Some days you simply don

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Today I was walking along the sidewalk with Rebekah when we passed an empty store. Inside was a short step ladder right next to a very tall step ladder. The rest of the store was empty, save for some trash in the corners. In a way it was very picturesque. As I admired the artistic qualities, my eyes shifted focus and I saw our reflection in the window. Her, sweet and short, holding hands with her tall daddy. We mirrored the ladders beautifully. I thought for a moment of trying to take a picture of it, but knew that a picture would never really do it justice. So I just stood there for another moment, holding her hand.

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Lying in his bed tonight, Reed asked me to tell him about when I was a kid. I told him about spending days with my Grandfather. I used to ride on the back of his old tractor as he plowed furrows in his field. His ‘garden’ was a bit bigger than a simple garden, but not quite a farm; an acre of food ready each year. I’d ride on the tractor with him as he plowed. Then we’d set seeds in the field. I remember squatting down over the fresh dirt and poking little seeds into the soil with a finger. He told me I had just the right size fingers for that. 

The field was irrigated with a pump that drew water from the creek which ran across one corner of the land. On summer days, we’d sit on the bank of that creek and fish. Which in hindsight was more a matter of sitting and playing with worms than ever actually catching anything. I remember once the splashing as a great catfish got reeled in, but otherwise it was simply little perch and the like that got tossed back. 

I recall when the plants had grown, seeing the cabbage and the okra, the corn and the beets. I know he grew snaps, too, but can only remember them–not in the field–on the porch at the house as my Grandmother showed me how to snap the ends off just so before she canned them. It was a simple little screen porch, just off the kitchen of their house, with a door that always slammed unless you were extra careful and slowly put it back just so, but I remember it seemed that a lot of work went on within it. I remember canning up lots and lots of food in mason jars that would again be emptied back out over the course of the winter. There was, I think, a basin of water, but I’m not sure what it was for. I wish I knew the process Grandmother used to can the food. It seems like the sort of very useful knowledge that nobody seems to have anymore. Instead we just drive to some store and get food there, never really thinking about what it takes to grow food, raise it, cultivate it and preserve it. 

Thirty years later, my Grandmother still makes the effort to can up little jars of preserves for us at Christmastime. It’s the sort of gift you can look at and simply say “Thank you” or you can stop a moment, consider what it took to actually make something for someone, and the love that goes into that gesture. It’s the sort of thing that makes me wistfully pine for a time in the seventies, before the internet and cell phones, when battery-operated toys were still a rarity (Batteries are for flashlights!). I used to climb trees; my kids climb playgrounds. I used to play with ants and honeysuckle and marbles, not bubble guns or video game systems.

And my Grandmother’s phone? It had a really, really long cord.

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oh, christmas.  how it feels like anything but.  sandwiched in between my hard-of-hearing grandfather, who is spending the first christmas in seventy-four years without my grandmother, and my father, whose quirks and behavior have caused both my sister and i to recently hypothesize about him possibly being aspergerian.

it’s weird and sort of laid back on this holiday trip.  i’ve been reading a lot and playing a lot on my laptop, having been blessed with the christmas miracle of poachable wi-fi from a generous -or more likely unknowing- frankenmuth neighbor.  i finished the last twilight book with some sadness but am now pleasantly ensconced in the hour i first believed.  i love the feeling of being comfortably settled in the middle of a good book – it’s dependable and there whenever i want it.

when it’s not really quiet around here it’s ridiculously painful.  my grandpa, in his deafened state, has also grown picky of late – in food, of action…  he reamed me the first night we were here for my lack of capitalization of his name, said that i could do what i wanted to with my own but that he wanted a big E and a big H.  he spends hours a day playing sudoku, laying on his bed, and i swear sometimes i can hear his mind whirring busily.

i have such a difficult time listening to my father talk to him.  he raises his voice and when my grandpa still can’t hear him, he shouts at him – as if the irritation and agitation are something he can’t hear, either.  no amount of persuasion causes him to pause before one of his screamed tirades. he just can’t see what is wrong.

i miss todd.  this is our third christmas together, yet not actually together as 600 miles separates us again.  i find myself still reluctant to do christmas with his family, although we all gather together for easter and thanksgiving.  i think it’s still ties to my mother.  even if christmas current is nothing like the christmases with her, it is still tied to her memory.  as if doing something with todd’s family would cut one last tie.  things with him are still off, and i’m not sure i know what to do anymore.

my youth pastor and i found each other on facebook.  i always liked him a lot and thought he was pretty cool.  i remember thinking how cool it was that a pastor had once been a bartender and still enjoyed margaritas.  he sent me a message that asked, “So…where did I go wrong that you list your religion as: “confused”???”   i wish i had an answer.

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the day is almost over, and i am somewhat relieved. i felt so strange this year, not overcome with the usual tidal wave of grief and sadness that has overcome me for the last four years. i kind of missed having the tears fall, a tactile reminder of my loss.

it’s not that it gets any easier. it just gets…different.

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Punch me in the cock, I’m tired. (Yeah, it’s a new phrase I’m trying out. Like “Damn, I’m tired.” As I tell my ever-patient wife, slang has to start somewhere.) How is it that kids know to wake up extra super early when you’ve stayed up a hair too late? Is there some kind of mean Fairy out there that hates parents? Like the anti-tooth fairy or something?

Oh, and a piece of advice to parents: Don’t leave the diaper bag in the car overnight; wipes freeze. Be thankful if you find that out BEFORE your child takes a dump in her diaper. I didn’t.

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Ah, what a day.

As I mentioned, Rebekah was sick. The vomiting and fever have since given way to explosive diarrhea (more on that later). Of note is the fact that our dryer kicked the bucket exactly one load into three days worth of vomiting. As you might imagine, there’s lots of laundry to do with a sick child and having no dryer handy…well. I got a not-altogether-unpleasant flashback to hanging clothes out to dry as a kid. It was nice to reminisce. Only, when I was young, we were doing it in on a line in the backyard, not on a jerry-rigged system strung out across the kitchen and back. But this got us through about nine loads of clothes and Reed thought it was a lot of fun to run around underneath the clothes, towels and assorted linens.

Today, our replacement dryer showed up … with its partner, a new clothes washer. Our last duo had lasted ten years, so we figured we were about due. About five minutes after the delivery guys leave, I realize the new washer keeps cutting off after two minutes. Push start. Two minutes and it cuts off. Repeat. At this point, I’m getting fairly frustrated as the morning has consisted of waiting around to get all the vast quantities of household laundry started, removing all the fittings and associated crap from the old units, etc. Now the new one isn’t even working! And I’d just let my still-working washer walk out the door! 

I figured out it was the old supply hoses that were causing a water flow restriction. But given some problems with faucet handles… well, long story short I ended up flooding the laundry room, which then flooded down into the basement. Not huge. Not water standing inches deep. But still a pain in the butt. Soaking wet, I manage to run downstairs and shut of the water main, get the spill cleaned up, pull the carpet up, fans running, new hoses hooked back up, new washer running with the first load and I’m just about to plop my tired ass down on the couch when the baby monitor crackles to life. 

Ah.

So, how do I end this day?

Rebekah has spent the vast majority of dinner out of her chair and sitting smugly in mommy’s lap. Then she pops up suddenly, hustles over to me, clambers up into my arms, grabs me in a big hug (really sweet, right?) … and promptly explodes diarrhea out of her diaper. 

Yay!

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