Word To The Ys

Here’s a post I started a month ago, and was waiting to post with some pictures.  Better late than never, I guess…

Newsflash: my kids are dramatic.

I know what you’re thinking…”What?  Not possible, with parents as contrite and calm as these…”  But I have recently become even more assured that we did the right thing in choosing a performing arts school for our kids to attend.  Last week Max participated in his first-ever all-school musical.  And it? Was. Awesome!  I was blown away by the talent of the lead kids (all 5th and 6th graders) and impressed that every one of the kids in school participated and looked happy to be doing so.  Max portrayed a tree with great success. 

I’m already looking forward to next year’s show…whatever it may be.  The teachers WRITE a new show EVERY YEAR.  Did I mention that my kids have the greatest school ever?  I commend the wisdom of their parents’ decision to live in a city with so many fabulous school choices…

Meanwhile, the middle child is honing his thespian skills at home by being a general ham.  My favorite thing about Ollie is, hands-down, his enthusiasm for life.  Everything is so…!!!  Some recent favorites:

• “Look!  I pee!  I DID IT!  There’s bubbles, and they POPPIN’!”
• “MAMA!  I GOT DA BOOGER IN MA NOSE!”
• I said I gonna poop and get a lollipop and I poop on the potty AND I DID IT!!!
• That’s my friend Seth!  Oh, he’s my friend and he’s a baby!  He’s so cute!  Oh, that be so NICE!
• LOOK!  MAMA!  A SQUIRREL! (addendum: we have a huge oak tree in our backyard that provides shelter and food for three squirrels, but every time he goes by the big kitchen window it is like the most pleasant surprise ever to see his squirrel friends.  He then rushes outside to greet them personally and, I kid you not, they have grown so accustomed to this that they don’t even run away.)

Just EVERYTHING is such an exclamation-point moment for him.  I love that.  I think maybe I am meant to learn to express enthusiasm for life from him.  I often feel things very strongly, but don’t always show it.  It amazes me but people often say I seem so calm, when all the while inside a veritable windstorm tosses me from joy to frustration, amusement to irritation, triumph to guilt.  I guess I say more than I show.  In theatre, it’s important to show within the saying.  I guess I could stand to revisit some of those old techniques.  Oh, to be a kid and express so truly and effortlessly.

Posted in Max, Ollie | 1 Comment »

It is well established that I am not a fan of change (except when it comes to my hairstyle, because I like to be unpredictable like that).  Though I know I’m supposed to embrace change and all, it’s always been difficult for me when the very earth shifts beneath me.  And it doesn’t need to be the big things in life that give me this sensation, either.  My favorite facial soap is discontinued.  Our evening plans are usurped by unforeseen obstacles.  Little House on the Prairie  is not recorded by my TiVo.

Not major stuff.

But there’s plenty of major stuff, too, and in fact it may well be that the big things are what have contributed to my ill-ease with change over the years.  And like many people, I find beginnings much easier to cope with than the endings.

The endings are always so hard.

Forgive me, but I’m having a difficult week as I realize I’m approaching an “anniversary” I’d rather not have on my calendar.  I try to focus on the happier things…

10 years since I began my post-college/professional/adult life. 

10 years since I began my commitment to learn to live with and love well the man who would become my husband. 

But then: 10 years since a treasured friendship came to a horrifying, heartbreaking end.

This week marks 10 years since the day I received that early-morning phone call from Derek’s mom.  He was gone.  Dead.  Impossibly absent from my sight forevermore.  He was one of the most vibrant people I’d ever been privileged to know, and he was dead at the age of 22.  And with the news of that ending, I began making my own series of phone calls to deliver this impossible news to others who would find it heartbreaking to hear.  Friends would be shocked; friends would migrate to my parents’ home where I was living at the time to comfort and be comforted.  That was one of the most beautiful things I’ve experienced in a time of such acute sadness…my friends all came, driving 30-45 minutes to sit with me and share stories and grief and (comic relief for those who were present)…ice cream novelties.  Some of these people didn’t even really know Derek, as he’d left school two years before, but they came because they loved me well.  And I need to say right here and now to those people who came in one of the darkest hours, because I cannot remember if I said it at the time–thank you for coming, for sitting Shiva with me.  Not only did they sit with me, but they agreed to come sing for the memorial because they knew it would help me and others who felt so sad.  It was one of the most sorrowful funerals I’ve ever attended (and, I am sorry to say, I’ve attended too many for my taste.)

In the darkness there was incredible beauty, also.  I still feel this as strongly now, ten years later.  It doesn’t diminish the loss in any way, but I experienced that remarkable gift from my friends.  I certainly gained a powerful spirit-guide.  Not to get too new-agey, but I have felt Derek with me many a time when I needed him.  I can sense his amusement at my life with three little boys, he having been last born of three boys himself.  And while I’m sure he would have introduced her to me had he lived, since Derek’s death I also have met and stayed in touch with his incredible friend that survived the crash that took his life, and she is an inspirational person if ever there was one.  So that also was a gift.

And still, and always, I have the pictures.  I have the music.  One of my most treasured items is a CD of the college choir from our European Tour days, which has immortalized his voice whenever I need to hear it.  If I just simply sit with the thought of him, I can feel him enfold me as he often did in life.  To say I loved him is an understatement.  To say I miss him is a greater one still.

I’ll maybe post another day a piece I wrote much more succinctly and eloquently about a song that always reminds me of Derek, because it was one of the songs we sang on tour together and because it simply captures the sense of longing that I feel whenever I think of him. 

Oh Shenandoah.  I long to see you, and hear your rolling river.  I long to see your smiling valley…away, we’re bound away across the wide Missouri.  ‘Tis [10] long years, since last I see you, and hear your rolling river…away, we’re bound away across the wide Missouri.

I miss you, D-man.  Maker of breakfast-time guacamole.  You with your unforgettable laugh, your beautiful smile, your sense of adventure and wonder, your enormous heart and compassion.   Thank you for all you gave me, and continue to give me even now.

Posted in Mostly Me, Other Ys of Note | 3 Comments »