Good Bye, Ol' Buddy

It was the summer of Madi's third birthday.
She was old enough to understand that the big trip to Texas from our little Northern New York home was not for pleasure.
At age one, she had become the youngest person in medical history to have a full spinal fusion.
Age age two, she had become Patient #98 in the VEPTR program.  We had traveled to San Antonio that summer for her first titanium rib installation on her left side.  An 8 hour surgery; 7 days in a post op induced coma; 3 weeks in hospital recovery; 8 weeks at home recovery... and now, we were headed back for installation on her right side.
So... I bribed her with A Puppy.  "When we get back from Texas, I will get you a puppy".
It seemed a small trade for a big ordeal.

One of my dance families at the time had just brought home a small Cairn Terrier from a local breeder.  He didn't shed.  He was cute and Toto loveable.  I spoke with them, got a phone number and made the call.

This is how our Buddy came to be "ours". We brought him home and began the name game.  Madi was determined he would be Bert (as in Ernie and Bert).  I argued that I was NOT standing in our front yard and yelling "BERT" for him to return to our yard.  "Ernie"?  I suggested.  No.  He didn't "look like and Ernie".  She was stuck on the letter "B".  I racked my brain.  "Buddy?"   I asked.  "Buddy!"  She exclaimed.  Buddy he was. 

He was a fluff of fun.  Energetic and a bit on the naughty side.  I had always had dogs, but never a terrier.  I quickly discovered that this terrier took mischief to an all new level.  Digging, biting and destroying were his top three activities.  Just when I thought I simply couldn't deal with him, he would answer Madi's little "Here, Buddy.  Here, Buddy Boy" and belly crawl to her side; oh-so-gently nuzzling her lap and placing his head under her little hand.  His adoring eyes would roll up to her sweet face and... I loved him.  So much.

We were living in our home in Croghan.  Behind our fence was farm field of cows.  Buddy's favorite activity was digging his way under our fence to chase the cows.  I would stand at the fence and futilely yell at him to "COME".  I was terrified that a cow would trample him.  He, however, ran blissfully in and out of their hooves.  I swear, he was smiling.

I would leave him in the yard for a hot minute while I toweled Madi up and took her inside.  When I returned, he would inevitably be paddling around in her little plastic pool, or digging in her sand box, or pulling up my flowers.  Young Buddy was a never ending bundle of energy.

When we moved in with my then-boyfriend, Buddy continued his adventures.  Hunting down woodchucks and engaging them in scary arguments in a new back yard,  hurling himself at the gate as very large dogs lunged back, and causing general mayhem.  Every time I was at my wits end, he would snuggle up to Madi and love on her.... and I would, in turn, love him more.

When we moved again, something in the new house or yard triggered allergies for Buddy.  He lost his hair and became "naked dog".  I tried everything.  Medicines, holistic treatments, baths and more.  He just never became his handsome self again.  Although he could have won Ugly Dog contests, to Madi and I he remained the young stud of a terrier.

Recently, my long term relationship ended and Madi and I moved once more.  In the new home, Buddy flourished.  He got a great deal of hair back.  He was just "happy".  He was 14 in dog years.  Ancient in people years.  He loved to cuddle in his bed and would bark (several times a day and night) for me or Madi to come and cover him up with his favorite flannel blanket.

Towards the end, he would  emit a high pitched whine up to 7 times each night for me to come in and cover him up.  I would run my fingers through his wayward tuft of hair on top of his old man head and pat his soft, silky ears.... often, I would get on my knees and eskimo kiss his wet little nose.  There is just nothing sweeter than an old dog who loves you unconditionally.

Last Thursday, I realized that Buddy's breathing was becoming labored.  Friday morning, we were to be off bright and early for Madi's college auditions 7 hours away.  "No, Buddy" I thought... "not now.  not ever"...
Madi went to bed around 11 pm that night.  By midnight, I called her down to say her good-byes.  We spent the night sitting sentinel by our sweet boy's side.  We told him we loved him.  We told him it was okay to let go.  We told him we would never, ever forget him. 
In the morning, we faced the fact that his level of pain was unbearable for all three of us.  One more time, I swaddled him in his flannel blanket.  I carried him out for one last car ride.  Madi held him tenderly in her arms and we drove in silence to the Veterinarians.  Time and time again, Madi thanked Buddy for being her first Best Friend.  Her best Best Friend.  Every time, little shards of my heart exploded in pain.

He didn't go easy.  When he finally gave in, his ear was cocked to Madi's voice for one more "I love you, Buddy Boy" and his eyes were glued to her face... even though they had long ago lost sight. 

A part of our hearts died that day.  We returned home, packed the car, and headed on our journey to build Madi's future.  A future without her First Best Friend, but one filled with memories of the past and the joy that a tiny terrier named Buddy brought us. 

Lotions and Potions

I want to know who comes up with the names on lotions and potions...
Lotions and Potions...that is what Madi called her special lotions, medicines, bath products from a very young age.  It stuck.
But, take a gander at the labels, all.  "Sunglow Mountain", "Enchanted Destination", "Country Chic", "Peppermint Passion" are all currently housed on my very own bathtub shelf.
Think about shampoo commercials.  Use that product and have instantly beautiful locks.
Wow.
I want a life that works that way.
If I just use the right product, I will feel as if I am standing on a mountain, basking in sun glow.
Just smooth on some lotion, and BOOM, I have reached an Enchanted Destination!
Who needs real sex when you can have Peppermint Passion??

Personally, there I days I think I need anti-labels.  You know... A bath gel that says "Stuck in the sand".  A lotion that says "Too Tired To Think".  A shampoo labeled "Going Gray Today". 
I studied advertising and I understand the lure of labeling.
But, I wonder... would Anti-Labeling take off?
Are we ready for some honesty, for something that is so true it is laughable?
Part of me says, yes.  Yes, we are.
There are many days that I am.

But then, I walk in to my favorite bath product store.  I try the samples.  I see the enticing labels.  I look for coupons, and I buy in to the false promise of the glorious life these products offer.

Hey, why not?

Snowbound Thoughts

I am ten again.  I am sitting atop a large mound of snow... as tall as the Mill it has been pushed next to, with my friend, Renee.
We nibble at the ice stuck to our old mittens and don't mind that our Sears snow pants have long since wet through.  We can't feel our toes or fingers and our cheeks are purple-red with cold.  I am pretty sure our noses are running like faucets, too.
We don't even notice.  We have ESP!  Yes!  We can sit atop our make shift igloo and guess what color the next car traveling down or up Bridge Street will be.  We are ALWAYS right.  Because we peek, of course.  But, in our ten year old hearts, we have special powers.  Not to mention the fact that it is Bridge Street in Croghan, New York on the day of a blizzard.  Maybe, maybe... ten cars top went by all day.
I don't remember what else we talked about or who we talked about.  I clearly recall it being a fabulous, childhood snow day. 
I am thirteen.  My ankles are sore, and again with those numb fingers.  No snow pants now!  I wear my tightest jeans and leg warmers and ear muffs and am, certainly, freezing.  I am skating around and around and around the ice rink behind the old firehall.  Boys are there. Boys I have suddenly decided are "cute".  They play hockey and intentionally hit all of the girls with the puck.  Carefully, of course (until someone loses an eye, hee hee).  When we gals can barely stand and our coldness equals pain, we change our skates for white boots that lace up with fur around the edges (all, without doubt, purchased from the Big N in Lowville), and cross the quiet road to Wishy's.  We order hot chocolates all around, heaped with whipped cream. We sip and gossip about The Boys as our extremities tingle and ache as they welcome the cold.  Without a doubt, The Boys soon follow us.  Eventually, we are playing pool or ping pong in someone's cellar and pizza is ordered from Stump's.
I am sixteen.  I have a new black and white ski suit that I got for Christmas.  Someone's parents have braved the roads and delivered a crew of us to Snow Ridge.  I ride the lift with a handsome strange boy.  On the last lift ride, he holds my hand.... and, my heart along with it.  We swish and swoosh down black diamond trails and I pretend I am not terrified.  But I am.  And not just of the trails.  I have reached a stage in my young adult life where challenge is thrill tinged with terror.  It is a sign of future me.  I never did heed it.
Flash forward to snow days today.  I shovel.  I snow blow.  Once, in a blue moon, I bundle up and take a walk in The White Stuff.  We do not have a friendly relationship anymore.  My daughter's snow existence never went beyond the Snowman building stage, for many reasons... all medical.  We have created a Nice Nest for snow days.  We cook and bake.  We watch Netflix.  She sings and plays piano or the ukelele.  I knit and scrap book and write.  And, I think.
I think about the love/hate relationship I have with the white stuff.  The stuff that keeps me from my dance studio and work.  The stuff that makes my back pain when shoveling.  The stuff that my doxie stands in and looks up at me with a What The F*** look on its little face while peeing.  The stuff that builds up.
But, I think, snow helps me with The Stuff That Builds Up.  It forces me to slow down, sit down, look around, and think.  It makes time for a certain perspective that lacks in my usual busy life. 
It brings back a realm of incredible memories... especially the one when, the first snow fall after my Mom's death, so many people reached out to me.  Mandee and Derek came the night of Christmas in Croghan.  They swaddled 4 year old Madi in her purple snow suit and shielded my heart from the bitter cold.  They held our hands and marched through knee deep snow so that we could behold a little town filled with Christmas love and magic.  That snow culminates in a memory I will always cherish when, the next day, my Dad and Brother and now Sister-in-law all came to my door bundled in their winter clothes.  Madi and I donned ours and, missing one, we all went out to build a snowman.  We rolled our grief in to tight snowman body parts.  We broke twigs and found a carrot.  We wrapped a colorful scarf around our snowman.  We came together to make something we could all touch and see in our most difficult time.
And Madi got to build a snowman.  At 4 years old, this is the stuff that matters.
That snowman melted, much like the noose of grief around my neck.
All these winters later, it is a dull ache... much like the memory of those numb fingers as I sat atop a mammoth snow hill with a child hood friend and practiced the rite of ESP. 
Snowstorms?  Maybe The Big Guy Upstairs knows what he's doing... whether you venture out or build your nest today, embrace the reality that Mother Nature wins... and you might as well, too.

Ch-ch-changes

I have made some quiet changes in a private way in the past four months. Not easy for someone with a very public existence.
"Why is your name changed on Facebook?"
"Why did you delete a universe of friends on social media?"
"Why did your relationship status change?"
Why should I answer?
Old Me would have felt obligated to explain.
New me just doesn't.
Here is the rub... Anyone who says that time passing doesn't signal little explosive bombs in your soul is either lying or secretly dead.
I have an extreme consciousness of time passage. I have expectations for growth and stimulation and hope and a beautiful swirl of color and unicorns and rainbows.
No, really. I do.
This may not make me a realist, but that is certainly not a title I have ever wished to wear.
At the end of each day, I believe we should let our head hit the pillow and ask one simple question-- Was I Happy Today?
Happiness is on its own daily scale. There's going to Disney happy. There's swimming with dolphins happy. There's getting the laundry folded happy. There's holding someone's hand happy.
There's no one died today happy.
There's I didn't kill someone today happy.
You get the idea.
When you start to avoid that pillow moment because you know that you will lie there, wide eyed and, often, teary eyed, because you know that not one of those ️happy descriptions fits your day, you owe it to yourself and to all those around you, to seek change.  This change will be far from easy. It will sting. It will bend, and almost break you. You will be questioned and will question yourself.
All of this is ok. To be expected.
Seeking happiness is not illegal or immoral. There will be many who will make you feel otherwise.
This, I know. I have learned and felt and avoided and absorbed all of The People Who Have Opinions.
Go ahead, have opinions. Share them. Believe the things you hear or make them the things you want to hear. I am done listening.
I know this. I go to bed, lay my head on this pillow, and feel the calm, seeping satisfaction of simplicity and happiness.
In the end, it is all I have ever wanted.

Lasting Impressions

I don't know if others do it.
Or, if they do, if they do it as intently.
If they have been as conscious of the meaning.  The importance.
The lasting impression.

I remember needing to remember at a very young age.
My Great Grandmother and I shared a birth date.  I clearly recall sitting in a green strapped, slightly tarnished lawn chair on our door step and hearing her tell me.  Remember this, darling girl.
So, I did.
So, I do.

When we moved from our ranch style home on Bridge Street, I stayed up all night.  Peering, somewhat anxiously, out my bedroom window.  I was nine.  To this day, I can tell you the shadow the street lamp cast on the hedge outside my window.  I had memorized the number of steps it took from the side of our house to the small hole in that hedge that I used to transport myself to Bonnie's house several times each day.  I knew the slant of the mill roof across the road and memorized the way every piece of furniture fit in my first bedroom.

Before I left for college, I squeezed my eyes shut until the tears and colors of my room swirled together and cemented on the inside of my eyelids.  Surely, when I was homesick, I could squeeze those eyes shut again and be somehow transported to my attic room, where the roses on the curtains I made in 7th grade would dance in the small town breeze and my very large stuffed bear would beckon me for a hug.

Lasting impressions.  Perhaps not the kind you are used to or immediately think of.  Literally, the impressions I have worked so very hard to make last in my brain... my heart... my very being.

The night after my daughter was born, the nurses yelled at me to get some sleep.  How could I?  How could I miss one iota of time when I should be memorizing the curve of her nose, the swirl of her light brown baby curls, the incredible power of her minute fist?  I did not sleep that night.

It was great practice, I suppose, for the nights I sat by her hospital bed and gazed intently at her.  Chest rise and fall, check.  A very lasting impression.

I have a compulsion to remember every moment.  Every detail MUST be of importance, right?  This time is sacred, this day to be embraced.  I acknowledge that it seems extreme, even to me... but I also know that my ability to recall physical details of loved ones gone or relive the most precious times of my life in grand detail is of immense comfort to me.

This is 2015.  When Madi was in Kindergarten, and they would say "The Class of 2015", it was almost comical.  I mean, seriously, that was SO far away.
Now, here we are.
She, a High School Senior.  Me, a mother embedding every sweet second of her "lasts" into my hyper-aware Mama brain.
I find myself hoping for one more Netflix episode of Gilmore Girls with her by my side on the couch just so that I can shore up on the physical moments that make my memories clearer.  How her head rests on my shoulder as she gets tired; how her laugh melds with mine as we watch our favorite show together; how her breathing changes as she drifts to sleep.  I let her sleep on the couch, and lovingly cover her with my favorite blanket.

I wonder if, in a few months, she will find herself standing in her bedroom- bags packed and walls bare as she heads off to college-  squeezing her eyes shut oh so tight and letting the images of this little world embed in to the backs of her eyelids so that, when she needs to, she can bring to life her vision of home.

I hope that she will carry with her the lasting impression of my love.  That she can close her eyes and feel that love, wherever this crazy world may transport her.

Tomorrow, put down your cell phone.  Stop snap chatting or checking facebook.  Forget about YouTube or Vine.  Take part of the day you have been given and see someone.  See something.  Memorize the details and imprint them on your heart.  The lasting impression is a gift you may need someday, all too soon.  Don't throw away the possibility of the memory.

The Sky Is Falling

I clearly remember all the fairy tales and folk tales I heard or read as a child.  They fed my over eager imagination and sparked my unending curiosity.  Jack climbing his beanstalk, Goldilocks and her three bears... but none captured my young imagination more than Henny Penny and that falling sky.
My mom would explain repeatedly that the sky did not really fall.  Nor would it, at any point in the near future.  Yet, there I would stand, firmly planted in ankle deep grass on a hillside and squint upward at the sky, anxiously looking for The Spot that would first crack like a white egg shell, and then spill forth much like the flowing yellow yoke of an egg.  Would the sun burst downward in a ball of fire?  Would the clouds float and then, suddenly, plummet onto me like a blanket of cotton balls that would catch in my nose and throat and make it impossible to catch my breath?  Would the sky be transparent and formless or crash down upon us in a fury of hail and painful wind?
I wondered.  Some days, I still pause to remember that fear and wonder rolled into one ball of clenched nausea in the pit of my stomach.
You see, as adults, we tend to know that clenched fist in the gut all too well.
There have been many, many days when I felt the sky was falling.  Not in the graphic way my five year old self thought... but in the too real way all adults experience.
The day that doctor told me my child would not live past age ten.
The  moment that another doctor walked down a dimly lit hall of a famous NYC hospital to tell us my mother's operation would not contain the evil that is cancer that had settled in her brain.
The days when the bills pile higher than the cash.
The days you smile and buy ice cream because groceries cost too much.
The days when you look at your bright and brilliant offspring and realize that you would give them all the terra firma of this world if not for that damn sky.... tilting, spiraling, suspended just above your head.  Falling.
Henny Penny may have clucked some nonsense, but that Chick had a point.  What if the sky IS falling... a little every day... or in sudden fury... and we are so intent on putting one foot in front of the other on the ground in front of us that we miss it until it is crashing over our heads and filling our ears with a silent gush of soft wind, like the sound made when your head hits the pillow and sleep comes suddenly?
I say, look up.  Squint into the sun, see the fluffy forms of clouds and imagine creatures there, or count the stars in a bright summer night sky.  Catch snow flakes on your tongue or let rain drops splash tears off your face.  I would much rather embrace the falling sky than have head to ground and miss the glory of the fall.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Where do we go from here?
When we are watching our graduates walk across the stage and into a new world.
When we are realizing that Empty Nest Syndrome is real.
When we are laying loved ones to rest.
Where are we going from here?
Trodding on and welcoming the new.  Always has been my way.  Embracing new life challenges and facing whatever is there when I round a new corner.
I've been fairly good at this.
I've lost those I love.
Lost them to life.  Lost them to death.
Lost them to lusts.  Lost them to loves.
Loved til it hurt and hurt those I loved.
I've changed life's path in the blink of an eye and seen this world through rose colored glasses.
I've had those glasses smashed before my eyes and found my path to be wrought with pebbles, stones and large boulders. 
My dog, Buddy, is old now.  Almost 14 years old.  He is blind, he is deaf, his bladder fails him and cries like he is being stuck with a knife if he comes uncovered in his plush bed.
I love this dog.  I will crawl out of bed at 3:00 a.m., feel the slap of cold hardwood on the bottoms of my barefeet and go to the kitchen to pull his cover over his balding doggy ears.  I whisper I love him and give him a pat before I turn out the light and trace the light on the wooden desk with my fingers, count the steps back up to the landing  and fold myself into my waiting bed.
I hope that this is where we go from here.
We go somewhere where a loving voice greets us and soothes us.  Where, no matter our physical ailments, we feel safely wrapped in a warm hug.
Angels, bugles, harps, clouds.  I am not so clear about those.  I am very clear that there will be a new path.  That I will don my rose colored glasses, walk painlessly on pebbled paths, and embrace what waits there. 
See you there, someday.  Wherever there may be.