Tag Archives: memories

The Soccer-Playing T-Rex

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You had been too quiet for too long when I went to look for you. I found you standing at your parents’ window that overlooked the backyard. I walked over and kneeled next to you. You were so focused on what was going on in the yard that you barely noticed me.

“What are you looking at?” I asked you. I had looked outside and didn’t see anything.

“Kardhu (the family’s golden retriever).” You replied your eyes never leaving the scene you were seeing.

“What is Kardhu doing?” I asked watching you.

“Soccer.” You replied with such conviction that I almost believed it was what you were seeing.

“He’s playing soccer?” I asked. You nod, and then you laugh.

“What’s funny?” I asked him.

“T-rex.” You said as you glance at me with your laughing blue eyes.

My eyes grew wide, and I whispered, “Kardhu is playing with a T-rex?”

You laugh and look at me, your gaze piercing my soul with a curious look as if you were gauging if I was really seeing what you were seeing or not.

“Who’s winning?” I asked you. You think about this for a second before saying, ‘Kardhu is.”

“He is?” I ask. You look at me, and I can tell you want to tell me something, but your words aren’t quite there yet. You shorten your arms like a T-rex and start growling at me.

“Oh because Kardhu has four good legs and T-rex has two?” You nod with such a grin on your face, and you come at me with your T-rex legs, and we dissolve into a fit of giggles on the floor. As I look at you, I can’t believe an almost three-year-old has such an imagination, and I hope it is something you never lose.

Cravings

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I woke up this morning craving a dish called chicken divan. My mom’s recipe includes broccoli, chicken, mayonnaise, cream of mushroom soup, lemon juice, shredded cheese, and bread crumbs. It is a total comfort food indulgence. My mom made this recipe for years, and it has always been one of my favorites. Steaming hot served over white rice; there’s hardly anything better on a cold winter night. So, I went on a hunt to find the recipe. She had initially seen it in The Boston Globe decades ago and had clipped it out. After many years, she put it in a plastic sleeve to protect it. After looking for that for a long time, I came up empty-handed and saddened thinking I’d never be able to replicate it without that aged and yellowed piece of newspaper. Finally, in the last place I looked, I spotted a newer white notecard with “chicken divan” written in her handwriting. Then I remembered, during her final years, she started handwriting out recipes that she knew I liked so I would be able to make them once she was no longer here. Holding it and looking at it, I expected to feel sadness. But I didn’t. It was more of a feeling of comfort. She was thinking ahead to this moment. My mom is still taking care of me, and that has comforted me more than the dinner I am going to curl up on the sofa tonight and eat.

The Birthday Orange

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My last post was pretty intense, and I think it might have given the wrong impression. Overall, I had a great birthday on Sunday. I did eat birthday cake, which was delicious. And I opened two cookbooks from my sister which I’ve had fun looking through and planning future meals with. It was just that moment of time when I looked at my cake where I was just inundated with memories of birthdays of old. From childhood to adulthood, 46 birthdays that I had with my mom. The one that really stood out in my mind was 1999. She had had a very close call with blood poisoning the summer of 1998 and was still recovering by the time January rolled around. When I came downstairs that morning, there sitting on the kitchen counter was an orange with a burning candle sticking out of it. She knew she wasn’t able to bake a cake, so she improvised. She thought it was a silly gesture, but it meant more to me than she ever knew.  I knew this birthday would be a difficult day, but I thought it wouldn’t be harder than my mom’s birthday or Christmas had been. It was just looking at that cake that caused a very large burble of primal grief to come rushing to the surface of my consciousness. The intensity of the feelings and emotions were just so overwhelming and caught me off guard completely. At that moment, I missed her so terribly and felt the rawness of that loss. That rawness stuck with me into the next day when it expressed itself in that poem. I posted it because I’ve come to see my blog as a safe space to express what I’m going through; the good and the bad. To be honest, it’s the first time I’ve felt so safe to say what is on my mind so freely. So, in a roundabout way, this post is a thank you to all of you who have accepted me into your worlds and lives. Like that birthday orange, you will never know the full extent of what that has meant to me.

The Post-It Woven Patchwork

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Slowly…slowly… I am losing my mind

I can feel it happening, one thing at a time

Like the sands in an hourglass

Slowly slipping through.

Falling into some dark abyss.

I don’t want to bid adieu.

To all the times in days gone by

Whether good or bad.

They are still my memories

And losing them is sad.

So now I’m obsessively writing

Jotting everything down

Every thought and memory

Scraps of paper now surround

This little spot I sit in

With my paper and pen

So when memories are no more

I’ll be covered in them.

Like a post-it woven patchwork

A wondrous little covering

I’ll be wrapped up in them

And old memories I’ll be discovering.

The Gardener

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My mom loved gardening. I vividly remember playing outside, as a child, during summer weekends, watching my mom hunched over her various flower beds with her blue and white cowboy-style bandanna tied around her head. She would be weeding or transplanting new flowers. There would be containers of near fluorescent marigolds, pansies or some other colorful summer flower. One house we lived in there was a stone wall in front of our house and my mom and planted rows of bright orange tiger lilies all along it. When I got home from riding my bike somewhere I could see the brightness from way down the street. Those flowers were like a landing strip for my bike.  Out of all the flowers my mom loved though, the one she had to buy every year were geraniums. Early summer always meant there would be pots of red blooms decorating our porch or front steps. It couldn’t be white or pink. They always had to be a deep rich red color. I must admit I’ve always loved the contrast between the red flowers and the verdant green stems and leaves.

So, the other day I was missing her like crazy so I decided to go to Wentworth Gardens in Rollinsford, New Hampshire. It is a massive complex with endlessly long greenhouses and a gorgeous outdoor space filled with bushes, trees, and other flowering plants. My mom and I went there the first spring we lived in Maine and she loved it. It’s such a wonderful memory I have of her, seeing that gardening spark come alive again in her eyes again. I spent a good amount of time just walking around looking at all the flowering plants. Then I spotted the geraniums and a lump immediately formed in my throat. I made my way towards them and as I touched one of the blooms I felt the tears welling up in my eyes and I swallowed hard and took some deep breaths trying to compose myself. I didn’t want to have a full-on meltdown in public. I knew what I had to do though, and I’m sure you have figured it out as well. I bought three deep red geraniums and planted them in a large pot that sits on my porch. Sitting on the porch and transplanting them to their new home gave me a moment where I felt close to my mom again. That was a nice feeling to have when, for the most part, she feels so far away from me. Now, throughout the summer, when I see those flowers, I’ll smile because I know she’ll have the same look on her face when she looks down and sees them.

geraniums

Hollowed Out

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I feel hollow.

The foundation of my life is gone.

Unstable ground is what I

Tremble on.

Unsure of who I am.

Unsure of where to go.

Unsure of everything.

I try to move forward,

But my gait is unsteady

And I fear falling

With no one here to catch me

Before I hit the ground.

At some point forward movement

Will become necessary.

I know it is what she

Would want for me.

But for now, I sit trying to

Fill this aching emptiness

With memories of happier times

With my mother.

My Dad

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Today is the 8th anniversary of my father’s death. It’s a hard day for me but as the years have passed it has gotten slightly easier. I have so many memories of him but for some reason one is resonating with me the most today. This is for him.

 

I sit across from him

Watching him struggle to find words

That are hiding from him.

It’s painful seeing him struggle to

search for something that was once so easy to find.

Mastery of words was his strength and now

The disease has robbed him of that.

This loss has weakened him in a way that

Makes it hard for me to recognize him.

And that’s what hurts the most.

My father sits across from me

But my dad is gone.

 

Losing my dad was one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through. But because of his Alzheimer’s I truly feel like I lost him the summer before he passed. When I think of my dad, I see a man who loved words and could use them so eloquently and express himself so well. In the late stages of the disease, he lost his ability to think of the words he wanted to say. He would just sit there with this determined look on his face, wanting to think of the word so badly. I never knew if I should tell him the word or let him try to think of it himself. Perhaps that’s why this memory is so strong this year. As I’ve mentioned before I’m having a tough time with my stuttering right now. I’m having as much trouble saying words as he did trying to think of them. Man, this feels so awkward to post this on my dad’s anniversary but I think it’s because I’m laying my soul out there for all the blogosphere to see. And it’s absolutely terrifying and I think my dad would be really proud of me for taking this step.