This is the latest that I’ve begun a month’s writing.  Ever.  

And now where to begin.

Vacation?  31 July until 15 August.  A week at Rehoboth beach in Delaware with Lisa and kids with Cheshire and Chris coming down for the weekend.  Another almost week in Brooklyn with Cheshire and Chris.  We have been home for a week.

Julia did well most of the time.  We did parasailing and she was fearless.  We saw a sand sculpture competition and she spent days perfecting three little dinosaurs and a nest as a sculpture.  She also enjoyed playing bananagrams (I think) with Lisa and crew.  Julia finds words in a bunch of letter tiles.  Sometimes her spelling is not perfect but she is leagues ahead of me.  I see nothing.  I indulged her in collecting tickets in the arcade playing skee ball and other silly games.  She is not great at skee ball yet but she improved during the week.  

Towards the end of the vacation Julia had a few nights when she could not get to sleep.  One night, she really frustrated Chris and he physically removed her from the bedroom and deposited her and her bedding in the living room.  All was fine the next day and I think Julia learned a little bit of a lesson.  We enjoyed walking the city.  Julia thought it smelled bad.  She is not wrong but we all kept explaining that it is not “bad” just the city in the summer.  I saw two old friends, we did not go to the statue of liberty (sold out on the days we were there), went back to MoMA and found the Museum of Mathematics (very cool) and ate our way through several ethnic neighborhoods.

We were both happy to get home and back to a house the didn’t need to be shared and more toys than either of us could carry in our backpacks.

And because I am writing this a week after we are home, I am leaving out as much as I am writing.  Julia did some neat stuff that she has never done before -- she ordered popcorn at the candy concession at a movie theater as I waited on line and since we’ve been home she was been responsible for packing the swim bag, a chore that I would not have trusted her with before we left.  The sores on her right wrist -- scars from the two year old bedbug bites -- are almost closed and we’ve been leaving them without bandages during the day hoping that they will tan a bit.  The scars have flattened out more than they ever have and if she will leave them alone, they may begin to fade.  However, she has scratched bug bites on that same arm.  Scabs are just too much of a temptation.  We have had words -- I’ve yelled more than she did -- and for a fews days now, she has professed that she will never pick again.  Swimming helps, the ocean helped.  And I am still hoping for healed arms before school begins.

Proof of my standing as an eternal optimist.  

Julia will be taking a few private swim lessons at the swim club in the next two weeks.  The instructor is a tall, very experienced, enthusiastic, rather loud and demanding, guard who teaches kids on the swim team.  I haven’t seen him teach anyone like Julia but he is doing great with her.  Figuring out how to engage her, urging her on and making her answer his questions.  I think he sees how comfortable she is in water and how much of a natural she is.  I am hoping for a good experience and for her to take instruction.  

Throughout the summer, Julia has been doing physical therapy exercises to strengthen her core and her legs with the goal of turning her right leg that turns in when she walks and runs out and her gait more stable.  We keep doing the exercises -- sometimes 6 a day, sometimes less -- and I may be seeing some progress.  She can do 30 crunches, 20 leg lifts, and can walk half way ‘round the block with her feet turned out to a modern dance first.  She can swim about 2/3 of the length of the pool. 

Getting back to vacation, my vacation was much harder than Julia’s.  I had rather an awful melt down during the first weekend which took me days to recover from.  I had trouble sleeping and no desire to be with the very people who have sustained my sanity for the last three years.  Right after the melt down, I just wanted to go home, a feeling the lingered in varying degrees as the vacation wore on.  We did some fun things but I could not leave the despairing pulling feeling.  I was the little guy with the black cloud over my head or the person walking in the ditch.  

This was not awful.  These feelings are not new but I thought I was past the worst of them.  I guess I am not.  

On Wednesday, during attachment therapy with Marilyn, I talked about some of the feelings as Julia worked on her trauma workbook and I was able to make some sense of the experience.  I want to try to make a list so as not to forget what we talked about.  Lots of self-pity here.  Also, I am not happy with, proud of, or feel like I had some sort of right to impose my misery on Lisa and Cheshire during vacation.  And I am grateful that they did not tell me that.

1. I am single, visiting and living in the couple worlds of my beloved ones.  I used to be like them.  There was nothing special about what we were; there is nothing special about what they still are.  It was comfortable and brought me great joy.  And for most of time I knew David, I had no idea of how much joy our simply together existence provided.  I am different now and being with Lisa and Cheshire emphasize my differences.  It can be gut wrenching hard to stare those difference down and embrace them.  Clearly, I was not ready to on vacation.

2. I am deeply exhausted.  I don’t just need a few night’s sleep, I really need real respite and renewal -- weeks, months, maybe a year.  I will not get it, at least not in the foreseeable future and taking a break from routine life in Madison throws light onto my needs.  I have learned to make the best of soul exhaustion at home.  Quest retreats, evenings out with Mary or Maria help tremendously but the well is not full.  The ordinary stresses of being away from home plus the recognition that my exhaustion of the soul is far from temporary were overwhelming.

3. I visit Lisa and Cheshire in order to recreate, or create anew, family.  But what I am trying to create is what I had, not my new configuration.  Up to this point, spending time with Lisa and Cheshire has allowed me to sink back into the family that we had.  It was as if David was in the next room, had gone to the store with Nick, or was not awake yet.  I cannot summon those feeling of life before anymore.  I cannot use Lisa or Cheshire to breathe life into my fantasy of life before.  And I don’t quite know what I am doing with them.  Yes, loving, yes, support.  It is me not either of them.  Both are willing to support me, neither understands how because I have no idea what I need or who I am becoming.  Also, I have not been aware that this was what I was doing.

4. Being with Lisa and Cheshire throws me back to David and all I can think of is how complete we were are a couple, as a family.  We were a closed set.  We (and the “we” expanded and contracted as need be) could be alone and not lonely.  We were complete in ourselves and we could be open to many more.  I am missing that feeling of being complete.  I am desperate to recapture it.  And I never will.  There may be a new complete or a different complete but not the one that I knew.  I am still half of, an amputee of the heart.  I know that I can change and I didn’t know how long that road of change was for me.

5. I am comfortable visiting Cheshire and Lisa and very grateful for that comfort, but there is nothing new or challenging with them.  I’ve wanted both the challenge of a new place, the thrill of learning something new or finding that perfect meal or mountain and the comfort of those who love me best.  In short, I have not travelled since my week on the Isle of Wright the month after David died.  The thrill and challenge have the potential of taking me out of comfort, of knocking me out of my self -- self-pity, self-interest, selfish ways -- which has generally been very good for me.  Perhaps it is what I need now, even more than I need comfort.  

6. I lost more than David.  There are no more grandparents and few elders.  I don’t mean that I always valued my elders, spent hours at their feet listening with wrapped attention to their wisdom, but they were there.  Now they are not.  My family who are available to visit, support, and take care of me is very small.  Smaller than is comfortable.  By melting down with them, I risk alienating those to care the most.  How stupid is that?  And I know how stupid that is.

Today, David and I would have been married for 33 years.  Another anniversary.  I don’t have strong feelings about it today.  Another fact, a sadness to be sure, but not a reason to postpone the journey.