And now you are 12

Dear Jordan,

Twelve years ago on my birthday, I thought I'd have a baby. 

Because that was my due date. And my birthday. So it was totally meant to be and I was going to have my baby on my birthday. 

Also, and this won't mean anything to you at the moment, I was absolutely not going to have an epidural if I could help it, and certainly not a C-section.

Ha.

And then all last week 12 years ago I waited and waited and waited.

Then 12 years ago on this very day, you were born! 

And you were perfect.

You had the most perfect round head and beautiful skin. You were honestly the cutest baby I had ever seen. Although to be fair, I never really thought babies were all that cute before you.

But you were also the cutest baby so many other people had ever seen. So it was true. Cutest ever. 

Things were really, really hard that summer. That year, in fact.

But the best thing was that we had a baby. We had you. 

And now you are 12! You're almost exactly my height.

I picked you up on Tuesday after seven weeks of camp, and you'd grown like two inches! You're already bigger than me. In 15 minutes you're going to be taller than me.

And not only had you grown physically, you'd grown emotionally.

You have a peacefulness about you. You seem at ease in your skin. You radiate happy.

We were so proud, so very proud, of how you spent that time away from home and embraced it. I know you were homesick. In your letters you'd say how much fun you were having, and that you'd like to come home after first session, and also, could we send your Magic cards?

In one letter you said, "Dear Mom and Dad, I miss all of you, and I miss Nana and India and Wanda most of all."

Daddy said, "We didn't even make the top three!"

We missed you and we were so grateful you could be out in the beautiful woods on the edge of a lake having an incredible summer. After being home, like physically stuck in the house, for so many months, this was such a blessing.

Driving to pick you up, I was so excited. When I arrived at camp and told them who I was there to pick up, they said my smile was huge, and I said, "I can't wait to see my boy!"

When we dropped you off, you were anxious, and you didn't want goodbye hugs or kisses. When I picked you up you were totally cool with me hugging you and hugging you and kissing you and hugging you some more. You were even fine with selfies.

Those seven weeks were so good for you. Being apart was so worth it, seeing how happy you are, and what a good emotional space you are in.

You worked really hard at camp acquiring new skills, and you got your name on the banner for arts and crafts champion. I know you are proud of this. We certainly are, too.

You and I have just been hanging out in Portland in between camp and family camp, and having such a nice time the two of us. We never get this kind of time. You're funny and creative and charming and just a pleasure to spend time with.

Today you got a brownie ice cream sundae and said it was totally better than birthday cake. You're just in such a delightfully positive frame of mind. You were even pleasant about me poking a swab up your nose for the pre-camp Covid test at the drive-through.

Growing up we were so excited to go to the A&W drive-in and to eat hamburgers and drink root beef floats in our car. I know it sounds weird that this was exciting.

And now here we are, driving up to Walgreens and parking at the pharmacy window and poking swabs in our noses, putting them carefully in a tube of noxious liquid, and sealing them in a hazmat bag, all as instructed by the pharmacists behind glass and wearing a mask.

I will tell you that even with my overactive imagination, I could never have imagined this.

Root beer floats would be more fun. Although not poked up our noses. 

Happy birthday, my sweetheart!

You are such a treasure. I love you more than I can express. I love you so big. More than star twinkles. More than sunshine.

Love love love,

Mama

Today I am 52

Today is my birthday.

Honestly, I'm shocked that it's already August. Of 2021. How is it now so soon?

Friday the 13th birthdays are my favorite. I love it when it falls this way.

India and I just did this fun photo shoot to commemorate it. 

I found this dress on a street corner. I don't know how it is where you live, but here you can put stuff out on the curb and people will take it. I've gotten so me very nice drinking glasses. We've given some nice furniture and kitchen ware.

My favorite find, however, is this fabulous dress. Well, it's between this and a small, very old cast iron pan that works like a dream. 

Anyway, when people compiment me on this dress I always say, "Thanks! I got it from the street!"

Nick is all, "YOU NEED TO STOP TELLING PEOPLE THAT."

But why? I enjoy that fact. It's like when someone likes your dress and you're all, "And it has pockets!"

I love compliments, I truly do. So this is not to deflect them. But I also love a bargain. If you tell me you got something amazing for like 70% off, I will always be impressed.

Which is not to say I wouldn't support you buying it at full price. If that makes any sense.

During the pandemic, I discovered the clothing of Jordan Piantedosi and it was like the clothes I'd been looking for all my life!

I ordered one and then another athleisure suit to lounge around in to brighten my mood. When I say this turned my life around, I mean it like this: there were months where I wore the same sweats for three days and nights straight, bathed, and then changed into the next set for the next several days.

I wasn't opposed to hygeine, but I wasn't seeking it out, either. Why did it matter, really?

And then I got these fun outfits and they made me feel better. India and I would go out and she'd instruct me to jump, twirl, pose. We giggled and giggled.

I would wear them out to walk Wanda and get random comments from neighbors, and some giggles, and that added to the joy. I was very low on joy.

Somewhere around there, my shrink and I also had a good fight with insurance to up my antidepressant and in the end we prevailed. And I don't know if that helped with joy, but it helped with the opposed of joy. Yoj?

I think this was last fall but it could've been winter or even spring. I don't know.

Last month in Maine friend Pam gave me some gummies to help with sleep. They were sturdy jelly rectangles, and you'd slice a quarter off of one as a starting dose.

I was staying at her house and I felt like they helped, and she said I could take them when I left.

So I took the packet and put it in my dopp kit with the rest of my traveling medicaments. When I took it out the following night, it turned out that in the heat of the car, they'd melted into a solid mass. It wasn't that they were inaccessible--just that you didn't know where one shape or flavor began or ended.

And this is exactly how I feel about pandemic time. 

It's one flexible, shimmery blob. Many things happened in there, some decent and some truly terrible, but I couldn't really tell you when, and I can't necessarily extricate them from other memories. Events have been conflated.

I don't know how much parsing them matters.

We have survived to this point and on the whole, I feel hopeful.

As many of you know, I look at my birthday as my own personal new year. I got my hair done yesterday to celebrate.

I think when my hair goes white I will leave it be, because that will suit my skin tone. The current ashiness of my blonde coupled with greys just flattens my skin tone. There's enough disappointment and flatness in life without adding my hair to it.

Anyway, today I asked India if we could do a birthday photo shoot. She's not always in the mood, but she is my favorite photographer. She has a great eye, and a fabulous sense of whimsy.

It was tremendously fun. India really gets into it and loves action shots that show the clothing. She'd currently like to be either a fashion designer or a supreme court justice, or maybe both. 

Whatever she does in life, I do hope she uses her powers for good. 

Since my last birthday I was diagnosed with Lyme disease (getting diagnosed and getting antibiotics was a struggle, I tell you). In the process they ruled out lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and a variety of other diseases. Thank goodness.

I have had two rounds of antibiotics, and I still have some joint pain but they don't really know why. So.

I've also gotten very into yoga, which honestly I wish I'd discovered before, and really it's my own damn fault for not, having grown up in India where opportunities abound.

But like all my other choices, I had to go about it the hard way, and perhaps just needed to find the right instructor at the right time.

You know I'm not a team player, as I've always had a horror of group activities. Also, yoga studios intimidated me. But this is different. These are friends, and we're pushing each other to be our best selves.

I've discovered yoga is one of very few activities that takes so much of my focus that all those annoying voices in my mind go silent. There's no making grocery lists or fretting about that one awkward thing I said, or whatever else my mind likes to tip toe through while I should be focusing.

It's super difficult and ultimately so relaxing.

Forgive me if my writing is awkward. 

These are muscles I've not used in so long. I think about writing and how much I miss it. But then I wonder what I would even say, when my creativity is at such a low ebb.

I need to just jump back on the wagon or bicycle or whatever that expression is. Get on the horse and lead it to water.

Can't make a sow's purse out of a rat's ass.

I love you all. Thank you for being on this life journey with me!

Love,

Lisa

Twelve Mays

Twelve years ago today, my dad walked out the door of their house.

Twelve years ago tomorrow, we located him at the morgue.

Two weeks later, we brought him back to the house as a bag of ash.

I write this post every year. 

May has become easier than it was. Or anyway, today is.

This year I didn't realize it was May, or rather what May meant, until I did. Does that sound stupid? Yes. But I felt it in my body. I was having a hard time.

And then recently I realized: it's May. May is my month of loss.

May is the month my dad left and we don't know exactly which day he died. And maybe which exact day doesn't even matter but it still matters to me.

As such, I need to remember and honor these feelings and his loss.

Nobody else needs to remember this along with me, and yet my dear friends Vik and Jess always do. In the middle of the night, when I was up and reading in the quiet darkness I got a text that said, "*hugs*". This morning I awoke to an email with, "I love you". 

It's perfect.

These messages first go straight to my nose, where that weird prickle triggers tears. Then I feel them in my heart.

Or maybe they to to my heart and that tells my nose to prickle. I was never very sciency, although I don't know if that would explain it anyway.

And it's not like an inability to build a model solar house in high school determines your understanding of physiology for life.

You know, I almost wrote that that twelve years ago today my dad walked out of our lives, but honestly, as soon as my mom realized he was gone, our lives became all about locating him.

The question always was: Could we find him in time?

Six times he'd survived.

My brother told Nick that my dad did it for attention. 

My dad's psychiatrist told Nick that every attempt had been so severe, the fact that my dad was still alive made him, an atheist, want to believe in God.

Dad left us today, May 15, on a gorgeous day very much like this one. Humid, ripe with flowering life, full of promise. I suppose it was a day very much like me at the time, six moths pregnant, humid, ripe with flowering life, full of promise.

We found him on the 16th, at the morgue.

This is not new information to any of you who've known me for a while.

You know that my dad walked out and then we searched frantically for nearly two days, and then we knew.

I wished so badly in the days that followed that I weren't pregnant, so I could have a stiff drink or five, or knock myself out with Valium. 

I hated how present I was in my grief.

My life up to then had been so much about my dad. Monitoring and working around his moods, being fearful, being vigilant, searching frantically, begging and praying in the aftermath, cajoling him back to health.

Keeping the secrets, lying to friends, pretending we were fine.

When my dad was fun, he was so much fun. He was great to travel with. He loved London, so we stopped there every summer on the way back to visit grandparents. And he loved musicals, so he shared them with us from young ages. He took me to Evita when I was so small that he brought pillows to the theatre from me to sit on.

My dad was so bright, and he was so dark. I understand now that his mental illness shaped how I grew up. It determined where we lived, not just how we lived.

We left Egypt after two years, rather than four, because Dad was sick, though they didn't know what was wrong.

That was his first attempt.

And we kept the secret.

Dad should've been posted to another country after India, but we went back to the US, because Dad was sick.

That was his second attempt.

And we kept the secret.

His suicide attempts, living around them, working to keep him alive, defined me.

And what I see now was that my life after my dad died by suicide continued to be so much about him, about not having him, about how we lost him.

It continued to define me for so long.

The loss has become less painful, and no longer defines me, though I know it will always be a piece of me. But not the largest piece, not determining my day-to-day actions, or driving me by fear. 

But it's important.

Growing up with my dad has made me both more understanding of people's struggles and less tolerant of bullshit. 

I'm not willing to carry people the way I used to.

A friend of mine is coaching me with boundaries. Mine still aren't great, but I was raised with practically none, so I think I'm doing pretty well considering.

Anyway, it's been 12 years, and some of these anniversaries have been incredibly hard, and this year this one is easier. It's a spectacular day, and I'm about to take my dog for a walk.

And then friend is coming over to sit on our deck and catch up. Nick bought a bottle of Absinthe and he's going to make Absinthe cocktails.

I thuppothe it will make our hearts grow fonder.

When you need a train it never comes

Included for dramatic effect or something

I don't have a plan, and though I have a propensity to blurt out awkward little statements every once in a while, I'm not actually an impulsive person.

I always save dessert for last. Or for tomorrow.

Even as a kid I'd have waited on that marshmallow forever if I needed to.

I'm not even good at planning. So I guess that helps, too.

But sometimes, like today, I think things like: what if I just tripped in front of that huge, heavy truck? 

Sometimes, like today, I think it would be a relief to not be here anymore.

I know for a fact that it wouldn't be better for my family. I have been in spaces before where I didn't know that, and this right now space is not like that. I would be crushed to never see my kids again. 

I have also in other times been in a space where I didn't believe it would ruin there lives if I were no longer here. Not today; I know it would ruin their lives.

I yelled at my daugher after she spent 38 minutes, beginning the second she woke up, scream-crying about the Mondayness of Monday and also everything else. With two minutes left to go, two minutes till we were meeting her friend, she decided to change her outfit.

I'd been so good at sympathy and empathy for 38 screaming minutes, and then I lost it.

We put on her shoes and hustled her down the block, wailing like a banshee all the way.

I hate myself when I yell.

Sometimes I hate myself even when I don't yell.

Today is not one of those days. I don't hate myself.

Everything just feels very heavy and impossible.

Our house is such a mess. 

I think I killed or at least severely damaged my succulent by leaving it out in the sun.

There is so much laundry. So much. So much that I could probably burrow into it and fall asleep and it would be hard to find me.

There is so much everything. And it's all hard.

How come nothing is ever easy?

And then I feel like an asshole, because there are real people with real problems. Not that I'm not a real person. But my god, compared to so many people, my life is so easy.

It's not like it's a fucking tragedy to have housecleaning and too many dirty clothes to deal with.

It's more that I just...think it could be peaceful. Not to be here anymore, I mean. Not to be me anymore.

Like I said, I don't have a plan, and I don't lack impulse control. 

I know bad place this is brain chemicals, and this is temporary. I felt joy this weekend and I know I will again. It's not one of those dark empty places with no hope in sight.

I want to take my mom to the doctor and hug my kids after school and kiss my husband when he gets home. Oh, and walk Wanda.

I don't want to not be here to do these things. Or anyway, not all of me wants to not be here.

So really, I have a great grip on that stupid fucking marshmallow. Although I guess that makes it sound like suicide would be gratification. Which of course it's not.

Maybe I just needed to say all of this out loud. To acknowledge these feelings and remind myself of what they are. And to try to let them go.

This isn't a cry for help. Truly. 

I'm so solidly here, buried under the laundry.

What to wear while rooting through your neighbor's garbage

First of all, if you're wondering if I wear these outfits all the time, the answer is yes.

If you're further wondering if this is the outfit I was wearing while rooting through the neighbor's discards, the answer is also yes.

These suipersuits are improving my pandemic. My goal is to wear them as much as possible while it's still cold because once it's DC hot these will turn me into my own personal sauna.

(Which is pronounced SOW-na. So there.)

Anyway.

On Monday I bought this charming monstera that was just starting to fenestrate from a very nice guy in a plant group I joined a few months ago when I decided that plants would also improve my pandemic. I also bought homemade moss poles from him.

I'm currently considering a worm farm. Nick thinks this may be a bridge too far, much like putting one's penis though plantation shutters to greet the day is, in his opinion, insane.

So.

So I bought this monstera in a very nice pot, and it had a little plastic water-catcher under it in just the perfect size.

Which I accidentally left on the floor in the backseat of our car. I meant to go back and get it out, but I forgot.

And then that night Nick and I had a fight. And he drove the car yesterday.

Since I wasn't calling him and he wasn't calling me, I couldn't say oh by the way there's this plastic thing on the floor of the car that fits the pot of my new plant perfectly.

So last night when we were all back to fine, I mentioned it. And he said, "Oh. I got the car washed yesterday and I put it in the recycling."

I knew, I just knew, he did this maliciously. I didn't say this, however. Till this morning.

This morning Nick was being all lovey and I said, "I know you threw out that container at the car wash on purpose."

He was all, what?

I went on to explain that he clearly threw out the perfect-sized plastic water catcher thing because he was annoyed with me. 

And he said, "I was cleaning out the car. I also threw out a bunch of your mom's tissues that had wound up on the floor. There was no ill intent."

Betty always carries around no fewer than 47 tissues at any time, just in case. And...what he said made sense.

And he added, "They're just in the next door neighbor's recycling."

Oh!

There's a group house next to use which, when we first moved in, was full of mean girls, but it's gone through many iterations since then, and the inhabitants I've so far met there now are nice.

So I traipsed down and began rifling through the giant blue cans that DC uses for recycling. It wasn't on top. Or near the top. I had just decided that maybe it wasn't worth it to me when I heard a voice behind me say, "Hi, Lisa!"

I turned to see our across-the-alley neighbor smiling at me. He and his wife are great.

But I don't know either of them well enough to not seem weird in the neighbor's garbage.

So started to explain about the planter thingy and how Nick threw it out and it was the perfect size and seemed like a waste and...uh...it was starting to seem less worth it since it wasn't right on top and their recycling was kind of disgusting.

As I did this, I closed the bin and sauntered cheerily away from it, to show that I really wasn't digging in it anymore.

Our neighbor said, "Yeah. Digging in refuse can be kind of gross...That's a nice bright springy outfit!"

I thanked him and told him I was trying to cheer things up. It occurred to me that it was probably the perfect outfit, in fact, for trash rifling, because who would go out of their way to do something sketchy in so obvious a getup?

Once I'd thought of that, I felt a little better. Although still weird.

I wished him a nice day and hustled inside.

When I got in Nick asked if I'd found it and I said no, so he went out to look. He came in with it and said that actually, he realized after looking in the neighbor's that he'd put it in our recycling.

He was scrubbing his hands with very hot water. He said, "Our neighbors don't have a great grip on recycling. They had some broken china in there."

"We should totally tell them."

I mean, I do feel like we should, but how do you even start that conversation?

"So the other day I was picking through your recyclables..."

I think that's my bridge too far.