Columbo

His eyes were the first thing I noticed. They were a color I hadn't seen before. I wouldn't describe them as ocean blue because they aren't that dark, but they aren't so light they could pass for grey either. If I had to pick one thing to compare them to I would have to say they are more like a shallow pond whose bottom is covered in algae; depending on the time of day - from the first light that peaks over the horizon, to the last burning rays at sunset and every artificial creation in between - they could pass for a blue or a green. In the right light, when the sun is lower in the sky and shadows are elongating they are the color of a blue spruce - cool and chameleon in their ability to shimmer blue or green or a combination of the two merely depending on the angle you are at. They have captured my attention from the beginning and even now - five years later - I find myself occasionally stealing glances at them, curious to know what color they will be today.

I like that I cannot label him. He's not typical. He's not a man who fits into any one stereotype. Even those eyes are not easily catalogued. He's simple but weirdly complex. Sometimes I call him Columbo because he has the uncanny ability to reveal parts of himself so well hidden that even I - a person who has seen more of him than anyone else - can sometimes be caught off balance. Perhaps this ability makes him good at his job. He can get the most hardened criminal to shake his hand while cuffing the free one. I admire this ability to keep parts of himself secret. I am his polar opposite. I keep nothing under my surface, I do not hide even the darkest parts of me. Perhaps he loves this most about me, this ability to reveal who I am in one large swoop. There is no mystery to me, and there seems to be none with him, until there is. Columbo incarnate.

I always want to wake up beside this man after a night of whispered conversations that last until the first morning light. I always want to collapse into him when the world seems to much, when the only solid thing is the knowledge that his embrace will never waiver. I always want to steal a glance from across the room, while kids hang from our limbs and laughter shakes our house - and wonder what color his eyes are today.

Baby Puck

Dear Preston,

Ive started this letter a thousands times, in a thousand different ways and no matter what I write it doesn't feel genuine. I want to express to you what today was about, what it meant to your father and I, but for the life of me I can't seem to get it right. Maybe it's the exhaustion. After six long months we finally got the news we have been so desperate to receive, but too scared to really hope for. Your heart has healed itself. There won't be need for a surgical team, or a hospital stay, or for a neat vertical scar down your sweet little chest - a scar we would all carry in one way or another. All that anxiety, and worry, and nerves- all the tears and prayers and anger came to a head today and was finally expelled.

When the good news was revealed to us I thought I would be screaming in delight, laughing hysterically, or crying tears of joy - maybe a combination of all of the above; but instead I just feel...tired. I didn't expect my relief to manifest in such a physical way - to feel it in my bones and muscles. Maybe this is what true relief feels like. A release so immense that you are left battered and barely able to move. Finally, I don't have to be wound so tight, and I don't have to be that overprotective mother anymore. I can put you down, I can let you explore, I can take you out and show you off, and what's more I can enjoy all those little moments I stopped taking for granted a while ago, while simultaneously looking forward to tomorrow. 

You are six months old today. You are doing what every typical six month old is doing. You are rolling over, laughing, smiling, and starting solid foods. You drool like a son of a gun and will put anything into your mouth without exception. You are six months old - and you are healthy.

I love you Preston. Thank you for such a beautiful Mother's day gift, I couldn't have asked for anything better.

Mom.

To be honest.

The odds are good that Preston will leave tomorrow's appointment with a clean bill of health. The odds are good that he will never need open heart surgery. So why am I fretting agonizing over it? There is something I haven't told anyone. Not Scott. Not my mom. Something I have barely admitted to even myself.

It was easy to brush aside - this disgusting, dark twisted thing which begun to grow so many months back. From it's roots sprung sharp thorns that cut, and pricked and made me bleed. A premonition, a whisper that started before Preston was ever born. I have ignored it, explained it, buried it under a mountain of mundane, motherly tasks and still it springs to the forefront of my minds eye every now and then. He not yours to keep. It has spoken to me from the moment I laid eyes on his screaming, flailing frame. Hormones, I excused it. Stress, I explained it. Pessimism, I revealed it. But nothing could quell the premonition that took up residence in the back of my head. Pounding it's stake into the soft membranes of my cerebellum.

Scott and my mother can attest to my unusual anxiety after he was born. I obsessed over his umbilical cord which fell off too early. I was convinced it would become infected. "I can take him into the walk-in clinic if you want" Scott suggested. I shook my head and was repelled by the idea. Not there. Those places are full of germs and disease and danger - too much danger for a newborn. Then my sister-in-law came over with my cute, sick nephew in tow. I tried my best to beat back the panic. But after they left I melted down. I sobbed hysterically while spraying every toy and surface with Fantastik. Scott looked at me as though I'd lost my mind but every cell in my body was screaming to protect Preston. Protect him. It was unusual, I can't stress this enough - I have never felt this way with either of my other children. Even when Gabriel was born prematurely... I never had any doubt he was supposed to be mine. So this gnawing, clawing, panic inducing feeling grew, and knotted itself inside me like a hangman's noose.

When his breathing became laboured and his diagnosis threatened to crush me under it's weight - the voice, the doubt, this thing that I had never been able to shake - reared up and grinned like the Cheshire cat. This was the answer to the riddle. This was how it would happen. Even now I curse myself for thinking it. But here it is - this premonition, this fear - now written in black and white.  No longer a monster in the myst, but a true foe that I need to defeat.  I need to expel it from my mind, I have to exorcise it somehow - and maybe writing it will destroy it's power over me. But this is why I blanch about tomorrow's appointment. This is why the platitudes and reassurances do nothing to ease my anxiety. Because I saw it coming even before I saw it's form.

It's more than pessimism - it's a feeling that has dogged me from the second he was born. This heartbreakingly beautiful, little human does not belong... Why I feel this way I don't know. I can't explain it. He's so full of light, and hope, and happiness. 

 and To be honest I don't deserve him, but I so desperately want to.

Children's Hospital

I acknowledge that my family desperately needs Children's Hospital right now, but that does nothing to calm my seething hatred for all things sterile. I've hated hospitals since I was a teenager. I got to witness first hand my grandmother's pathetic, skinny body covered in tubes after her suicide attempt - the one that took her life. It has created such a distaste in my mouth that I have never recovered from it. As the days draw nearer to Preston's next appointment the butterflies -which always flutter in my stomach since his diagnosis- slowly cocoon themselves and become heavy boulders. This feeling - its a kin to stage fright. Every minute that draws closer to your appearance in front of the audience feels like eternal torture. Your heart races, your mouth is dry, and it's hard to eat because those boulders in your stomach leave no room for anything. You just want to step into those bright lights and get it over with. That's the best way I can describe this feeling to those who have never experienced it. And at the end of all this tension and anxiety - when the play draws to a close - my players don't just get a good or bad review...we get a good review or open heart surgery for our infant.

I can't prepare for this drama. There are two separate endings to this play and I have no clue which ending I will be enacting. I'm out on stage, going through the motions, projecting an eerie confidence that I don't feel and I just want to flip to the end and see the outcome. Scott tries to remind me that the cardiologist believed Preston would never need surgery and I want so badly to feel what he feels. He has this quiet optimism about him, a complete confidence that our news will be good, our review a heralded success. Such good odds...but what the hell is that suppose to mean to me anymore? The odds are Preston should never have been born with a congenital heart defect to begin with. The odds are that the Ventricular Septal Defect should have been one or two holes at best, not an infinite number - not so many that the doctors couldn't f*cking count them. I'm sorry. It's still raw. It still bleeds. This anger that it was my baby. Percentages, odds, in all likelihoods - I can't translate them into hope anymore. They lost that ability the day Preston was struggling to breath. The day I sat in that hospital room praying he was fixable - begging whoever was out there to have a little bit of mercy on me - on us.

Exhale.

I hate hospitals but I begrudgingly admit we need them - maybe after the 4th I can even learn to appreciate them - one way or the other...I guess I'll have to.

A Mother's Kiss

Today he threw himself into my arms- full of tears and snot, and owies- and knocked me off my feet. "I hurt, Mom!" he wailed while bringing his foot to my face so I could bear witness to the blister rising on his ankle from the brand new shoes, which are already to small. This boy, so petite in comparison to his father, has already grown large enough to knock me off balance. His strong, wiry frame, full of muscle and sinew only resembles the baby he once was by the little bit of pudge, which still frames his innocent face.

Recently his tears reach epic proportions. He can't seem to live in a world where blisters and hurt feelings can wrench from him emotions he can't contain. The realization that the world is unfair comes at him all at once. Not every act perpetrated by his sister is punishable, and not every injury can be healed with a kiss. His understanding of the world is expanding and growing day by day, and he doesn't always enjoy this new found knowledge. Who can blame him?

Even in my own - well planned and practised - life there come moments where I wish I could throw myself into one all mighty tantrum. Life is the greatest contradiction. It is full of moments which hold awesome serenity, while simultaneously bringing moments which can be wickedly brutal, and infinitely cruel. Life is a god damned oxymoron and anyone who has lived here for longer than five minutes knows this.

So shout out your perceived injustices to the world Gabe. Because there will come a day when it's no longer acceptable - the cruel, twisting knife of civility. It's just that others don't want their serenity ruined by the horror next door, bud. Don't judge these happy few. Who knows what hurt they endured last week and perhaps today they just want to laugh even if their tears have not yet fully dried.

Growing up is hard to do - but at three years old there are still moments where tears and snot and owies are my job, and I hope that serenity can still be found in a mother's kiss.

Dear future

Dear future teenagers of mine,

I'm sure by now you have told me you hated me or casually mentioned how I have single handily destroyed your social life, and while I'm sure both of these things are true exaggerated I want to shove one more lesson down your sweet little throats. It's not a lesson easily learned, most people have to learn the hard way before it is finally taught, but I'm hoping against hope that you can be those people who nod, and have an amazing epiphany that will last your entire lifetime. I know...doubtful right. Well here goes anyway.

You aren't invulnerable. Bad things can and will happen to you. I was your age once, hard to imagine right? And although I wasn't as blatant as some teenagers when it came to my belief in my youthful longevity and immortality, I also never believed that I would ever become the lead in a comedic-tragedy. But life has a way of making you into an ironic lesson when you least suspect it.

Even though I have everything I could ever need, I do not have everything I want! I want an absolute. I need to know that you will grow up safe and secure, and that you will fulfill your every potential. I want what all parents want...I want you to get through life with minimal scarring. I want you to smile, laugh, and love, and I want you to be strong enough to survive even the most devastating event imaginable...

Your father...he sees a lot of horrific things because of his job... this you know. He meets with death nearly every shift. He photographs that cold stranger in all it's glory...in all it's devastation. And your father is tainted, just a little, by it's gruesome appearance. You can sense it sometimes. You can sense when it has seeped into his skin and taken up residence like some sort of damn virus. Sometimes it's the way he holds his head, or the rounding of his shoulders, sometimes the weight of the dead is just too damned much for any one man to handle. And still...I want an absolute. I want a promise that because he is your father's coworker...that death won't come to visit us. Not until we are all old and gray and ready.

But I also know we don't always get what we want. So if by some miracle you are reading this letter, and you have survived into adulthood. If Puck's heart is healed and whole, and neither one of you took your mortality for granted...then know this...Nobody's life is special. No one gets a pass, not one person is exempt from tragedy or from the challenges that make up our life. Every person will suffer their own trials, and fate will mock us all on occasion. But if you can learn that no hurt big or small needs to be suffered alone...then there is always time to heal. And perhaps that's the only absolute in this life. The love a parent has for their child. I would die for you...but more importantly...I would live for you. If fate was so cruel as to take from me a person I could not live without. I would get up everyday, and I would continue on. For you.

You aren't invulnerable, but you are loved unconditionally. Remember that.

Mom.

The Hero and the Princess

The briefest moments in times are sometimes the ones best remembered. It's the cool, crisp, spring mornings which brings to life memories that seem long lost...

I remember that he often smelled of caramel or Tums. His salt and pepper hair was thick and shiny, combed to the right and styled as though he never left the 50's. He was Peter Falk incarnate, often mistaken for the actor who played Columbo, he politely refused requests for autographs - a common occurrence. He told the best bedtime stories too. He never read from a book, but instead would weave tale after tale, filling them with untold adventure and excitement, straight from his own imagination  and brilliantly intertwined with his memories from The War. I could never tell what story was true or not! His subtle English accent only added to the story's mystery and intrigue and I never doubted that this man was truly the hero his stories portrayed him to be. This man, my grandfather, was the single most interesting person I have ever known.

I remember she was kind and soft and her skin was thin as parchment. I felt safe with her. Her kindness and love stretched over me like a blanket and smothered away a world that had become infinitely cruel to me. She spoiled me and I knew it. She always told me I was special because I was the first born grandchild but I think she saw me as I was - fragile and a little scared. I think she saw herself in me and because she didn't know how to protect herself she took me on as her charge.

They seemed perfect together. The hero and the princess. Of course things are never as they seem - reality is far less romantic, but to a child they were the most perfect people in all the world. I loved them best. I loved them more then my own parents. They weaved their magic spell, the one that made all grandparents immune to true judgment, and I never knew the darkness within them until I was too old to believe in fairy tales - in the stories my grandpa told me at bedtime.

I was 16 when my grandmother took her own life. That fragility of hers, which she tried so desperately to hide, finally collapsed under it's own weight and she needed to move on. She needed to find a place where childhood horror could be forever buried, and where unfulfilled promises and unspoken words never came to rest upon her shoulders. In a generation where silence reigned and truths were buried as deep as the hurt they caused my grandmother never had a chance to find her voice, to express her pain, until one day it bubbled up, boiled over, and started a fire she could no longer contain.

 It broke him to find her lifeless body and the venomous words pleading from the suicide note to let her die or she'd hate him forever. It was too much for a man who had known her since she was a teenager, had married and conceived two children, who had loved her the best way he knew how...But sometimes destruction swells up from the ground and throws us off our feet, and all our mistakes suddenly collide into our world and shatter it into unrecognizable remnants of what should have been.

 My grandfather died of cancer a few years after his wife took her life. He was not the man I had known as a child the day he left this earth. I think in his final hours he finally learned what the world had tried so hard to teach him. That love needs to be shouted from the rooftops because those words you left unspoken yesterday may come to haunt you tomorrow.

Still... on cool, crisp, spring days I don't remember the people they were. I only remember the people I thought they were. The hero and the princess, the people I loved best. Courage and Love - personified.