Hitting a Tree

I'm reading over some posts on Facebook and it is all Labor Day mayhem, bbqueing and drinking and sunning and I think about doing that and then I can't think about doing that but I remember what that feels like just going on, laughing and living.
Bumps in the road come along and you have to diverge in your driving or maybe you hit it head on and then you curse out yourself or the driver next to you. A few miles down the road it is over and then you are on to the next thing, the hair appt, the car payment, the rainy forecast, the things you don't have, the things you do have, your hopes and your dreams.
And then you hit a tree
and you can't move
You know you are alive
and you hear other people driving by
Some sound out alarms
and others don't even look.

On Friday we went in for a fairly routine visit to check on a lump Gary had discovered over the week. We laughed on the way in.
I told Nora who was screaming out of our living room window that no, in fact we did not have chocolate chips but we did have raisins and Gary told me that was the saddest thing you could tell a child.
Jonah came with us and Jonah and I watched Sesame Street and they were talking about the letter Q and drums, two of Jonah's favorite things.
Gary came out
we drove home
for a long Labor Day weekend.
Two hours later his doctor called, an hour later we were in a urologist's office and all of my children had been shipped off to Patricia's house.
She kept them for the next 24 hours.
I cried in the bathroom.

The type of cancer he has is treatable, they think. It is a "good type of cancer to get, if you are to get cancer."
But I can't help think about how quiet my house would be without Gary.
My friend Gwendolyn called me this morning to talk and she told me she had thought about me and Gary a lot lately, about what a great love we had for each other and I know she is right and so I told her and then I cried.

Blanket Days

Today I woke up with the day spread before me like a warm blanket. Nora had told me last night that she wanted to go swimming at the Y and I had told her that we could do that but upon waking the humidity had finally broke and the air was cool and crisp. No way could we be inside on a day like today and Nora agreed too. I went to my spinning class early, up at 6 and gone and then as I was walking out sweating and smiling there were my three children running towards me as if from a dream screaming "Mommy!" It was like I was a star in my own tv series and these were my greatest fans.
And then there was Gary smiling with books in hand taking our eager children to the library where the librarians all know our children by first name and have suggestions waiting for them and smiles to share with them.
When I got home to my silent house I sat a bit and played some piano and it was peaceful and quiet for some time and then just like that it was full of laughing children, fighting children, apologizing children and reading silently children sprawled out all over my furniture and my body.
We ate a beautiful meal Gary had cooked and Gary and I lingered at the table talking about NYC next week and the future.
We decided last minute to hike at Goose Cove with bikes and skate boards and scooters and feet and Sparky and we talked about different plants and the clouds and the water supply that we were walking around and we played pooh sticks. Jonah won at pooh sticks and the girls clapped and Sadie swore she saw a snake and we talked about what kind of snake it could have been and we talked about looking it up when we got home but we didn't.
I found out today that Nora has no problem counting to 100 when we played 52 pick up with two decks of cards and that she can add pretty well too. I learned that during a game of war. I didn't have to give Sadie a test today about vocabulary words or spelling because I listened to her use words such as indignantly and surpassing appropriately in a sentence and Jonah spent three hours playing piano this morning much to Gary and my amazement.
Sadie wants to read Harry Potter 7 again because she feels like reading it at age 9 will be different than at age 8 and I think she is right so we will.
Sadie asked if all the other kids are starting school next week and I told her they were. She asked if we would start school then too and I told her that all through the summer we never stop because we learn all the time.
We will work on some math stuff and Nora loves the Explode the Code thing. We will do our ecology class and we will take a CSI course at the community college. Swim team starts and Folk Chorale starts and life moves us around much more.Mostly it is like today though, days spread out before us with choices to make about how to spend them.
Right now if all Sadie did all day long was build with legos and play the piano and listen to me read Harry Potter 7 she would be happy and so she can and because she knows this, she knows I have faith in her.
Molly is off to bigger and better things lately. She just cut her hair short and it is adorable. She talks about important things now and she is excited about her future. She spends a lot more time away from home now and I trust that she is making good decisions and that she will come to me when she needs my help or my love.
Right now Jonah and Nora have been soaking in a bath for the last hour and they are relatively quiet. I think they are tired. Jonah continuously asked us to wait for Nora on our walk today and I realize that under all that testosterone and energy simply enough he is just this guy who adores all of us.
I will read to them and we will fight over who lays where and one of us will storm out of the room and return with more covers. We will laugh at the Bearenstein Bears and Jonah will fall asleep and when he starts to snore we will look at him and want to cry at how sweet and chubby he is and one of us may talk about eating his hands and another one of us will surely bring up something that he broke today.

Th e Wishing Well

For a lifetime now it seems we have been running around like chickens with our heads cut off, always trying to find something, catch up and be at ease. When this recession hit our town and our country Gary and I did not really feel it because, well, we had always struggled financially, so it was no different now. We have always bought second hand, cut coupons and gone without. One of the things that I have always loved best about our jobs is this possibility in both of them. For example, right now I am on call and I will be until midnight. Possibly I could make some extra money tonight. Then again, I could possibly only make a tiny little bit but being the ever optimistic person that I am I always can see it for what it may turn out to be like and usually it does work that I go out and we make some money. In Gary's job and world it has always been this way. He could drum up some extra lessons any old time and we could get those new curtians or pay the credit card bill or whatever. The difference between his possibilities and mine is the slight, ever so small possibility that he could hit some huge possibility. A possibility that could change our whole world and turn us upside down.
A few years ago Gary made a friend, a fan friend. A lot of Gary's friends are "fan friends". They come to a show, see how great Gary is and then because Gary is who he is, when they come up to introduce themselves they are immediate friends. Gary is an amazingly warm and tender person and people are instinctlively warm back to him.
This new friend had all sorts of connections and over the course of the last few years we have rode a roller coaster of possibilities. In a couple of days Gary will travel to NYC for the second time this year to play his guitar with some other musicians in what looks like could be a very interesting turn of events.
So how do I feel?
Part of me is elated. It would be nice to feel freed up from my job for awhile. I would love the chance to travel with the kids and show them our world. I would love to feel more free.
Part of me is terrified. When my dad started to make a lot of money, that was the end of my dad, spiritually and emotionally.
When I went to Target today to buy some gifts for Gary who will turn 42 in a few days it was easy. The kids picked him out little things and I got him some needed stuff like a new bag and a bike helmet. We spent more time hemming and hawing over the cards. The kids wanted to get him just the right one. Jonah picked him out the card with the charging elephants and Nora chose a really sweet one with flowers and Sadie picked him out a card that played "Somewhere over the Rainbow" when you open it. She said it would make him cry and we all agreed it would.
At times like this I wonder if I wished too hard for this break for Gary and what it will mean to us all. He is already being asked to sacrifice some of our vacation time to travel to NYC and to practice.
It makes me feel possessive of him, wanting his overall attention.
Although I am a person that does not ever regret things I would like to be able to look in a crystal ball once in awhile, maybe know what I am getting myself in to before I go around throwing coins in to the well.

Grae

Gary and I waited up until 11pm on Wednesday night. Grae was home visiting and he called and told us he was in the area. It was no imposition, it was a joy to wait around on the couch for him. I have often thought about writing a little story about Grae, such an interesting path he follows and it is worth telling about the days he comes home and tells us of his adventures. For some reason during his first few visits he reminded me of Dill from To Kill A Mockingbird. Scout would go about her life all through the year and almost forget about Dill and then the summer days would shine upon her and Dill would be at her door, ready to play again. That is how it is for us and Grae.
Grae used to be Greg and Gary has known him for many more years than I. From the stories I have listened in on throughout the years Grae somehow met Gary out in Western Mass or maybe at a show somewhere and they immediately made a connection. They have been friends ever since. The first time that I met Grae was driving to a Max Creek show in the middle of nowhere with Gary on New Years Eve, I think 1996, yeah that is it. I was going to give up smoking and he was trying to talk me out of it. I was not drinking and he was lecturing me on the necessities of living an independent free life away from the constraints of not drinking. To be honest, he was not my favorite friend of Gary's but we sat up until the wee hours in our shared hotel room talking and laughing, the three of us. And then he was gone.
For all of the time that I have known him he has lived in Northern California and he has come to visit his home of Massachusetts once every couple of years so this has amounted to about 8 or 9 visits in our life together from Grae.
It marks time for me.
All the visits occurring in our 20s were marked with drinking and partying and philosophizing and laughing.
When Gary and I started to have children our relationship with him took on a whole other flavor.
There is this thing that happens when friends have children and other friends don't but Grae was around so infrequently that really it was not a big deal. We always cleared time for him. Gary loved him and before I knew it so did I.
In our most recent visits all of the confusion and angst that I had in my eyes throughout my 2os and early 30s are in his eyes in his 40s and now this visit was all about changes and moving on. He has moved all of his belongings in to a storage facility and is going on a great adventure to live in South America on the Amazon River indefinitely. Cool.
We stayed up and waited for him. He looked older, much thinner and much kinder than he ever had. We picked up right where we had left it two or three years ago and then the next day he was gone.
Gary and I are two creatures of habit and constancy. We stay in our flow and we have become foundations for some of our most wandering friends. I love to hear their stories. I love it when they sleep on my couch. I hope that my children travel to wonderful places and have great adventures and find our home waiting for them just where they had left it, a light on and the two of us standing in the doorway....... waiting.

Happy Learn Nothing Day!

Crap! I forgot today was Learn Nothing Day! The kids have already gone off to Nature Camp, listened to the radio, opened books and talked with us about all sorts of various things. Learning Nothing is a very hard thing to do...........

In younger days I danced like this. This is how Gary met me. Looking and feeling like this. This was a festival before we got married. Gary had just come home from 6 weeks out on the road and we had driven the old tour bus two hours to this festival. I think Gary may have been playing while I was dancing here but maybe not.
We camped with our good friend LJ. Several years later LJ drove across the United States and left us a message staring at the clouds in Montana chanting about the surreal beauty in the skies. He overdosed two weeks after that call.
We were dancing during this photo. He and I loved to dance together.
I miss being that carefree. I know what they all say, all the old cliches about age and youth and all that but I know that when I go out now even if I may be swaying I will never dance like that again.
I danced in those days with the lightness of a floating petal, carefree and full of the promise of another day and one after that. I danced without the burden of bills and taxes and checklists. I danced in the eternal glow of youth.
I love this picture. I am glad it is here to remind me.

"He took her soul—though, being a secular-minded person, he didn’t think of it that way. He didn’t take the whole thing; that would not have been possible. But he got such a significant piece that it felt as if her entire soul were gone. As soon as he had it, he not only forgot that he’d taken it; he forgot he’d ever known about it. This was not the first time, either.

He was a musician, well regarded in his hometown and little known anywhere else. This fact sometimes gnawed at him and yet was sometimes a secret relief; he had seen musicians get sucked up by fame and it was like watching a frog get stuffed into a bottle, staring out with its face, its splayed legs, its private beating throat distorted and revealed against the glass. Fame, of course, was bigger and more fun than a bottle, but still, once you were behind the glass and blown up huge for all to see, there you were. It would suddenly be harder to sit and drink in the anonymous little haunts where songs were still alive and moving in the murky darkness, where a girl might still look at him and wonder who he was. And he might wonder about her."
Mary Gaitskill Mirrorball, at Pantheon Books