on her voice in mine

A visit to Cherry Valley, the part of the year home of my Dad and Stepmom, playing music each night from set lists that were older than me, from a time when my Mom and Dad sang and played together.  Yellowed sheets of legal paper filed away in manila folders.  Notes for her voice, and now my voice, more than thirty years apart. 

My parents don't know each other anymore, but they do in those songs.  These two people, so distant now, sang, played, made me.  Singing the same words gives that past some presence.  Reminds me that it wasn't always like this.  That somewhere in the song lists and sets lists were two people who thought they had it.  They didn't.  But maybe for a short time they were close to it.

Not sure how my Dad will feel about my posting this song since it was recorded without his knowledge (from my cell phone under the table). He hadn't played it in years, and it's not his favorite song to play, so I'll give him that disclaimer.

 

on the new routine

5:45.  I opened my eyes just long enough to see the numbers on the clock and his shape shuffling around the almost darkness.  I closed them and listened to his moves, knowing what was next without seeing him.  I rolled over and made a noise as he came to my side, kissed my forehead, told me to go back to sleep and that he was sorry he woke me.  I made another sound, the syllables meant "good morning", and slid deeper into the bed, under the covers, finding that spot that a minute earlier meant sleep.

Our routine is changed now.  Before, his waking up meant my waking up.  His alarm was my alarm.  It meant he went to work and I grabbed the backpack and went to the pool for a pre-work swim.  But it's been nearly two months since I've smelled like chlorine on my way to the office, or read an entire book, or watched the NBC lineup on Thursday night.  Two months since he started teaching and our world shifted in this huge, great way.  Now he's up well after midnight writing lessons and I am either on the couch fielding questions about how well it's working, or not working, or waiting in bed for him to join me, unable to sleep until he's beside me.  And so in the mornings I'm exhausted, he should be too, but this is the thing he's worked towards for three years, he doesn't have time to be exhausted.  But I am.  I sleep in for another hour when I should be on my 20th breaststroke.

I know it needs to shift again, that I need to adjust to our new way of life.  As small as they may seem, the little movements of routine, once altered, are hard to reinstate.  But I miss the pool.  I ache and hurt and need it again.  That thing that months ago felt so foreign and scary has become the thing that's started to bring me back to my old self.  With it I had been feeling better, stronger, more sure of my feet and knees and back than I had in two years.

So on Monday I will force the old routine into the new one. 

Writing it here means I have to.

on summer, in photos

on September 11th

I left the tv off this morning but even without the bombardment of images and video I felt it.  The weight of what this day will always mean.  Outside was worse.  It was a perfect morning, clear and cool without a cloud in the sky. Yes, the same sky, I thought. 

Underground I felt the panic that sometimes finds its way into my commuting daydreams.  But we pulled into 23rd street safe and sound and I walked up and out of the station to face the new skyline of downtown.  It's no longer empty, it's rising, and even though it will never be the same, there's a comfort in something filling that space on the horizon between the east and west sides of 6th as I walk to work.

This blog was started out of a need to write during a period of loss and mourning but I am reminded today of all that we still have, of all we haven't lost, and the incredibly cruel truth that so many cannot say the same.

on choosing to be Mighty

A few weeks ago, as the cursor hovered above the registration link for Camp Mighty, I struggled with the thought of taking something this big just for myself.  I had done it before, but for some reason this felt different.  That time before, eleven days in the High Sierras, felt worth the travel, cost, time away.  This time felt selfish, like a splurge with no real backing to justify it.  Even though this was the weekend I had been hearing about and lusting over for the past year and a half, even though I knew that it would be inspiring to be among all those amazing women, I still hesitated.

For a long time I have felt the burden of being the only one of us with health care or benefits or a salary.  For years I've struggled with knowing that I couldn't leave my job even if I wanted to, that every financial decision was based on what I brought in, that the big raise I received just as Mike's final year of school and student loan were running out in 2011 meant that I covered the difference in his new, lower paying temp job.  So I never really felt that raise because it was immediately put towards something else.  But it was ok, when Mike decided to go back to school I knew we were in this together, that what was mine was his.  And that it had been that way since the beginning. 

Just a few months out of college and six months into dating, I admitted to Mike that I was in debt-I was so irrationally scared of facing it or the collectors and wanted to just let them disappear.  I was young and should never have been given a cell phone or credit card but I was and those companies had me where they wanted me.  Mike wouldn't have it and sat with me as I called each and worked out a payment arrangement.  At the time I was unemployed and living off the little I had saved from college graduation and my very generous roommate and best friend in Boston.  Mike took what he had and paid them off*.  Six months into dating and he was already sure that we were in this together, that what was his was mine. 

But now the scales have balanced.  Our finances have always been combined but now there is a feeling that we each have, where before it had always been one more than the other. And so the investment in a weekend away to learn and create and do some good is happening: Camp Mighty, here I come.

*It should be noted that even though Mike told me around this time that "I was the woman he was going to marry", I was a bit more skeptical (hey, child of divorce, our skepticism runs deep.) And so I took his offer of paying off my debt but paid him back over time, just with the luxury of no interest rates or scary collectors.

on August 14th, again

Dear Bernadette,

Last night meteors fell across the sky, all those stars crashing through space at the same time, a hundred every hour. When I was younger my Dad would wait until dark and then drive us over to the bluffs at Makamaw beach to watch the August showers. I'd squint and focus on one point in the distance until he would say no, not like that, open your eyes to the whole sky, relax them and you'll see. And then they were everywhere. In front and over, in my periphery to the left and the right. I couldn't keep up with counting. Last night as I lay in bed next to Mike I imagined what was happening above our too-bright-to-see-stars city and thought of you.

We went through photo albums before bed. Picked out our favorites and talked about you. Just before we fell asleep Mike asked me what time and I said I thought it happened around noon. At noon today he will be wrapping up his introduction to the Principal of his new school, doing the job you told him he should pursue over a decade ago.  I know you will be there with him. You're never far. And when I stop trying to remember so hard, when I just relax and open my eyes, you are everywhere.

Onward full tilt we go,

Caitlin

on a happy shift in our world

The apartment was hot on Wednesday night.  The fans in each corner of the livingroom only succeeded in moving stale air around and the curtains didn't budge from their place in front of the open windows.  The day before I had broken out in hives, a new allergy I've developed from sun exposure, and I sat on the couch itching my skin and cursing the small bedroom air conditioner for not being strong enough to cool the whole place.  But I pretended to be calm, pretended to not be bothered, because Mike was at the computer attempting to stave off the meltdown of all meltdowns.

Earlier that day he had received a call from an Assistant Principal at a High School in Brooklyn asking him to come in for an interview the next day.  With less than 24 hours to prepare, he was googling teacher portfolios and interview tips as I was sifting through his lesson plans from his student teaching days to find something compelling and brilliant so there would be no doubt that he should be hired.  We were not excited, we were anxious.  This was the first phone call in nearly 100 applications.  The first shot and it felt like it was happening too fast, like there should be more time to make him into the applicant they wanted.

The next morning Mike drove out to Canarsie and was interviewed by a group of students, then faculty, then the Assistant Principal, and two hours later he called to let me know that it had gone well.  I could hear it in his voice, in his retelling of his interview answers and their comments, I could hear that he had it.  Or at least had a strong chance.  Twenty minutes later he called again to say that while driving home a call had come in from the Assistant Principal asking him to come back to meet with the Principal on Tuesday.  I was ecstatic, told him that was great news, that he had made it to the second round.  He cut me off, "They want me to come in to meet the Principal on Tuesday because I was just offered the job.  I got the job.  I'm a teacher."  And with that I shouted and the tears came.  My closest friend at work burst into my office and hugged me, yelled her congratulations into the phone so Mike could hear her, and after we said goodbye I ran around the 11th floor for a victory lap, stopping only for hugs from managers who knew what this meant for us.  Two years of full time school, then a year of a temporary staff position (making a salary so low it matched his first out of college job a decade earlier), and then all those resumes before the call from Brooklyn that changed everything.

August is hard.  We lost Mike's mom, Mike's dad, and both of my grandfathers in this month.  But we were married in August and now we have this news to help the balance of joy and grief.  I have found myself unable to hold back tears these past few days.  While cleaning the house this morning I stopped and let a cry out into the broom handle.  It feels like a release valve has been opened, like three years of worry and wondering and waiting has built to this and I am finally allowed to let go.

It was worth it, Mike is a teacher.  I have never been so proud.

on the non-believer

I was not raised in religion.  Faith, tradition, sure.  But religion, as a practice, no.  It made things confusing at times but at an early age I knew what I believed and didn't believe.  But when you grow up in a town (or let's face it, a world) where nearly everyone belongs to something, not belonging can prove difficult. 

I grew up on Scudder Place.  A walk down to the end of the block, a left onto Vail, and a right onto Church led you to Main Street.  At the southern corners of Church and Main stood a large brick Catholic Church and a tall white Protestant Church.  These things were important, you could tell, there were two of them.  A majority of my town could be found at either one on Sunday mornings.  Instead, on Sunday mornings I was having long, lazy breakfasts or canoeing through the marsh at Crab Meadow or walking the paths at Twin Ponds.  There was a sort of religion there in the quiet and comfort of the migrating warblers and my Dad's whistle, but not the kind of religion my friends were learning. 

One summer afternoon, just a few weeks before we entered middle school, I took my friend Liz to the beach.  We swam and played and laughed and towards the end of the day she told me about the Virgin Mary.  I can't remember how she came up, Liz had just finished her CCD course and so perhaps she was on her mind, but I told Liz that it was an important story but that she probably wasn't a virgin.  I wasn't trying to be blasphemous, I didn't know enough to recognize how important this was to my friend, it was just that I was newly sex educated and there were things I didn't think I could believe. 

Liz looked shocked and plunged beneath the water to get away from me and my words.  She popped up for air about ten feet away and found her way to our blanket on the sand where she stayed, silent, until it was time to go home.  I didn't understand why my opinion had hurt her so much.  I didn't understand why not believing made me different, bad, but it did.  Liz didn't speak to me for a few months after that.  Her mom took up the cause and a few years later when my parents separated Liz was no longer allowed to sleep at my house.  Maybe if we were one of the families who gathered outside on Church and Main on Sunday mornings, maybe if we had just tried to show that we were sorry we weren't like them, things would have been different.  But we weren't sorry, so they weren't different. 

Liz wasn't the only one who didn't understand.  My Grandma, my Dad's mom, used to send me small, delicate crucifix necklaces on birthdays and Christmases.  My Mum, my mom's mom, used to clip the Catachism class schedule out of her church's weekly circular and leave them out for me to find.  And now Mike, the man I've decided to spend my life with, looks pained when I tell him that I don't want my children raised in a specific religion.  

It's our biggest argument to date, and one that hasn't been solved.  Whether he admits it or not, Mike must feel that he has the power in this argument.  His view is backed by 2000 years and millions of like-minded believers.  Mine is all my own, shared by others I'm sure, but mostly a created adaptation of several pieces of several religions.  It doesn't have a name, a beautiful structure attached to it, a day of the week set aside to worship it, and so I'm sure he thinks my argument doesn't carry the same weight.  

But not believing can be as powerful a conviction as believing.  I haven't lost yet.

from the car, over the Triboro

on the power of two

The summer after my sophomore year of high school was the summer of me and my mom.  The year before had been rough and the years after would prove tricky, but that summer, those few months, we were settled, relaxed, and had started to understand the new world that was life after the end of the nuclear family.  It wasn’t perfect, that new world.  I grew up a bit too quickly, knew too much about the inner workings of my parents' marriage and divorce, but she was mine.  It was during this time that I started to joke that I had become the proud parent of a 46 year-old divorcee: every Sunday I moved from one place to the other and we parented each other, grew up together, she was mine.

It was a year of firsts.  The first time my mom did the grocery shopping she called me from the payphone outside King Kullen to tell me how proud she was.  The dinner that night may have been a pint of Cherry Garcia and some spaghetti with a jar of sauce*, but she had done it.  In the years before the divorce my Dad had been the grocery shopper, the most nights of the week dinner maker, and always the highway driver.  I remember the first time she drove the two of us out to my grandmother’s on the North Fork.  The merge onto the LIE from Deer Park Avenue was something she never had to do in that old life of her and my Dad, me and my brother.  In this new life the responsibility was hers, I was too young to drive, and instead of staying home and accepting that she was scared, we did it.  She picked me up from lifeguarding class on a cloudless Friday afternoon, windows down, Indigo Girls blasting, and we merged.  I loosened the seatbelt and turned all the way around to get a better view.

“Slow down, not yet, slow, slow, ok go go go merge merge merge!” 

She slammed her foot on the gas and it felt metaphorical even in that minute, even then with no presence of afterthought to help it along.  I knew as we sped through the cars with the volume up and our voices blending with the wind from the open sun roof that we were going to be ok.  I knew we had passed some test, some sort of challenge for how we were going to move through this new world.  And we would do it together.  We didn’t always play nice or fair, there would be plenty of angry hang ups and emails and words we wished to take back along the way, but she was, will always be, mine. 

"...chase all the ghosts from your head,                    
I'm stronger than the monster beneath your bed,
smarter than the tricks played on your heart.
We'll look at them together then we'll take them apart,
adding up the total of a love that's true,
multiply life by the power of two..."

*disclaimer:  The Ben & Jerry's for dinner years were short lived. 

on being back

I was just struck with a total sense of panic.  Not for anything real or serious, but rather because I realized that May was ending and I was about to let an entire month go by without writing one word here.  Blogger tells me that my last post was on April 13th.  As I write that sentence I feel like I'm in a confessional, even though I've never been to confession, saying, "Bless me father for I have sinned.  It has been six weeks since my last post."  Irish Catholic guilt is with me even without being raised Catholic.  Now that's something. 

I panicked because I loved writing here.  I don't want to let this go.  But as the space between posts grew I started to feel that it was a silly endeavor to start with and I was not cut out for keeping up with it.  And once that tiny nagging thought crept into my head I let go of writing and have not been back to this page since. 

But here I am.  Back again.  I am not sure what will come next but I thought enough time had passed without any words.  

photo from here.

And a very happy unofficial start to summer to you.  My annual welcome summer party begins momentarily with an afternoon with a friend and a weekend at my grandmother's.  It's good to be back.

on the voice

Last month my brother called to tell me that he was coming down to audition for the next season of The Voice.  He asked if I would join him and after a day of thinking I couldn't because I would only make a fool of myself, I decided the experience of it outweighed any doubts.  I thought of how we could talk about it years from now, about that time he came down to New York and we stood outside in the cold for hours just to sing in front of a TV producer, and changed my mind. 

And so the Saturday night before the audition he got off the bus from Boston and made his way out to our place.  We walked to pizza and then practiced, him coaching me on my chosen song, each of us anxious and tired but too excited to go to sleep.  The next morning the cab dropped us off at the back of the Javits Center, far behind thousands of others.  We huddled in the cold and willed the sun to move faster up the back of the building in front of us as the Hudson kept things bitter behind us.  By nine we were ushered inside to the perfectly choreographed registration and then waited in our seats as would-be divas tried to out belt each other in the corners of the huge room.  It was around that time that we realized we would be auditioning in groups of ten, by row, and that we would get to audition together.

I didn't take the process very seriously for myself but I wanted this for my brother.  I thought he had the audition nailed before we even went in the doors and was already thinking of what we'd do for the rest of the day after we learned of his inevitable callback.  But the producer behind the desk didn't look up for my brother, or me, or the seven other auditioners until the 16 year-old Bieber look-alike started to sing.  He sounded sweet, but certainly was no Voice (just watch, he wins the whole thing next year), but within seconds of opening his mouth her head snapped to attention and we knew he had it.  And then it was over.  After the ten of us finished she announced that he and another young woman would be called back and then we were thanked and told to have a great day.

That was it.  All those days of preparing and hours on line just to have it end in a two second sentence.  The speed of it was too much.  Shouldn't there be an appeals process?  Another producer to try out for since this one obviously had a "type" in mind?  But there wasn't.  We found our way out of the basement audition rooms and only after we were through the revolving doors and onto the street did it hit my brother.  He had wanted this.  And it was over.  Even if it was just a TV show, something we'd joke about at some point down the road, in that minute it was more than that.  I put my arm around him and we stood with our backs to the sun as we watched the pool of hopefuls behind the Center's glass windows below us. 

So in honor of my brother, of his voice (which doesn't need the approval of some twenty-something producer on an early Sunday morning), here he is singing at our wedding.  His taking the mic was a surprise for everyone in the room and his voice is my favorite sound of that day, of any day.

on so it goes (April 11, 2007)

Written in April 2007 for the friend I never knew: 

Kurt Vonnegut has died and I feel like we have lost a friend.

It's a very strange thing to feel so affected by someone you've never met.  But he was my friend too.  When my mother tried to end it for the first time, I found him.  He too knew that strange loss of sharing a space with someone who is still living but doesn't want to be.  And I remember the summer when I was 19, when I moved up to Albany and into that empty place three months before all of my other housemates.  Living in that creaky house by myself, with the drug dealers outside on the corner yelling up to me that they knew I was alone and didn't I want to come out and play, Vonnegut kept me company.  I read Slaughterhouse Five on repeat that summer and the voices became so familiar that my journal entries from those months are cluttered with phrases of "so it goes".  

He lived to be 84 but died from a brain injury after a fall in his Manhattan home.  And that death just doesn't seem fitting.  It's too normal.  I think that maybe he should have simply disappeared.  And for years we'd wonder if the folks from Tralfamador had come to take him away and all of the not-knowing would be fantastic.

But he is gone.  And I am sad.  So it goes.