fashion clothes

I can always count on my brother to keep me honest.

For real.

The irony comes in where he pretends he doesn't read what I write, but then asks about something I wrote.

He is always, always, always the first one to call me out when I do something stupid, when I say something I shouldn't, when I write something that contradicts something I wrote before.

He is the king of leaving and then deleting comments on my Facebook page. I wonder sometimes if he even means for me to see them, he does it so fast. Usually I do see them, and they usually are right on about some aspect of something I overlooked or glossed over or neglected to talk about.

I should tell you this. We couldn't be further apart in how we see the world if we tried, him and I. We rarely agree on much, but we learned a long time ago how to talk about anything and not get stabby. We respect each other's perspectives. We understand that we see the world a different way. We accept it all.

That part, the acceptance piece, is huge.

I don't think it happened, if I am being honest, entirely, until our father was sick.

Incidentally, if you read here often, you know that I usually write about my father's illness and death as though it occurred in some bizarre only child vacuum. There's a reason, and the reason is that my brother hates it when I write about him, so I usually try not to.

Yet, I'm doing it today anyway.

I'm doing it now because there is this piece of who we are that is cool and weird and seems way too grown up and mature.

It's the acceptance part.

It goes a bit like this, and I've tried to explain it to people, but I sense that it might be something you have to live to understand. Anyhow...when our father was ill, I was here, a thousand miles away and my brother was there. In the same town. In the same place. At their house almost every single day.

We necessarily had a different experience with it all as a result. For a while, we were frustrated with each other. It's easier to cast blame on someone else for whatever you think their shortcomings are when they aren't physically in the same space you are. It's easier to believe whatever stories you've been told when you aren't privy to living it first hand. It's easier to get angry about what the other person is or isn't doing when they are too far away to really know.

Having sick parents is stressful. Having dying parents is stressful. Having parents with mental health issues is stressful. Having parents who refuse to take care of themselves is stressful.

Having to deal with all that while living your life, dealing with your spouse and children magnifies everything.

Being stuck in the generational sandwich can suck it.

At some point though, though, we had this moment. It probably happened when our father was in the ICU the first time about a year before his death. When my brother and I were in the same physical space long enough to see that the other one of us was doing the best we could with the information we had, the frustration disappeared.

We realized that neither of us had any idea what the other one was dealing with. We realized that we had to honor the role of the other one, that we had to talk to each other more and rely on what anyone else told us less. We understood that we each had different gifts and abilities and patience levels. We knew then that we could help both of our parents better if we were a team.

From that point on, things were just different for us. Better.

No more bickering. No more animosity. No more resentment.

Isn't that the kind of relationship that siblings should have, eventually anyway? They are, after all, the only people in the entire universe who came from the same place we did. They are the only people who could ever possibly understand the crazy things we were subjected to as kids, why we are the way we are.


They are the best able to understand us.

They are the most equipped to tell us when we're derailing our lives.

They are the usually first ones in line to tell us we're wrong.

And that's all okay, or at least it can be if we go about it the right way.

He called me on something this week, and he was right. He was absolutely right.

In the post I wrote on the anniversary of our father's death, I gave mention to feeling manipulated in the past by my mother and her incessant need for everything to be worse for her. She really did spend a lot of time minimizing our grief, and I can tell you that it gets old in a hurry.

He sent me a message the following morning, after clearly not reading the post (wink, wink), saying that if I truly believe, as I do, that she suffered from intractable mental health problems, then I can't blame her for being the way she was.

And he was right.

I can't blame her. I don't blame her, though it may have seemed that I was doing just that to a casual reader. I don't blame her. I don't want it to seem like I did or do.

Death is so weird that way. I feel like I have to make everything about them in the past tense now, and that just seems so wrong. Anyway...

As I told him when he pointed out my flawed reasoning, or at least the way I had presented it, my response was this:

And therein lies the inherent value of siblings.

They know exactly what that means.

No matter how horrible this journey has been,


For that gift, given to me by my parents, I will be eternally grateful.

My wife and I were celebrating our anniversary a while back. We found a babysitter. We had an evening to ourselves, a rare luxury for us. At the restaurant we went to, there was a lounge singer and he was playing some of my favorite songs. One in particular, which I haven’t heard in a long time. One, which once again, struck a new chord with me. It was “Man in the Mirror” by Michael Jackson. Great song, right? Great message, right?

It is a brutally honest song. It got me thinking about looking at myself in the mirror.

On the way here for Christmas, my brother and his family were in an accident.

me, Dad, Mom and my brother Ventura, CA Thanksgiving, 2009

My Mom and I had a complicated relationship.

That sentence may qualify as the understatement of the year.

Possibly even the decade.

She was a complicated person. I am a complicated person. Though we shared little else in common, we shared that. Over time, all of the things that made us each who we were and are became insurmountable obstacles. When she died just over two months ago now, I hadn't seen her in over a year. It was hard. It was all hard.

Her being here was difficult. Her being far away, impossible, but in different ways. There was little about our relationship that wasn't part of some intricate web, some labyrinth of differing perspectives, some convoluted story with a past you had to muddle though to get to now.

And now she is just gone.

I miss her.

I miss who she was.

She loved Christmas in an almost unnatural way. She was the polar opposite of me.

She could listen to Christmas music year round. I cringe at it when I am forced to listen. 

She could seek out the little Christmas boutiques in every city we ever visited and spend hours touching everything, find something she couldn't live without. I haven't bought a Christmas decoration in years. 

She bought and bought and bought and bought. I try to be frugal.

We couldn't have been more different, her and I, not if we tried.

The last few years have been exhausting. I won't even begin to sugarcoat any of it. Maybe someday I will write those stories, but for now, they reside in my head and my heart, confirmation that I did all that I could until I couldn't do it anymore, and then I did what I had to do, even if no one understands.

Last Christmas was painful. My Dad had been gone almost two years, it was the second round of holidays without him and she had gone back, moved away from here. Not because we wanted her to, but because I think in her heart she felt like it was the right thing to do. I don't know for sure why she did because she stopped really talking to me so long before then. I never will know what her motivations were for much of what happened those last few years. I sense that she may not have even really known. What I know for sure is that she packed up and left one day and whatever hope I had that things could be better between us someday was crammed into that truck with her belongings.

I didn't understand it then, I don't understand it now, but rationality and reason haven't suited me well when it comes to her. They never have, so I don't know why I would think that anything would suddenly make sense now.

I think perhaps it is because I crave it so desperately. I want to believe that there is a linear time frame, that cause and effect exists, that things happened the way they did because there was no other way for them to. That, at the core of it all, was some rhyme or reason. Or maybe I'm just trying to convince myself.

All I know is that I feel a bit lost sometimes.

This navigation of the world without parents is bizarre, to say the least.

It's something I tried to prepare myself for, something that I thought I was prepared for, and yet here I am, struggling anyway.

She wasn't very maternal those last few years, that's for sure. Our relationship had flipped and I was the one trying desperately to take care of her, even if she fought me the whole time she was here then shut me out when she was gone. She wasn't always kind and loving, not anymore, not with me anyway. She wasn't my safe place, she wasn't the place that I needed her to be. She wasn't very much like a mother at all, certainly not when I could have used one, and hadn't been for a long time.

But she was mine.

And I miss her.

I've realized so much about my relationship, not just with her, but with my father as well, in these past few years, but I have learned even more in these two months. I've learned things I never wanted to learn.

The hardest lesson of them all is that even if what she and I had was broken and damaged and flawed and dysfunctional, it was all I ever knew.

And now it's gone.

Sometimes it still doesn't seem real.

Christmas has not passed without a hole in my heart in a very long time. Most years were occupied with a constant nagging, a feeling of being pulled somewhere else, dreading the inevitable, trying to squeeze every ounce of the bittersweet taste out of each moment. Even back before all that, it wasn't nearly as idyllic as I thought it was, I just had no idea. Maybe it was better that way.

Delusion can be magnificent when you don't realize you're in it.

Those days are over, though, and I'm here now. Eyes wide open, missing both of my parents. Wishing that I could have just one of those moments in the past back, knowing that it can never be, understanding that there is no utility in entertaining such fantasies.

I live, irretrievably, in reality.

Uncomfortably.

Reluctantly.

This Christmas, I'm going to try. I'm really going to try. I want to live in the moment, remember the good times, shake the bad ones off quickly. I want to make new memories.

I need to make new memories.

I need to recapture myself this Christmas, whoever it is that I am now floating around this world without a mother or a father. I need to find my joy again, figure out who I am without them.

I need to remember how much my Mom loved Christmas and figure out how to do it myself.

I know deep down in my heart that she'd want that.

When we put out the decorations this year, a box of hers came up from the basement too. One that she'd left here, filled with Nutcrackers she bought in a frenzied insistence that she needed.them.all. They drove me crazy at the time she bought them, because they said so much about the chaos going on right at that moment. Now, they are bittersweet reminders. Pieces of her left behind that I still don't understand. That I'll never understand. That I've learned I must stop trying to understand.


On my cabinets now, the Believe sign she agonized over in the store one day, tracing the letters of the word she clung to when Dad was dying. Behind the sign, all the Nutcrackers. These little wooden statues are safely in a place where they will watch over her six grandchildren open gifts on Christmas morning, precisely where she would have wanted them to be, precisely where she would have wanted to be if she was still here, even if it had never been possible.

I'm trying, Mom. I am.

I miss you both so much.

Give Dad a kiss for me.

Merry Christmas.

I dread writing Christmas cards for a few reasons. It seems like every year I send out more and receive fewer. It's one of the things that I hang on to, a bit like the rusty and antiquated dinosaur I am.

I'm a walking contradiction sometimes. I know this. I write online. I have an entire virtual persona. I blog and admin a page on Facebook and some of my best friends are the people who only reside in my computer, and yet I crave the direct human connection. I need it. I require things I can see and feel and touch.

I still write all the important stuff down.

I like lists. They make me happy.

I resist ebooks, even though I've been a part of one that was published this year.

I like paper.

I like pens.

Get off my lawn.

I hand write the envelopes for my Christmas cards, even if I stopped writing the update letter years ago when life started to get complicated. I figure that the people who actually care either talk to me or read this and they should have a fairly good idea about what is going on. No one else cares enough, and that's fine too.

Handwriting the cards is one of those things I force myself to do even if it's outdated and old fashioned and absolute proof of my crotchety old age.

It's also one of those things that I absolutely dread doing every year, but I force myself to do it anyway.

This is why.


This address book. It's the one that I have had for every one of the fifteen years that I have been married.

I love this address book.

I hate this address book.

Every year I vow that this is going to be the year that I get a new one. My husband laughs at me and asks, every year, why I don't just keep all this information in some electronic format, you know now that we live in the digital age and all.

I shrug my shoulders, open the address book, and flinch every few pages.

This book isn't just a book of numbers and letters. No.

It's my past.

The good, the bad and the ugly.

Fifteen years of friendships that faded away. Fifteen years of people who hurt me. Fifteen years of addresses that I used to hand write envelopes to.  Fifteen years of little stars and asterisks and dots beside the names of those who received a card in the mail that year.

Fifteen years of the names of people who aren't here anymore.

Fifteen years of the ghosts of Christmas past.

This year, an address underneath my Mom's name that didn't get a star next to it.

I know that I should get rid of this address book. I do.

I also know that I won't.

I know that this time next year, I will reluctantly open it up again, and I'll remember.

I was five when my Pap, my Mom's father, died. He had a massive heart attack and died the following day. I remember everything about those moments with such strange clarity. I remember how we had to leave suddenly to go there and how my brother and I were dropped off with our other set of grandparents. I remember my parents not really telling us anything, but having that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach like something was very wrong. It all happened so fast.

My grandparents had a living room that was hardly ever used. The floor would shake if you walked in just the right spots, and as kids we used to jump there on purpose. It was one of those rooms, you know the kind, the nice rooms with the nice furniture and the nice lamps that matched and the fancy drapes. It was the room where the tree was put up every Christmas, which was one of the only times we were every really in that room.

The other rooms of the house, the little den with the television, the giant rec room with the pool table and the bar, the teeny tiny dining room and kitchen, that's where we usually were. This room was different. Formal. Special.

The style was straight out of a 60s/70s home decor magazine. I could probably still describe everything about that room. My favorite thing about it was the gigantic plate glass window that overlooked the patio outside.

My parents came back from wherever it was they had gone and left us, and they took us into that room. It wasn't Christmas. There wasn't a wedding. The whole family wasn't there.

We weren't supposed to be in that room.

They both sat on the floor and put us in their laps. I can't for the life of me remember what they said or how they said it, just that they did. He was gone. They tried to explain death the best way they could to two little kids, they tried to contain their own grief and shock. They tried.

They went to the funeral a few days later, leaving us again with someone else. I don't remember who we were with, just that we weren't there. I wanted to be, I wasn't allowed. They thought for sure that they were making the best decision, that they were doing the right thing by us. I can't say what would have happened had I gone to the funeral, had I been given a proper chance to say goodbye. I don't know. I'll never know.

I know that his death affected me for a long, long time.

Only a few weeks later, Christmas arrived. The adults were not in the mood to celebrate, they were all still reeling from the sudden loss. I know that feeling all too well myself. I push it away the best I can, but it still lurks in the shadows, the reminders of who isn't here anymore, of how unfair it all is.

That Christmas morning, with tears in their eyes, my Grandma, my Mom and my Dad watched as I unwrapped one special gift.

The fancy anniversary clock that sat on the console table spun, the chimes rang. Everyone was looking at me, waiting. For a moment time stood still. I had no idea what it was, this gift, but everyone else seemed to know. Their anticipation, the emotions on their faces told me that whatever it was must be important.

It was a tiny pink clock. On the face, a little girl holding a raccoon. It was the kind that you wind by hand on the back and could set an alarm where it would ring the bells on top. I was confused. Why was this clock such a big deal?


He bought it for me, my Pap, just before he died. He had intended to give it to me that day himself, but didn't make it that far. When they told me who it was from, I cried. Really cried. I didn't really know what to do with all the emotions then. I hardly know what to do with them now.

That clock still sits on my dresser today. Aside from photographs of my children, it is the one thing I would save in a fire. It has traveled with me, it has gone to college. When we moved here, it was one of the items that was packed in the car, not on the moving truck, just in case.

In my basement right now, there is a box. A box that has been sitting there for a few years. My Mom bought it. My Mom bought things. Lots of things. Too many things.

The year before my father died was such a chaotic one. There was so much going on, she was buying so much that she lost track of it all, just having it all shipped here. It was out of control, for lack of a better phrase. This box came in with so many others, and was put with the rest to go through before the holiday.

The box was put too far aside unintentionally. Misplaced.

The following year, Dad had died and she moved here. I meant to remember to tell her about the box. That it had been put underneath other things accidentally and the kids hadn't been given what was inside. I meant to. Then so much else happened and I forgot.

I forgot.

I found it last year in the basement again and cried. She had moved back and we were here and I didn't know what to do with it anymore. It didn't feel right to give the items inside to the kids on her behalf without her here. It was all so complicated. They had the gifts she intended for them to have last year to open, and by then she'd forgotten about the box too. If I'm being completely honest, I'm not even sure she remembered ordering it. She ordered so much, and it had been over two years.

Then she was gone. It's been a month and a half now. I went down to the basement a few days ago and saw the box again. I knew it was time. The items in the box will be wrapped and placed beneath the tree this year, one for each of my children. They will be wrapped elaborately the way she loved and the tags will read, "from Grandma Judy".

What will be inside isn't anything fancy or extravagant. Neither was the clock I received. They may not figure out right away why I'll have tears in my eyes when they open these gifts.

They each will get a little trinket box, bought three years ago now, with their names on them, from her. Three years passed with this box sitting there, three years of it being misplaced, of being forgotten, of waiting. Three years of it never being the right moment.

It is time.

I'm sorry, Mom. I'm sorry that I misplaced it the first year, that I forgot the second year, that you weren't here the third year. I'm sorry.

I'm going to do my best to make this right.  I hope the kids will take ownership of this last best gift from you, that it will be the one that matters the most, that it will be the one they hold dear, that it will be the one they take to college someday, that it will sit on their dressers thirty years from now.

Looking back now, maybe there is a reason that this box in my basement waited. These last gifts from you.

Maybe it wasn't accidental at all.

Maybe, just maybe, this is how it was supposed to be all along.

I love you, Mom.

Dear Dad,

I've been thinking about you a lot lately. It always seems like this time of year makes me think about you more than I ordinarily would. Your birthday, the holidays, the drama.

The garbage disposal that always stopped working when there was a house full of people, like clockwork, and how you'd have to put in the very expected emergency call to the plumber, a family friend, and how he'd always end up eating just a little bit and taking some more home with him.

There are times that I wondered if you did that on purpose, you know.

I know that his life wasn't easy, that he never had enough to make the ends meet. I know that he wasn't a great plumber, but he was lucky to have a friend who always needed him in a pinch, then sent him home with something more than money.

He was lucky to have you.

We all were.

I miss you, but you already knew that.


This year has been a tough one. I'm hoping that you and Mom are together now and that whatever hurts were in the past are gone. I hope that all the rest of it has dissipated now and that the good is left. I hope she's finally at peace now.

I hope.

I hope that I didn't let you down. I don't think I did. I don't think you would have ever asked me to do what I did, what I felt like I had to do. I think that you would have told me to walk away sooner than I did. I believe that to be true. I don't know, though, and that unknowing hurts.

The wondering.

I know that you wouldn't want us to feel like we failed you. Or her. Or anyone.

I try to push it away, really, I do.

This grief thing, it's hard. I see it now. I knew that you weren't in a good place when you lost your father. Your brother. Your mother. I understand it now. You spent so much time being the strong one, and I feel like you passed that on to me. I have to be strong because I just have to be. It's not worth discussing because there's nothing to talk about. It just is.

This week has been hard. It won't get easier. I know that.

I won't have the anxiety about waiting to catch you or Mom on the phone, of waiting for it to ring, of timing it right. I won't feel torn about where I should be anymore.

I'll just be.

Here.

I know that is all you ever wanted for me. To be fully present in my life, to live in the moment, to stop fussing over the past, to stop worrying about the future.

I'm here now, but without you.

And that's not fair.

Life never is. That lesson you tried so long to teach me, I've learned more now than ever.

When you came to visit us here, you spent so much time wandering around outside, staring at the sky, at the mountains. You told me that you hated that I moved away, but that you understood. You knew me so well, back then. Better than I even knew myself, I think.

Thank you for that.

Thank you for everything.

I'll be here this week, right where I should be. I'll be fully present and I won't feel any guilt anymore about where I'm not.

At some point, though, I'll talk a walk outside and stare at the sky, look towards the mountains, and say hello.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

I love you.

Two years ago today, I kissed my mother, told her that I loved her, then sat in a waiting room alone and cried.

On that day, so very coincidentally on World Diabetes Awareness Day, her life was changing irreversibly. All of our lives changed that day.

They'd already changed so much in such a short period of time.

I thought I had lost her the month prior, though that time for a different reason.

On November 14, 2011, I told her I loved her, not knowing if it would be the last time.

The afternoon before, I had called a dear friend of mine who is a pastor. She came without asking any questions and sat with us as we bowed our heads, held hands, wished for guidance and peace.

She did just that. She brought us peace. I can never repay her for that kindness.

By then, the choice had been made. It had to be made or a certain ending would rapidly come. The word choice is a bit misleading when the only choice is to choose or die.

It was gangrene. There was no question anymore.  The tips of her toes had blackened, and the telltale signs were spreading upward too fast. We'd waited and hoped, she'd gone through several prior surgeries to try and save the blood vessels. Days when she was sedated in the ICU with gigantic metal wires in her femoral arteries trying to pump medications directly to the blocked arteries. None of it worked. We'd exhausted every other option.

Weeks had gone by like this. Trying to save the leg, her in excruciating pain when she was conscious enough to feel it, knocked out most of the rest of the time. I can't tell you how many hours I spent sitting in hospital chairs, waiting for her to wake up, hoping to catch the doctor, asking questions that never had the answers we wanted to hear.

Then it was time.

The surgeons were called.

For all the time spent waiting, we knew that time was rapidly speeding up. We had to do it now, or risk needing to go higher. The higher the amputation, the more disabling it would be, the harder the recovery, the more life altering.

It was all going to be hard no matter what.

It had already been hard.

My mother had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes about two years before that day, though she didn't want to accept her diagnosis. In reality, she had probably been walking around with it for a long time before then. She lived in denial of it, refused to accept it. She didn't want to hear doctors say that smoking was especially dangerous with diabetes, that her clotting disorder put her at an exceptionally high risk for circulatory problems, that she could lose her legs, that any number of other things could happen...so she didn't. She willfully ignored it all, even though she had already had a DVT many years prior. We tried all we could think of to help her come to a place of acceptance. We all tried.

Every so often, she would try. A little. For a little while. Until it got hard.

It always got too hard.

She didn't want help. She didn't want anyone going to the doctor with her. She didn't want anyone helping her figure out what to eat. She didn't want anyone asking how her numbers were. She worked pretty hard to keep us in the dark about it all. She changed doctors frequently, she refused to let us talk to them. All we ever knew was what she wanted to tell us, except for when she was in the hospital and we'd find out the hard way.

After my father died, she spiraled downward very rapidly. Her diabetes, never well controlled, got worse in a hurry. She moved closer to us, but still refused to allow any involvement with her medical care. On a day that she had no choice but to ask for help, I took her to a podiatrist. The pulses in her feet were both weak. Severe peripheral artery disease. He was concerned, she just wanted it to get better. His face told me how serious it was, but she never saw it. She just wanted to go out to lunch.

She labored under the delusion that modern medicine could fix anything.

Not long after that, she ended up at the emergency room with a foot that kept changing colors. The blood supply was slowly being cut-off, and I watched as her foot slowly died a little more every day.

Once the first amputation was done, we lived in fear of the next. We knew the statistics, and they weren't good. An uncontrolled diabetic was far more likely to require a revision of the first amputation or to require amputation of another limb within a year. Only four months later she was being taken in a helicopter to another hospital where a vascular surgeon would try to save her remaining leg. Her life leg, they called it.

Her life leg.

They put her in a helicopter that morning because it was her only chance to live and everyone knew it. I stood in a parking lot alone as I watched her fly away, sobbing uncontrollably. The doctors at the hospital they took her to managed to save that leg, that time. She was in the hospital for weeks, a rehab facility for months.

I drove back and forth to that far away hospital almost every day, just to sit in a chair for hours again waiting for her to wake up, waiting to catch the doctor. I dropped everything else in my life, again, only to find out that she wanted to leave as soon as she was able. I couldn't stop her.

She decided to move back home, a thousand miles from here. She didn't want to stay in a facility, and I couldn't take care of her. Her needs were too many, our resources too few, she still refused to accept her condition, there was too much else to the story and I just couldn't do it. I couldn't. It had nothing to do with what I wanted to be able to do. I couldn't do it.

With the oldest a few weeks before she left.

She never forgave me.

She lost that leg almost exactly a year after the helicopter flight, in March of this year.

I had no clue it had even happened until weeks later when she threw a clot and had a pulmonary embolism. It scared her enough that she called me.  It took her two more days to tell me she lost the other leg. She didn't want me to know. I only knew what happened here because of physical proximity, because I could lay eyes on her, because when she was asleep at the hospital the nurses would talk to me.

Once she left, there was nothing I could do to try and help her. I couldn't even find her half the time. I called and called. I never knew if she was alive or dead. We checked obituaries habitually, reluctantly, just in case. When I could find her, sometimes she would talk to me. Sometimes she wouldn't. More than once, she forbade the nurses from talking to me on the phone.

I was a thousand miles away and no one would tell me anything. It never stopped me from trying.

She didn't want help. She never did. She wanted someone to tell her that she could eat whatever she wanted, that soda was safe, that smoking wouldn't hurt her. She wanted someone to tell her that it would all be okay, that it could be fixed, that she could be better. She wanted a magic cure. I couldn't tell her those things, I wouldn't tell her those things.

I couldn't enable her.

Choosing not to was the single hardest decision of my life, even if no one else ever understands that.

I wanted her to live.

It didn't matter what I wanted.

It never did.

My Mom died last month after gangrene set in again, this time in the remnants of both of her legs. She was offered, and refused surgery to revise the amputations. She didn't want to go through it again. I understood. They would have needed to take both legs at the hip.

She went onto hospice and was gone in a few short weeks.

It still doesn't seem real to write that.

It seems like some horrible nightmare, like things like this don't actually happen in real life, shouldn't actually happen in real life. No one should ever be subjected to the pain she was in. I know how awful it was when she was here, when it was only one leg. I can't even begin to imagine how hard it must have been at the end, and I'll never know because I was here and she was there.

It doesn't feel like she is really gone.

It doesn't feel real because I've kissed her and told her I love her so many times before never knowing if it was the last time. I've said goodbye to her before, more than once.

This time it is real.

It seems stranger yet to be writing about any of this here. She didn't want people to know about any of her medical problems. She didn't want people to know about the diabetes or the amputations. As crazy as it sounds, I did my best to honor that. To protect her. I never wrote about any of it. I couldn't enable her, but I needed to protect her. I still am protecting her because I won't write about all the other chapters in this tale. Maybe someday....but today is not that day.

Even if no one believes it, I loved her.

God, I loved her.

Love wasn't enough.

I hadn't seen her in over a year when she died. I would have given anything for it to be different. It wasn't.

My mother taught me a great many lessons in her life, the last of which is this: if someone doesn't want help, there is nothing you can do to help them. Only they can help themselves.

Type 2 diabetes can be managed, if you choose.

These complications can be avoided entirely or delayed or reduced in magnitude.

If you don't control it, it will kill you.

I promise you it will. 

Maybe not this way, but somehow, it will kill you.

My Mom's diabetes was uncontrolled. Now she's gone, and there is nothing I can do except tell this story in the hope that someone out there who needs to read it will.

I miss you, Mom, and I love you.

I wish things were different. I wished it then, I wish it now, but wishing doesn't change anything.

She always struggled with this time of year as it held reminders of too many people she had lost. I struggle now too, and have one more day on the calendar to dread. I can't just be somber though because it's not how I work.

I have to do what I can to help others understand the devastation that can be done by this disease.

Check your sugars.

Please.

Hi. I'm not supposed to be here right now, but guess what? I am.

I'm supposed to be out there. In the wild. Sleeping on the ground and communing with nature and shit.

I have never been this happy to go camping. Ever.

Let me just say this before you read any further.

I'm not a good camper. I complain. A lot.

And yet, I found myself cursing Mother Nature last night, all night, because I was in a tent with five other people and 300 flies hoping that the wind didn't pick us up and drop us somewhere in Kansas.

I should explain.

The husband camps. He's a camper. He loves this stuff. He backpacks and hikes and fishes.

I like toilets and showers and air conditioning, plus I'm allergic to nature. Literally.

I'm seriously not kidding. I'm allergic to nature. This is my bubble.

In the name of teaching our kids to toughen up and love the outdoors more than their prissy mother (namely, me) does, we camp. We camp even though we have a horrid track record when it comes to ending trips prematurely because someone barfs in the tent.

The husband (who seriously wants to be a park ranger when he grows up) planned a camping trip for this weekend. One that obviously doesn't involve me sitting on the couch with my laptop and wifi.

In fact, he rejoiced and patted himself on the back when I lost service a few miles before we got there. He likes to unplug. I like the people. He likes to make me unplug and ignore the people.

We got out to the lake yesterday and it was hot, but nice. We went down to the sandy beach and swam and played. Then the blazing hot ball of fire in the air disappeared behind some clouds.

Goodbye sun. It was nice knowing you.

Afternoon thunderstorms are part of life around here, and they usually pass quickly. For the moment, we'll ignore the fact that I'd told my husband the weather was calling for rain and storms the entire time he planned for us to be there and the naysayer said nay. The naysayer was wrong.

The sun didn't come back out. Ever.

It started raining and we set up the table inside the tent figuring we would just wait out the storm, then make dinner. Checked my phone. No service. The last thing that came through before the service was gone was a flash flood warning for our hometown, which was West of where we were. Storms move from West to East, so I knew something big was coming, but had no radar to look at anymore.

The storm never ended, it just got worse and worse and worse. We ended up cooking hot dogs fast on the camping stove and telling the kids we couldn't cook anything else. Eat chips for dinner. Yes, Mom said it was okay.

I should tell you that I told the husband to buy an LED lantern this week, and he told me we didn't need one because we had a propane lantern.

I should also tell you that he should listen to his wife.

We huddled in the tent with one glow stick, a tiny flashlight and the kids' lanterns. And listened to the wind howl all night.

Rain. Thunder. Lightning all around us.

All.freaking.night.long.

At some point, I peed in a cup because there is no way in hell I was going out there in it and hoofing it to the bathroom.

Incidentally, I realized this morning that pit toilets scare the ever-loving crap out of me. Seriously. Totally irrational fears in that little cinder block room.

The storms finally eased up sometime just before sunrise.  When we finally peeked our heads out of the tent, we saw that most of the other people in the campground had given up. Either packed up and left entirely or slept in their cars. I don't blame them. I'd be lying if I said I didn't think about it over a million times. It was still raining, but it wasn't scary storming anymore.

The husband was determined to salvage the trip and got up, re-set up the shade tent and started making coffee. Halfway through cooking breakfast, the raindrops started getting bigger and bigger and we knew it was time to call it.

So we grabbed everything as fast as we could, shoved it into the car with no rhyme or reason and started on home, with a van full of insect castaways.

Seriously. It's like we are taking part in a fly relocation program.

I should be floating around in a lake right now, or sitting on a beach and drinking a beer.

I'm home instead, running on almost no sleep, with a van full of muddy camping gear that still needs unloaded and dried out.

The camping gods were not pleased.

Clearly, I should stay indoors with my internet and air conditioning where I belong.

Hey! At least no one barfed.

That has to count for something.

Saturday, my husband and son returned from a week at camp. There was fishing and canoeing and rifle shooting. My son earned merit badges in photography, archery and fishing. At some point during the week, my husband texted me simply to say that he has my eye for it.

And the Grinch's heart great three times that day.

They returned home, dirty and tired. I figure that Sunday we would just hang out around the house so they could relax a little, but it didn't quite work out that way.

We left the house with intentions to get home brewing supplies, which we did.

We ended up doing something else, entirely, though.

We cashed in free pints at Upslope brewery in Boulder, but had to share one of them when the other met a hasty end and was spilled all over the table (and me). Instead of driving home, we drove along one of the highways just at the base of the foothills. Rolling hills, open meadows, views of the valley and the mountains surrounded us.

I was reminded what I love most about living in Colorado in that moment. We are surrounded with such beauty here. You just have to see it.

We landed in Lyons, a town we obviously haven't spent enough time in even though it's just next door. Though we've been to the Oskar Blues restaurant in town here and the local tasting room, we'd never been to the one there, the original.

As soon as we walked in, we both wondered why we'd waited so long. The downstairs immediately took me back to the places I spent so much time with my family growing up. A solid wood bar that ran the length of the room, a band setting up to play live music, a pool table in the corner, an arcade with old school video games.

We tasted, we played, we danced.

I taught my son to play pool, the game I learned in my grandparent's house, around the familiar green table we all called home back then. For many years, it was the center of us all. No matter how long people were gone for, no matter how far they traveled, no matter who fought with who, everyone always, always, always ended up around that table.


Grandpa would be proud.

My son, the oldest musically inclined one who is now up to 6 instruments, walked right up to the band during warm ups to ask questions. Instead of shooing him away, they talked to him and even let him play the upright electric bass.

I had to fight back tears of nostalgia a few times, for the family gone and the family I miss, for how much this place reminded me of them all.

I think we just found our new favorite place.

After we left there, I pulled up along the river. There aren't many times or places in life where your parents encourage you to throw rocks, but this is one of them. The kids were hesitant at first, like it was some trick we were playing on them. Nope. Go for it.

They took their shoes off, waded in the shallows looking for rocks, they launched them off the bridge even.

And they laughed. Oh, did they laugh.

I had planned a fabulous dinner to be eaten after a quiet day at home. Instead, the kids inhaled Spaghettios when we got home at 9:30, with smiles on their faces.

Sometimes you just have to get in the car and go.

You never know what you might find out there.

It seems like I write so much about my father in June, and I'm sure that you all get tired of reading about him. I miss him and life's not fair, but it is what it is, so suck it up and move on, right?

I try not to miss him too much. More than that, I try not to wallow.

Even more than that, I remind myself to be grateful.

For the time I had with the father I was given, and for the father I have left.

The thing about marriage is that it's for better or worse. And it's a package deal. You don't just marry your partner, you marry everyone else they bring along with them.

My husband brought this guy.


The only one with the real mustache in this picture is my father-in-law. The rest, pretending to have a sweet stache like Dad or Papa has.

Like a boss, I might say.

At this point, I've known this man for most of my life.

He went from being the cop/father of my boyfriend that I was a little bit terrified of to being the guy who poses for pictures like this because I ask him to. Then laughs.

Two years ago, he went from being my father-in-law to the father I have left.

I don't think there are enough words in the world for me to ever tell him how much his love and support has meant to me these past few years.

He's everything a father should be.

Patient, understanding, helpful. If I need him, he's there. No questions asked.

I've called in a few favors, and I am so very grateful there was someone on the other end of the line to answer.

Thanks, Dad.

I love you.

Here's a little Neil Diamond for you. I heard you saw him in concert once....

Now, before you read any further, there are a few things you should know.

First, I often refer to myself as a superhero. It's even up there ^^^ on my header. I'm not actually a superhero, of course, because superheroes aren't real, but I take issue with anyone who wants to challenge me on the subject, and have done so before. I've been through a lot, I've done a few things that firmly seat me in superhero categories and I pulled off a kickass Wonder Woman costume for Halloween last year. If you're going to have a problem with any of that, go ahead and stop reading right now. Don't make me deflect stupid with my bracelets.

I happen to think I make this work.

Second, I'm a dork. Full blown geek. I read comic books, I go see the movies on opening weekend. I watch trailers online the day they are released. I've had passionate arguments with my family and friends about whether Batman is a superhero or not. I can tell you the differences between DC and Marvel. I'm going to Comic Con at the end of the month, and yes...I'm wearing the costume. I'm completely geeking out over the chance to meet Stan Lee and George Takei. If you don't know who they are, please google it. For the love of god. If you are intent on making fun of me for any of that, go ahead and stop reading now.

Third, I'm writing about the Iron Man 3 movie in this post, so if you really want to see it and don't want anything spoiled, stop reading now. I'm not really discussing the main plot anyway, but I'll leave it to your discretion. If you read this, and I ruin something for you, don't say I didn't warn you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now that we have all that nonsense out of the way....

I saw Iron Man 3 the weekend it came out. Of course. I happen to love superhero movies in general, but if you put RDJ in one of them, you know that I'll be there.

Good lord that man is aging well. 



Anyway, I'm a fan of the franchise in general, though I didn't love the second movie and can't stand Gwenyth.  I'm there for RDJ though, I mean...come on, let's be honest about that.

I didn't really know what this movie was about, mostly because the trailers are really good at showcasing the action in these movies, but tend to leave out any details about the actual plot.

Spoiler Alert

In this one, Tony Stark fights some demons, and not the kind that descend from other planets with armed droids or the kind that invade other countries or any of that. I mean, he fights his fair share of bad guys, don't get me wrong...but that's not what I'm talking about here.

He is fighting the demons inside his own head.

Between the second and the third movies, he developed an anxiety disorder. As a very intense type A personality, a highly intelligent control freak, this didn't sit well with him. He lived in denial of it for a good long time, until the panic attacks got so bad that they were interfering with daily living and endangering his life when the bad guys showed up.

What the what???

A superhero who has anxiety attacks???

Maybe I really am a superhero after all.

That whole italicized description of Iron Man above could be one of me...well, up until the fighting bad guys part. My enemies aren't all-powerful radioactive injected re-generators, but they're just as bad at times. Trust me on this.

I have always been an intense person, a control freak if you will. Then life decided to start playing tricks on me, and when everything spirals rapidly out of control...people like me tend to do okay for a while, then hit the wall. I've had at least three panic attacks in the last year. The kind where you go from being okay, thinking you're managing everything just fine one second, to completely believing that you're going to have a heart attack and drop dead the next. Your heart starts racing, the walls start closing in, you start sweating, you literally cannot do anything to stop it once it starts.

It's not fun.

Seeing it play out on a screen was a bit of a reality check for me. I've lived it, but I haven't seen it.

A few days before I saw the movie, I finally sucked it up and told my doctor. He wrote me a prescription for anxiety meds after he made me promise that I would call him if they didn't help. I did. I will. As much as I want to believe that I can always handle everything life throws at me, I know otherwise now. Sometimes you need help. Sometimes you need to call an audible. Sometimes you need medication.

Even if you're Iron Man.

At the end of the movie, after he'd defeated all the bad guys of course, he had the power generator in his chest removed, stripping him of his superpowers.  Technically, he's just a smart rich guy with a ton of fancy toys now (like Batman heh heh). Technically, you could make the argument that he's not a superhero anymore. They ended the movie with a false finish, claiming the story had closed, that he was putting himself out to pasture to live out the rest of his life uneventfully away from the messy business of saving the world.

Real Marvel fans know you have to stay until the end of the credits to see the whole movie though. It's simply not true.

We all know he'll be back. We all know he'll still be a superhero, even if he's not one by everyone's definition anymore. And we all know he'll still be awesome, even if he's a little more human now, a little more flawed, even if he displays a little more weakness.

Maybe, just maybe, superheroes are real...and maybe, just maybe, there doesn't have to be anything super about anyone to make them a hero.

My family of very un-super superheroes.

I'm about get all deep and thought provoking, so just hang tight with me for a second.

The last few years have been, to put it mildly, tumultuous.  People have been lost, things have been discovered, conditions have surfaced, changes big and small came, often without warning.

For most of that time, I've been riding out the storms in the middle of it all, wondering when the seas will calm. Stuck in the proverbial sandwich generation, doing the best I could to take care of my parents and my children, being pulled in every direction, feeling like I'm failing at it all.

No. Not this kind.

Through it all, I've learned a great many life lessons and have gained perspective that I didn't have before. I'm more aware of the subtle nuances in life, of the lingering effect that words from the past can have. I'm more conscious of what I do and say, more considerate of how my words and actions can affect other people.

I think more. I feel more. I cry more.

I try not to linger in the past, but I've learned that sometimes we need to because it's the only way to really understand the now. It's the only way to avoid making the same mistakes in the future, of transferring the troubles of the past to tomorrow.

The most telling lesson I've learned in these past few years is one that seems to coincide perfectly with this holiday we approach. Mother's Day.

It is this.


Just let that sit for a minute and be with it.

Our parents aren't perfect. Our children aren't perfect. We aren't perfect. None of us ever lives up to the ideal, and it would be impossible to avoid disappointment and failure. We are all flawed, and all those flaws make us who we are - inevitably different than what others had envisioned for us, what we had envisioned for ourselves, what we had envisioned for them.

We can't change where we came from, we can only make the best possible sense of it, learn, grow, and move on. We can't alter the past, we can't change how the experiences of our parents dictated how they parented us. We can't expect that someone heading into the sunset of their lives can change. We can only take them for what they are, for who they are, and be the children we choose to be to the parents we were given.

If where we came from was a flawed place, as it inevitably was, we need to accept that we cannot change that origin. What we can do is be cognizant of it, we can be enlightened about it, we can explore it and process it. The only way we can avoid reliving that past and urging it forward is to be aware of it and of ourselves. To make conscious decisions to do things differently.

In doing so, we will inevitably discover things about ourselves and our parents that are less than ideal. We can choose to lay blame. We can choose to be frustrated and sad. We can choose to wonder what if and why not. Or we can embrace the reality that our parents were just people, flawed people, doing the best they could with what they had, living in a different world and a different time. We can choose to be bitter and erect walls or we can choose to embrace who they are, knowing that things may never change, knowing that they will never change, and open ourselves to the possibility of whatever relationship we are capable of having with who they are right now.

We have to be the children of the parents we were given. We don't get to choose where we were born or to whom. We can't separate ourselves from that reality. We can't escape the place we come from, at least not in any substantive way. They are where we come from. They are who we were given.

As much as we cannot change who our parents are, we cannot expect that we can choose who our children are.

We can't put in a request for perfect children, for easy children. We can't even ask for or demand healthy children. We get what we are given, and in order to mother them the way they deserve to be mothered, we inevitably need to adjust our sails. Change our expectations. Reassess where we are with who they are. Then we need to accept, shift, and set forth on whatever course life has set for us, regardless of whether it was the one we thought we were headed for when we got in the boat.

Every child brings with them their own set of challenges. There are as many ways to raise a child as there are children in the world.

Some of them are healthy.
Some of them are not.
Some of them have uneventful childhoods.
Some of them have lives full of turmoil.
Some of them have chronic conditions.
Some of them have mental conditions.
Some of them have different ways of learning.
Some of them are stubborn.
Some of them are happy.
Some of them are filled with rage.
Some of them cannot control themselves.

Every single last one of those children belongs to us. Came from us. Who they are may be different than who we expected, who we hoped for, who we wanted them to be, but none of that matters now. We must parent the children we were given the best we can, as the flawed parents we are now, doing what we think is right.

We'll make mistakes. We'll get some things wrong, certainly, regardless of who and what they are, regardless of how hard we try. Our biggest mistake, though, would be parenting them as though they are the children we wanted instead of the children we were given.

Mothering demands flexibility and change, adaptation and adjustment to the children we were given.

It requires unyielding hope.

It is built on a foundation of unconditional love, love that doesn't come with an asterisk or qualifier, somehow less because this isn't what we signed up for.

Know this:


We must mother the ones we were given.

This week has been one that I'd rather forget if I'm being honest. A week full of realization and revelation, of seeking answers to questions no one wants to ask, of wondering when or if things will ever be different.

The truth is that my family unit, the six of us, we've had a rough few years.

There are things that have happened that altered the course of our lives. Some within the control of people, others not. Each with their own set of consequences.

There are times that I know that it's overwhelming to me and I know that I can barely handle it all. The panic attacks make that pretty obvious. The insomnia. The fact that I didn't eat at all yesterday until dinner and the familiar pains in my stomach were comforting.

I'm afraid to admit that last one, because it means that I know I'm feeling that desperate, that powerless. That I'm trying to regain control of the one thing that I know I can. The anorexia that lingers in the back of my head when everything else spirals out of control is taunting me. Again.

I'm not in a good place.

We're not in a good place.

As the consequences weigh heavier on us, combined with the wonders of genetics, we struggle.

We all struggle.

I feel like I'm sinking right now no matter how hard I fight. Like I'm not doing enough, like I can't do enough, like it will never be enough. It's dragging me down, down, down.





I know that I'm trying. I know that I'm doing everything within my power. I know that none of that matters because so much of this is beyond my control now.

Most days I can tread water just fine. I can roll with the tides. I can keep my head above water. I can get it all done. I can put my feet on the ground in shallow water, stand and feel the warmth of the sun even sometimes.

What I need right now is a good float. A chance to lay my head back and relax and trust that the water won't drag me down again. A moment to close my eyes and find some quiet. Peace.

We all could use a good float.

Especially the one who is most like me.

What is it they say about hope?

It floats.

Three years ago on Easter, I was back home in California with my parents and my children.  Dad was still here and he was fighting the cancer.  He'd grown his mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore cancer beard.

He looked so good that week.  So good.


I spent a lot of time yesterday reflecting on the past. I looked up at the sky and saw a heart shaped cloud.  Knew he was there.

He tends to do that when I need it.

Then I started to think about how giving he was at the end, how much he cared about everyone else, how much he went out of his way to help other people through his death.  It really was remarkable to watch, and I consider myself blessed to have been a part of his life.

I've written before about what he did in those last few weeks, mostly before many of my readers were here.  I'll share this piece of him with you again.

I went home for his last three weeks.  Once he was put on hospice, I left to go back.  I knew it wouldn't be long, and so did he.

He had very clear ideas of what he wanted to take care of before he was gone.  Some of it he did alone, some of it he needed help with.

Some of it will stay with the people he touched forever.

Almost eleven years before my father died, he lost his oldest brother Donnie in a freak car accident.  A girl, high and drunk, crossed the center median and hit him head on one morning while he was driving to work.  From one second to another, he was just gone.

He was laid to rest under weeping cloudy skies, the 21 gun salute piercing the morning stillness. Military funerals really are the worst.

My dad, with the white shirt in the middle. Uncle Donnie, second from the right, next to Grandma. I want to say this picture is from '93?

His death hit everyone in the family hard.  So sudden, completely unexpected, totally unfair.  He was young and handsome and strong, then he was just gone.  No opportunity to say goodbye to anyone.

When my dad was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, he refused to accept the death sentence he was given.  He fought and fought and fought, until he knew it was time to let the fight end.  I had many conversations with him those last few weeks, and we talked about Donnie a lot.  He didn't want the family to go through that again.

Under false pretenses, we asked them to come to the house and visit with him.  He was running out of time and he wanted to see them all, we said.  His sisters and brothers, his nieces and nephews.  Almost all of them made it.

Some came individually, some came together.  Some came more than once.  Others moved in and camped out in the living room with us for a few nights. On one day, we gathered in the garage with almost everyone around a cooler of beer and told the same old stories over and over again.  We laughed and laughed and laughed.  It was as though it was just another reason to celebrate, another party, another holiday.  Like old times.

He talked to them all, he smiled and thanked them all for coming to see him.

There were a few tears, but not too many.  He told them jokes, he shared laughs, he told them not to be sad.  He mended fences. He buried hatchets. He said things to people that had gone unsaid before, he listened to what others told him.

He held their hands, asked them to take care of one another, look out for each other. Told them he loved them.  Reassured them all that he was okay.  That he was going to be okay.  That they were going to be okay.

He kissed them goodbye, hugged them for the last time, waved to them as they pulled away in their cars.

He didn't do it for him.  He did it for them.

He was exhausted and worn out afterwards.  It took everything out of him for a few days.  For the vast majority of them all, it was the last time they'd ever see him.  The last time they would hear his laugh and see his bright blue eyes.

He was glad to see them, of course, but he did it for them.

He did it for love.

His last, greatest gift to them all.

It was beautiful to watch.

It's not been a good week here, and the last few days have been bad.  Really bad.

Friday was actually a pretty fantastic day, the only part of the week that I didn't hate with everything I have.

My friends made me meet them for lunch. They give me a hard time pretty frequently about the fact that I rarely make public appearances.  I'm perfectly content to hole up in my house, and over the past few years and all the stuff that has gone down, I've found that it's usually better for me to avoid other humans.

I'm terrible at feigning interest in small talk, I can't rally behind people who complain about things constantly but never do anything to fix them, and I have bigger things going on than worrying about whether my kid lost their lunchbox or if soccer practice will be canceled on any given Tuesday.

It seems like there's always something bigger going on around here.

And I'm tired.

It's been like this for three and a half years now.

There are times, when I'm wallowing in my hole, wondering what the hell happened.  When just about every facet of my life is messed up beyond anything I could have ever imagined, I can't help but start wondering if it's some cosmic game, if it's some divine test, if life's just a raging bitch, or if it's me.

I tend to carry a lot of blame for things that weren't my fault.  I know that rationally, it makes no sense.  That these things would have happened regardless of what I could have ever done differently.  That other people made choices.  That sometimes shit just happens.  That genetics suck, that autoimmune diseases are assholes, that the apples don't fall far from the tree.

I wanted to run outside last night into the cold air and scream uncle.

I didn't.

Mostly because doing that would have just pissed me off more.

I am really angry right now.  Beyond angry, actually.  So angry that I know that I can't call him right now because I know that I can't control my anger.

And I'm worried.  And I'm hurting.  And I'm sad.

And I'm powerless to do anything to help.

I can't change anything.

I can't make it better.

I can't fix this.

It would have been nice if he told me when he should have. If he thought for even one second that I deserved to know.  If he could have put aside whatever he thinks about me, whatever he believes, and just been human long enough to pick up the phone.

It would have been nice.

But that's not how things work around here.

I could really go for a few months of boring monotony.

As an Irish lass, this is a big week for me.  For reasons that I can't exactly explain, at some point in my teenage years, learning about my Irish heritage became important to me.  I attribute it to being raised in a cookie cutter suburb where just about everyone was a part of the same mainstream culture.  It wasn't enough for me, I wanted a connection to more.

My first best friend in the whole wide world was half Taiwanese, half Jewish.  Her home was filled with treasures, family tradition, authentic home cooked meals and more. I immersed myself in it.  I longed for the same connection with my family's past.

My family emigrated to the United States during the potato famine like many Irish families did at the time.  Some made the move, but not all.  We still have a family village outside Cork, and I dream someday of visiting there.  A cousin went after he finished college and ended up staying for months longer than expected, meeting so many members of the family.

True Story.

We've always had corned beef, cabbage and potatoes on St. Patrick's Day, but over the years I have become more famous for my soda bread.  For many years, I prepared an entire meal for the preschool on St. Patrick's Day, wanting to teach them that this celebration isn't just about wearing green, pinching people and leprechauns.

When I was pregnant with my oldest, we chose an old Gaelic name, Aidan, not realizing that name would become one of the most popular.  We chose it because of the heritage, not because of the trend.  I wanted to spell my oldest daughter's name Ashleigh, but we settled on the more common spelling for some reason.  In the event I ever have another daughter, I already know what her name will be.  It would, of course, start with an A.  It would, of course, be Irish.

One of my favorite traditions every year is to attend the St. Patrick's Day parade.  My girls have begged to dance ceili for a long time.  As much as I would love to enroll them, the schools are far from where we live, the classes are very expensive and the outfits cost a small fortune.  Maybe someday when they tire of soccer...

Right after we married, my husband went to the Irish shop in San Diego that has been run by the same woman for years.  He knew I wanted a claddaugh ring, but he wanted to make sure it was authentic and came from Ireland.  I've worn it every day since.

Not long after that, I went to get my tattoo.  A four leaf clover, for luck and for family.  I knew that I would never fall out of love with it, and almost fifteen years later, I haven't.  I'm proud of it, and have so many ideas of other traditional Irish symbols I would love to turn into body art.

There is the fun side of it too, the part where I play with it all.  A few years ago, the leprechaun started coming to visit us.  He's naughty.  He dyes the milk green, he turns the furniture upside down.  He sprinkles glitter on everything and hangs underwear from the ceiling.  The kids seem a little more determined to catch him with each year, though they haven't managed to yet.

He'll be here in a few days.  The parade is this weekend.  The feast will be prepared, the soda bread loaves made.  I'm sure the kids will talk me into some ridiculous rainbow treats for their classes, like usual.  The keg is full of a homebrewed stout, made with Irish hops, and the Jameson has been purchased.

Let's put some Irish on it.

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Here are some of the links to recipes for things I have prepared in celebration of St. Patrick's Day.