pagan, with a dash of wisdom from philosophy and other religions tossed in for flavor. the church of kim, is what i usually call it. it's kind of a hotdish version of all these things assembled and baked for 30 years, with cornflakes to top.

some things in the christian doctrine still speak to me, mainly because they're so close to being pagan. for example, the priest smudged the altar with incences about fifteen times during mass. bells ring while he's performing different sections, which usually is done to scare of evil spirits. the whole time, i could see the circle being drawn around the altar, and it reminded me that although it felt foreign--as though i'd returned home after an extensive stay overseas--it was still familiar and i could be comfortable here.

do as you will, an it harm none. love thy neighbor. where's the difference? i'm not going to waste time drawing thick, black lines to separate myself from all the things i have added to my hot dish. that was my mass distraction.

at the end of mass, when i could feel my throat tighten and the tears building, the choir came from their perch and gathered around grandma's urn, and sang acapella. there were about 10 white-haired church mavens, all who'd given up their day to sing my grandma to heaven. it was probably the most spiritual part of mass, in my opinion.

i felt like i was going to sob, but just before i could do so, i noticed the flower display to the left of the urn swaying, and the annoyed and somewhat embarassed face of one of the singers, as she realized that she'd knocked it. and all the feelings of sadness i had--all the fears for my parents, and the grief--it all got up and walked away, and i smiled.

i wasn't even able to cry when my dad picked up the urn and walked grandma out--the oldest son, carrying her away.

they had a meal afterwards, cold salads and some warm chicken stuff that tasted like stroganoff, but no one could figure out if it actually was stroganoff. kibbutzed with my family, met one of my dad's second cousins who we found out had brothers playing in pro hockey, and watched my dad's first cousins hold up a picture of my grandma when she was sixteen or so next to my sister, beth, and comment on how similar they looked. they were right; she does share many of the same characteristics.

the picture had been at the wake too, an 8x11 of grandma looking younger than imaginable, and glowing. in the bottom right corner there was a note, penned in her hand: to my loving mother, from your loving daughter.

i wept on the way home. later, friends gathered to play some spygame until late, and collapsed.

Saturday

when i woke up, it was snowing. soft, fresh snow. we were scheduled for a few inches, maybe 2, but in the end i think we got about 4 or so. i was feeling for beef stew, so after my walk i hazarded into target and grabbed some items, and came home and put the stew together. made 3 loaves of banana bread that substitutes tofu for eggs. watched the bbc version of pride and prejudice.

i was going to take the short route through the woods. tired, my nose was colder than i remembered it being, and it was slippery under the fluffy snow, mainly because of all the cross country ski tracks. i was enjoying the waves i created, the snow riffling out front of me. flakes were falling thick and fast, and i was having trouble seeing, even more trouble taking pictures.

halfway through, a skinny girl skiied towards me. she didn't have any poles, just her arms moving. i was reminded of my cousins, who race cross country in the winter, who'd just read at grandma's funeral. as she came up she skiied to a stop. how do you get to the hockey rink, she asked, cheeks flushed. i pointed behind me: take a right at the bench. she started to ski and then said, if you turn left up ahead, you'll see a spot of snow cleared out; i lost my mom's watch, i think it was my grandma's watch.

then i noticed the tear on her face, just one. how her cheeks were blotchy, not in the pattern of exertion, but in the pattern of distress. i'd just seen a church of this, the day before. i said i'd check, and if i found it, i'd leave it at the hockey rink.

left at the next intersection. i started to think that perhaps her idea of a large spot where the snow had been trampled was a smaller spot than my imagination was searching for. after a good twenty minutes, i was ready to give up. i stood at the top of a small rise, looking for the wide, triangle shaped marks that would mean someone had recently climbed up a hill. there weren't any. i thought perhaps i should head back, that perhaps i'd missed it. nah, why not keep walking. as i went down the hill i could see what she had done--instead of the bird-shaped marks, she'd removed one ski and just pushed herself up the hill on the other one. smart girl.

at the bottom of the hill, i found the area--a big spot. you could see where she'd realized she'd lost it, and then the backtracking. i looked around, i swept gently with a stick.

i remembered when i was in high school. i'd borrowed a ring from my mother, dark coiled wire, one she'd brought back from italy. it fell off as i walked, and i was in near hysterics because i knew where the ring had originated. i cried for a while on the shoulders of friends, and then later in the day, when i figured i was going to have to find a good story to tell my mom, the ring turned up.

i remembered that feeling, searching for something my teenage mentality told me was going to ruin my relationship with my mother forever. who knew what how she was going to react?

that story ends happily. i don't know how mom would have reacted. when i got home, i told her the truth--that i'd lost the ring, but that it had been found. my mom laughed and said that the ring was a trinket from italy, not something on which she spent a lot of money.

i didn't find the watch. it'll probably turn up come spring, when things melt. or even next week, if temps rise. or someone else will find it, and it will become a memory in their minds, some other person's keepsake. i don't know the girl's name, or how to find her. i don't know how her mother will feel, or how old that watch was, or what memories were attached to it.

in fifty years, that watch will be forgotten. that daughter won't care about that watch; she'll care about her mother, and her father, in a different way, one that reminded me that the grief my uncle paul felt, and the grief that stained my father's cheeks, is a grief best kept for losing a person, and not a piece of jewelry.

Sunday

the sun is out. i've got beef stew bubbling in the kitchen, and banana bread with cinnamon on the counter. homemade pepper biscuits will be made soon to accompany the stew. whatever happens in the next days, i must remember to do just one thing, something i have done but often forget: laugh at the days to come.