The Crayon Can

It is funny the material things we consider our treasures.  I imagine it is true for everyone from the poorest to the wealthiest amongst us that when asked which belongings we would save from a fire, we would answer with descriptions of our family photos, our love letters, our journals, and as many of those important-to-us-and-unrecognizable-as-riches-to-anyone-else items as we could gather:  Well-worn stuffed animals.  Stones.  Driftwood.  Handmade afghans.  A chipped tea cup.  Her berry-picking hat.  His soft blue  shirt.  When my grandparents were moved into a personal care home a few months before their deaths in 2001, this metal can that Grandma had always kept crayons in was one of the things I wanted from their house and was immediately relieved to know that I had saved. 

There is nothing obviously exceptional about either its exterior or contents.  It is a Folgers-brand coffee can with a handful of crayons, crayon-pieces, and crayon-niblets inside.  I don't remember ever seeing the can with the Folgers label still on it.  Like meals and decor and most everything else at my grandparents' house, the crayons were not fancy.  No glitter-filled crayons here, no crayons that change colors, and no leftover crayons from a highly-coveted 120-pack.  "Burnt sienna," "copper," and "Carnation pink" are as newfangled as these crayons' names get.  I learned this week that the stub of "green-blue" is a collector's item of sorts since the color was retired in 1990.  And because these things were also in the bottom of the can when I salvaged it from Papa and Grandma's house, I consider them equal parts of its sentimental wonder:  A rusted pair of scissors, a couple scraps of Crayola wrappers and once-clear tape--and a folded paper piece, which I would bet good money was from a cut-out heart.  

But the smell!  The crayon smell inside this can!  I take off the plastic lid, and the decades-old crayon scent works like the magic of an uncorked genie:  It is again a Sunday afternoon at Papa and Grandma's gray-shingled house outside of Punxsutawney, and while they, still safe and vibrant with good health, visit with my parents and aunts after dinner, I sprawl out on their moss-green living room carpet and color pictures.  Sometimes the scent takes me back to the late 1970s and early 1980s and I am doodling on the scrap paper Aunt Vee brings from her secretarial job to their house for just this purpose.  Other times, I open the can and find myself a little older, but with the crayons and scissors still around me, designing cards out of the pages of the Sharp's Penn wallpaper catalogs that Grandma saves.  Sometimes, of course, the scent just takes me back to childhood-in-general, and I can't tell what grade I'm in or whether I'm coloring a Christmas decoration or the blues and greens of water and land on a state map for a homework assignment.  Then there are the times the crayon can's scent sends me straight to Papa and Grandma's foyer to look for a not-yet-colored-in page of one of the few coloring books they keep under the crayon can on the tiered brass shelf beside their front door.  Or the times it takes me back to a summer week I am spending at Papa and Grandma's house, and my childhood Beagle is panting beside me while I draw his portrait on the couch.  There is so much going on inside this metal can, you see.  

I keep the crayon can on a hall shelf with other treasures, and it surely mystifies most who see it, dinged and unlabeled as it is.  As is true for us all, its magic lies inside.  Lately I find myself opening it more than usual as I pass by, breathing in deeply and eventually replacing the lid quite reluctantly, wishing its scent could keep me in its hold a little longer.  May I be granted one more day, please, when sticks of wax are all it takes to make my life colorful and pressing down too hard is my biggest concern?  Life has a way of demanding a wee bit more of us than that, though, and perhaps especially for those of us who began it in awe of these boxed rainbows, it is only natural that we sometimes grow frustrated as we figure out, over and over, how to grow up without losing that sense of enchantment.  No worries, Papa and Grandma, your girl is determined to get it right.  The crayon can holds not only the blue-green and green-blue of the wild seas I intend to learn to surf someday, but also the pinks and reds and yellow-oranges of the roses I want to grow around my home.  I will find the balance, I remind myself.  I will try not to worry as the years unfold.  And I will hope that my grandparents say an extra prayer every time they see me reaching for the lid.   

If you just watch things, just sit still and let the world exist in front of you - sometimes I swear that just for a second time freezes and the world pauses in its tilt. Just for a second. And if you somehow found a way to live in that second, then you would live forever. ~ Lauren Oliver

My younger brother's first baby is due any day now, and the rest of the family daily guesses names and marvels at the idea that there will be a whole new person with us very soon.  The day my nephew was born, I wondered aloud to my mom how strange it was that I had just met him and already loved him so much.  "I'd never even laid eyes on him until today, and now it's hard to remember the family without him."  My mom replied with something along the lines of "Well, of course," but it was stunning to me how the heart instantly expands.  It's a girl, my brother and his wife have already announced, and I'm eager to feel, for the third time now, that rush of auntly love and surely-you've-somehow-been-here-with-us-all-along when I hold my new niece the first time.  

"Thirty-six," largely due to my younger brother's news, has been a year of nostalgia so far for me.  Each year now seems to fly by faster than the one before, and maybe because 2013 has had me looking both forward and backward even more than usual, I feel like I've lost track of this one somewhere along the way.  While I was home for my birthday in May, my sister-in-law announced her pregnancy.  When I went home in September, it was for the autumn-themed baby shower.  And next month's visit will find my younger brother now a parent.  I remember riding the hopital elevator up to the maternity unit the day he was born in 1982.  The next time I was visiting my hometown hospital's maternity unit, it was 2004 and my older brother had just become a dad.  And didn't all these things happen just yesterday?  No, really.  I don't understand anymore how time passes.  Lately the scene in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town on the Prairie keeps coming to mind in which Mrs. Bradley makes everyone in attendance cry on musical literary night by singing "Backward, turn backward, Oh Time in thy flight.  Make me a child again, just for tonight."  Picture me here pulling out my handkerchief along with Laura and Ma.  My younger brother is days away from being a dad.  Those who served as my former elementary school's principal, custodian, and secretary while I was a student there have all died this past year.  And all of this while I continue write, little by little, a memoir of my 1980s childhood.  "Those were nice years," my dad said of that time while I was home in September.  "You kids were all still pretty young, and Papa and Grandma were still alive. . . ."  My heart was almost too full to respond to him then, and it feels full-to-bursting now as I picture my once-Pound-Puppies-and-Connect-Four-loving brother with his wife and baby beside him this Thanksgiving.  "They were such good years," was all I managed to get out to Dad, and I want to pause here tonight and just sit quietly and look at my favorite pictures from this fall before any more of it passes passes and say "Thank You."  Because these are good years too.  

♥

I Stumbled, But I Never Fell: Eighteen Years Ago Today

Eighteen years ago today, I was hiking Cornell University's campus in Ithaca, New York and its nearby trails with my uncle Eric and one of his friends.  I had both turned eighteen and graduated from high school the month before and was spending six weeks of the summer living with my Ithaca family.  Eric, who has always been "Eric" and never "Uncle Eric"--a story for another day--and his friend were twenty-nine at the time, a fact that for some reason was shared in the seconds right before or right after this picture was taken.  I remember laughing ("You're not twenty-nine!  Stop!") before doing the math and realizing they weren't kidding.  This was the first time we'd seen each other since the early 1980s.  Here we are, then, at eighteen and twenty-nine, all sunburnt and nostalgic, on Cornell's Suspension Bridge in the summer of 1995.

My maternal grandmother had invited both me and my best friend Sommer to stay with her after our graduation.  Sommer died on March 1st that year, though, and in the picture above and every other one from the last ten months of 1995, I still look shell-shocked to myself, every smile tentative since happiness had become something I was afraid to feel, let alone show, for fear of having it abruptly snatched away from me as Sommer had been.  She was supposed to have been with me in all that summer's pictures and scrapbook pages, the two of us tanned and teasing and blissfully eighteen.  Instead, six mornings after Eric and I hiked around Cornell, I woke up from the first dream I'd had after Som's death in which I'd heard her voice--her voice again!  Sommer's voice!--and raced downstairs to find my family and breathlessly tell them about it.  And then the searing pain of her loss ripped through me again, because--Really?  This is what it had come to?  Being thrilled to have a dream in which I heard my best friend's voice?  This was the way life was for me now?  This was what was left for me?  Other eighteen-year-olds were spending their summer hanging out with their friends--in real life!  not in their dreams!--and shopping for their first college dorm room.  I felt like I was eighteen going on a hundred that summer.

June 5th of 1995,  though, was when I began to find my footing, both literally and figuratively, as Eric and I walked through Ithaca's gorges and hiked up and down its hills.  It was the hardest I'd laughed and the most fun I'd had in months.  Not pictured above are the high-heel espadrilles I was wearing that day.  I'm not a "shoe person," but I loved those shoes.  They had long ballerina-like laces that wrapped around my ankles, and they looked like cream crochet.  "Can you walk in those?" Eric asked as we set off on our hike that day, and I confidently said yes in that stupid way you confidently say yes when you know you're wearing beloved but utterly impractical footwear.  And then he and his friend had to walk down all the slopes ahead of me in order to form a sort of wall with their bodies that would stop my momentum as I laughingly tumbled my way down in the silly things.  To all our credit, I stumbled, but I never fell.  

Looking back, the day was clearly a turning point for me.  When we returned to Grammy's house late that afternoon, my cut-off shorts and once-cream shoes now muddy and my face red from the sun, she greeted us by noting that it looked like I had had a good time.  I had.  And if I had had one good time after Sommer's death, I now realized, that meant there were still good times to be had.  And if I had had one, then the odds were good that I would have another.  And if I would have more good times, especially with people I loved and who loved me, then this life business must still be a pretty good deal.  Eric and his friend had mentioned as we crossed the suspension bridge that day that it had been the site of more than a few suicide attempts.  I can't help but remember that whenever I remember this photo and day, and it is not lost on me that the point where others gave up is the point where I myself started to come back to life.  There but for the grace of God. . . .  And today it's been exactly eighteen years since our hike, and I am seven years older now than Eric and his friend were then.  Doing the math always drives the point home, doesn't it:  Life goes on.  And we are blessed as we go along with it, shell-shocked and sunburnt and silly-shoed as we all sometimes find ourselves, laughing despite our losses and fumbling our way forward. 

Home Sweet Apartment ~ in Pink

Since bringing back from my parents' house the mantel my dad built for me and Mike last April, I've been painting it and fixing up the things that will surround it.  My treasured old "Home Sweet Apartment" needlepoint is the first piece I've revamped for the mantel-wall.  It was one of my very first eBay finds back in 2001, that most-miserable of years, and even though--or maybe especially because--I was unexpectedly living with my parents again at the time, I was thrilled when mine was the winning bid:  This vintage sampler, like a Field of Dreams-type "If-you-find-the-decorations-for-it-the-new-home-will-come" talisman,  gave me something concrete to work toward as a frustrated twenty-four-year-old.  

In the summer of 2002 when I finally had my first all-to-myself-with-no-roommates apartment, I delighted in unpacking the needlepoint and dolling it up, and what a year before had arrived pine green and maroon with an unfinished wooden frame became pink and aqua to match the little dining nook in my new place.  

"Home Sweet Apartment" behind me as I would sit in the corner seat under it there and work on school work for my second Masters program.  "Home Sweet Apartment" beside my newly-ex-boyfriend and I as we sat across from each other at this vintage tablecloth-clad table eating bowls of my homemade soup and awkwardly figuring out our post-breakup friendship.  "Home Sweet Apartment" above me as I bawled my heart out in this pink-dotted chair the following New Year's night after realizing we weren't ready to be "just friends" just yet and that we might never be able to in this lifetime.  The sampler over me and my mom when she showed up on a whim with two chocolate muffins from the bakery and listened as I made us tea and told her all about it.  The sampler over a whole bunch of us when I hosted both my first family dinner and first birthday party and relearned that as long as I had love to give--and gave it--I wasn't down for the count.  Before I moved out of this first "all mine" apartment, a former professor joined me for cookies and lemonade under the needlepoint and commented that I was good at making people feel welcome.  "Hospitality is your thing, isn't it," he thoughtfully noted.  And that's when "Home Sweet Apartment" really clicked for me:  I really had created a home here, not just filled and decorated a rented space. 

The pink and aqua needlepoint became a more subdued and not-very-Val-like red and yellow in 2007, so as not to overwhelm Mike with my pink-and-rainbow-loving tendencies.  Our studio apartment was so tiny, it was hard to do any real decorating in it at all, so the yellow and red actually didn't bother me too much.  When you can roll out of bed in your home-sweet-apartment and land on the kitchen floor, or open the bathroom door while sitting at the dinner table, the color combination of a sampler's matte and frame isn't your biggest homemaking concern.  Besides, the sweet sampler watched over me and Mike, this time hanging from the apartment's built-in mantel, during all our goings-on for four years the same as it had when it had been pink and aqua for me before.  Home was still love-filled and our favorite place.  Be it ever so humble, you know.   

Today it became pink again, though, and I don't see it changing after this.  It finally looks just right to me.  I covered the yellow matte with the dotted pink upholstery fabric that I had used to cover the captain chairs in my little circa-2002 pink and aqua corner.  I repainted the red frame black.  And I removed the glass-front since I don't trust this apartment's wall to hold its weight.  While I continue painting the mantel and fixing up the wall around it, at least this much is done.  That I figured out a way to incorporate the old chair fabric makes me especially happy.  

"Lighten up, Val--It's a sampler," I know, but when I look at it, I remember the journey it's accompanied me on and think of it as a witness to the past twelve years.  When Mike and I eventually move on from renting, I will pass it on to its next owners with a prayer for their own resilience and contented refuge in home.  

Sweet, indeed.  ♥

Flea Market Cat and the Year of (Not) Letting Go

While making my way through muddy paths and blustery winds at the flea market with family last weekend, I spotted this antique toy on a table.  I'm not one for knickknacks but fell for this simple old black and white cat, and after handing my eight dollar bills across the table to the elderly woman who was racing to cover the rest of her wares before the next rain, it was mine.  The older I get, the more I love the quote from William Morris that advises us to "have nothing in [our] houses that [we] do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."   This cat fits the bill for me.  I also love the advice to get rid of a few things for every one thing you bring into your home, so sometime this week, I'll be putting together another bag to donate to Goodwill.  A memoir of my mid-thirties would surely have a chapter titled "Clutter Be Gone."  Too much "stuff" makes me antsy.  Unless it's of books, I despise piles. 

At 24, I wasn't like this.  While discussing one of the "Hoarders" TV shows a couple weeks ago, I told Mike about the time I was shopping at a Salvation Army store in my hometown a few weeks after my family and I had finished cleaning out my grandparents' house and came across some of their belongings on the store's shelves:  My parents had donated to the store the items from Papa and Grandma's house that no one in the family had claimed.  I hadn't wanted these things before, but I suddenly felt sick at the thought of strangers owning the contents of Papa and Grandma's home.  I bought back all their books that I could find on the shelves, along with a porcelain swan that had always sat on top of their piano and that was now marked with a neon green price sticker.  My grandparents had just died in the two months before, and I wasn't ready to let go even this little bit.  Not ready at all.  I made peace with it eventually, and at some point, the books and swan made their way to the Salvation Army a second time, but I spent the spring and early summer of 2001 surrounding myself with boxes and piles of Papa and Grandma's belongings and berating myself for not having "saved" more of it from their house in the first place.  And what little money I was earning that miserable year and the next, I spent too much of on more "stuff" that further cocooned and comforted me.  One afternoon, the mailman delivered an embarrassingly tall stack of packages onto my doorstep only to return to his truck for a second stack--and in front of my younger brother, whose respect is chief amongst those I'd never want to lose.  It was easy for awhile to tell myself and others that I was just buying what I needed for my new apartment or "treating" myself after a hard year of too many disappointments and losses.  Although I was far from a hoarder, I was, in those heartbroken days of 2001 and 2002, surrounding myself with Any Little Thing That Would Make Me Feel Better, even if only by association--This "new-old" damask tablecloth is just like one of Grandma's--or because of misplaced hope--Maybe I'll be wearing this new sky-blue sundress the day my ex-boyfriend finally comes back to me.  I don't laugh at the people being buried alive by their possessions on TV shows.  Sometimes tablecloths and dresses mean so much more than tablecloths and dresses, and sometimes you need to hang on to them awhile.  Some peoples' "awhile" never ends, as those hoarding programs show us, and I feel sorry for them and their loved ones. 

My own "awhile" lasted about a year and a half.  By the end of 2003, I had donated or sold on amazon and eBay most everything that had before seemed so soothing.  I had healed some.  The vintage tablecloth wasn't necessary.  The sundress wouldn't be seen by the ex-boyfriend.  I would continue to remember reading on Grandma's lap as a child even if I gave away most of her books.  Papa and Grandma's house would still live in my memories after its foyer's porcelain swan found a new home.  Eventually, I just realized I'd be okay without it all and that I was, when it came down to it, okay without Papa and Grandma and the ex, as well (if I had to be, and God knows how stubbornly I struggle to accept a loss).  But what you need--all that you really need--I learned in those years, you carry within you.  Death cannot steal it from you, not really.  Goodbyes do not negate it, even when your present seems to have cancelled-out your past.  If the wooden flea market cat makes me happy, I enjoy it.  (It suits me, for sure, and it does look sweet amid the autumn leaves and little pumpkins.)  I enjoy it all the more knowing--finally and truly--that I'd be okay without it too. 

Silence for the Lunch Ladies

One of my favorite teachers in the fifth and sixth grade was Mr. M. He is one of those people who makes me happy just by existing. You know about the Mr. Ms in the world, I'm sure, and how you smile when they come to mind and how you are both purely grateful that God thought them up and continually delighted just knowing that they are out there somewhere. My Mr. M was one of the "cool teachers," and he was, I think now, born to work with kids. I never saw him angry or exasperated or looking even remotely stressed during all his teaching days, and when he was disappointed in one of us, he reprimanded us privately but effectively, losing neither his cool nor any of our fondness for him.

Only slightly taller than we were, he would often sit on his desk to teach class, and like all good teachers, he was learning right along with us. In the fall of 1988, Bobby McFerrin's song "Don't Worry, Be Happy" was on the radio constantly, and in class one day, Mr. M wondered aloud about one of the lyrics. "'The landlord say your rent is late, he may have to litigate,'" he quoted to us that morning. "I can kind of tell from the rest of the song what that means, but I don't know what 'litigate' really means, do you?" And as we called out our guesses, Mr. M reached for a dictionary and read the definition aloud. Just like that, he had discovered what the word meant! He hadn't know a second ago, but then he used the dictionary, and it helped him figure it out! This was how you learned.

In another class, we were supposed to have recorded ourselves reading something on a cassette tape player, and when Mr. M finished playing one student's recording for us, he went to turn off the recorder only to hear the girl continuing to talk about something related. It was about her grandfather, I remember, and how much she thought of him. "Oh, that's nothing, you don't have to listen to that!" she rushed to tell him as we all listened to her tape, but Mr. M shook his head and said, "You have nothing to be embarrassed about. That's how everyone should feel about their grandparents." And since he said it--Since it was Mr. M saying it--no one laughed at her, and instead we all thought about his words. Twenty-four years later, that is all I remember about Bobbi Rae: She admired her grandfather and was embarrassed and Mr. M made it better. This was how you treated people.

The hardest subjects he covered in those late 1980s classrooms were ones in which he clearly wished he didn't have the life experience that he did: Missed opportunities. Regret. Mr. M had had been a star athlete in high school and college and had had the opportunity to try out for the 1984 summer Olympics, but he didn't. He just didn't. We were now in his class five years later, but we all remembered the pep rally in the school cafeteria our little elementary school had held in his honor in 1983. I had never given it any thought after that. I doubt any of us had. But there we sat in Mr. M's classroom one day listening as he wondered aloud, while perched on top of his desk, why he hadn't tried. "What was I thinking?" he asked us. "And now I'll never know." Whenever we were blessed by such opportunities in our own lives, he told us, we needed to be brave and to see how far we could go with them and chase our dreams as hard as we could. We were not quite uncomfortable as we sat in silence watching Mr. M gaze off into the distance over our heads, his mind seeing Olympic glory that his eyes never had, but we were saddened. Our Mr. M was so wonderful, surely he could have done anything he put his mind to! Why hadn't he? It was hard for all of us to understand, and we sat together in our rows of desks in front of him a little longer, letting it all sink in, remembering the American flags and "Sam the Olympic Eagle" mascot coloring book pages we had colored for his pep rally years before. This was how you learned from someone else's mistake.

The last day before our school's Christmas vacation began in 1988, there was a rap on the door of Mr. G's room right before our sixth grade class was to head down to the cafeteria for lunch, and we all looked up to find Mr. M bounding into the room looking more mischievous than usual. "I'm sorry to interrupt you, Mr. G," he greeted our startled teacher, "But I've got an idea I want to run by your students. I just thought of a really good Christmas present we can give the lunch ladies!" We twisted around in our chairs, curious and already smiling along with him. We giggled as we listened to his plan, and even Mr. G smiled as Mr. M used his last few minutes of class time going over his idea with us. Minutes later, we all marched silently into the cafeteria, our entire sixth grade class joined by a few younger grade levels' classes, as well, a couple hundred of us making not one sound as we sat ourselves at the long brown fold-down tables and joined the line for milk, juice, and hot foods. The cafeteria staff was puzzled, but as instructed by Mr. M, we didn't let our poker faces slip, and we remained silent throughout our thirty-minute meal. Silent! A school cafeteria filled with ten, eleven, and twelve-year-old kids just a couple hours before their Christmas vacation started: Silent! By the time we were to line up to return to our classrooms again, the lunch ladies had come out from all their work stations to stand in front of us waiting to see how this rare and much-appreciated easy-on-their-ears lunch period would end. We looked to Mr. M for our cue, and when he grinned and nodded, we knew the moment had come. "MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!" we all shouted to the cafeteria staff, and our hardworking lunch ladies laughed as they realized this lovely half-hour of peace and quiet had been our gift to them. It had been Mr. M's idea, of course, but we were so thrilled with ourselves, you'd never have guessed it as we noisily chattered about it on our way back upstairs. This was how you loved people.

Many of us made the trip back to our elementary school to stop in and see him and some other favorites once we started junior high the following year . And some of my former classmates' children are likely being taught by Mr. M now. I sent him a letter my freshman year of college to tell him just how much we had loved him and his classes as kids. Mr. M is still working in our small town school district, and a recent news item in my hometown newspaper brought him to mind and made me want to write to him again, now that I am old enough to articulate why we all remember our time with him back in the 80s so fondly. The letter I send him next week will include a few old and new photos and more than a few memories, one of which will surely be our Christmas '88 silence for the lunch ladies. This was how you touched us. This was how you made us better. This was how you made a difference. This was how you were one of the cool teachers. ♥

In My Heart of Hearts

In July of 2007, I was living with my parents and spending many hours walking. I had quit my job in June and was still a few months away from moving here and being with Mike and all that awaited me in this happier phase of my life. That summer was one I remember as the healthiest I've ever had: I had turned thirty a couple months before and would lose thirty-some pounds by year's end. I had so much time just to think, just to sort, just to go for my long walks around town, just to be. It was a sweet summer and still one of my favorite and most memorable ones. How often as an adult do we get that kind of extended free time and freedom? My bills were paid, I felt truly alive, I enjoyed my days, I had things to look forward to. . . .Life just felt good that summer. I felt good that summer.

One evening after returning to my parents' house from one of my walks--to the thrift shop and back was eight miles, and that was the biggest chunk of most of my treks that summer--I changed into a t-shirt and my beloved "dog bone" pajama pants and sat down at the computer, intending to email Mike before climbing into bed with a book. We wrote back and forth a few times, but I began to feel sick and just strange--sudden backache, my chest felt strange, I just felt strange. I remember mentioning to Mike that I wasn't feeling that great, but I assumed I had just somehow pulled a muscle or something--although how I would have done that during what had been an uneventful day, I had no idea--and before I could write again to sign off or explain, the pain in my chest got so bad I found myself in the bathroom deciding to try a hot shower. Maybe the heat will help. I must have really strained something in my chest. The pain got worse by the second, and the feeling of the water hitting my chest was excruciating. I turned off the water and stood bent over in my parents' blue bathroom for a few moments, trying to think of something else that might help. Maybe if I rub it? Maybe I pulled a muscle and rubbing it will help? Even the lightest touch of even one finger against my chest made me feel that much worse, though. I couldn't believe what I was feeling, and although this is a rather crass way of describing the pain, it was what came to mind at the time, as well: It felt like something was trying to claw its way out of my body from inside my chest.

I was soon doubled-over in my parents' bathroom, still wet from the shower but struggling back into a t-shirt and the pajama pants--skipping bra and underwear and just trying to get covered up because I realized I could very easily pass out from this pain and I didn't want to be found in my altogether. Just bending my legs into the pants and lifting the t-shirt over my head was agony like I had never even imagined. I would try to raise myself back to a fully upright position, and the very act of trying to straighten out my body made my chest feel like something was being pulled taut and about to snap inside of it.   OkaynomorestandingupVal! It was being squeezed tighter and tighter, and by then I couldn't breathe enough to call out to my parents or to make any sound at all--and I finally realized that I must be having a heart attack. And that if it was this bad and I wasn't able to call out for help, that I was likely going to die.

Before my "real" thoughts began, I thought that it was funny that I'd have a heart attack after I'd lost so much weight and adopted such a healthy lifestyle, and I was also glad that I would be found wearing clothes, even if it would be an "Attitude is everything" t-shirt and dog bone pajama pants. And I wished that there were a way to let everyone know what these final few minutes had been like for me. I wished there were a way to tell everyone, "Hey, don't worry about that. It hurt really bad for a few minutes, but that doesn't really matter." Because it didn't. I knew I was dying, and I just thought, "Well, some people get to pass easily, and some people have to experience some pain when they die. I got a heart attack." What I really wished, though, as I braced myself against my parents' sink that night, waiting, was that everyone I loved knew that I loved them. I thought of my parents and my brothers and poor Mike, still sitting there at his computer waiting for that "Sorry-I-left-you-hanging-like-that-I-decided-to-take-a-shower-to-see-if-that-would-help" email that would never come, and I hoped they all knew--really knew--that I loved them. I thought of Old Friend and hoped that when he heard the news that he would remember that I had truly loved him and that we had last parted on good terms. I thought of my niece and nephew and hoped they would grow up remembering somehow that I had loved them. I thought about my friend Sommer and how everyone would be shocked that she and I had both died so young--Som at eighteen and I at thirty--and how stunning it was to me that I was likely going to see her and my grandparents again in just a few seconds?! minutes?! I thought of everyone I loved and had ever loved and even the people I hadn't loved all that much, and I just wished them LOVE. It was all I could think about as the pain twisted inside my chest and now deep inside my back and shoulders too:  I love you, I love you all, I wish you love, it's all about love, I love you, love each other, it's all about love. There were no grudges or hurt feelings, and there was no anger or sadness or regrets or fear. I just wished everyone love. I knew that that was the key to everything and that everything was truly fine.   Just love each other. Love, love, love.

I don't remember what happened between those thoughts and my finding myself crawling from the bathroom into my parents' bedroom where my mom was watching TV, but I was now in front of her on hands and knees saying, "We need to go to the emergency room." She and my dad helped me into the car. . .Dad driving and Mom asking every few seconds, "Vally? Are you okay? Is it any better? Does it feel worse?" I stretched out on my back in their backseat watching the lights flash by in the dark out the windows around and above me. And somehow as I was shuttled to the hospital, I began to feel better. Whatever had been wound so excruciatingly tight in my chest seconds before seemed to be unraveling and becoming lighter. By the time I was answering the ER clerk's medical history questions, I felt fine. Tired but fine. The doctor assigned to me asked a bunch of questions and did whatever tests he did, and someone came in to take blood. An episode of "Jon & Kate Plus 8" was playing on my room's TV. I couldn't reach high enough to turn it off, so I got to hear them fighting [over the best way to store pine cones in the garage?!]. Eventually, the doctor and a nurse explained that I hadn't had a heart attack but instead just heartburn. Heartburn!? A near-near-death experience brought on by my first-ever taste of spicy brown mustard!? Mom and Dad were soon parting the curtains and saying they'd been told they could take me home now. Back into the July night air in my t-shirt and dog bone pants. Soon home and immediately getting in touch with Mike to explain why hours had passed since my last email. Taking the above picture of the Daffy Duck Band-Aid and pajamas that marked my ER visit. Sleeping with my bedroom door open that night so my parents could keep an eye on me. And knowing that something had shifted inside me that night that had nothing to do with stomach acid or muscle fibers.

The heartburn, if that's what it was, has never occurred again. My mom remembers seeing me crawl out of the bathroom toward her and doubts the diagnosis. Whatever it was that July, it brought peace with its pain. At a seminar in my field seven years ago, one of the speakers invited a volunteer to come join her at the microphone and tell us what she believed. That was the only instruction: "Would you please tell us what you believe?" I was awed by the volunteer's bravery as she listed item after item as though she'd known these things about herself forever and had expected to be asked about them. Older now, I myself could list some things off the top of my own head too, but I still don't know how many of them I would want to share with an audience. Something I can share without hesitating, though, is what I learned about love in July 2007: Love is The Most-Powerful. It is What Survives. It is Worth the Effort. It is What Matters Most. It Shows Up in Ways Big and Small. It is What You Can Take With You. It is--if not the entire answer--A Huge Part of the Answer. It is What You Need to Give. It is What You Need to Receive. It is So Much Bigger Than You Think It Is. Love, love, love. This is what I believe, even if it took spicy brown mustard to help me figure it out. 

Pine Needles

One side of my grandparents’ yard was a sloped grove of pine trees. When we were kids, my brothers and I would make elaborate mazes and forts out of the blankets of pine needles beneath the trees, digging and tunneling with our bare hands until the dark soil under them was exposed and we had created enough paths for a good game of chase in the shade. I never thought to take any pictures of our pine needle wonderland, but this favorite picture of Papa and Grandma shows some of the pine trees down the slope behind them.

And thanks to online mapping and its incredible “street view” feature, when I look up my grandparents' old address, I can see a bit of that same view from the opposite perspective, looking up the hill toward their house: The trees and their pine needle carpet and all of it in the shade that made it feel even more magical.

My grandmother died exactly five weeks after my grandfather, over Memorial Day weekend of 2001, and a week or so later, before the property changed hands and the new owners moved into the house, I made one last visit to my grandparents’ house with my then-boyfriend. After giving him an extensive walking tour of the mostly-empty house and yard, I asked him to lock the front door for me. While he did, I sat down on the brick steps of the front porch, breathing in those pine needles one last time, and fumbled around in my overalls’ pockets for a tissue that wasn’t already in wet shreds. Finding none I wiped my face on my his shoulder. “How do I leave?” I choked out. “How do I just leave now?” We never came up with any answer besides the obvious: You just do. You have to, so you do. What’s amazing, we decided that afternoon, isn’t that it ends and you find a way to go on, but instead that two people can love each other enough to create a home so good and so beautiful that their granddaughter would want to show it to one of her friends and tell him all about it.

Today after my run, I walked around my current neighborhood a little and stopped at a yard nearby with its own small patch of pine trees. And for the first time since that final visit to Papa and Grandma's house nine years ago, I bent down to separate a plush carpet of pine needles with my bare hands until a hole appeared. The neighbors, if they notice the hole at all, will likely suspect an animal had been digging there today, but they will never know how much that "animal" wanted to keep burrowing until an elaborate maze had been constructed in their yard. And call out to her brothers that it was ready and we could start the chase now. And laugh and shriek with them over every frantic slippery step that resulted in falling into a pile of pushed-aside pine needles. And look up every now and then, with pine needles and dirt in her hair, to wave to her grandparents as they smile down at her from the living room window.

As Old Friend and I headed toward the car to leave Papa and Grandma's house for the last time that day in 2001, I scooped up a handful of pine needles and a pine cone to keep at home with other treasures. Today before walking away from the neighbors' yard to walk home, I took only pictures. How do I leave? How do I just leave now? You just do. You take what you can and move on.

Mr. Dylan Starts Kindergarten

My nephew, who I still picture as the chubby baby who used to get a kick out of being repeatedly "attacked" by one of my stuffed sheepdog toys while he sat on my bed, giggling and surrounded by piles of my blankets and bed pillows, began kindergarten today. Kindergarten! My heart! My little "Mr. Dylan!" My older brother emailed me a photo of his boarding the bus, and as I looked at it, I joined countless other parents and family members who this week find themselves exclaiming "Kindergarten!? How is that possible!?"
 
Dylan's arrival was especially exciting for me since I'd been afraid I'd miss it: I was scheduled to move out of state soon for my graduate school internship and practicum and thought maybe he'd be late. Instead, he arrived two weeks early, and I, then his only aunt, quickly filled the blog I kept then with nephew-related photos and updates. It was such a happy time.

The day of his birth was only the second time I'd ever seen my older brother cry, was the first time I'd seen a woman so close to labor, was the day I got to see my own "baby" brother (in the ball cap below) become an uncle, and was the happiest I remember my brothers and I ever being for each other. The shot below captures us all in one of our sweetest moments together. It is one of my favorite family photos.

I took tons of pictures after Dylan was born, left the hospital to go back to my parents' house--my parents were now grandparents?!!--with my mom to make cupcakes for my family and for the maternity ward staff while she called family and friends to let them know Dylan had safely arrived, worked in my pink and white garden for a little while--and Dylan, the afternoon of your birth was a gorgeous one--and then went back to the hospital to drop off the cupcakes and visit my nephew and his parents some more. I remember saying to my mom how strange it was that we had all just "met" Dylan and just instantly loved him so much, and she said, "Well, of course," but it was surprising to me, the depth of this new love.

That first night, I gave Dylan his first present from me: A bib I'd ordered ahead of time that read "Aunt Val Loves Me." My older brother and my sister-in-law kept telling everyone, "Let Val hold him. She's moving soon and won't get to see him for awhile." The last time I held little Dylan before I moved for my internship, my mom watched and said, "You're trying to memorize his face," and it made me cry. She was right. And when I saw Dylan again months later, he looked completely different to me: Chubby and bundled up in a snowsuit, and he was shy around me and didn't want me to hold him. That was hard. I loved the little guy and was so tickled to see him again, and he didn't know me at all. In time, we bonded again, though, and he became my "Mr. Dylan!" and since he couldn't pronounce "Aunt Val," I became his "Annie Owl." Everyone would laugh and melt when he'd say that, and I wish no one had ever corrected him.

Today my "Mr. Dylan" started Kindergarten, then, and while I couldn't be there, he was on my mind all day. I hope that when his little "First Day of School" package from me reaches him, it finds him happy and having fun and making new friends. (My mom called while I was typing that line, actually, to report that he did indeed have a fun first day.)   I love you, Mr. Dylan, and even if I live far away and have to be your pen pal, I will remain, forever and always, your "Annie Owl." ♥

Overnight Success

When I was about twelve years old, I was a faithful reader of Tiger Beat, Teen Beat, and Bop magazines, and I remember a number of articles and interviews in them in which the heartthrob-of-the-day, actor or singer or group, would proclaim something along the lines of "Everyone thinks of me/us as an overnight success, but I/we worked hard for this for a really long time, so it doesn't feel that way to me/us!" The "new" sensation would go on to outline the years of fruitless auditions or off-Broadway plays or free concerts performed in their parents' backyards for the neighbors, and I would read these details with such incredible interest. The hours of rehearsals the New Kids on the Block put in, just like the Jackson Five before them! The faith a pre-teen Debbie Gibson had in herself to create a home "recording studio" consisting of a row of tape recorders set up on an ironing board! The perseverance a fifteen-year-old Tiffany showed in doing her first "tour" in shopping malls! The chutzpah of a still-unknown-and-too-broke-to-afford-a-home-phone Michael J. Fox as he negotiated his contract for "Family Ties" from a phone booth outside a fast food chicken place! I devoured these stories. I love them even more this week when finally, a full ten years after graduating from college and four years after finishing grad school, I have been hired to do a job I'm truly proud of, excited about, and eager to begin. I'm not exactly where I want to be yet, but I'm on my way, and closer than I was before. 

It is slowly sinking in that a new stage has begun. Tonight I have flowers spread all around the apartment from a congratulatory arrangement from Mom and Dad. Tuesday will be my last day at my current restaurant job. That evening, Mr. Mike, who has been my friend since college and thus seen me through all my "pretty little rough patches" these past ten years, is going out to dinner with me to celebrate. Soon I start my new job. And I feel strong and optimistic. And I did not give up. There are fresh flowers in the toothbrush holder tonight to prove it. 

Elbs

My grandfather left Italy for America as a child. When he arrived and started school here, he spoke no English. Papa would tell us all about the day the teacher asked him to read aloud in class, and when he came across the abbreviation for the word "pounds," "lbs.," he pronounced it "elbs," and his classmates all started laughing and making fun of him. The other kids nicknamed him "Elbs" and teased him about that the rest of his time in school. Papa had to drop out of school in the eighth grade to go work in the coal mines, but the short time he'd had to put up with the kids' teasing led him to remind me and my brothers, a lifetime later, "You're no better than anybody else. And you're no worse either. You just remember who you are."

I never thought to ask Papa if there had been any kids in school who were truly nice to him and his younger brother when they'd first arrived here, but if I could talk with him about this story today, that's one of the things I'd want to know. And were any of the old-timers we would run into--and whom Papa would stop and talk with--when we "went into town" to buy groceries those summer days I stayed at Papa and Grandma's house people who had once been kids in Papa's class? Were any of his former classmates still alive and residing in the same town at that time? Did he run into them all the time? Was he ever called "Elbs" as an adult? Did some of those kids change as the the times and the neighborhood changed, eventually becoming nicer to my immigrant grandfather and his Italian-speaking family? And had the teacher laughed too? How did his teacher treat Papa and the other immigrant students? Papa would likely shake his head at these questions and say something along the lines of "No matter" or "That's not the point" in response to them. But I am not missing the point--I just can't help but be curious. He wasn't one to hold grudges, but he was one to remember a kindness. I wish I'd delved into his story more, is all.

I am reminded of the "Elbs" story every time I read or write the abbreviation for "pounds," which is pretty often the past couple years as I work toward getting into my goal weight range. To have Papa's "You're no better than anybody else. And you're no worse either. You just remember who you are" come to mind so often is one of his greatest gifts to me. 

To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best. ~ William Thackeray

 My friend Sommer would have turned thirty-one today. Every night as I settle onto my pillow and prepare to sleep, I see her forever-teenage-face reflected in my now-thirty-year-old one. I keep a favorite picture of her framed over my side of the bed, so her giggly smile is always one of the last things I see each day. I have never thought of her as a "guardian angel."  To me, she remains "just" Sommer, "just" my best friend, "just" an awesome soul I have been blessed enough to love, but I am cannot help be comforted by the belief that she somehow still loves me and looks out for me. 

A Rod McKuen poem I found a few months after Sommer died still speaks to me tonight just as it did in the summer of '95:

"...And now I love you
and I live you as well
because of you
I am larger than myself 
I am as big as both of us
I live because I love you"

I would have preferred, of course, to have had a lifetime of "in-person time" together, but some people never have a Sommer in their lives at all, so I try to recognize my blessings as such and to be grateful for them. The older I get, the more often I look at that picture above my bed and find myself thinking, "My gosh! I got to love this giggly and sweet person! I got to be one of her friends! How awesome is that!" It is Sommer's birthday, but as the saying goes, her presence is my present. 

♥