Could We Start Again, Please

Sweet Stuffed is asleep beside me while I type, for starters.  The vet visited Friday afternoon to treat an overgrown dewclaw, trim the rest of Stuffed's nails, and to shave some of the matted fur that I've been too afraid to handle on my own.  He expertly and most efficiently did all these things but also said that Stuffed, at 19, is experiencing "Old Cat-ness" now and that we should just love him and do our best to take good care of him, especially since Stuffed can no longer take care of himself as well as he used to.  It is harder for him to bend and stretch while cleaning himself, for example, so we need to be the ones to wash his paws and paw-pads.  At this age, he went on, a cat's skin is so thin, it can tear just by scraping up against something, and its bones are so frail, people can literally break a cat by not handling it gently enough.  It is good that Stuffed wears a jingle-bell on his collar, he added, so there's less chance anyone will accidentally turn too fast and step on him.  Stuffed is down to five pounds now too, he said, and when a cat's skin has become as thin and fragile as Stuffed's now is, he explained, it's typically in the next six months that "real problems" begin.  

With "six months" seemingly echoing after the vet left, I spent the rest of Friday afternoon and evening bursting into crying jags, wishing I could go back to the beginning with Stuffed and do it all again.  That Stuffed avoided me the first three hours after the vet-visit was understandable but didn't help.  When he finally re-approached me, slowly walking toward me in bed only to curl up at my side unexpectedly, I started crying yet again.  ('Sweet Stuffed, ♥ no way for him to win with me Friday.)  I knew this was all coming someday, of course, but someday was narrowed down so suddenly.  As Mike pointed out Friday night, yes, Stuffed's old, but he could live five more years; The vet can't predict the future.  I am already suffering some of the loss, though, and am still choking up multiple times a day when I think of all this.  I have heard "six months" before about loved ones and have clearly survived, but there is something about this innocent little soul and the idea that he doesn't know what I know. . . .I already feel gutted by it.  I have already prayed to Sommer and asked her to take care of him after he passes.  I believe in such things, and she was a lifelong cat-lover and cat-rescuer, and if it's possible, I know she will do this for me.  Appear to him even before he passes, please. . . .I want him to be used to you already. . . .Don't let him be scared or lonely for even one second, Sommer, please, I mean this.  The thought that Stuffed could go from the warmth of my arms to hers is the only one really bringing me any peace these past few days.  ♥  I am having a hard time here. 

Ohhhhhh, my heart.  I get so very tired of this loss business, for all of us. 

Aunt Cathy

One of my friend Sommer's aunts died on Thursday, I learned Friday afternoon.  Aunt Cathy used to work at the little café inside our local Walmart store--back in the early 1990s when the hometown Walmart was not a "supercenter" and still had a tiny café near the entrance--and Sommer and I would always stop in to visit her while out running around in high school, gabbing with her between her serving other customers and really gabbing with her on slower evenings when she had more free time. The first of their family reunions that I went to, this sweet lady offered me a chair in her backyard and I sat down only to have it crash and splinter into pieces underneath me.  After various relatives helped me up off the ground, I don't know whom amongst all of us laughed the most.  Even though I had just met some of the family for the very first time, it was almost too funny to be embarrassing.  :)   When Sommer died during our last few months of high school, it was one of Cathy's daughters who was the first family member to come out to my parents' house the day it happened to talk with us, and it became my mom and I who would visit Cathy at Walmart, the three of us catching up on family news and helping each other through those horrible first weeks and months.  I last saw her in 2010--randomly bumping into her a hundred miles from her home, which made it even funnier and sweeter to us.  A huge hug, then, at our last meeting, and more laughter and family news shared before we parted.  My heart has been with her family this weekend, and I send them all so much love.  

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ~ Anais Nin

What a sweet past week!  I returned today from four days of visiting family--mine and Mike's--and had such a great time with everyone:  A late supper out with Mike's mom and sister Friday night, a Thanksgiving-dinner-in-May with my family Sunday, a drive out to my grandparents' cemetery with Mike Monday afternoon, the softball and Little League games of my oldest niece and nephew Monday evening--and both their teams won their games, and my nephew hit a home run that won his game, and seeing his PURE JOY as he ran into his teammates' arms after crossing home plate is one of my all-time favorite Dylan moments.  He was THRILLED, and the coaches let him keep the ball.  My parents, sister-in-law, and I were yelling our heads off in the bleachers, so happy for him--my nephew's first band concert Tuesday morning, what's become a traditonal tea party-ish stop for lemon meringue pie, fresh strawberries, a roll with jam, and tea for me and Mom yesterday afternoon, and a drive out to the cemetery with Dad later to place a bouquet and a photo of my driver's license cake at Sommer's headstone.  I'd been imagining myself doing just that at Som's headstone since before I got my license, so to get to leave my flowers and photo there finally was so sweet, one of those moments when I could look at myself and think, "Ah!  I have grown!  I have made progress!  I really did do something with this past year!"  Last May, I don't know if I would have believed that a year later, I'd be driving to my parents' house--I DROVE us home from my in-laws' Sunday, and I drove to the cemetery--and getting to visit Som's headstone as a licensed driver for the first time too.  Truly:  Progress!  ♥ This entire past five days was full of sweet moments, but finally seeing my simple bouquet and celebration cake at Som's stone just made the trip for me.  Let's hear it for personal growth!  :) 

At the Ripe Old Age of Almost-38

I finally got my driver's license yesterday.  When my best friend died in a car accident in 1995, I don't think my friends or family or I had any inkling that it would scare me away from driving for so very long.  My dear Sommer had been on her way to pick me up for school on March 1st of our senior year of high school when her car went off the road.  The investigators never determined what caused it to happen, and that fact left me uncomfortable in cars at best and terrified in cars at worst, even as a passenger.  

I tried in 2002, when I was 25, to get my license.  My dad taught me to drive, and I spent more than thirty hours in practice that summer, but I failed the test twice--parallel parking mistakes, both times--and wasn't comfortable enough even then, so I didn't bother taking it a third time.  In the summer of 2003, now 26, I tried again.  I renewed my learner's permit and went out to drive with my dad a few more times.  One evening, I didn't navigate a turn properly and almost hit an elderly male driver.  I could have killed this poor man, not to mention my dad and myself.  That was only about ten minutes into that evening's drive, but I turned the car toward home and never went driving with my dad again.  I let my permit expire, and until last fall, that was the end of that.  My parents tried to tell me to "get back on the horse," and my aunt Laurie continued, for the next few months, at least, to ask about my progress, but it would be eleven more years until I would try again.  After awhile, no one asked or mentioned it anymore.  It was just an awkwardly understood subject:  Val Doesn't Drive, It Freaks Her Out.  It was the one aspect of the entire trauma of Som's death that I wasn't able to work through and get past.  

Until yesterday.  ♥

 In 2013, I decided that I was going to get my driver's license before the twentieth anniversary of Sommer's death, which will be March 1st of this year.  I studied for my learners' permit--the written test--again, researched local driving schools and sent one a long email that September to tell my story and see if any of its instructors were up for the challenge of helping me. 

 "Please know," I warned toward the end of that first email, "that I don't get behind the wheel at all without thinking of [Sommer] and imagining her last moments, so this is still a tough road ahead of me."  The founder of the driving school promptly wrote back to say that she would be honored to work with me and that another student of hers with a similar story had just gotten her license, and to please call so we could talk and arrange my first lesson.  But I was still too scared, and I put it off another entire year.  Another entire YEAR, you guys.  Bah!  And then I realized this past summer, now September 2014, and now 37 years old, that the twentieth anniversary of Sommer's death was only six months away and that if I didn't start now, I'd never get my license by then.  And twenty years, it was now clear, was more than long enough to have this particular monkey on back.  In a fit of bravery, I found myself calling Cindy--Just do it, before you chicken out--and before I knew it, we were talking and laughing and had made appointments for my first two lessons.  I quickly renewed my permit yet again, rewarded these small acts of courage with a bouquet of pink roses--the pink roses would become a tradition throughout this process--and hoped and prayed that I could somehow make it happen this time.

My first driving lesson with the wonderful Cindy from the driving school was September 23rd of 2014.  I hadn't told anyone--not my parents, neither of my brothers, none of my friends, not even Mike--that I was attempting to get my license, so no one knew--until yesterday!  ♥--that any of this was happening.  No pressure for me that way--or no additional pressure, I should say, and much less stress.  I met Cindy in a neighborhood store's parking lot (after Mike had "safely" left for work), and she immediately had me sit in the driver's seat.  That alone was sickeningly scary to me.  To anyone walking past us as we sat inside this car in the store parking lot, it was just a student having a lesson with a driving school instructor.  I knew, though, that I was terrified that I was going to die in a car accident during this first lesson and had actually written a goodbye letter to Mike and left it on our dining table for him.  I was that scared.  After reviewing the controls and features of her car, Cindy had me drive around the neighborhood to see how much I'd retained from 2002 and 2003.  "You're doing beautifully," she encouraged me and added that it was clear that I'd retained a lot of what I'd learned with my dad twelve years prior.  "Usually during a first session, the student's veering all over the road and stopping and starting really abruptly and the whole car's bucking and jerking.  You're doing none of that."  As in 2002 and 2003, though, my driving may have looked okay to the people in the car with me, but I myself felt nauseous with fear.  "I feel like I'm going to cry," I confessed, and Cindy asked if I wanted to pull over.  "You won't be the first student who's needed to stop and cry," she reassured me.  I didn't stop and cry right then, though.  I waited until I got home.  :)  And I forced myself out again for a second lesson that same week.  I rewarded myself for those first two lessons with another bouquet of pink roses, and I scheduled another session for October.  

On Halloween, my third time out with Cindy, I drove on the parkway for the first time.  I drove on the parkway!  And drove in rain (and on wet leaves) for the first time.  And through a restaurant drive-through for the first time.  (Cindy wanted a diet Coke.)  :)  And drove through my first roundabout.  All the cars in Cindy's driving school are equipped with accelerator and brakes on the instructor's/passenger's side too, and I think knowing that if I couldn't control the car, the instructor could, is one of the biggest factors in my success at learning to drive this time.  With some of that specific fear finally removed, I was finally able to absorb what I was learning instead of going through the motions while really focused instead on the Oh-my-God-it-will-be-just-like-what-happened-to-Sommer-I'm-going-to-kill-someone-this-is-life-and-death-it-will-happen-again-because-of-me-this-time the way I had been in 2002 and 2003.  "I've got you," Cindy would remind me.  "I'm right here."  When I returned home from that session Halloween afternoon, I wrote in my journal:  "It started raining as I was getting ready to meet Cindy, which added to my anxiety--I was almost nauseous before this lesson--but now I'm glad it was raining because it makes me feel that much braver and that much more accomplished.  Today changed things.  I can picture myself really driving after today.  It's going to happen this time, it really is."  I ended that journal entry by doodling a driver's license cake, 

and it would be a vision I would hold on to, some positive visualization of the celebratory cake I was determined to make the day I finally got my license.  And after this lesson, I treated myself to a small china bowl with pink roses I found at Goodwill, a twist on the pink roses tradition for this turning point in the process.  

In November, I had two more lessons, one being a review of parallel parking and the other my first official highway lesson during which I drove to the airport and back.  Cindy told me then that if I were to take my driver's exam that day, she thought I had a pretty good chance of passing it.  She would still want more time to do a mock driver's exam with me, but this was the first time she had mentioned my being even somewhat ready for the test.  Later that month, I dreamed that my older brother and I were in a car and I was driving us somewhere, and we were laughing and talking while I drove.  This is the first "driving dream" I'd ever had that wasn't a nightmare, and when I woke from it, I realized I wasn't afraid to drive anymore:  That stage of my life had ended.  ♥

 My sixth lesson was December 19th and was, indeed, preparation for the exam.   (Gah!  I'm really doing this!)  And on December 21st, I decided to (be optimistic! and) go ahead and  schedule it.  Unlike in 2002, the Department of Motor Vehicles now has a road test-scheduling feature on their website--no more walking in and taking a number as I had before--so I was soon scheduled to take the exam the morning of January 6th.  I spent Christmas and New Year's sick with dread, although Cindy said I was ready now.  And finally, after four months of "sneaking around" and keeping all this a secret, I told Mike what I'd been up to.  I still didn't want to tell him, but Cindy had said that she was going to pick me up at 6 am--6 am!--the morning of my exam so that we could repeatedly run through the road test route and practice in the DMV's official parallel parking space--it is off-limits during business hours for anyone not taking the exam--before my test, and I couldn't come up with a "story" for why I would be leaving at 6 am, so I finally had to tell him the truth.  On January 3rd, I had my final lesson with Cindy--more test preparation--and I mentioned while we drove around the DMV lot that a storm was supposed to hit in the next few days.  "Ugh!" she groaned, then added, "Do you want to see if they'll just let you take your test today instead?  They might be able to squeeze you in."  I didn't like what I was wearing, though, and I knew that if I passed the test that day, that would be my outfit on my driver's license for the next few years, so I told her I'd wait for January 6th.  And then I laughed as I realized that if that was my reason for not wanting to take the exam, I really was finally ready for it.  :)  The city was hit with snow and ice the night before my exam, though, and in the wee hours of the morning, I texted Cindy to let her know I wanted to reschedule it.  I hadn't driven on snow or ice before, and the idea of doing so for the first time the day of my driver's exam didn't thrill me.  Later that day, I rescheduled my exam for 8:30 am January 27th, and I've spent the past few weeks alternating between nausea and panic and tears as the clock has counted down to Test Time.

 I got absolutely no sleep--not a single second--Monday night.  The city, like much of the northeast, was hit with a mess of snow, and Cindy had told me to let her know by 4:45 am at the latest whether I wanted to cancel or take the test.  All night, I wondered what I would decide.  At 4:02 yesterday morning, I sent her a text message:  "Unless you think the roads are too bad, I will try the test today."  I figured that even if I didn't pass the exam, at least I could consider it a driving-in-snow lesson.  (I had still never driven in snow.)  And Sommer's birthday was last week, and part of me wanted to do it this month for her, as a gift of sorts.  And I was just tired of having this dread hanging over my head since December 21st.  And a defiant damn-it-I'm-going-to-DO-this part of me had begun to burn:  I wanted it.  Wearing a locket with a favorite photo of me and Sommer inside, and carrying Dad's handmade fishing lure in my bag as a good luck charm, since he had been my first driving teacher, I woke Mike at 5:45 yesterday morning to tell him that Cindy was here and I was leaving.  "Hopefully, we'll be having a celebration cake tonight," I told him as we hugged goodbye. 

Although Cindy did not agree with me, the practice before the exam was horrible.  I messed up something every single time I tried to parallel park--and the parallel parking is what had thwarted my first two attempts to pass the test in 2002.  I repeatedly drove the route well, but I only managed to try to parallel park correctly over and over and over again right until 8:24 am when Cindy said I really needed to go inside to check in and start the test.  The man who would be my examiner asked me to sign my name at the check-in desk, and my hand was actually shaking.  Then my arms started shaking.  The examiner tried to joke with me--"That's a nice Irish name," he said sarcastically as he looked at my signature--but I was so nervous and nauseous, I could barely smile at him and was just trying not to cry.  I turned to Cindy and whispered, "Cindy, I'm SHAKING.  Even my ARMS.  What am I going to DO?"  She said I would be fine and tried to distract me by showing me some vacation photos on her phone, but I have rarely been as big of a mess as I was in the moments before the exam began.  I couldn't bring myself to make eye contact with Cindy again as the examiner and I headed outside, but Cindy told him as we walked past, "Val's good.  She is.  She's ready."  Cindy, Cindy, Cindy.  :)  ♥  The examiner walked out to the car with me and said that I could start the car and get situated for a second because he needed to walk down to the lot's parallel parking space to make sure the cones were set up properly and the space wasn't too messy from the snowstorm, since I was the first exam of the day.  While he checked out the space, I got myself sorted out in the car and prayed--and to Sommer specifically--for courage and calm.  I have to do this this time, please help me, I just have to do this, I need to pass this and get on with my life, I need this stage to be over, I need to pass this, please, PLEASE. . . .The examiner returned, and after he was done explaining a few things about the exam, I told him, "I'm almost forty years old, I hate being this nervous!"  He looked stunned and said that he hadn't realized that I was that nervous.  "You hide it really well," he added.  Ha!  (Cindy said later that he told her the same thing about me after the exam, while they were waiting for me to come back inside:  He wouldn't have known that I was nervous at all if I hadn't mentioned it.  To me, it was beyond obvious, but apparently not.)  And then, just like that, just like a switch had been flipped, all my nervousness went away, and I thought, I've got this.   It was like I could see the entire test and day before me--Val passing the exam, Val posing for elated pictures with Cindy after the exam, Val at the grocery store buying ingredients for her celebration cake after the exam--like it had already happened.  I've never felt such a strange and sudden calm. 

I demonstrated all the vehicle controls correctly, the examiner got into the car and asked me to use the horn and windshield wipers for the final part of the vehicle controls section of the exam, and then I backed up--dodging a snowplow driver who was a little too close to our car for comfort--and drove us down to the parallel parking space.  Before putting the car into reverse, I took a second to think through the steps, and then I did it.  I just did it, as smoothly as an expert driver in a driver education video.  I just did it.  I asked the examiner if he wanted me to apply the parking brake "just to be official," and he said no, and then he added, "I actually just want to sit here and savor this a minute because I know I'm not going to see anyone else do as good of a job parallel parking the rest of the day."  ! ! ! ! ! ! !  ♥  I calmly thanked him--although I felt like cheering and giddily clapping my hands--and off we went for the road test part of the exam.  Part of the route was a snowy and somewhat slippery hill, now in even worse shape than when I had practiced on it with Cindy just minutes earlier, but I controlled the car well, and the examiner complimented me on that too.  "As long as YOU know that I've come to a full stop here. . ." I said at two different stop signs, "But I'm going to have to inch forward a bit.  I can't see anything."  As if the examiner didn't understand how to drive and wouldn't have comprehended such amazingly advanced skills.  ;)  But I wanted to make sure that he knew that I knew. . . since he had warned me before the exam that he is a "stickler for stop signs."  "Of course," he replied both times.  "You do whatever you need to do to drive safely, especially in these conditions."  While waiting for traffic to clear at another point so I could make a left turn, another driver flashed his lights to signal that he was letting me go, and when the the examiner saw that, he quietly said, "Oh, NICE."  :)  He was mild-mannered and quiet and the perfect fit for me for the exam.  'Back onto the main road, and thank God, no icy patches on it--just snow and slush.  Before I knew it, I was pulling back into the DMV lot and parking the car.  The  exam was over.  And after twenty years of being terrified of all things driving-related, I was told that I had passed my test and could go inside to get my picture taken for my license.  

On no sleep, in the city, and on my first day ever driving on snow, I got my driver's license.  ♥ 

Click to enlarge.  :) 

 The examiner talked with me for a minute, answered a couple of my driving questions--I asked him what advice he had for me as a new driver--congratulated me, and went back inside to start the next person's exam.  As soon as he left, I got out and went to the back seat for my bag--letting in a bunch of swirling snow when I opened the door--and took a second to reach inside and grab my phone to send a quick text message to Mike.  Without waiting for a response, I zipped up my bag, locked the car, and turned around to see Cindy waiting for me outside the DMV's door.  "Can you BELIEVE it?!"  I cried out, then really started to cry.  "Yes, I CAN!" she replied, and we hugged before I headed over to the counter have my picture taken.  And it is, like most driver's license photos, a hideous picture of me that looks nothing like any of the other pictures taken of me yesterday.  :)  But it's my DRIVER'S LICENSE picture, so how could I complain?!  

 My examiner kindly took a couple pictures of me with Cindy before he began the next person's test,

♥

and when Cindy and I got back into the car, I pulled out a couple thank you gifts I had made for her:  A vintage car-shaped planter with a Hyacinth bulb inside, 

 and a card I'd drawn to look like a license plate.  

On the way home, Cindy said that maybe it was Sommer who had "magically" calmed me down as the exam began, and I have to agree.  She also admitted that while she had believed I would be fine and would pass the exam, she had also been really nervous for me (with my trembling hands and arms) right before it:  "I've been doing this so long, I don't really get nervous anymore when my students take their tests, but I was almost SICK over you!" she told me, and we laughed over her "You make me sick, Val!" for awhile.  After more picture-taking and some goodbye-hugging, Cindy dropped me off, and I soon found myself in the grocery store, just as I'd envisioned, buying ingredients for my celebratory cake--this one is a Hershey's recipe actually named Celebration Chocolate Cake.  I couldn't stop sneaking peaks at my driver's license--"my driver's license," I just wrote!  I have a driver's license!  ♥--as I walked around the store.

Back at the apartment, I immediately called my dad.  ♥  I mentioned his good luck fishing lure, of course.  And I sent messages to my brothers and their wives.  My secret was now out! I answered text messages and phone calls and emails as I baked my cake, crying again as I reread that first message I'd sent to Mike right after the exam.

Oh, life is so sweet some days.  So perfect and down-to-the-last-detail SWEET.  ♥  After all three cake layers were out of the oven, I took an hour-long nap--my first sleep in twenty-nine hours---and woke to a congratulatory phone call from my mom after she'd gotten home from work.  She couldn't believe I'd kept it a secret, and for so long, and that even Mike hadn't known until I scheduled the exam.  She sounded just as shocked by my accomplishment when we said goodbye as she had when we'd said hello.  :)  She doesn't even drive in the snow, so she was really quite stunned by all the story's details.  :)

And finally, after supper last night--Mike ordered an extra-cheese pizza with mushrooms, my favorite--I got to enjoy the cake I'd begun drawing sketches of months before.  Positive visualization at its finest.  ♥  To complete the roses tradition, I used the pink roses tablecloth I'd been saving for this occasion.  And was in bed by 9 pm, for the best sleep I've gotten since before I'd scheduled the exam last month.  :)  Ahhhhh!  I did it!  Six days after Sommer's birthday and with just five weeks remaining before the twenty-year mark of her death, I did it!  Mike and I don't have a car--we can walk or take the bus to everything we need in the city--so for now, the driver's license is more a symbolic gesture and an accomplishment than it is everyday joy rides, but I told Cindy I would continue to schedule sessions with her just to get more/regular driving practice, and sometime this spring or summer, I want to rent a car and drive home to my family for the first time.  One step at a time.  Today, I'm still basking in the accomplishment, marveling at yesterday's sudden serenity, and looking forward to another piece of my cake.  ♥  I did it!  

Chocolate Sommers Day

Today is my friend Sommer's birthday, and in her memory, I've baked a small batch of what she, my mom, and I called "Chocolate Sommers," a cookie Mom used to make that Sommer loved.  Our junior and senior years of high school, Som would come home from school with me in the afternoons and, more often that not, find a sheet of them freshly-baked for her.  "Cool!"  she would shout when she heard that Mom and I had come to jokingly rename the recipe "Chocolate Sommers."  "I've never had a cookie named after me before!"  A box of chocolate cake mix, two eggs, and and 1/3 cup of vegetable oil:  So simple, and yet, such a goofy thrill for her, my friend with the Cheshire Cat grin. 

The photo above captures Sommer exactly as I always picture her, and you get a pretty good idea from it of what opposites we were too.  There I sit shying away from the camera somewhat, knees together, hands clasped, and there's my girl beside me. . ."being Sommer."  Our teachers and students who didn't know us well were always shocked to learn that Sommer and I were best friends.  She would come to class late, if it wasn't a day she'd decided to let herself have off in the first place.  She could change her own tires before most of us her age even knew how to drive.  When she felt a teacher was being unfair to her or others, she practically growled and would defend herself and anyone else who needed it.  She got kicked off the bus her junior year of high school because she had told off the driver who was letting, day after day, a young boy on the bus be bullied.  After days of intervening on the kid's behalf, fighting with the bully harassing him, and trying to get the driver to deal with it, it was Sommer, not the bully, who was told not to ride the bus anymore.  She was positively sputtering by the time she was recounting the story to me on the phone that night, and when I told her I was sorry and that yes, it was unfair and wrong, she replied that she didn't care about having to drive, she was just worried for the poor boy.   (I don't remember how that ended, but I know she raised more hell about it, as was her way, and I'm thinking parents and/or others must have talked with the driver or school personnel.)  Her heart, I always said, was as big as her mouth.  She applied for a much-wanted job in a car repair shop when she was sixteen, and when the owner made it clear that he'd feel better with a man working there instead, she argued with him about the injustice of that.  She had a wall calendar in her bedroom featuring the hunky model Fabio; Mine at the same time was probably Quotes of Comfort or Mary Engelbreit.  She remains the only person I've ever known who could walk into a room and instantly have everyone's attention.  I had always thought that idea was just a kind of writerly way of describing an outgoing person, but then Som and I became friends and I got used to seeing it happen:  She had an energy about her that made people look up, watch, and wait for her words and actions.  She had burgundy-dyed hair when we met.  She was aching to get a tattoo, but her deal with her mom was that she had to wait until she was older if she really wanted one.  "Well!" cried out our senior English teacher when she ran into us in the local mall's Hallmark store one afternoon.  "There's a dangerous duo!"  That still delights me, although now it's more because I was half of this sweet duo and not because someone teasingly deemed me edgy.  She was born just four months before me, and we were close enough in shape and weight to share clothes, but I always thought of her as being the older one and as one of the protective forces in my life.  It was easier making my way through high school as a studious introvert when I had this purple-haired  ball of fire beside me, if only because she paved the way a bit.  I was strong and capable in my own ways, of course, and helped her along, as well, although exactly how we quieter ones do that is never as obvious.  In most of our pictures together, I am positioned off to her side and a bit behind her or am otherwise unconsciously trying to hide myself a bit.  Never Sommer.  She faced the world head-on, she stood up, she stepped forward, she burst out, she led the way.   

A month or so after Som died, I was talking about this attraction of opposites friendship with another girl in our senior class, and she said that she too had always thought it was strange that we were friends.  "But," she concluded, "You could always make each other laugh.  You guys got each other hysterical."  Yes.  It breaks my heart to have to say that while I remember her speaking voice, nineteen years since I last heard it, I no longer remember the sound of her laughter.  I pause as I type that because it hurts so much.  If you woke my mom in the middle of the night and asked her what she remembered about our friendship or the time we all shared with Sommer, she'd likely instantly respond, "They were always laughing together."  One day after school, Som and I stopped at Wal-Mart and were looking at hats--I lived in hats and baseball caps in high school, so funny the phases we go through--and my mom, who had stopped there on her way home from work, heard us laughing long before she saw us.  She just followed the sound of our laughter until she found us in the store.  In one of the sweestest dreams Mom had soon after Som died, Sommer came over to the house and ran upstairs to my room and shut the door and Mom stood at the bottom of the stairs in shock saying to my dad "How can she be here, Gene?  She died!" and listening to us as we laughed together again.  " I couldn't make out anything you were saying," she told me later, "I just heard you both laughing."  The few precious dreams I've had since she died in which we're laughing at something together are amongst my own favorites.  In one, she and I were back in our junior year American history class and our teacher's lesson for the day was depressing in that it seemed to be a recitation of sad and sobering things that had occurred in the nation over the years.  After he had mentioned the umpeenth war or famine or other historical crisis, a classmate muttered, "Didn't anything good ever happen in history?!"  And Sommer, ever the smart alec, replied, "Yeah!  I was born!"  As we all giggled, I teased back, "What about me?!" and Som quickly said, "Yeah!  Val was born too!"  Nightmares and sad dreams of her death plagued me for years, but that silly dream made up for more than a few of the rough nights.  "I was born!"  Indeed, she was, my sweet girl, and oh my goodness, am I the better for it.  I would have preferred a lifetime of sharing that laughter and not just the couple years we were blessed with, but I'm old enough now to know that not everyone gets a Sommer in their life at all.  That she had to go on ahead of me, almost seems now like it should have been expected.  I have to follow her, it has been decided by something bigger than us, as I always did, combining the best of her with the best of myself as I make my way through the world that she's already finished with, and I look forward to our hug and laughter-filled reunion.  As ever, she makes it easier for me by having bounded ahead and paved the way.  

I'll catch up to her someday.  In the meantime, life goes on, and I continue to try to live mine with as much kindness and enthusiasm as I can.  It is milk with Chocolate Sommers for dessert tonight here, in honor of my mischievous and colorful friend.  She would be touched by this but would laugh, as Mike and I did this morning, over these cookies that look like they were frosted by someone who'd never decorated a cookie before.  :)  Turquoise and peach were her favorite colors--she was not a pink gingham, patchwork, and roses kind of girl, of course not, no--so that partially explains the odd frosting.  Being in too much of a hurry to let them cool before frosting them is the rest of my excuse.  Ah, well!  A heart-shaped cookie and glass-of-milk toast now for my friend.  She would be thrilled to know that Chocolate Sommers are still being baked and that she continues, in this way and others, to make life sweeter.  

I say to myself that I shall try to make my life like an open fireplace, so that people may be warmed and cheered by it and so go out themselves to warm and cheer. ~ George Matthew Adams

Christmas Eve!  My favorite day of the whole year.  ♥  It's our first Christmas with the mantel, and while the new-old (vintage, from eBay a couple months ago) tree turned out a bit busier-looking than the one I'd had in mind--I'd wanted just a string of little clip-on candle lights, gingerbread men, and pink hearts, simple and pink and sweet--it all came together.  I took some time a few weeks ago to re-sew my pink gingham stocking since it had never been really stocking-shaped and its size hadn't matched Mike's Yankees one.  'Better now.  'Had to boost the supposed-to-be-five-feet-tall tree up onto a tray table to make it taller than the mantel.  Then had to secure the tree to the table with a ten-pound weight so it would stop pitching forward.  And most of the time, the lowest branches are covered with grocery store bags because a certain four-legged someone keeps trying to chew them.  It's always something with our Christmas trees--the last two years saw our old one tethered to the wall with a bungee cord--but again, it came together. 

That's the still-unfinished wing chair in the foreground.  I stopped working on it this fall so my money would go toward Christmas and not toward fabric and upholstery trims for awhile, but soon, I'll start it again.  When it's done, it will be sitting where the tree is now.  ♥  When I first decorated the tree and mantel, I added the little wreath (below) between our stockings, but I took it down last night.  It seems too busy with it up.  A string of heart-shaped lights is still on my list for the mantel, but that didn't happen in time for Christmas.  And now that I look at these pictures, I see that the little "love" sign inside the wreath would likely be perfect on its own between the stockings. The little Garfield under the tree is actually Stuffed's stocking.  Garfield is holding a tiny stocking labeled "Stuff it!" and we fill it with cat treats and/or a toy.  This year, a toy.  (My mom sent him a little pouch of treats.)  ♥ 

And the faux fire is one I painted a few weeks ago.  I had been meaning to do this for awhile, and finally, on a day off, I set up bowls of acrylic paints, gold glitter nail polish left over from a Pirates game, brushes, and a big square of oilcloth cut from the roll I'd used for the cupboards, turned on About a Boy to play in the background while I painted, and began building a fire. 

I used two thumbtacks to hang it inside the mantel.  I might prefer the way the painting looked about six photos into the project--a much simpler log fire at that point--but I'm not sure.  It will do for this year. 

The angel that serves as our tree-topper was a gift from my best friend Sommer's mom eighteen years ago toward the end of my first semester of college.  The flowers that had been in its arms were getting droopy, so this Christmas, it's holding a big heart instead. This angel touches me even more now than when I first received it.  Betty had sent it to my dorm address along with a note and another little gift in a prettily-decorated shoebox.  That was around/right before Christmas 1995, about nine months after Sommer had died.  The Christmas before that, Christmas 1994, Sommer was alive and well--she would die in a car accident a few months later--and it was actually a joke between us that everyone was giving me angel-related gifts that year.  That Christmas, I received a cassette tape of "music of the angels" from my aunt Laurie, an angel poster from my parents, angel ornaments, angel figurines, etc. and Sommer and I laughed between ourselves about it because angels actually scared me--or at least, they kind of freaked me out a bit.  They always look like they're standing (or floating) stock-still, they usually appear expressionless and neither male nor female,  something about their wings. . . .They just creeped me out.  No one else knew that, I guess, so it was angel-after-angel that Christmas, but it was strange to receive sooooooo many and from soooooo many different people all during one holiday.  Over Christmas vacation from high school that year, surrounded in my bedroom by all these angel gifts, I made myself a mix tape.  For reasons I didn't even understand, I labeled one side of the tape "Songs to Comfort Me" and made an instrumental piece from my new "music of the angels" gift the first song on it.  Nine weeks later, Sommer died--and that tape was the only music I listened to those first couple months, and the angels all suddenly made sense, like they were part of a small army that had been sent ahead of time to help lift me up.  (In a way, of course, that only made all these angels even stranger and more mysterious to me, but a good-strange and a comforting-mysterious now, at least.)  Betty didn't know any of that when she made me my "Sommer angel" later that year, though, which made it all the more meaningful.  ♥ 

 Mike's Spider-Man holds the tiny sign my friend Madai sent years ago.  Love is all around. 

'Now off to bake sugar cookies for today, peanut butter fudge for tonight, cinnamon rolls for tomorrow, and to re-do my to-do list one last time pre-holiday.  And to call my parents.  ♥  I love imagining what everyone's up to today, and images of you guys and my other loved ones keep coming to mind.  Merry Christmas to you all.  ♥

Beginning to Look Like a Chair

The wing chair is certainly looking more chair-like, but after three weeks of choosing needle and thread over long walks, I'm likely looking overstuffed too.  :)  Now that I've finished the patchwork part of the chair, I'll head back outside.  Around 5 a.m. this morning, after a long night working on this and determined to make it my last night of making patches, I finished the patchwork on the chair.  ♥

On a roll, I decided to keep going and cover the chair's [wings? I assume] and the strip under its cushion in the pink rosebud fabric I'd set aside.  And Stuffed, who had been barricaded from "his" chair most of the month, promptly jumped up and settled in for a nap as soon as I'd removed the last straight pin.  

I'm taking a break for a couple days while I plan out the rest of the fabric and rest my hot-glue-blistered fingertips.  The moment I added the rosebud fabric at either side, the chair looked like a true chair again and not so much like a wing chair I was in the process of maybe destroying by adding handmade patches to its back-rest.  'A bit of a relief, that moment.  I've never done this before, this revamping of a whole chair.  Cotton batting!  Needles!  Threads!  Upholstery trim!  Hot glue!  Limited lengths of vintage fabric pieces that really had to be measured-twice-cut-once. 

I'm beyond pleased.  Maybe I can someday sell chairs and couches redone this way, I was telling Mike the other day.  I could get a vendor spot at the flea market with my furniture pieces and maybe some pillows. . . .  I had already drafted a few versions of future business cards in my head when Mike snorted, "Yeah.  Just see if you can finish one chair first."  My mom and I have had an in-joke since first seeing Dirty Dancing ages ago that we break out in moments like this.  When lead dancer Johnny excitedly tells Neil Kellerman his ideas on how to "shake things up a bit" with the final show's choreography, Neil obnoxiously cuts him off as he begins to dance and says, "Woah, boy!  'Way over your head here."  Mom and I have adapted that to "Woah, girl!" and we say it to each other whenever one of us tells the other of her latest plans.  My business cards were definitely a "Woah, girl!" moment, but if I saw this chair at a flea market, I'd want it, so maybe someday. . . .It is always sweet to experience these moments that make you fantasize a bit and see a maybe-different-maybe-someday vision of yourself and of your life. 

Almost every--if not every--patch here has some personal significance, which makes it all the sweeter.

My grandparents' old chenille piece and one of their quilt-top pillow tops, hankies from friends and family, a scrap of fabric from chairs I'd sat on in my first apartment kitchen with Old Friend, curtains from my former room at my parents' house, a bandana Mom found me for my birthday a few years ago. . . .The three roses in the tiny square patch at upper-right below were attached to a cross pendant my friend Sommer gave me for Christmas our last Christmas together.  I saved the cross, of course, but decided to add "her" roses to the chair, so now my Som is there too.  ♥

The heart I made for the patch below reminded me more and more of my beloved Holly Hobbie as I worked on it, adding the rose, the stitches, and the orange trim above it, which reminded me of my dad, who still laughs at the fact that as a kid, I pronounced Holly Hobbie, "Hobbly Hobbly."  He still calls her that.  :)  I've found Holly Hobbie fabric to use elsewhere on the chair, and I'm sure a "Hobbly Hobbly" joke will be made by Dad when he sees it. 

Since most of my Old English Sheepdog things are still packed away at my parents' house, I didn't have any of my stash here to cut up for a patch, so I decided to try to make one.  The sheepdog below is okaaaaaay.  I did my best and gave it some grass and flowers to stand on, and I just said, "That's good enough" and moved on.  This has been a sweet project, but I'm also tired of it.  Have I mentioned I don't really even like to sew?!  The things we do for our visions.  :)  The white-striped dotted Swiss patch to the dog's right is one of the curtain-pieces.  The pink-dotted piece is the chair-scrap, and eagle-eyed blog readers will also recognize it as the fabric I used to frame my "Home Sweet Apartment" needlepoint. 

The coral-ey daisy patch and the one of the girl playing with her cat below are two of the only patches from the salvaged quilt-top I saved that I ended up using, after all.  Most of the girl-with-her-cat patch is covered by the seat cushion, but it was too dear not to use.  It is pretty threadbare and maybe wouldn't have survived being cut out and re-attached someplace else, so it's fine where it is.  The pink chenille at left was my grandparents'.  Gah!  I love this chair!  ♥

I also represented Stuffed with the heart-patch below made of the green dotted Swiss fabric I used way back in June 2007, before I'd even first met him, to make him his cat-shaped toy we've come to call "Girl Cat."  I paid a visit to Mike that summer bearing a backpack filled with homemade apple pie, peanut butter and chocolate birthday cake, and the cat toy for Stuffed.  A tiny green dotted heart now to remind me of it all.  ♥

The boy-on-the-beach/no-fishing patch above is one of the only other original quilt squares I saved from the old quilt-top I used as a grid for this.  Like the girl-with-cat square, it is threadbare and fragile, but we'll love it as along as it lasts.  It is too special not to save. 

Stuffed is content just to have access to his chair again.  And now I'll join him in it for a bit of rest.  ♥