*kendraspondence*

Dear Unc,

The anniversary of your death came and went last month and I thought I’d feel better after a year had passed.  But the truth is that I don’t know what I expected “better” to feel like, to look like.  Only that I had hoped I’d feel differently.  I don’t.  I still miss you in a way that feels fresh.  All the time.  Sometimes it’s once a day, sometimes it’s once a week, but I always think of you and I’m lucky because I never saw you when you got gravely ill, so my mind still flashes to your quick smile and the way you would silently crack up with your head cocked back, almost like you were hyperventilating and singing Gospel music at the same time.

Since your death, I’ve been really selfish with my memories of you.  I don’t mean I’ve been keeping them from people who were meant to have them.  I just mean that I’ve been private in my pain, silent with my questions, crying in the shower so there are no puffy red eyes at untimely times.  Sometimes I go through the e-mails you wrote me, or find a picture of you, or think about the last thing you said to me, which was, “I’m going to give you one more hug before you become a mom.”  Then I think about how you never met my daughter, who people say made you a Great Uncle.  But I know that you were already a great uncle.

I had to give a speech a couple of months ago, and I didn’t know why I had been tapped since I haven’t done anything significant besides potty train a toddler and master the art of pineapple surgery.  But when I heard the other speaker at the conference, Wayne, talk about his friend who had passed the year prior, I realized why God had given me the opportunity.  Wayne talked about how much he missed his friend, how his friend had died young and before he had time to “finish his work.”  So Wayne thought he would try to dedicate the next year of his life to finishing this friend’s work.  And then I realized how I could parlay this into my life, how I might better channel this grief.  I thought about the work you had been doing, not just as a CEO of a spiffy hospital, but on a more human level, as a uniter, as a healer, as a mad hyperventilative cackler.  I cannot do any of those things very well, but maybe I could understand what motivated you to be those things…Perhaps that can be part of my own life’s work.  I’m trying to do this.  I succeed most often with the cackles.
I love and miss you.  And I’m trying to love on my husband more, just in case we only have 20 more years together, too.

Love,
KC

I imagined it in reverse.

I thought my baby would be the one telling me that she was the Big Girl, while peddling at breakneck speeds on her tricycle to get to the corner where she would inevitably halt and turn, breathlessly smiling that smile that says, I have far outpaced you, woman!  And with each step closer to my trike baby at the corner, I would be thinking, I have spent whole afternoons watching your glacial progress in controlling your popsicle stick toes, waiting to see if they would push that green toy car a microscopic nudge farther.

But instead, she is the one that is resisting it.

“I not a big gahl, Mommy. I a wittle gahl.”

And I have to agree with her.

Until she asks me, “Mommy’s a big gahl?”

Reminding me that I am, yes I am a big gahl, honeypie. In more ways than one.

***

The Big Girl/Little Girl tug-of-war is profound and painful.  Girlhood is so fleeting and there are times I know that I grew up too fast, partly because I willed it and partly because I had no choice.  And there are times when the air is warm and musky and I want to ride my bike around another suburban cul-de-sac with a few wilting dandelions flipping around in the plastic wicker bike basket while I sing some hybrid song of lyrics I am spontaneously inventing and lacing them with Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry Be Happy.”

***

There is so much sweetness from my girlhood that I am willing like an heirloom to my daughter, but like any heirloom, it is all so fragile and cannot be replicated by any modern day tools.  My little girl has to ride her own bike and pluck her own dandelions and write her own songs, mingling them, I hope, with a few notes I have taught her, which someday she might know by heart.

***

Shots from that very fun wedding we attended where Baby Girl thunderjacked the Daddy/Daughter Dance.

St. Paddy’s 2010

See this girl?

We took her to a wedding today.  A Pi Day wedding with no pie.  But excellent cake, that was for certain.

That girl in the picture thought the DJ’s stage was her personal platform from which she was meant to stage-dive onto the dance floor.

And when that dance floor was cleared for the daddy/daughter dance?  That pint-sized girl with the rosy cheeks thought the floor was being cleared for her.  To stagedive onto the dancefloor and announce, “Yay I did it!!!  I did it!!” and run around and spin and wave her arms and pirouette just a few feet away from the father who had emptied his heavy pockets to entertain and feed hundreds of people on a rainy Sunday, on the occasion of his daughter’s wedding.  That father just wanted to dance with his own daughter.  But instead he found himself sharing the dancefloor with his daughter and someone else’s daughter, who clapped vainly for herself, while an entire wedding reception venue exploded in applause for her.  During the bride’s dance with her father.

Baby Girl soon exited stage left.

There are some things we have to do in order to get the urge out of our system, no?  I don’t mean nefarious deeds or illicit affairs.  I mean more alone the lines of indulging our curiosities until we flush that curiosity right out of our system.

In my case, that has meant:

- Eating 3 Aunt Annie’s pretzels in one afternoon.  Glad I got that urge out of my system.

- Yelling at the top of my lungs in the college weight room at two guys that kept changing the radio station to super misogynist song station.  I don’t think I will be creating another scene like this, again.  Out of my system.

- Marrying an Asian.  So glad that whole desire was fulfilled and put away.  And I kid!

- Applying to law school.  This is pathetic, but there was a time when I just needed to get the whole application and acceptance song and dance out of my system.  To prove that I was that smart, based on some faceless law school admissions committee decision.  I got in, I never attended, and it’s out of my system for good.  For sure.

- Snorting a Pixi Stick.  It was red, it was messy, it hurt.  Out! Out of my system.

- I am sure Loverpants could rattle off a mile-long list of other things I just neeeeeeeded to buy/see/chew/do so that I could tuck away that burning desire.

But the latest includes getting our pictures made with the mall bunny.  Just had to do it.  Glad we did.  No regrets.  The bunny’s name was Dennis.  Crossed Dennis off the list.

***

I will be thanking (with kendraspondence in kind) those of you who reached out after my last post.  You made me feel not so alone, and hopefully others out there in the ether who are navigating a road toward mental wellness (let me give you a hint:  that final destination might surface and resurface over time) might also feel your words reminding them of their not being so irrevocably alone…

***
Nice little weekend here.  Spent a lot of couch time, took a bath, took a walk, did a bit of grumbling on the lap of the man I love, watched Hollywood dazzle, graded a few papers, felt miraculously rested when Monday morning came.

The highlight of the weekend, though, was visiting my mates who live at the self-proclaimed Little Stone House.  I invited myself to their place, because that’s how I roll, and what did they decide to do but make a cake and pretend like *I* gave them an excuse to celebrate their daughter Fabiola’s birthday.  (You may remember that Fabi is actually made of cookie dough, and you are probably wondering why we didn’t just slice and bake her for the birthday?  But I guess, heh, for traditions sake, the cake seemed more appropos).

If you don’t have Stef and Jason for friends, I’m afraid it is too late since any of their mutual friends reading this will agree that their dancecard is already filled by us.  They are just beautiful inside and out, and by that I mean they have beautiful souls AND beautiful furniture.  They are wonderfully creative and their daughters have such bright spirits.  This family is downright infectious and I don’t know what friend lottery I won, but I am taking the whole lump sum winnings and keeping them all to myself

***

Big Sis Mirabelle wonders, Can we get some candles around here?

Mama Stef with her gals

Fabi to Papa Jason:  I totally know you grew this beard for my birthday so I could cakemoosh it.  Thanks, Pops.

The man who gives mini-manis is the one you keep.

Three cheers for dear friends….