Barking Mad

Being Quiet in the Midst of a Storm

  

I spent a lot of this past week thinking about my life and where I want it to go and how I want to get there.  This is the first time I've just taken the time to sit back, despite the flurry of activity going on around me, to really sit down and consider what I want the rest of my life to look like and more importantly, what I want me to look like and trying to convince myself that the person I desperately want to be; I deserve to be.

Amidst the chaos of unpacking (I started to dig back into all of the boxes again, after spending more than two weeks simply not giving a damn about not being able to find my mixer, measuring cups or the rest of my bras and Gareth's boxers!), trying to help Gaby deal with the difficult process of adjusting to a new home, (this hasn't been easy - she's outwardly expressing what I'm feeling inwardly but don't share...ever!), and start a project I've been wanting to start forever, I sat back on Thursday afternoon and was absolutely still, inside and out.  A wicked wind storm was blowing outside with winds in excess of 55mph blasting the house and blowing snow off the frozen lake which sits in front of the house, directly onto our deck.

As I sat and watched the sun set over the lake and turn all that ice into so much gold crystal, I was awed by how intensely beautiful it was, despite temps hovering around -10F and the wind uprooting trees, scattering trash bins everywhere, and causing power snaps here and there.  Despite the natural violence, it was still beautiful and I was struck with the question of whether or not, in my search to figure out my place in life, if I will be able to resurrect any sort of beauty out of what has been an emotionally violent two years. 

I've destroyed my body by adding an additional 125lbs to an already obese frame, and then made matters worse by trying to control everything with bulimia.  I have no idea what sort of damage I've done to my heart but I'm certain that it hasn't escaped my abuse, unscathed.

With another particularly hard gust of wind that hit the house, I sighed and finally realized that whilst I've hit rock bottom, I know that this isn't where I want to remain.  From a purely physical standpoint, I can't stay here.  Simply put, I'll die.  Sooner rather than later.

  

Every once in while it takes something as powerful as a wind storm to clean the slate of today and make room for tomorrow.   I sat back and watched the winds blow the clouds from the previous storm, out to the west and wondered if I'm at the point in my life where the clouds are clearing and I can start to see the rough beauty of my own life and start to make something of it?  Is there enough of the foundation left to rebuild something stronger, more resilient, and beautiful?

I'm going to be quiet more often, especially in the midst of a storm...sometimes it's when I hear things the clearest.

 

Winter Weekends in Maine

This past weekend saw us make the 6 hour drive back to Maine to check on the house, clean out the fridge and the chest freezer and make some decisions about the monumental pile of crap that's stacked to the ceiling of our large two-car garage.

OK who am I kidding?  When we actually got there, we managed to spend a total of maybe 4 hours back at the house and the rest of the time at the waters edge, throwing glacially cold pebbles and rocks into the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean.  Alright alright...you've caught me again!  Gaby and Gareth stood around throwing rocks into the water whilst I had my camera aimed at just about everything in my line of sight. But at least I wasn't the only idiot outside, in subzero temps, cursing at the cold and the havoc it was wreaking with my shutter speed...

 

Personally, I can't throw anything, be it a rock or a ball, to save my life.  Gaby has inherited her daddy's penchant for tossing and skipping stones.   I'm better off with a camera in my hands vs. a pebble or rock...take my word for it.  If you don't believe me, just ask Tammy Davis whose tooth I knocked clean out of her head back in the 2nd grade, with a ... that's right, a rock.  I was aiming at a hill behind her. Need I say more?

When she wasn't flinging stones into the icy indigo depths of the ocean, Gaby was goofing off with her favorite person in the entire world...her daddy!

  

  

Gareth tried, unsuccessfully, to get a picture of her and I together.  Between the freezing blasts of wind coming off the water and Gaby trying to put snow down my back, it just wasn't happening!

 

As always, I tried in vain to get a photograph of Gaby where she was looking directly at me and not off to the side.  One of these days I'll get it through my thick head that whenever she sees me with the camera she does the exact opposite of what I want her to do.  I need to tell her to look at my shoes and maybe she'll look at the camera for once.

I just wanted one little winter 2010 photo.  Just one.  Is that too much to ask?  Apparently, if you're 4, and there are mounds and mounds of freshly fallen, powdery snow to jump into, it is.

"Gaby, can you look right at mommy and give me a pretty smile?"

 

"Ummm, sweets, that's not what mommy had in mind.  I just want a pretty smile, just one."

  

"Errrr, Gabz, that's not what I had in mind. How about a little less tongue, and can you stand up straight? Come on now, look at mommy...look at the camera..." 

  

"OK, well good, you're standing up straight.  You sure do have pretty teeth. Can we take a picture to send to Meggy, and show her what pretty teeth you have?" 

 

"Gaby, baby, sweetheart, just one little smile?  Right at mommy? Pretty please with sugar on top and maybe a pony too?"

  

"Gaby, baby, please, my fingers are losing their feeling.  Do you want mommy's fingers to fall off?  All your school chums will call me 'Nubbins'...do you really want your friends to make fun of your fingerless mommy?  If you just look right at the camera real quick for me, I'll buy you a pony and a rocket!"

  

I think her expression says it all; "This is as good as it gets old lady!"

And now m'dears, I'm off to figure out just where the hell I'm going to keep not just one pony, but two, and to Google NASA and see if I can borrow a rocket.  

 

Almost 20 Years Later, it's Finally Time to Lay Some Demons to Rest

I woke up yesterday and realized that for the first time in almost 20 years, I can not recall the name of the man who was driving the small pickup truck that hit and killed my son, Joshua. 

For almost 20 years I have harbored feelings of hatred, genuine hatred, and anger towards this man who to this day remains faceless to me. He never should have been on the road that night.  His license had been removed by the state of California and he was alleged to have been drinking.   He was never arrested or held after being briefly detained by police. 

I remember several days after Joshua's funeral and burial, seething with anger because this man never bothered to phone us, send a card or a letter, or offer any sort of condolences of any kind.  At the time, I wanted to rip this mans neck off and commit his soul to Satan, if I had to sell my own to do it. 

Some time in 1993 when my former husband, Joshua's father, and I were in the midst of serious economic despair, we didn't even so much as have a home telephone and I had 3 year old twins hanging on my sides and was hugely pregnant with my youngest son, we took every coin we had in our possession and phoned this man - the man who drove in the pitch black of night on a lone country road and in the blink of an eye, took away the child who first blessed me with the title of "Mommy."  So much metal to precious skin and then...gone.  An altogether too short life, blown out like a candle in a single exhalation of breath.

 

He didn't know what to say to us then.  He offered no excuses as to why he was on the road.  And in my mind I knew it wasn't right to ask him why he never bothered sending condolences, sympathies or failed to show up at the services for Joshua.  Besides, what would he have said, "Hello Audrey, I'm the man who killed your son?"   Painful and awkward would not have done justice to the emotions a scene like that would have caused.

And now?  Now I sit here and know, without a single doubt in my mind or heart that it's time to forgive this man.

It's time.

In forgiving him perhaps I can find it within my own soul to forgive myself for not being there for Joshua and trying to prevent this from happening in the first place. 

The wound that Joshua's death left behind is terminal.  There will never be a day that passes whilst I tread the earth that the familiar ache and sting of his loss isn't present with me.  However, I no longer have to carry around the dagger of hatred, anger, and blame for this man, that I have been holding close to me, like some morbid piece of carry on luggage of the soul.

It's time.

Time to lay this burden aside and cast into the ocean of time the sharp blades of condemnation and judgment which were never mine to carry or bestow upon him in the first place. 

It's time.

Time for me to rest my head at night with one less shard of painful broken glass slicing it's way through my heart and the corridors of my soul.

It's time.

Time for me to say the words...

I forgive you.