Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Distillation

The sun gleamed on the smooth snow.  My daughter raised a ski pole at me and bravely angled her skis down slope.  Slowly she pushes off, angling across the run one way, then back the other way.  That's my girl, I think to myself.

Nana is at the bottom of the run capturing the moment with her camera.  Ava angled sharply toward her and toppled a couple of feet away, distracted by the audience.  Papa chuckled next to me as I likened Nana's camera to a magnet pulling Ava straight for it. 

The wind bursted suddenly through the aspens and pines.  Stole my breath with it's iciness.  Even the sun couldn't warm my skin in the gale.  I breathed in and out.  In and out.  I looked at my father-in-law, my babies' papa.  He breathed in and out, his skin somewhat ashen.  I listened for some clue, some hitch in his breathing that would give away the devouring sickness within.  He is dying.

It's been two years since we received a text message from my mother-in-law with the diagnosis.  Lung cancer.  Inoperable.  My husband crumpled into his pillow next to me.  He quietly sobbed as he said, "I knew it.  I knew it." 

David is not my father.  But I love him.  I can't help but think at moments like these that it could be the last time he watches his granddaughters accomplish something.  Will they remember how much joy they brought him?  How much he loved cradling them as infants, turning a hard stoic exterior into a mushy baby-talking grandpa? 

Watching the men in my life has shown me one thing - the fathers we might have known - strict, stressful or too busy - all of that is scoured away with grandfatherhood.  They are no match for the generation that came after their own children.  Easily manipulated and a willful partner in crime they become a grown man child with thinning salt and pepper hair. 

Ice cream? Sure.  Wear your pink feather boa? Absolutely.  Bedtime?  Who cares, we'll let your parents worry about that when they get home at midnight. 

How do you wrap up a person - a complicated being - and store them away as a memory?  How do you document the love of father, a grandfather and accurately portray the way their eyes crinkled when you walked on chubby legs for the first time, or when their hand encircled your smaller one in theirs on a Sunday walk?  How do you distill the essence of a person after they are gone? 

For now Ava clips out of her bindings and steps into Papa's waiting embrace as he fusses over her.  She smiles up into his face, and he smiles back. 

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Confessional

Item 1: When I was pregnant with my second daughter I'd keep a fresh loaf of French bread between the files in one of the drawers of my desk at work.  I'd slide that drawer out every so often, reach down and tear off a hunk of the pillowy soft bread, slink down in my seat and chow down behind the computer screen.  Mama was hungry.

Item 2: My friends liked to tell people it was my birthday every time we went out to a public place together...usually with boys on dates like the wagon ride up sardine canyon culminating in Lefty the singing cowboy forcing me up on stage and tricking me into kissing him - On.  The.  Lips.  What if that had been my first kiss?  How disappointing.  Far more disappointing than my actual first kiss in sixth grade with the boy I was "going with" by the pop machine at lunch in a mock wedding ceremony. 

Item 3: I often let people call me and my family by the wrong names instead of the awkward business of correcting them.  For example the manager at Lowe's referring to my husband as Greg the entire two years he worked there, or my neighbor/friend assuming Brielle's full name was Gabrielle and letting her call her that for a good six months before Ava corrected her while on a play date at her house.  Ava gets Eva sometimes while I'll gladly answer to Lisa, Darcie or Dawn. 

Item 4: In the early days of Facebook I decided I wanted to look up people from high school without actually joining so I set up a fake account with the exotic name I'd always desired - Monique.  Of course not wanting to go the full crazy I decided to use my last name Cooper.  Because that's just reasonable.  Not being very savvy I also put down my true hometown and birth date.  Boy was I surprised when I started getting friend requests from people I knew.  How did they know it was me???  Imagining them snickering behind their computer screens still makes me blush.  Remember that girl from high school?  Denise Cooper?  Her name's Monique now.

Item 5: David Copperfield magically switched my panties onstage with another girl about 14 years ago.  He never switched them back.

Item 6: I've read Scarlett - the sequel to Gone with the Wind about six times.  Written by a different author and peppered with a few naughty bits some say the sequel's not up to snuff.  Some people think too much.

Item 7: When I'm passionate about something I can get very single-minded to the neglect of everything else.  I'm looking at you Familysearch.org.  Damn you for making my kids eat off of the lids of Tupperware bowls because all the other dishes in the house were dirty because Mama spent a week trying to find Grandpa Craig in the Irish census of 1830. 

Item 8: I've thrown down a towel over the spot where my infant daughter peed on my sheets during a 2 AM feeding, laid down and gone directly back to sleep. 

Item 9: Most nights dinner consists of jelly sandwiches, mac and cheese, or spaghetti because my husband works evenings and really - what's the point?

Item 10: I watch Honey Boo Boo.  I know they are crude and an embarrassment to the good state of Georgia but I'll be danged if Sugar Bear and Mama June aren't a love story for the ages.