the shed list

this morning i wrote a list titled "things that are weighing me down: this week's shed list". it was ambitious with unfulfilled tasks having gathered mass for the past year or two. i encouraged myself that in seven days i might feel oh so much lighter.

lighter despite the pan majority of m&m peanut butter chip oatmeal bars i've eaten in the past four days.

i have perfected the ability to put off and ignore anything that puts a knot in my stomach by focusing all my attentions on tasks like making packer scrapbook paper for the photo book i meant to have done in time for Christmas and won't because photoshop and i are not done tweaking OR arranging Christmas decor and then moving things back around before moving them once again and then throwing my hands up and complaining that i'd like to just throw everything back to the basement unsure that anything works anywhere.

or eating m&m peanut butter chip oatmeal bars.

writing out the list helped me breathe more fully. i would get this. saturday and i'd feel a marked difference in myself.

and then i realized it was already thursday.

the snow made its first fall of the season.

caleb and i spent the quiet afternoon opening my lionel train ornaments, or as he so carefully pronounces "ore-ma-nn-ents". reading the boxes. talking about the massive o-gauge track my grandfather set up every season.

and then someone delivered flowers. a stunning square vase with red roses, pine and holly. three little red glossy balls. a touch of snowflake.

my initial thought escaped my mouth and i told caleb i couldn't figure out what the heck - i haven't been that nice a person these days. who the wha?

the card led with a joke and ended with an old friend's initials. in the card she said she had considered baking me a pick-me-up, but decided flowers were better for the waistline.

the big hefty i'd been ignoring since thanksgiving escaped as a jumbo mylar balloon from under me. of which no one in my house has made mention. that didn't make my week's shed list because i simply can't.

dad died today.

it was remembered. and i didn't make any more bars.

i did have a coke.

put the lime in the coconut

you know when you start to write down a lyric and suddenly question whether the words you've strung together for years upon decades is how the song really goes? if you're one of those who just realised jeremy spoke in class today when you've been telling everyone he was smoking grass?

yeah, well.

put dem bot together...den you'll feel better.

i do not like coconut. but i was thinking the other day how that tune was on heavy rotation in my head after mom hit the train.

i am also so very not a fan of 'the wizard of oz' or its soundtrack. but when Israel Kamakawiwo'ole is somewhere over the rainbow, that tune is my absolute favorite. right next to 'stand by me'. which was played at our wedding. and also in the movie of the same name centered around boys in search of a dead body. and while goose did not die by locomotive, they did play iz's oz as he sat on the beach and i weeped as cancer finally took him from 'er'. and i stopped watching.

we played 'son of a preacher man' at dad's funeral. i wonder what dad would have thought. of that and the shots of he and mini-skirted mom leaned back on the car, kissing, that accompanied it.

i wonder what will be played at mine. and if anyone would think to play any of my top three choices laid out above. i do so hope if carl's alive that when they place me in the ground or throw me into the air, that he hums the little espn diddly. and then for vern or matthew to somehow play the 'lost' bomb.

nearly all of which would be so fitting should we die en route to hawaii.

you know when you sit down intent on recording a specific thought and you totally tangent yourself?

life is an adventure

i spent six afternoon hours in a resort house twice the size of my own while vern golfed with his peers on dupont's dime. the views were fresh and clean. i was trumped by ornery vertical blinds and a riddle of steps. so, too, was owen. he napped. he batted the coiled door stop. i got a sunkist that now only reminds me of the three-hour gestational glucose test from the cooler. i read 'the glass castle'.

in college i would daydream in the shower about the shape my memoirs might take. how i might recognize the proper spot to stick a bookmark in it by way of a final period. being yet swept by the greatest of my family's trials and knowing there would be no happy resolution in the future, it was a challenge that perplexed and amused me. i gave my open-ended memoirs scented with pantene a title: 'blueberry'.

my brother and i often chat about how censored will be the stories we pass down. yet when we talk privately about those legacies we want to set free from our future, i always marvel in how one sibling's accounting of an event fills the gaps for the other's. a dark memory becomes opalescent in light. the left side of a frame is polished giving new harmony to the right. it ends with us. we have a pact. and we discuss how in ending it we can yet share with our children the honest totality and depth in color and sound of that which we've declared to be so. so. ended.

i would never compare ourselves to the walls'. in charm or tragedy. even so, it feels familiar, and especially so in this that the author said later in an interview:

I’m very close to my brother. He loves the book and was very supportive every step of the way. I showed him parts as I finished them because he has a steel trap memory and I wanted to make sure I remembered things correctly. It’s interesting, because we remembered the same events, but had different takes on them. For example, I think of the cheetah as being a gorgeous, powerful beast with rippling muscles. Brian said, “As I remember, that was as a sort mangy creature.” I ran that by Mom and she said, “It was both, but it wasn’t inside a cage. It was just walking around the zoo.” People remember the same things differently, and if Brian or my sisters had written the book, it would be entirely different.

when at 1 am we returned to our resort home after kabobs, cokes and a few rounds of 500 at the dupont house that evening, i stayed up two more hours to finish the piece. and i considered how jeannette's memoirs were bookmarked by the death of her dad.

thrilla nite

the former miss mj2 asked what our favorites of michael jackson's were. funny how it's hard to pin songs down when they are so absorbed into a moment. i really just don't know the answer to that.

my very first boyfriend was paul w_ts_n. it seems his grandfather had the meat locker in town. our favorite song was "let's get physical". for my birthday he once gave me a three-charmed heart necklace in a heart-shaped tin jewel box with a puppy dog on the porcelain lid. i have it still. we told our mothers on a sunny summer morning that we would make babies for them. our sole request as compensation was a life-time supply of m&m's and... something four-year-old's equally prize. i want to say bubble gum, but no one is around to proof me that fact. when asked how paul and i would have these babies, we told our mothers what we knew about the birds and bees from spying on their daytime stories: we would roll around on the bed and smell each other's necks. paul moved away before that favorite tale of my mother's would become embarrassing.

my second boyfriend was marty p_pp_t. it was a short-lived romance. a fling. i broke up with him when i saw what his bedroom looked like. there was nothing fun to play with, no decent toy or game to pass our time. he cried. i traced a heart on my backseat window to him as we left his house in the drizzled night rain. it was very dramatic. i imagine i was still spying too many soaps.

my third boyfriend was kevin h_lb_n. older now, i considered kevin to be my first true love. i re-named my lucky win cabbage patch after him. we met at reunion - guthrie - the family church camp i went to that year with my grandparents. his grandparents and mine were good friends, and the h_lb_ns had brought their granddaughter and another grandson as well. all four of us the same ages. jennifer and i sharing a first name. jennifer and kevin the same last. i new my married name would have a nice ring to it, and moreover, i could say it out loud whenever i wanted without being reckless. reckless = teased for bridal day-dreaming. it's not that i didn't get into trouble.

i was sitting next to kevin at campfire. everyone gathers on a steep hill around the nightly bonfire. suddenly my wheelchair brakes were pulled so hard i was certain something had given and i was about to wheel right into the flames in the midst of "i've got love like an ocean". a split-second later and the jerk back, i reconsidered my descent thinking i would not roll but take flight. grandma was a stern woman and i feared her more than any other being on earth. i would never intentionally disobey her. hand to heart, i had completely forgotten my promise to swap nap time for an early bedtime. to this day, that moment is in the top ten of all-time most frightening experiences. i took my naps after that in exchange for campfires and the trips we'd make to the canteen for now-and-laters on the walk back to our cabins.

kevin and i exchanged what we thought were love letters. he sent me pictures from school talent shows and his father's second-wedding with him all dressed up as ring bearer. we tagged along whenever our grandfathers came to preach at the other's church, sometimes with his cousins, sometimes not. my cousin and i tape-recorded "chariots of fire" off the radio and i whispered at the end "i love you, kevin" which is barely audible above the giggling.

by the sixth grade we seemed to have a mutual realization of how corny we had been and this mutual realization brought on a sort of mutual embarrassment and serious awkwardness whenever our families gathered together. when we found ourselves together again at a church convention our junior year i seriously got butterflies. he was so tall. when i first met vern i chuckled to myself at how he looked like i imagined kevin did all grown up. kevin doesn't. a few months ago we became friends again on facebook. he and his wife have three boys and is a fire fighter in the same town he was raised. his grandparents have both passed. he looks so old with one of those goat-less mustache goatee things.

i asked if he could still moonwalk. i could about hear his choked laughter. every reunion has a variety show and that summer we met and became such fast friends, kevin did a michael jackson routine complete with the red jacket, hat, socks and high-water pants. i remember another group singing 'elvira'. they were fun, but kevin was amazing. it was as close as i've ever been to dating a celebrity and while many other big moments are tied to jackson hits, the one that stands out most is kevin performing 'thriller'. i often do not consider mj without a thought of kh. and then feeling kind of giddy reminiscing about the alluring mixed scent of campfire smoke, avon's skin-so-soft, and willy wonka candy.

water-proof

i read an article in a parenting mag the other night that suggested i ask for a water-proof cast if one of the kids breaks a limb this summer.

i about fell off the toilet seat. i wasn't using it. i was pretending to be for some solitude.

when my grandmother finally disclosed to grandpa the huge lump she had on her breast, they traveled as far as california in search of doctors' advice and treatment. she had waited much too long. they lived in rooms 416 and 418 of the red lion in downtown omaha as she battled cancer. as an infant, i slept in one of the open dresser drawers. at two weeks i took my first swim in the hotel pool. my family celebrated Christmas there. twice.

finally my grandfather bought a house. it came with a housekeeper and a pool. he thought each would help my grandmother recover. or at least feel more at home before she passed. we call it the fieldcrest house. it was magnificent. grandma died on my father's birthday twelve days before i turned two. she never did move into the house.

my grandfather and college-aged uncle did. the house had floors and chandeliers and framed mirrors spanning the width and length of an entire hall and carved entry doors - all flown-in from italy and france. the wet bar in the living room had a gold faucet that resembled a swan. it was built and decorated by the original owners as a piece of art. the two bachelors put a pool table in what had been the dining room. they picked the living room furniture up at the office store, getting whatever my uncle had fallen asleep in as grandpa looked at drafting tables for his bedroom. the two burgundy wing back leather chairs and matching couch. i lived in those chairs during the winter months curled up watching tv and eating ice cream.

i lived in the pool during the summer months. i would dive off the spring board and touch the drain. i would play on the buoyed rope dividing the deep from the shallow ends. there were two floats of silky squishy white with built-in pillows. my tough bladder meant i never needed potty breaks. i never came in to eat. mattie, the housekeeper, would serve me pb&j and chocolate milk sitting on either the steps or a float. i know what chlorine-logged bread tastes like. i never came in to nap. if the sun got the best of me, i would sandwich myself between the two floats, using the top as a blanket. it was light and cool and would mold to me. it was so luxurious.

mom taught me how to dive properly and all the swim strokes. my uncle and i raced and flopped from the diving board. dad would sometimes even play with me, but my best swim date was grandpa. we spit water at each other. watched fireworks shimmer reflections on the fourth. defy lightening in the storms - or at least my grandfather would. i still had a mother who would pull rank when it rained on us though she could never convince my grandfather of anything. as i write this, though, i note it was the only time he would let her pull rank on me in his presence. indeed, lightening + mom was the only thing that could get me out of the water.

the summer before the second grade i was scheduled to have another round of knee surgeries. my brother came down with the chicken pox. then so did i. the surgeries were postponed, and i spent a week itching with grandpa and mattie. i forgot once while napping to pull up a float or get more sunscreen. i was so badly burned we had to reschedule for the second time.

third time was the charm, and the surgeries happened. and when they were over, i spent the rest of the summer watching everyone splash happy from the kitchen patio doors. my first time in a wheelchair, up to my hips in hot, heavy casts. oh did my face burn. it was the most painful part of any my surgeries. soothed only slightly by the fact that grandpa remained dry-docked with me. i remember that night of the big party for my uncle and lots of other kids diving and splashing and floating around, grandpa sitting at the kitchen table with me, watching alfred hitchcock and after telling owl stories.

water-proof casts. what a marvel of modern invention. crazy the things that crop up while sitting on the toilet not-peeing during a mommy break.

i don't even know what to say

our ob's nurse was from parkersburg. her husband was a football coach there. her cousin played at the time for the chiefs. we loved our ob appointments. she left just before we were pregnant with maddy to join wartburg. the college i graduated from in '98. it's fun to see her in alum stuff. we thought of her when the tornado whipped through last year. we watched her on tv, and were so proud of what she had to say regarding a community's heart and grief. some things are beyond man's control. and then come days like today. and i question the evils that are directly a result of our lack of control.

big prayers to dawn, a-p, and the family of coach thomas.

not so itsy bitsy

i thought i would get me a new suit for our numerous waterpark and sprinkler-run adventures this summer. now that summer has indeed arrived with its two bff's: mug and storm.

in march, i had high hopes of resurrecting my favorite black number. the last time i wore it vern had to help get it off. by that i mean he had to hold my suit bunched around my waist with both hands while i gripped the bed with mine and we both tugged. he remembers it fondly. i cringe.

i'm not back to black yet. i could almost pull out the maternity suits were it not that they are designed to give you a little breathing room just where i'd prefer they suck me back together. i bought a cheap blue suit after our tug of war. i could wear it up until my 7th month of pregnancy. it looks like it. i'll swim in jeans and a t-shirt-covered-nursing bra before i wear that sorry thing again.

so.

i was willing to pay a little for this wonder of wonders i found on-line. a miracle of sewn lycra that would boost, suck, shape, trim, tighten and take a good 10 pounds off. i squealed with joy. it was cute. i was skipping around the room. and then i read the fine print:

Suntan lotion absorbed by the suit and not washed out can damage the fabric. Please always be careful to keep your Miraclesuit® free from lotions.

i wear 50 sunblock and reapply every hour. and i still burn.

Whirlpools and spas have a high concentration of chemicals to sanitize the water. Public pools often exceed normal chlorine levels for health reasons. Regular use of these facilities may cause the fabric of your suit to breakdown more quickly than what is considered to be normal use. We suggest wearing an older Miraclesuit® in the hot tub, and saving your new Miraclesuit® for the beach or pool.

in my befuddlement of how miracles are not suited for freckled iowa girls like me, this post from antique mommy came to mind.