the day after

I just posted a lot of photos in the photo blog.

Indeed, I did more than survive yesterday.  Thriving may be going a bit far, but abiding in acceptance, understanding and love are useful ways to define the day.

The days was a slow flurry of activity.  I cleaned and cooked in the morning in preparation for the evening.  I was in the kitchen puttering during that half hour that marked the time that the emergency team worked to try to restart David's heart.  I pondered the meaning of "time of death."  Was it the time that the pulse was lost or when the medical team gave up, when they asked me,  standing at the foot of his bed, whether it was ok for them to stop working on him?

We went to the pool -- I took my water aerobics class, bouncing in the water with a bunch of old ladies of which I proudly consider myself part of.  Then Julia came into the water and we saw some friends from school.  Julia hung out with the girls while I chatted with the mom.  It was a beautiful afternoon, sun, puffy white clouds, sparkling water and company.

Then home to finish preparation for the evening's gathering.  Maria from next door stopped by with an offering to Julia and I asked her to come for dinner and the movie.

Mary and Robert arrived early.  I showered and the three of us prepped while Julia did her reflex math. Then Maria and Kirstin and Amy and crew came.  We feasted on antipasto, home made hummus, cheese, M&M's, ice cream and Amy's incredibly delicious pear sorbet.  My DVD player would not respond to the remote and for moments there was the possibility of no movie.  Maria stepped in and offered her living room and DVD play.  A very handy save and the party became progressive.

The film, Mysaki's Princess Mononoake was very intense and long.  We all struggled a bit towards the end.  Julia was too stimulated and she needed to burst out in talking very often.  And we were all patience.

And then the movie was over, loving people left, Julia and I prepared for bed, Julia fell asleep and I could not sleep for ever so long.  But no matter.  I had made it through another of these anniversaries.  I was able to have a party, a gathering of loving souls to get me through.

And I enjoyed giving this party.  Actually, I also enjoyed doing the End of Therapy Party two weeks ago.  This too is a change, a move out of the tunnel of grief.  I am beginning to be able to do what David and I loved doing together.

Today begins the time of living here, in Madison, for more time as a single mom than I did with David. I miss him.  I would do so much to have our lives together back, but . . . I am learning to thrive.  At least yesterday and this morning.

Long week!  Lots of doing and many, many more feelings.

I am going to bullet this and add to it during the day.  I can't quite sort it all out.  Perhaps I can put it in order later.

- The party was good for Julia and for me.  It was good, albeit exhausting, to have laughter and conversation in the house.

- Lots of ambivalence around party preparations.  I made my usual lists of to-dos with shopping, home chores, cooking, etc, and assigned each item to a day.  I had to force myself to accomplish and check off items, or push items to the following day.  The exercise kept me aware enough so that I didn't leave too much for the last minute.  I am still very competent at party planning.  Muscles are mushy but there is body memory.  But at times, it was more of an effort than ever.

- Doing a real party alone is a terrible loneliness.  Many times, I paused and thought of how the work would have been divided between David and I.  One would shop for cheese, one pick up olives, one to vacuum, one to go over the bathroom at the last minute, one to fix supper, one to load the dishwasher, one to decorate, one to read Julia to sleep, one to prepare food, one to do the last minute sweep of the house, one to, one to, one to.  But there were two, not one, and divided there was less than half the work because so much was done together.

- I was not alone by any means.  I was wise enough to ask Mary to come over hours before the party began and put herself at my beck and call.  Her work and our constant patter kept last minute butterflies at bay and actually left us with a few minutes to walk around the house and marvel at our preparedness.  For all the reality of loss, the washes of sadness that come and go, words of thanks are hardly enough to  say to my dear friends.  First help to survive, now, perhaps to thrive.

- Mary and Robert stayed after all the guests had left to clean up and to debrief with me.  And also, to munch on leftovers.  We have plenty of leftovers.  At the close of the party, I felt very well.  The three of us spent some time just sitting around praising our efforts and talking about the delightful people who had visited.  Julia colored on the floor.  Then we all got up and started a clean up.  We filled the dishwasher, put away food and washed serving platters.  We did so much that Sunday's chores were putting clean dishes away.

- At the beginning of her party when the few kids came over and Julia did not immediately respond to them in the most appropriate way, I was beside myself.  Scared that a party had been a mistake, sure that I/she/we were being judged, worried that everyone would just go home. . . but the kids that came over are the few special children who accept Julia for who and what she is.  They coaxed her to play and joined her instead of expecting her to join them.  Quite humbling for me.  I did not really have to do anything to help them give her a good party.

- And Julia did enjoy herself.  In her own way, in her own time.  She brought out toys and shared, she brought out her precious dot-to-dot books and tried to get all of the kids to do some.  Not everyone was interested.  When James came in, she hugged him tight and told him how much she missed him.  Not completely appropriate but very sweet.  Poor James was embarrassed but accepted Julia's enthusiasm.

- When Julia blew the candles out, after she throughly enjoyed having everyone sing to her, she made her wish. "For freedom," she said.  I don't know where it came from but it seemed so generous, so of this world.  They may have spent time learning about MLK last week.

- Since coming out of heavy mourning this summer, I have grown uncomfortable with the habits I/we developed to survive, and now groping around to change them.  I need a new grace for us to learn.  I need meal ritual.  We need quiet reading time, perhaps with tea and a fire, for our evenings.  We need more self-care, family-care on a daily basis.  Creating new habits, replacing what is easy, lazy and routine with something to feed the spirit takes energy and imagination.  At least for me it does when all I want to do is throw dinner together and stare at the tv in blessed relief after a long, sad, stressful day.  And that sounds so awful.  When it was the best I could do, it was fine.  Julia did not starve and we did not watch much junky tv and we always had time for nighttime reading in bed.  But now, I want more for her and for us.  I look at our routines and I am not teaching good habits for her lifetime.

- I gave myself some reading time last night -- my reading muscles are mush and it is not easy for me to concentrate.  I read the first chapter of Far from the Tree, by Andrew Solomon -- my Christmas present from Lisa.  Good reading for me right now as I continue to confront Julia's difference and my own.   

- Thinking about vacation and checking out an online venue for stays in homes and apartments.  Looking at Brooklyn for a month and coming across some incredibly funky, interesting places to stay.  I want my home to be more like those that I see -- "more" meaning that I want to let my crazy home ideas fly and also give Julia inspiration to do and make and decorate.  I like what our house looks like right now -- extremely soothing and, I think, easy to live in -- but it is neutral in a lot of ways.  I have redecorated with one eye on the real estate market.  I don't want to make it harder to sell, or give myself huge amounts of work to do when I want it to sell.  But I want a home to make uniquely mine, giving space to Julia to do the same.  And that takes a long time and the knowledge that this will be home for a long time.  I had much of that at our Washington Blvd house in Indy and a bit here.  Maybe this feeling is the maturation of the great clean-out and purge of the last years.  

- I stretch this morning realizing that thinking this way may be the light at the end of a long tunnel, not allowing the loneliness and the hope of some better future crowd out my optimism for today.

Planning Julia's birthday party next weekend.  No therapy yesterday afternoon, so we went to a recommended bakery and ordered a cake and cupcakes -- finally an alternative to needing to choose a cake everyone will like.  So, chocolate cake with white icing purple roses and a blue dinosaur, and "Happy Birthday Julia" on top.  Can't wait to see it.  A dozen extra cupcakes.

Then, went to the party plus store for decorations.  We found dino napkins in mardi gras colors which opened up a whole bunch of interesting decorations.  And blue and purple, along with orange and green are the colors.  One of our friends doesn't like balloons.  When I told Julia about this, she decided to forego the balloons she wanted.  We found lots of decorations to hang from the ceiling to make up for the balloons.

We invited 25 people!  So far, I've gotten RSVP's from 17 who are coming.  Six kids.  The house will be full.

We'll eat -- pizza, antipasto, spinach salad and cake -- and play games -- pin the fossil on the dino, musical chairs, and dino egg races -- and open a few presents and talk and play.  I'm asking for help with hosting, kid games, and pictures.  I'd like to have a good time too.

I need to clean, shop, decorate, put music together, rearrange furniture, pick up cake, put antipasto and salad together (ordering pizza feels like a tremendous gift!).  I will be busy this week and I expect to enjoy it.

My girl will be 12 -- not 12 like anyone else is 12, but her very own Julia Dinosaur 12.

Waking up, Julia remembered that we bought two cupcakes at the bakery that we ordered her cake.  We didn't eat them because last night was an FUS potluck and we came home full (and with too many sweets -- funny how some monthly potluck choices revolve around one kind of food.  This month -- dessert!).  Julia is hungry.  She asked for an egg, her daily banana, pop tarts, waffles, and her cupcake.  Really, she usually does want to eat a very balanced diet.  LOL!

Query to any readers with kids -- Julia has wonderful thick Asian hair.  I've kept it chin length for a few years now so that she could do some care for it.  Now, she wants to fix it in the mornings which is a lovely step forward.  However, she cannot put it up in ponytails or braids or barrettes, etc., and I have not found a head band that can hold it back. (Last year, I let her go to school with just a head band and got a note home asking that her hair be pulled back.) The only thing I can think of is bangs.  I am not a bangs fan but I want her to be able to feel competent with her care.  Any other ideas out there?