for the record, I'm totally okay with those shorts
(6:21 PM. Justin opens door, walks in with armfuls of work stuff and groceries, closes door behind him and places the toes of one foot across threshold)
Kate: OHMYGOD the clock has been moving one minute ahead and two minutes back all day and I can’t get anything done and he won’t pee but he needs to pee so he’s been running around squealing and holding onto his crotch and he was tearing books and yelling at me so I called him a bossy boiler and then he grabbed onto my leg and wouldn’t let go for three frigging hours and then he was running rampant all over the Kiwi and he doesn’t listen to a thing I say and I think he’s from another planet and he keeps taking his pants off and all he’s eaten is three crackers and two brownies and he kind of stinks and I’m not sure why and JEEBUS, all he did was whine and complain, like, ALL DAY.
Justin: Gee. I wonder where he gets that?
+++++++
I am a porcupine, prickly in advance of the next unknown, of this first anniversary of gains and losses.
I don’t know how I’ll feel, what I’ll do with myself. I hesitate to make plans, promises. The only instinct I have is to avoid company, curl into a ball in a dark room and drink myself into oblivion for six weeks until it’s over.
I’m kind of kidding, but kind of not. I did it once, you know. It worked like a charm.
It was my last day working for a software company with $37,500 in annual revenues despite $10 million in venture capital. The inevitable implosion landed me pink-slipped, but only after three months of the kind of trickle-down angst that brings out the very worst in people.
No, I wasn’t by myself (point for being social: Kate). Yes, I was the only person getting drunk (point for being a spectacle: rum). It was some random Tuesday after I arrived home and declared, “I just lost my job, and I’m about to get completely plastered. Feel free to join me if you like.” (point for hospitality: Kate). Justin and his brother and his brother’s eventual wife spent the night watching me become increasingly self-entertaining, for which I still feel sheepish (point for finding myself hilarious as crickets chirp: rum).
I remember hearing a knock on the bathroom door and muffled whispers asking from the other side if I was, you know, umm, okay.
The door opened a crack and through the steam she would have seen me passed out in the bath with my clothes on, head tilted back, underwater except for a breathing hole, the lower half of my face forming an island of what I’m sure was boozy, open-mouthed snoring through a fjord of suds.
Are you BLIND? I remember thinking in some distant corner of a brain newly occupied by two orangutans picking nits from each others’ fur. I am PERFECT.
An entire evening of precisely orchestrated stress relief culminating in horizontal, zero-gravity, amnesiatic, thoroughly medicated heat?
I woke up hungover, embarrassed and COMPLETELY CURED.
+++++++
On their birthday I may be all cupcakes and dancing, lightened with blessings, or maybe not. Ben was saved but the Liam that might have been was lost, the day he was flooded and then died and then was born and then brought back to linger for us for as long as he could.
This first year, I don't know if I've got it in me to pretend that May 5th wasn’t the most catastrophic day of our lives.
I want to wake up to a kick in the head from my three-year-old as per usual and tap my barometer and make the calls to say “Why don’t you just come over for some tea and something sweet and I might even have some little candles in the junk drawer and we’ll see…”
Or maybe nothing but a walk in the woods with the boys. Maybe I need to be alone or send Liam a letter or leave him a piece of cake somewhere secret or just be angry without an audience, promising to myself and concerned family that I won’t be this way next year. That Ben won’t remember me sobbing over a bowl of chocolate batter, left with the impression he’s half of a whole.
This first year, I just don’t know. I won’t know until that kick in the head.
+++++++
Why Husbands Should Not Provide Running Commentary of Magnum P.I. Episodes During Post Composition, exhibit #14-d
Justin: (enviously) That’s one hell of a moustache. Only Tom Selleck can pull off a moustache like that.
Justin: (ten minutes later) Christ. Check out that package.
Justin: (five minutes later) Seriously. Did you see that? He’s got a cow’s knuckle in his pants.
Justin: (three minutes later) Look at those SHORTS! How is it possible that his junk doesn’t dangle out the bottom?
Justin: (ten seconds later) They are pretty tight, I guess. It wouldn’t so much dangle as it would be squashed out the crack of his leghole like a balloon animal.
sweetsalty kate
35 Comments
Reader Comments (35)
let the day be what it will be. i'll be thinking of you.
and i'm dying over justin's commentary. what on earth was he watching?
thanks for the good cry ... and the good laugh.
I guess you know we're all out here thinking of you...that's the best I can offer. Wish there was more.
And thanks for ending on an up note (had enough tears here today)...Justin's balloon animal image...well that just hit the spot.
You got me with "leave him a piece of cake somewhere secret" ... that's just exactly what I would do. From one mama to another, I'm absorbing a bit of your pain. I'll be thinking of you.
You are incredible. "...Ben won’t remember me sobbing over a bowl of cake batter, thinking he’s half of a whole." How do you come up with this stuff? Probably the same way you come up with being an amazing mother and friend and wife. I'm so sorry...first year anniversaries suck.
Like all your readers, I'll be thinking of you through all of this, Kate. I think the honest with which you're facing it will be an incredible gift to all your boys, no matter how it shows up on the surface.
This is why I hang (lurk) around here. I really don't know how you do it. You can go from pulling my last heartstring to making me burst out laughing in the span of 3 seconds. But really, that's life, isn't it? I'm sure you'll find your own way to celebrate and mourn for your boys. Maybe put an extra candle on the cake for Liam? He would want you to be happy on his birthday, I'm sure. Wishing you peace through these next few weeks.
Oh Kate. Whatever you decide to do on the day, we'll be with you. It's marvellous to me that you can write something so poignant and yet still feel like you can leave us all laughing with Justin's balloon animal.
Thinking about you -- and laughing...laughing about those shorts. Love that.
Crying and laughing at the same time here...
Thinking of you...
The only way through it, is through it. I made no plans, and just sort of wandered through -- I guess I'm a bit hesitant to plan anything now, lest it all go to hell and I'll wind up feeling bitter once more. It's a hellacious day, and I hate that so many of us have that yawning chasm to get through afterwards. Whatever you do, it will be from love, respect, frustration, anger, and grief. All as it should be.
That rather sounds like it would be MY running commentary.
Maybe Ben's own birthday gift to you this year is oblivion - he will not be scarred by batter-tears, or even upset if there's no cake made at all. He'll wake up and you'll be there for him, and that's all that matters to him on his first May 5th.
And we get lotsa channels but alas, no dreamy Thomas in his shorts and 'stache. ...sigh.
Katie will be sixteen years old this June. I can't remember when I finally stopped crying and being depressed by her birthday, but I do know it was years.
When people say it takes time, they don't tell you it will be years before your heart stops aching.
how you take me from sorrow to laughter with your words. may 5th will come and i will think of you and ben and liam and evan and justin and send prayers and love to you all. it is all i can do, but i hope it helps in some way.
Sometimes planning not to plan is the best plan that can be made. Maybe that day will involve all of the above? Cupcakes tears and rum- and that would be just fine.
Your husband cracks my shit up.
There's no "right" way Kate. Whatever you need-even that voided feeling of confusion is normal.
Know we are thinking of you, and I will say your names, quietly, in the trees behind my home, into the ears of the paired geese and pheasents...so they'll find Liam and remind him that love holds him still.
Maybe this is oversimplifying - but why not have a party for Ben on the Saturday, the 3rd, and let the 5th be what it will? Say it's for convenieance's sake. Really, you could do that every year for quite a while, before the 5th falls on a Saturday. This way, Ben gets his party, & you (& everybody else) gets to celebrate his birth. The 5th can be a quieter time, maybe do take some cake for Liam out someplace.
Like I say, maybe it's oversimplifying, but it might give you enough of a seperation to make it easier to celebrate.
ANd that's a very funny husband you have there. He should be Magnum PI for halloween?
Whatever you feel and whatever you do that day will be perfect. holding you in the light. xoxo
I've been thinking about you and this day coming up for about a month now, wondering what it will be like for you. I don't have anything to say. I don't have any advice (it wouldn't apply anyway, as I think this grief is a secret dance between mother and son.) But I will be thinking of you, remembering Liam with you, and celebrating Ben.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go change my pants after your hubby's commentating. Ahem.
Ditto the comment by binkytown..."Sometimes planning not to plan is the best plan that can be made." Whatever happens you have so many to support you...
Ahhh...Magnum, back in the day, he was like a god to me... ;)
I actually agree with Kourtney above... not that you won't feel sad whenever you do celebrate, but it might make it easier to have his party on a different day? He's so little that he doesn't know from cake and parties anyway, obviously, but then you could maybe separate the celebration of his birth from the mourning of Liam's death by a little bit more.
And I think leaving cake for Liam is a beautiful idea. Put out a piece with a lit candle... wait for him to come to you in the wind and blow it out... and know that his birthday wish is for you to find peace.
Justin cracks me up. Which I sorely needed.
Yeah, not planning is the best plan. Until you stumble onto something that feels right. And maybe not even then. A little while ago Monkey told me she wants to make cupcakes next year. If she is still up for it, we will try it then, I guess. My whole point being I think you are right on-- give yourself until the kick in the head, but also keep that permission slip to change your mind any time somewhere very handy. OK?
I think you'll know in your heart what you might be up to doing. I also think leaving something like cake or a party hat for your Liam is awesome. He would like that. Thinking of you.
PS Magnum PI is a studmuffin
you know this, but you will not know until the kick in the head comes and...you do not need to pretend.
celebrate one and mourn the other, the scales of motherhood your cross to bear. it must feel so strange, that good and tragic tied up in the same day. like the others have said, take time to figure out what works for you in terms of honouring both. remember, whatever the day brings, this will not be the only birthday. it is only the first in a long series, and all of them will hopefully grow easier, more right.
this year, three days from now, i will make cupcakes for the first time, for Finn. last year we were in Prague. the first year Oscar was a week old and in the NICU and i had a funeral to go to for my high school boyfriend. both times i felt the day just get lost, somehow. and the first year it felt awful. the second? i took a little time apart, to honour him, and then the distraction was welcome. i figure every year will be different.
love to you.
(((HUGSOFINNERPEACE)))
Thinking about you daily, mama. The boys' birthdays are on my calendar.
Pretend nothing. Your soul knows what to do. Take a deep breath, exhale. Ride. Trust yourself.
So let yourself be. Ben thinks you are a goddess anyway. Even if you aren't chirpy and perfect on this first birthday. Or any birthday, for that matter. And don't think about next year's, or the year after that. Just work on this one for now.
And know that you are loved and cared for, by your boys, your family, and complete strangers like me. Know that if you go into the hole and don't come out for awhile, I think people understand. And we'll be here when you come back around.
Have faith in yourself that you'll find your way.
yes, i find that sometimes the cure shifts...from a bottle, to my baby's smile, to the swelling of love that bursts from your heart, to the light in the trees, to the chocolate melting in my mouth, to the desire to sleep for days.
you will find the cure.
or it will find you.
i'm keeping you safe in my heart these coming days...
xoxo
Mmmmm... Magnum. 1st birthdays are weird. Child is too young to "get it" yet expectations of other people can be strong. I am glad you are trying to allow yourself some space and freedom to let that day evolve spontaneously. Thinking of you & yours.
i think i'd go for a paddle and have a seat under that tree full of sunshine for a long while. maybe with a bottle of rum.
In my experience for the last 5 years since that fateful March 19th, I have found that the anticipation of the day is worse than the actual day itself. The first year I remember going into the memory box and reading all the condolence cards, looking at the pictures, clutching that tiny, tiny hat in my hands and just sobbing for a few hours.
I guess my point here is to just let whatever feelings you have come, no matter what they may be. It's useless to fight it, because your heart always shows itself in the end. I wish you a little peace, my internet friend.
I know I should comment about pretty much everything else in the post, but this, "...squashed out the crack of his leghole like a balloon animal" is brilliant and I'm going to be smirking all day because of it. Thank you!
I have been thinking about you with May quickly approaching. I don't know what to say that previous posters haven't already said. They've all had great ideas. I love the cupcake idea for Liam.....so sweet...I also love Camerashymomma's idea...so peaceful. Do what feels right for you and Justin. Those that love you will understand. Ben won't know the difference between having cake on a day different from his actual birthday.
Lots of love,
ashley
I’ve been meaning to de-lurch from the first day I read your blog, which I discovered thanks to Dutch’s tip in early May last year. I haven’t for that very reason Dutch speaks about there – struggling with what to say and struggling, with each posting, with the shameful feeling of peeping into something far too intimate. But there’s something wrong with staying anonymous when someone has opened themselves up so much. Thank you: for letting us in, for sharing, for highlighting the easy-to-oversee details of life.
I wish you strength and peace for the coming days. Be gentle with yourself.
I know it doesn't compare, but what Molly said about the anticipation being worse than the actual day struck a chord with me. My dad gave me the same advice about birthdays when I was 28. He warned me that the '9s were worse because the milestone of turning 30 or 40, etc. Armed with that I haven't had any real problems (pay no attention to the tattoo I got at 29 or the baby I had at 39). Here's hoping you have the same good fortune.
One of the great things that happened recently was that we had The Cupcake's first birthday with nary a grandparent around. So when she got sleepy that night we just had our celebration the next night. Flexibility is the #1 rule of parenting in my book.
And now I wish I had watched Magnum PI. I had no idea what I was missing.
My throat was thick with tears, my inward breath hitched, and I kind of went "huh-huh-huh" as I exhaled, thinking about what the 1st birthday must be like for you. And then I read Justin's commentary and I laughed like a drunken loon, without premeditation.
I really appreciate your writing.
Holy crap the Selleck stuff was the funniest thing I've read in a long time! *I* want to watch Magnum P.I. with Justin. That's my kind of humor.
(yes, I'm catching up backwards - blog Memento)