No one can stop you but you

As found here. 

Pressure has stepped up at work, blah blah blah. More hectic than before, blah blah blah.

In the meantime, my children are suddenly both giants (Viva wears a size 9.5 women's shoe, Lord help us) and I don't know how that happened. I am trying to keep up with everything they're up to, in between making dinner and doing laundry. Sweet Dub is working nights right now on two different freelance gigs. Evenings are exhausting, just so much to do. I love my kids and realize how quickly the time is passing so I am trying my damnedest to be present -- to hear about their days, to know who is friends with who, check on the homework, know what field trips and food drives and music recitals are coming up, harass them into the shower after dinner, harass them out of the shower when bedtime is already past, open their bedroom door and shush them well after lights out. Let's not even get into the Sunday night hair marathon. My kids have so much hair. It needs conditioning and detangling and braiding or twisting up. It is not a low-maintenance blessing.

Well, and so, writing, you know? Not so much.

Right before Sweet Dub got the second night gig, he and I had come up with a new concept for a joint website to launch in the new year. We have not had time to work on it. I am hoping -- no, I mean to say I am PLANNING. INTENDING. to carve out time during the week between Christmas and New Year's to get it together. It must be done, else the time will keep unraveling away and we will be in the same spot. 

Time to get it done! 

Image found (where else?) on Pinterest.

All In

So life has sped up, as it often does once the summer break from school ends and the new school year begins. Our day-to-day life is more hectic, and we all seem to feel a bit frazzled and disconnected. Added to that, here in greater Los Angeles we are experiencing a heat wave, so our apartment radiates with the heat of one thousand suns.

Last night when I came home, Ceeya was wandering about in nothing but her underpants and Sweet Dub was lolling about in an armchair with an ice pack on his head. (We don't have air conditioning.)

"Everybody get themselves together," I said. "We are out of here in five minutes!"

And we went and picked up sandwiches and trekked out to the beach for a picnic dinner on the sand. The surf was really high, waves were crashing fantastically against the shore, the kids leaped about shrieking and laughing, and Sweet Dub and I sat on the blanket and breathed in the air and leaned into each other in quiet (and cool!) contentment. We watched the sunset. We watched our babies:

And then today I read this, and I loved it. It just reinforced how such simple things are so important and can help keep it all in perspective.

  

Because at some point in life the going in gets harder and so now, while you can, go in the water. …Go in before the going in feels impossible.

And this is a perfect reminder for me right now.

Throwing Down Some Wisdom

Yesterday after work I was sitting next to Viva on the couch. Out of nowhere and with no prompting whatsoever she turned to me and said, "You know, Mom? I think we're RICH."

"We ARE rich," I said. "Rich in love."

"No, I don't mean like that," she said. "I mean rich because we have our whole family and we're all together."

(Had I been at my snottiest, I would have said, "Same thing." I am so annoying. I am so glad I did not do that. Yay, me!)

"That is really nice that you feel that way," I said. "You are right, we are so lucky to have each other. I feel grateful every day."

And I do. Much as I may complain about things, at the end of the day I am happy. What more can you ask than that?

P.S. Also, super pleased that she is aware that she is in an unusual position and doesn't take her blessings for granted. She is happy - not in a simple-minded, Pollyannaish sort of way, but in a "I've checked it out and I gotta say, I got it pretty dang good" kind of way.  I like that she doesn't define richness by having things, but by having close relationships with people who love her. Oh, my girl. She just captures my heart afresh, that one.

How Others See You

Recently, we were playing this game at the dinner table. It's a fun game, can be thought-provoking, and the answers may surprise you. 

One of the questions was (and I paraphrase): "What is a quality that one of the people at this table has, that you wish you had?"

Viva looked at me and said:  "I wish I were more like you in not being afraid of so many different things. I mean, you're not afraid of anything!"

I was stunned. I said, "You mean you think I'm BRAVE?"

"Yeah, you are," she said.

Wow. That might be one of the greatest things anyone has ever said about me.

What do you think your loved ones might say about you? Ask them. You might be surprised.

Best of Intentions

A close member of our extended family is in the midst of a scary health issue which, at their request, we have been keeping hush-hush. All of us adults have been taking turns going to the doctor with this person, as this person is now in week five of treatment. Sweet Dub, since he has the most flexible schedule, has been taking up a lot of these duties -- which means I am single parenting it more than usual, which means I have even less time to do my fun things I like, i.e. blogging and such like.

Best of intentions, terrible implementation.

Hopeful that things will smooth out soon.

Scattershot

So many things to say, so many things I can't share.

It's a dilemma. So here are some random things.

Can I be boring and tell you how in love I am with Lupita Nyong'o? It just feels like I am jumping on an already over-populated bandwagon. But, oh, hell -- here I am, plopped right in here, trundling along with the mainstream media. I predict a huge uptick in the popularity of the name "Lupita"among babies in the years to come. Yeah? 

Today is National Day of Unplugging! ....Oops. Oh, I guess you are supposed to be unplugged from electronics from sundown tonight until sundown tomorrow. Unfortunately that is not going to work as we have some serious family medical shit going down right now (see above re: can't share). Blah Blah Fail.

In related news, we have undertaken the task of getting Viva a cell phone for her eleventh birthday, which fast approacheth.  She will be graduating from elementary school in May and moving on to middle school in August. I want her to have a way to keep in touch with her old friends since she will be switching school districts and it is highly unlikely any of her friends will be at her new school. I also want to have a way to contact her because I anticipate a variety of after-school activities and needing to pick her up hither and yon. We plan to have a talk with her about our expectations for her usage and care of the phone and to provide her with something along these lines as reinforcement. 

Wow, do people have a lot of opinions on whether YOUR kid should have a phone. Sweet Dub and I are both rather sensible most of the time. I said, most of the time. And Viva is fairly mature and responsible most of the time. I said, most of the time. I am aware that she may abuse her privilege of having a phone. And she will be aware that she will be in Huge Unspeakable Trouble should she abuse the privilege. There will be consequences, and then we will move on. 

Have I mentioned how much I adore Viva? Perhaps not lately. (I mean perhaps I haven't mentioned it lately, not that I don't adore her lately.) I love this age. She is fun to be around, and we have long talks and just enjoy hanging out with each other. I will always love her, but I also really *like* her as a person because she is so thoughtful and funny and insightful. 

Oh, and to head off any friction in the event her sister reads this someday: yes, I also love Ceeya. How can there be any doubt?? 

And finally: I think the laundry hampers in our apartment are being filled by fiendish elves while we are out. Why is there so much laundry, always? What is to be gained?

Happy weekend. Peace out.

A Hot Mess

Big sigh. This hair issue has gone from bad to worse.

My sister-in-law wanted to make Viva an appointment to get her hair done this Saturday so she would be set for Thanksgiving. I responded that Viva doesn't want to get her hair pressed again, so I wanted to make sure the other stylist, who doesn't press hair but does "braids" (i.e. cornrows) was available.

"I thought Viva doesn't want braids, she said they made her hair hurt," Diva said.

"She doesn't want cornrows, she wants individual braids," I said.

"Well, that takes forever and that is really expensive," Diva said. And then she fixed her mouth to tell me that she was through with my child, that she didn't even know what she wanted to do with her hair, that she was trying to do something nice and that before she started doing this, Viva's hair looked a hot mess and she never ever saw her even look in a mirror and that she just can't be doing this etc., etc. and by the way YOU'RE WELCOME.

I remained calm (although WHAT THE F? You are THROUGH with my child? My child, who you just said looks A HOT MESS?! And then you are going to imply that I am ungrateful?) and said (as I had already said multiple times) thank you for doing this for Viva, but since it's not what she wants, it doesn't make sense to keep doing it, so why spend that money and time.

And then I prevented myself from having some kind of cardiac infarction, wished her a safe trip for Thanksgiving, and as I was saying it, realized she had already hung up on me.

Happy frickin' holidays. If you took my blood pressure right now I think it would be off the frickin' charts.

Ceeya Cinco

Today, my beloved Ceeya turns five! Here she is, enjoying a birthday chocolate muffin before school this morning. 

I can't even describe how much Ceeya has changed our lives, and (warning, cliche) how much richer our family is for having her in it. We were not lonely before as three, but now I wonder what we did with only one child. I can see how some people keep trying for just one more kid. I don't see how they afford it, but I get it. Each kid seems to magnify the love in the house. It doesn't seem possible, but love just magically expands.

Sweet Dub and I joke about Ceeya being our Unexpected Journey, and it has been one wild and crazy journey that has taught us so much about each other and about ourselves. She is so amazing and lovely and needed in our family. How I worried that she might be overshadowed by Viva! It seems silly now, since she is such a big personality, but Viva is a tough act to follow.

I need not have worried. My little busy bee is no shrinking violet.

 

Can't wait to see what comes next. Happy Birthday, my babygirl!

One of the Greats

Today is the ninth anniversary of my grandfather’s death.

Reggie was my mother’s father, but he was more than a grandfather to me. I am not sure quite how to describe our relationship: if I say he was my second father, it sounds disrespectful to my stepfather, but in all honesty he was the most consistent father relationship I had in my life. My mother separated from my biological father, George, when I was only 11 months old, and he had very little to do with me or my sister from then on.

But Reggie is a big part of my memory bank. My mother was quite young when she married and had children; she was only 22, with two kids, when she left my dad. We moved in with my grandparents for a while, a pattern which continued throughout my life. I honestly can’t remember how many times we moved in and out of their house, but the precedent was so firmly established that after one particularly nasty fight with my stepfather when I was away at college, my sister moved in with my grandparents permanently. At any rate, even when we weren’t living there, we were at my grandparents’ house every weekend. It was clean, and quiet, and the fridge was full, and hugs were plentiful.

I remember helping Reggie rake leaves, shovel snow, wash the car. He made snowmen with us in the backyard. He took us around the neighborhood and hovered at the ends of driveways while we trick or treated. He taught me how to ride a bike. He taught me how to drive a car. He insisted we go to summer camp. He paid for braces, and bikes, and ice skates, and God knows how many other things. When he peeled an orange, he would peel it in one glorious long peel and then cut teeth into it with a paring knife. He would then put the orange teeth into his mouth, bare his teeth in a horrible grin and chase us shrieking through the house. 

He was very reserved but then would turn unexpectedly goofy; he liked to joke a lot. While he was nowhere near as demonstrative as my grandmother, who was very loud in her loving of us, we never held back with him. My sister and I would fling ourselves at him and squeeze him with our skinny little arms and screech how much we loved him until he finally said, “Ditto,” laughing almost bashfully at letting us pull it out of him.

Reggie was the grandson of slaves, and impressed upon me early the importance of education and of getting good grades, of working hard and doing the right thing. He graduated from college during the Depression, and recounted how there were no jobs back then, especially if you were a black man. He went back to school and got a Master’s in Education because he wanted to be a teacher. He served in the Navy in World War II, and as a light-skinned black man was accidentally assigned to a white unit. In retelling the story, he said he believed they thought he was Italian, but as the military was still segregated, as soon as it was discovered he was summarily reassigned to the “Negro” unit. As he described it, it was a humiliating experience.

He met my grandmother on shore leave in Virginia in 1944. She said he was “soooooooooooo handsome” she couldn’t even understand why he was talking to her (which is ridiculous, because she was gorgeous). “In that uniform, oh! He was soooooooo handsome,” and of course he was. (Throughout my childhood, he was always beautifully groomed and dapper, even in his pajamas.) They were married in 1945 and settled in his hometown, Boston; and welcomed their first and only child, Cynthia, in 1947. He worked for the government for 40 years, retiring at 70.

He had very high expectations of me and would examine each report card with care. He was always trying to teach me something, and those lessons stuck, but I would say the greatest lesson was his example. He was hard working and thrifty, and he took care of everything he loved. He was fiercely proud of his lawn – having not been able to afford a house until he was in his 50s, he was extremely house proud. He was financially savvy but cautious. He did not live beyond his means, he chose his words and his friends carefully, and he always put family first. 

When he was alive, life made sense. And after he passed, the family was flung into chaos. All along, I believed my grandmother was the rock, the hub around which we all revolved – but after Reggie died, I realized that the hub was the two of them working in tandem, as a team. She was devastated when he died – we had to take her to the funeral in a wheelchair, she was that overcome – and honestly never recovered.

I really miss him today. I’ve had a lump in my throat all day. I hope he and my grandma are together, cracking jokes and sitting comfortably side by side, reading the paper or watching baseball. I hope he occasionally peeks down here and smiles at what he sees.

Some of us have great runways already built for us. If you have one, take off! But if you don’t have one, realize it is your responsibility to grab a shovel and build one for yourself and for those who will follow after you.
- Amelia Earhart

Cuatro

Four years ago, this:

And today, this:

 

My baby is four years old! What the Doc McStuffins?? I can hardly believe it.

 

Before Ceeya was born, I worried whether I would be able to love another child as much as I loved Viva. Ceeya just tromped on in and claimed her space in my heart with absolute certainty that that spot was hers. She is super intelligent, hilariously funny, incredibly stubborn and heart-rendingly sweet. She is my roll dog -- anywhere I am going, she wants to go along for the ride. She has made our family all the richer for being in it and I adore her.

 

Happy Birthday, my little pumpkin. You make Mama proud!

 

 

Heartsick

After a long couple of weeks during which the family has experienced more heartache and stress and back and forth from hospital to convalescent home to a different hospital (see here and here), Sweet Dub's stepmother elected today to take Dub Senior off of life support. She signed the papers and then she left.

This is not something I could ever imagine doing if it were my husband lying there, but then you never know what you would do in a specific situation unless you're actually in it, so I guess I can't judge.

Since Sweet Dub doesn't want his father to die alone, he is driving down to the hospital now to sit with his dad and hold his hand and talk to him, and hopefully his dad will be able to hear him or at least sense that someone who loves him is there with him. 

I have already taken three days off over the past couple of weeks and I know I will have to take more after Dub Senior passes on, so as ridiculous as this sounds, I have to stay in the office (I also have to go pick up the kids, let's not forget about them).

I just feel sick.

End of Summer

Testing to see if I can add photos from my iPhone using BlogPress. These are some of my favorite shots from the summer of 2012:


Viva, of the ever-glowing skin.



This seems to be Ceeya's default pose.



Me and my sweetie.



Classic SoCal life station shot.

About to hit "post" -- here goes....

Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Smudge it!

Sweet Dub's dad has been moved to an extremely and utterly depressing convalescent home to, I suppose, convalesce. However, he is still pretty much almost completely paralyzed (limited movement in his right arm, and he can move his head from side to side but not turn his head all the way).

Things don't look good. In an ideal situation, he would have all the top experts monitoring his care and even if he were in a home such as this, it would be sparkling clean and quiet, with a view overlooking a transquil pond with duckies, and the entire facility would smell like gingerbread.

That is SO not the case here.

In one of my not so nice moments, I said to Sweet Dub, "Well, this is really all his fault anyway."

"What do you mean?" Sweet Dub said.

"He should have known better than to get sick while he was poor and black," I said. "I mean, what was he thinking?"

Sarcasm as a coping mechanism. Sometimes the ugliness just bubbles out.

Today, my office-mate brought me some dried sage so I can go home and cleanse the BlahBlahs of all the bad juju by burning it. I am seriously going to do it.

Not Feeling Perkier

 

Are you familiar with this book? Felix stays up late and eats way too many chocolate Blimpies and in the morning he doesn't feel so hot. His mom gives him some sugared prunes to perk him up and, well:

 

"Not feeling perkier," says Felix.

 

Unfortunately, given my recent sad sack post and despite all the positive thinking I can muster, I too am not feeling perkier. Sweet Dub's father was rushed to the hospital last week, and it appears that he has suffered multiple mini-strokes over the past couple of weeks. He is almost completely paralyzed, including his esophagus, so he is unable to swallow.  He can't eat or drink, but he is horribly thirsty and dry-mouthed. Over the weekend it appeared this function was returning, so family members were providing him with water on a swab, and ice chips. Unfortunately it appears that due to the paralysis, when he "swallows," it's going straight into his lungs. So now he has fluid in his lungs and today Sweet Dub was told he can't take any food or drink by mouth ever. As in, the rest of his life.

 

As with most medical issues there is way more than I can go into here, but the end result is, after five days in the hospital things are not looking good.

 

Sweet Dub is not close to his father. Had I written about Dub Senior a few years ago, I might have nicknamed him Not-So-Sweet Dub, since they share the same name, but today that seems like kicking him while he is down, and I do have some standards, after all. But Dub Senior has not been very nice to people over the past couple of decades or so, and now that he is sick, it is difficult to rally people around him. Sweet Dub is calling on all his memories of his younger days, when his dad actually was sweet to him (oh those hazy childhood days when your parents were wonderful), to help keep him centered and to do the right thing.

 

That is what is uppermost in both our minds:  to do the right thing. But it's complicated and these are uncharted, ethically murky waters. He is not in any pain, but he can't eat or drink. The doctor says he wants to perform surgery to insert a feeding tube. We suspect this is because they need to get Dub Senior out of the hospital and into a convalescent home. It seems like a move that is contra-indicated in relation to common sense. Today, he is uncomfortable and can't eat but is being fed by IV. If he has surgery, he will be in pain, and there is always a danger of infection, and he'll still get sustenance through a tube. What we are all wondering is if it's worth it in terms of his quality of life.

 

Uncharted waters. We cling to our raft and peer at the sky and try to paddle in the direction of solid ground. I have never seen my husband so despondent. It is heartbreaking.

This Must Be the Place

Home - is where I want to be

But I guess I’m already there
I come home - she lifted up her wings
Guess that this must be the place

-- Talking Heads

Home is where the heart is.

-- traditional proverb

Mama, I yike this new house!

-- Ceeya

Viva is eight years old, and she has lived in five different homes. Heck, Ceeya is not even three and she is on her third residence. That is a lot of moving.

I have been thinking a lot about what home means lately. I moved a lot as a kid—not just from apartment to apartment but from school to school as we moved. I moved away to college in Pennsylvania, and then I moved back to my hometown of Boston.   And then I moved all the way across country, to San Diego and then Los Angeles. Pre-marriage, I also moved a lot within Los Angeles, which I actually enjoyed because I got to try out a lot of different neighborhoods.

Moving sucks. At the same time, I like moving. I like finding a new place, exploring how things fit together, figuring out new routes to work and school, discovering the little gems of each new place. Now even though we have only moved about three miles away from our old place, I am learning all the ins and outs of our new neighborhood and our new space. There are so many pleasant little surprises as you go.

And at the end of the day, no matter where we are, when I open the door and hear, “Mommy’s home!”:  I am home. And I get to plop down in the middle of my grabby, yelly, huggy family and be bombarded by tales of the day and how hungry they are and look at their boo-boos and fingerpaintings and math homework and the latest photographs Sweet Dub has taken. And what could be better than that?

The Blah Blahs Have Landed

I won’t bore you with the details, but on Friday, September 9, the Blah Blah Family finally moved.

It took weeks of preparation, as we were essentially cutting our living space in half—moving from a three bedroom house with a separate studio to a two bedroom apartment. If you have never had to do something like this, well, I am not going to say you should try it. But it was cathartic, the amount of stuff we had to go through and decide what we could and could not live without. And also, with the number of times we have moved in the past five years, I have never had a decent amount of time to go through all my belongings and decide what I did not need to keep. Since I knew space was at a premium, I elected to take a week off between Labor Day and Moving Day to devote myself 100% to going through every room in the house and culling all unnecessary items. Result: this time around I was shredding tax documents dating all the way back to 1998. Can you imagine? I’ve been carting all that stuff around?! It boggles the mind.

So: lots of trips to Goodwill to give stuff away, handing over bags of outgrown clothes to Viva’s friend in second grade, a bed to Sweet Dub’s stepbrother, a couch to the Parent Center at our local elementary school—and countless trips to put stuff in storage. Sweet Dub is determined to empty out the stuff in storage (lots of baby items—stroller, car seat, etc. in excellent condition) by putting it on Craigslist/eBay. We shall see.

I have added another 15 minutes to my commute, which means I leave the house with Viva by 7:30 AM, drop her off at school at 7:45-7:50ish, and get to work by 8:15. I am trying to mellow out about it and listen to podcasts or mixes I love on 8tracks or Pandora by hooking up my phone to my car radio. It’s not the end of the world, but for those familiar with LA, I am driving from Culver City/Fox Hills to Echo Park and back during rush hour. I do not recommend it.

The kids are happy, because now we have a pool and Viva can swim every day and Ceeya can float about with her life jacket on when she feels up to it. There are long stretches of pathways and sidewalks that they can tear about on, on their bikes. We are all together, which is all that matters when it comes down to it.

Related story: the night before the move, as I was putting the kids to bed, I said, “Okay, you guys, time to sleep and not a peep. Daddy and I are really busy getting things ready for the move tomorrow so I need you guys to go right to bed and no shenanigans.”

Ceeya: (Sniff. SNIFF!)

Viva: Mom?

Mama Blah (extricating from the bedclothes): Yes, Veev?

Viva: Ceeya is crying.

Mama Blah: No she’s not, she’s fake crying, just like she fake hiccups. You know she does that.

Ceeya: (SNIFF, SNIFF!)

Viva: No, Mom, I think she’s really crying. Look at her eyes.

Mama Blah (peering in the dim light of the nightlight and realizing she’s right): Ceeya? Are you crying?

Ceeya flings herself into my lap.

Mama Blah: Oh, no! What’s wrong, baby? Are you sad?

Ceeya (wrapping her arms around my legs): Yah.

Mama Blah: Are you sad about the move? About having to leave this house?

Ceeya (mournfully): YeeeAAAAH.

Mama Blah: Aw, honey. That’s normal. We’ve had a lot of happy times in this house. But we’re also going to have a lot of happy and fun times in the new house, okay?

Viva: Yeah, Ceeya, it has a really big bathtub [the pool] for you to play in! And we’re right by the park! And lots of kids live around there!

Mama Blah: That’s right. We’re going to go swimming, and to the playground…

Ceeya : (SNIFF! SNIFF!) I DON’T WANT TO LEAVE DADDY! (breaks down completely)

Mama Blah: What??
Viva (simultaneously): Oh my God.

Mama Blah: Baby, Daddy’s coming with us to the new house. You thought we were leaving him behind?
Viva (simultaneously): Oh my God, Ceeya, you’re so weird, we’re not leaving Daddy!

Mama Blah: Viva, go get your dad. (Viva leaves the room.) Ceeya, baby, we all go together—you, me, Viva and Daddy. We are ALWAYS together. We would never move and leave Daddy, okay? We are all going to live together in the new house. (Sweet Dub arrives and we all pile in for a big Blah Blah Family hug as he reassures her.)



Man, kids are something else.

By the way, any tips for cooking on an electric stove? I’m completely useless at it.

She is Gone

After 85 years, she is gone.

My grandmother passed away late Wednesday night. There are no words.

I am grateful for her. That is all I can think to say. She was a very strong personality, hugely determined, funny (sometimes unintentionally), and so loving. I never ever for a second ever in my life doubted that my grandmother loved me and was for me, 100%. I learned so many life lessons from her.

I am so sad. And my brain is really scrambled and I feel incapable of putting together anything coherent.

Viva headed back to school today after a week of Spring Break. I asked her how she felt her vacation was. She said on a scale of 1 to 10, it was about a 5, because it started out great, but Thursday was horrible. When we drove up to the house on Thursday, “there was a hole [in the room] where Nana should be sleeping,” is how she put it.

Yeah, that about sums it up.

I am trying to figure it all out. Bear with me.

To Make You Smile

Me and my two lovelies. The picture feels like a hug to me.

Love you, love you, love you

Sweet Dub is out tonight, taking photographs for a client. I am home with the kids, who seem to be doing everything possible to tap dance on my last nerve. I lose my temper more than once. I finally banish them to their room to play so I can have 10 minutes of peace and that is when I realize I am on the verge of tears and have been all day.

My grandmother, you see, is passing over into the other realm. I have just spent the weekend with her--a weekend where she was not once conscious--and it was very, very tough. She is in the phase which I am told is called "active dying," so she is very agitated, raking at the bedclothes and wearing an expression of acute pain or distress. She doesn't open her eyes.

My mom says that this morning she spoke. My mom was able to tell her she loved her, and my grandmother said she loved her too. I am glad they at least had this moment, as my grandmother has been rather disoriented in the last week and at one point was convinced my mom had tricked her. She became very fretful, saying she knew there must be a phone around here somewhere. My sister asked her who she wanted to call, and my grandma said she wanted to call my grandpa (who passed away 7 years ago). I'm not sure what she thought my mom had tricked her about, but it's funny that she was going to tell on her to my grandpa.

My mother was 19 when she had my sister, and 21 when she had me, and 22 when she took us and left my dad. My grandmother was 41 when she became a grandmother. When my mom left my dad, she moved in with my grandparents for a while. My mom was an only child, and my grandma had always wanted a houseful of kids. My mother likes to say that she had my grandma's other kids for her. All I know is that my grandma loved us to pieces and she was in constant motion, usually doing something for one of us. She would play leapfrog with us, and build snowmen with us, and when she wasn't doing that, she was cooking something obscenely delicious (and with the benefit of hindsight, ridiculously fattening).

In time we moved out to a series of apartments as my mom went back to college, but we were never more than 15 minutes away from my grandparents at any time. We were expected at their house every weekend, even after my mom remarried. My grandmother took early retirement in her 50s. If I got sick at school, it was Grandma who would come and get me and worry over me tenderly. My grandmother loved us all loudly and with great ferocity. She is not a tall woman (we are the same height, 5-feet and one-inch on a good day), but she has always been formidable. She expected a lot of us, but she expected a lot of herself--something I didn't recognize until I was well until adulthood.

My grandma, Muriel, grew up in a small town in a very segregated area of Virginia. She is a very fair-skinned black woman who could pass for white if that were the road she chose. In her small town, everyone knew her family and she was known to be "colored," so she had to sit in the back of the local bus and when in town, couldn't sit at the counter at the local diner or drink at particular water fountains. She met my grandpa while she was waiting tables at her cousin's restaurant during World War II. He was a very handsome light-skinned man on shore leave from the Navy. "I don't know what he saw in me," she has said on more than one occasion, but if you see pictures of her from this era, she is a beauty. She loved to laugh and loved to talk. His family were New Englanders and very reserved, so I can see how he would be captivated. I would imagine she was kind of sassy.

Because of her upbringing, I believe, my grandmother was very quick to take offense. This trait seemed to become a bit diluted over the years and I think she began to cultivate some patience and tolerance with people, but I was always amazed at how much she could read into a situation where I would not have come away with the same opinion. Her early experiences really colored (sorry, can't think of a better word) the lens through which she viewed the world for the rest of her life.

I never had any doubt that I was loved. My grandparents' house (which we always referred to as "Grandma's House") was a place of order and calm, of fun and laughter, and a veritable cocoon of love against the chaotic home we lived in. Every single time we would leave the back door to go home, whether bundled up against the snow or heading out into a muggy mosquito-laden, sun-baked driveway, my grandmother would squeeze each of us tight. "I love you, love you, love you," she'd crow, every syllable dripping with affection, and we would yell back in a cacophony of squeaky shrieks how much we loved her as we were hustled into the car.

Tonight I apologized to Viva for not being myself, for yelling, for not wanting to play. "I'm just very, very sad," I said. She put her arm around me. "I know, Mom," she said. "I know how you feel."

An Ill Wind

My sister left me a message this morning that my grandmother fell. My grandmother is 85 years old and has stomach and lung and maybe liver cancer. She lives at home, with my mom and sister and family, and has refused all treatment except palliative care; a hospice nurse comes to bathe her and help with other tasks my mom can't handle. In the past week my grandmother has become increasingly disoriented and can't recognize certain people. They are theorizing that the cancer has spread to her brain. Her coordination has also fallen off dramatically--hence the fall. The decision has been made to bring in a hospital bed and have her sleep in the family room. She is taking liquid morphine and codeine and that's about all I know because my mom won't answer the phone right now.

Also today: my aunt emailed me that my stepfather, a recovering alcoholic with a host of medical problems, also fell and broke his kneecap. He is in the hospital and will need physical therapy and then substance abuse treatment.

In the meantime, all hell has broken loose in the Middle East and there has been that stupefyingly horrendous trifecta of the earthquake, tsunami, and near nuclear meltdown in Japan.

I know I am prone to exaggeration in the best of times, but life has taken on an apocalyptic tone of late.