Happy Halloween

It’s been a full day. Katy has been in her Dancing Princess costume since 10AM and as I type this Rob and Katy have been home once to get a bigger bad for her “collection taking” (and to drop off our cat who has followed them up and down the street playfully attacking swinging goody bags and trying to gain entry to our neighbors homes when they open their doors).

Katy’s new school is not like the one she attended back in Des Moines. My old school district was very careful with Halloween, as they were with all holidays. Never acknowledging by name. No parties. No costume parades. In fact, the city of Des Moines and its surrounding suburbs neutered the holiday long ago by refusing to allow it to be held on the 31st and changing its name. They referred to it as Beggar’s Night and with the exception of only one year in the twenty that I lived there, it was always held on the 30th for two hours. This was supposed to cut down on vandalism and maybe take some of the “satanic” taint away from it. I find it ironic that Halloween is thought to be a holiday of evil. It’s druid origins have more to do with acknowledgment of the departed than the calling up of demons, which is actually Christian nonsense anyway.

I volunteered to help out in Katy’s class again today. It was fun. The kids from all the grades gathered in the gym. We sang - okay, they sang - O Canada and then each class got to parade across the stage to show off their costumes. Katy’s teacher had an assortment of party stations waiting for them back in the room, and we helped the kids make Mardi Gras type masks and decorate those tiny “pumpkins” and make tracings of familiar Halloween images like bats and ghosts which they labeled themselves.

Katy was so impatient to get out a trick or treat tonight. She decided that Rob should take her because he couldn’t be trusted at home with the candy. Katy was sure he would eat most of it before anyone could come knocking for it. I don’t think he would have. Eaten all of it that is. Some would be a given though.

After they returned, we set out for the bookmobile as Wednesday night is library night. Rob, me, the little dancing princess and our cat tagging along. We probably made a very heart-warming sight and looked quite the nuclear perfect family. Little would anyone guess where we all were at just a year ago, though I don’t like to make those comparisons. I didn’t decorate this year because Rob isn’t ready for tombstones in the front yard, even if they aren’t real, but I was ready in a way. I listened jealously to my best friend describe the haunted house that our Jaycees friends build every fall to raise money for charities. Will and I fell in love while building one in the fall of 1998 and shared our first kiss in the shower scene I created. There amidst the splayed body in a tub full of blood with spooky music in the background and strobes blinking was were it all began for us. Couldn’t have been anymore romantic. And those memories are good ones. Decorating and remembering creations past feels okay these days. There are things that don’t come back. Priorities change and continue to evolve for some time after the loss of a loved one. It’s inevitable and probably not a bad thing at all. Some people go the whole of their lives without ever given a second thought to how they live their lives and in my opinion that doesn’t make them luckier than I am.

So, Happy Halloween, my friends.

Lost Blog Entries and the Moon at Noon

I had this beautiful piece about Rob written this morning , but for some reason known only to the geeks at Apple Tech, the program “unexpectedly quit” and I hadn’t saved. Let that be a lesson to us all, I suppose. When I told Rob what had happened and that the topic of the day was him, he wondered if I had used the anecdote he told me last evening when we were snuggled up after just getting in bed for the night. He had apparently been 40 minutes late for a site safety meeting he is on the committee to oversee. It’s one of those committees that no one wants to take part in but they do it anyway simply because it’s a good way to rack up brownie points with the powers that be. Anyway, as Rob walked in to the meeting yesterday morning, more than a little late, he observed that nearly everyone in attendance looked as though they were having the mental equivalent of a root canal. Sour and dour and painfully uptight looking. And as he observed the situation and slid into his seat he thought to himself (with not a little bit of Virgo smugness), “Yep, bet none of you got laid this morning.” It’s moments like these - and there are many - that I know my soul is well-mated.

This morning I was so proud of myself for getting the blog entry done early because I wanted to spend the day working on my novel. Yes, I have started the Nonawrimo thing a few days early but I am am justifying this because we are taking a trip to Rob’s mom in the middle of the month and that will be a good five days of getting nothing done as far as writing goes, so I am actually going to end up two days short of the 30 days anyway. In the end all that matters is the novel, and it’s starting to actually take a shape - and not the one I had originally envisioned either.

So, with my best intentions thwarted, I was going to camp at the Starbucks and write for a bit after dropping my little girl at kindergarten. But, it’s lunch hour and the tiny Starbucks resides in the local Safeway where many people visit the store’s deli and then feel free to eat in the Starbucks sitting area. Yeah, I don’t get that either. So, there were no tables, and though I could have taken my chai latte over to the Fort library, I decided to come home and write in the office Rob set up for us a few weeks ago. Yesterday, the cat sat in my lap as I wrote but today she is angry with me for leaving her outdoors while Katy and I went to the gym. As I explained to her when we returned to find her curled up on the welcome mat at the door, this is what happens to little cats who don’t come when they are called (she’s learning but slowly).

On the way into the Fort I noticed the moon was still up. It often is. Not something I ever saw back in Iowa. I still can’t get over the sky here. Rob says it is the same sky but it just looks so different. Perhaps it is the wide openness or the latitude, but the clouds and the moon and the stars even never fail to catch and hold my attention like they were paintings in the Louvre.

What I had wanted to say today was how I love to watch my husband. In the mornings he is so deliberate in his actions as he dresses for the day. He is a powerful looking man and it fascinates me, the way his muscles move under his skin and how the light shades and shadows him. Of course, my first version was far more poetic. Rob wondered if being so often my topic he would lose his Canadian sensibilities. I am not sure that Canadians are anymore sensible than the Iowan’s I lived around all my life, but he is certainly the least affected man I have ever known. Sensible is certainly among his many middle names.

I am sorry I lost that earlier entry but I guess I was supposed to write this piece you are reading instead. Sometimes things work out better than originally planned.

Late

I sometimes wonder if I will ever have a proper schedule or be up early enough to accomplish things without constantly running into time constraints. Or, if I will ever have a schedule that is me-driven as opposed to working around other people’s schedules. If that sounds selfish, it’s because it is. I have the least amount of responsibility and the most amount of free (remembering that it is all relative) time of anyone and I still end up feeling the most constrained. Since the beginning of the school year, I have tried to get myself on some sort of schedule that would allow me time to write and to work-out properly and I am still having to steal time from the evenings to get some of this accomplished or nothing gets accomplished at all. Some of these conflicts exist outside my control. My deep water exercise class only meets on Mondays and Wednesdays from 8 to 9Pm. I can nothing about that. I am also unable to find writing groups that meet during the day or that meet only once a month. The two I have joined meet every other week and unfortunately they are on the same biweekly schedule, so weeks with writing groups means two evening out for several hours at a time back to back, and to top it off I end up missing one of the deep water classes that week. With Katy needing to be at school for the afternoon kindergarten session, and it only being two and a half hours - not counting the half hour on the bus home, this ends up being just enough time to allow me to accomplish one thing at best and lands precisely in the middle of my day just to mess up any attempts I make at a schedule and that mainly because I have to drive in to town from where we live. It’s not a long drive but again, long enough to really screw things up if traffic is bad or I am running just the slightest bit late. Take this morning as an example. I thought I would have enough time to run into the gym and workout and be back home to feed Katy quickly and then drive back in and drop her at school so I would have the afternoon to work on my novel. But, the iPod was on red and the car charger has been missing since we got back from Iowa. A quick call to Rob at the office yielded me nothing and by this time, it’s now too late to zip into town and be back for lunch. I have tried packing her lunch but this either ends up with her not eating because the child-minders didn’t get her going soon enough or me having to cut my workout quite short to feed her in the car before school and then we were either too early or too late. Neither of which was a serenity enhancing option. Writing in the morning and then working out after dropping Katy off at school doesn’t work either. First, I never get much done writing-wise because if Katy isn’t interrupting me there are household chores that need doing and after lunch is the worst time for me to try and do anything strenuous. I am just not an early afternoon exerciser, so I don’t work out as hard or as long as I need to. Late afternoon was always a good time to run, but that cuts into supper time. Evenings? I think I pointed out what a cluster-fuck those were turning into already.

I already know that the writing groups have to be pared down to two a month and I may have to let the Fort group go entirely because, though I like them and the discussions, the Wednesday night meeting times don’t work well for me. I don’t know what to do about writing and working out around Katy’s school schedule. Afternoon is proving to be a good time of day for her but it’s a crappy time for me. Part of the difficultly has to do with not having a set time to get up in the morning. I know I can’t go back to 5:30 AM again but sleeping in to 7 or 8 is not working either. Sigh. It is a sorry thing to know that you are only capable of scheduling yourself when it is something like a job or school forcing it on you. How pathetic am I?

And I realize that I am the envy of others who are not as fortunate to be able to take time away from employment to parent and/or pursue a dream, I just never considered that life would still be so occupied with obstacles and such. Or that it would be as hard to do as it is turning out.

Time, Timing and the Healing of All Wounds

There are essentially two camps of thinking when it comes to re-partnering or finding love again after being widowed. The first camp is loud and belligerent in its conviction, believes that time must pass and grief work must be done and that all parties involved must be consulted beforehand. I don’t belong to that camp. I find them to be irritating and sheople-like. But then again, I don’t believe that time heals wounds or that such a thing as grief-work even exists (it sounds suspiciously like those “camps” that Dr. Phil holds, tapes and uses as filler when he can’t come up with real topics to discuss). I am also a firm believer in not allowing friends and family, who are merely appendages to your life really, to have say over the general direction my life. In-laws will get over you. Parents and siblings have lives of their own that should occupy them more. And children grow up and go out into the world to live lives that they won’t allow you to input to, so why do you owe them input into yours when they are essentially not mature enough, or self-less enough, to give meaningful input? The second camp, my camp, believes that love will come along again if you are open to the idea and living your life minus the drama of single twenty-somethings who read Cosmo for the man-snaring dress and sex tips and visit their tarot readers monthly to see if their bar-hopping is going to pan out. And the grief part? The idea, prevalent among first campers, that if you wallow in it hard enough and long enough it will diminish to a corner of your psyche where you can wall it off and pull it out only on anniversaries is the most simplistic thing I think I have ever heard. Grief is. And it continues to be. Forever. It diminishes, if you want to use that term, as you begin to reclaim your life and rebuild it. Nothing short of that works. Could that be the “grief-work” everyone talks about? Perhaps. But what does love have to do with it?

When I was single, and I was for forever and a day, it seemed to me that the more time I spent pondering my single state the more single I remained. It was only when I was busy living and moving forward that the opportunities to fall in love and have that love returned presented themselves. The same held true after my first husband died. And what love has to do with grieving is that it is made easier by being able to share the load with someone who cares about you in a more intimate manner than your children or your mother-in-law can. This is true of most everything in life.

I am not going to pretend that I didn’t think about falling in love and marrying again early. In fact I thought about it even before Will died. Ours was a Terry Schiavo-ish situation with him first suffering from a rapidly progressive dementia until within little more than a year, he couldn’t communicate or understand at all. At that point, I spent well over an additional year on my own before he died though the man I had married was long since gone. Though I can intellectually understand those with terminal situations who refused to contemplate the future before their spouses died. I don’t get that kind of denial personally. So, when I read things other widows have written about time lines and respect for one’s late spouse or the need to make your children the epicenter of your life until they are grown or “working” the misery as reasons to not date or begin relationships, I chalk this up to the fact that some people aren’t me.

There was a recent flare-up on the widow board caused by a poster’s plea for others to not casually toss about absolutes when replying to other people’s queries. I watched the thread for a day or so because I knew it would dissolve into the age-old debate between the daters and the not-daters. Everything widow eventually breaks down along those lines when the subject is moving on. A woman I have little patience with leapt upon this topic, as she always does, to criticize and shame those people who haven’t followed her example of simply living for her children and waiting for the day that she no longer misses her husband. I have always felt there was a story behind that and to my surprise, those who usually support her vitriol, openly or through their silence, chastised her to the point where she admitted that she was the hypocrite I suspected her to be, an early dater. Her relationship however didn’t work out and she is essentially carrying a torch for this man still. Not at all unlike what happens to the single and divorced in the world. We are not as unlike them as we like to think in this respect anyway. So much for the idea that waiting is the given though, and those who begin to feel again and act on those feelings are horrible people and bad examples.

Rob finds the finger-waggers as irritating as I do. Not because he worries about what people think. He doesn’t. But because it is disrespectful and presumptive of others to claim knowledge of his heart and mind simply because they share his widowed state. As he is fond of pointing out, widowhood does not make saints out of assholes generally, nor does it give any special ability to guide or give counsel to people who had social issues or issues at all to begin with. So, I resisted the urge to re-register and comment. Easily as it turns out but I couldn’t let it go enough not to blog on the topic because, personally, I feel that the vast majority of the bereaved are back out into the world sooner rather than later and it is those who cling to their grief via arbitrary timelines and “rules” and absolutes who are the ones who really need help. The rest of us are doing all right without them.

Make a Difference Day

All over the United States today people will meet up for various activities to try and make a difference in their communities. They will clean roadways and parks. Sponsor and volunteer at events for senior citizens or underprivileged children to bring joy or hope or just a little bit of a good time into the lives of these people. My aunt is helping out with bingo and lunch at the local high school for the seniors in her area. Never mind that she is, at 76, as senior herself. She was telling me about it when we were back in Iowa visiting last week. The do this once a year and provide transportation for people who can’t drive any more or they go to the nearby nursing homes and bring over anyone who is able to make the trip. It’s a much anticipated and appreciated event which begs the question of what do these seniors do the rest of the year? And what are the volunteers doing the other 364 days that would qualify as making a difference? Or is one only expected to put oneself out just this one day a year?

To my aunt’s credit, she makes a difference every week. Her community sponsors lunch for the senior citizens once a week at the same school and my aunt volunteers to help serve before sitting down to lunch with her friends. My aunt is not someone who volunteers to make a difference as much as she does this for herself. It makes her feel good to help those of her peers who aren’t as fortunate in their health and circumstances as she is. She doesn’t view it as making a difference as much as it just being the right thing to do.

I wouldn’t want anyone to think I am opposed to Make a Difference Day. I’m not. It’s a good idea, but it is also a short-sighted one. One day of volunteering might instill the “volunteering” spirit in the odd person here and there but more likely these volunteers simply pat themselves on the back for a deed well done and then try to salvage what is left of their weekend. Longer projects like those sponsored by the Jaycees or Habitat for Humanity and Meals on Wheels Programs or local food banks/pantries are probably better ways to make differences than one time events. Still, if just a few people pick up and run with the ideas they get today then it’s a worthwhile endeavor.

Get out and make a difference America. Today is your day.

Expectations

Got an email from my oldest friend today. Not old in the chronological sense, but from the years we have known each other sense. She and I go all the way back to the fifth grade and The Church of the Resurrection Grade School. That’s thirty plus years now. Aside from family, I don’t think I go back farther with anyone else. Despite a few breaks in contact here and there over the decades, she could probably tell anyone who was interested in just how much, or not, I have changed over time. She was inquiring about our recent 25th high school reunion, which she missed, and to fill me in on her mother’s recent surgery. It seems her mother needed knee replacement and was under the impression that replacing a major joint was on par with most day surgeries. In, out and home to be all comfy snug as a drugged up bug for a day or two and then back to one’s normal routine. Alas, it was not the case. Apparently one cannot receive a new knee and go to the gym the next day and begin abusing it in spin class or on the treadmill. There is the whole pesky recuperation thing to deal with first. For my friend’s mother this means purchasing a walker, acquiring a toilet seat heightener and being eligible for a short term handicap parking sticker. I knew without her having to tell me that her mother would be horrified at the prospect of any one of those things, but all at once probably sent her over the edge. I know this because even though I haven’t seen either of her parents in many years, I have parents of my own who reject anything that hints at the fact that they might not be as young as say, my friend and I are. Which is not that young by the way.

She marveled at the differences in expectations patients can have about procedures like knee replacement. Being a doctor, she has seen these expectations run the gamut from Monty Python crowd of “It’s just a flesh wound” to those who believe there is never a good reason not to be put completely under. Expectations. And pity the poor doctor, or teacher or barista at the nearest Starbucks who can’t live up to them.

One of the reasons I was glad that immigration forced me to prematurely retire from teaching was the unrealistic expectations that were being forced on me by superiors and lawmakers and the media. A job that once beckoned me through the school days an hour or more before my students, and most of my colleagues, arrived every morning has been sucked dry of its joy the ridiculous notion that schools should be run like businesses and that educating children was no different from putting together appliances. I am sure the same could be said of medicine and the damage that has been done there by insurance companies who feel their true purpose is to enrich shareholders. Expectations. One of those eye of the beholder things, eh?

As a widowed women I found a veritable rule book of expectations I was expected to adhere to with the conviction of the newly reborn. One of my favorites was the one year rule. The widowed are expected to put off any major decisions until the first anniversary of their spouse’s death has been duly mourned for all to see. and maybe hand them certificate suitable for framing afterwards. Who knows. It sounded a bit iffy to me. Put off? What does that mean exactly? I had a master’s degree to finish. I was actually in the middle of my thesis when Will died and was preparing for my final seminar class that coming July. Selling my house perhaps? I wasn’t in dire need of that but if I had been, would it have been better to wait a year and hope a foreclosure wasn’t the result? I did reach the conclusion it was time to start looking at other career possibilities, but I was going to stick with teaching until I had things lined up. Would waiting a year to start planning my move have given me more clarity or simply thrown cold water on my momentum?

Expectations are about reality but sometimes reality bites a bit too hard to be given all that much credence. If my father hadn’t the lofty expectations he did after his strokes and being diagnosed with plumonary fibrois, he would be dead already. Expectations might inconvenience and cause us to shake are heads a bit in wonder, but in the end they are subjective thing. Better to be a square peg than one of the numerous round holes.

Bursting into Song

One of my favorite episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a musical with all the characters bursting into song and dance like Singing in the Rain or West Side Story. I got to thinking about this when I came across a group on Faceback called “Why yes, I do just burst into song”. It reminded me too of when I was young and I would string together popular songs to tell stories in much the same way they do in the movie Moulin Rogue. I would imagine my characters singing songs to tell their stories alone or in duets. I was a very odd child. When I was older, and even now, I used songs to cheer myself up or onward, narrating my own life through tunes. If my life were a musical today the musical narrative would be comprised mainly of love songs. I caught the end of Faith Hill’s Breathe on the way to deep water aerobics tonight and it captured perfectly the way I feel about Rob. Sometimes these days, I am so happy that I almost feel guilty. However, it’s not as though I have forgotten. You never forget, but I am done letting those moments that crop up on occasion dominate or interfere with my life. There will always be memories and anniversaries and times of the year that prick at the underside of consciousness in an attempt to awaken the past.

I awoke the other morning shortly before the alarm from a dream about Will. I have gone from never dreaming about him to dreams where he is part of the white noise to the current state of affairs with him turning up on occasion and interrupting dreams already in progress. He is never who he was though. Not the man I fell in love with or married. He is the sick and demented version of Will. What he became after the disease took hold and had eaten away significant portions of the white matter that covered his brain. In these dreams he is like a child or a little old man. I can’t communicate with him in any meaningful way and I spend a great deal of time comforting and caring for him. In the latest dream, he begged me to just hold him as though he were a small child and I woke up from the dream in tears. Though there is something to the theory that dreams are your unconscious mind trying to tell you something important or the way your mind problem solves while you sleep, there isn’t much to this dream that needs deep analysis on my part. I have always wished that we could have known what was wrong sooner so that he and I could have had a chance to talk about his wishes and say goodbye, and I wish I could have been able to care for him instead of putting him in the nursing home. I also wish I had been able to take time off work to be with him those last months he spent in hospice. But I couldn’t and I can’t fix that now. And I also know that it’s October. The month that Will went into hospice; where he died two years ago this coming January.

Last year around this time, I began living most of the “firsts” that lay grieving people so low during that first year. Nearly everything important was packed into those last few months of the first year and it was very hard to cope with these events when I was also dealing with personal illness, raising a small child and working a full-time job. I did it though. Not well, and I would never counsel people to do what I was told to do, which was to wallow in my misery. I was fortunate that my innate tendency to question “authority” and my inner musical buoyed me up enough that I didn’t get stuck in that mode. I know there will be moments in the coming months that will bring up memories, good and bad, but isn’t that just part of life?

The trip we took back to my folks recently provided me with a chance to visit places from my childhood. The farm where my uncle and grandmother lived for instance. By chance the call of nature (yeah, I pee outdoors now like a Canadian) put me behind the car-shed, and as I walked back to the homestead from around the barn I paused for a moment to look up at the door to the loft. It was closed and the ground beneath was covered with ankle deep grass. It was just a over and month and 35 years ago that my uncle fell to his death from that loft after having a seizure. Later that same afternoon, we stopped at the cemetery where he is buried. The first person I was close to and really loved who died and left me. And it’s been thirty-five years. I can still feel that pain. Remember with clarity the last time I saw him. Regret that I never got the chance to say goodbye. People might argue - widows would argue vehemently - that it’s not the same as losing a spouse, but they are full of shit. Loss is loss. And who is anyone to say that one type is worse or more painful? It took years to get to a point where Jimmy’s death wasn’t part of me every day. It will take as much time or more to incorporate Will’s passing into my psyche as well. And there will be more dreams. And they are just dreams. But the musical that is my life is what I hear when I am awake and living and loving and laughing, and that is what counts.

From Here to Eternity

There was a commentary piece in the Globe and Mail yesterday stemming from the recent death of Deborah Kerr. The author talked about scrutinizing a recent photo of the eighty-something actress trying to find traces of the beautiful woman she had been so long ago. She went on to wonder why it is that male actors are allowed to basically decay in the public eye via their film work while women are considered used up commodities when they reach their forties. As an example she used compared actors like Jack Nicholson being a leading man still despite the fact that he is physically an old man whereas Ms. Kerr “retired” from acting essentially when she turned forty. It gets back to, naturally, the double-standard when it comes to men and women and aging. A standard that exists, I think, for two reasons. One being that it is a man’s world. They have always made the rules and the rules have always favored them. The second reason is that we women go along with this by willingly buying into the notion that as we lose our youth to the years and the mileage, we become less beautiful. The latter, and the former really as well, is crap.

If I could, I would show you a picture of myself at eighteen and one now and you would have to admit I am much better looking now. I am the proverbial ugly duckling that age and wisdom have transformed into, if I must so say myself, a damn fine swan. I can’t pretend that I am happy with wrinkles or gray hairs or the fact that I must work longer to get into a healthy physical state, but I am much better looking than many of male peers. The article I read talked about how advances in cosmetic surgery have helped women stay at par with their same age brethren, and though I am grateful for the advances in medicine that help those people who have been ill or badly injured avoid some of the physical stigma, I am not so sure that cosmetic surgery has been a good thing overall for my gender or that without it we wouldn’t be “at par”. There are exceptions, of course, but I don’t think that the majority of men fare any better against the ravages of time time than women do. They get just as fat. flabby, gray and wizened as we do when we don’t take the time ti eat properly and take care of ourselves. Having just been at my 25th high school reunion I can say that by and large the mid-forties is not what it was a half-century ago when people that age seemed to look so much older than we do now. Hair coloring has something to do with this as does the advent of birth control which allowed women to control to some extent the ravages of childbearing on their bodies. Mainly though, we live less physically demanding lives.

Still, it hasn’t changed the perception that forty is old for a woman and prime for a man. Not fair but we women don’t do ourselves favors by buying into such nonsense.

Making New Friends

On the drive to school yesterday my daughter asked me if I had made any new friends yet. This isn’t the first time she has asked me about this. Making friends is a big deal in her five year old world, and she assures me that she has made many new friends since moving here. Friends at school. At dance. With the children of people Rob and I know. And she considers herself a great friend of our next door neighbor, Charlotte. Katy can spend hours following Charlotte around as she does yard work and other outdoor chores. Of course this got me thinking, once again, about me and the friends thing. I just have never been one to make friends easily. Even when I can manage to be outgoing, I am an acquired taste it seems. Since coming here to live, I haven’t given the whole friends thing much thought. I have been more focused on activities I like and finding groups and venues that allow me to pursue them. I wonder sometimes if this will eventually lead me to friendships, but I don’t dwell on it. Still, it worries my daughter or she wouldn’t bring it up.

The majority of friends I have made since leaving college for the adult world have been made in the workplace. The trouble with job friends is that they are relative to that job. When you leave for another workplace, you leave behind those friendships. A few have survived. Meg and I met twenty years ago now and we are still good friends. Her girls are like nieces to me and if I were to have an older sister, it would be Meg. I met Sandi at Goodrell in the mid-nineties but it wasn’t until we worked together on the 8th grade team that we became friends. We keep in touch by email now, and she read this blog (Hi Sandi!), but with as a full time teacher with a husband and three little ones she is a very busy woman. Judi taught next door to me at my last teaching assignment. She is still there and we too communicate now through email. And then of course there are those I met via the Internet. My mommy friends who I post with still after nearly seven years and though I have seen pictures of them and their families, I haven’t met a single one in person yet. There is Liz on the soap board too. I don’t watch the soap anymore but I continue to keep up with her. I don’t even know what she looks like. I have met a few people through the Widows’ board. Rob, of course. But also Cheryl, who came to our wedding and we keep in touch with on Facebook. Marsha in Illinois whose blog I read. Fi and Sarah here in Canada. Fi found me through my blog and we are friends on Facebook too. Sally too is a widow friend and fellow blogger who I hope to catch up with in person one day.

Is it odd to have so many friends that I don’t interact with in the flesh? It would seem odd to my daughter. I guess it would seem odd to many others too. Without a job I am left to meet potential friends as I may. The gym is not proving to be a fertile ground for friendship, nor is the swim class I attend twice a week. I go to workout. Like reading or writing, I get in a zone and disappear. The writing groups I have joined are still possibilities. I met some really great women in the group I belonged to back in Des Moines, but I haven’t been attending the groups here long enough to know for sure yet.

I should worry more about this, I know. One of the worst side-effects losing my first husband was that I lost many of the social contacts and friends I made while we were married. Aside from my best friend, Vicki, everyone else fell by the wayside. Not that I dwell on this much, but if something were to happen to Rob, there would really be no one here for me. Most everyone I know, I know through him and if you have ever been widowed (and I imagine the same holds true for divorce) you know that your spouse’s friends are really and truly just that. His friends. At the moment though, I am usually so busy that I don’t really notice, and I guess it helps too that I have always been able to be alone. That’s not true of everyone.

I am not going to worry about it. Friends come along, like love, when you are just living your life and making the most of every minute.

The High School Reunion

I graduated from Wahlert High School twenty-five years ago this last May. Still, sometimes it still seems like it was not that long ago although it doesn’t feel like yesterday anymore. This weekend while we were back visiting my family and seeing friends, there was a reunion. I had tried to convince a few friends I haven’t seen since my wedding to Will to come but they begged off for various reasons. Truthfully, nearly all of my high school friends are simply not the home-town types. They all went away to university and moved farther away for careers and whatnot after that. They aren’t necessarily the family/homebody types although some did marry and some more started families. We were the types of kids who didn’t party really and found entertainment in the oddest of ways and places. We belonged to the band and orchestra and school newspaper. The clubs we joined were of a more intellectual nature and I can’t think off-hand if any of us managed to stick with a team sport for more than our freshman year. No one who was anyone in our high school knew who we were or cared to know, really. But isn’t every high school like that. And every college? And once you are out in the “grown-up” world these social hierarchies don’t disappear. The neighborhood you live in. The place where you work. The playgroup your toddlers are in and the school PTA you were guilted into joining. They will all have their cliques of “popular” people who find you wanting in some rather unimportant way or another. I guess as human beings we just have this need to be liked and admired or envied that leads some of us to form groups with the unspoken purpose of excluding others and some of us to feel unworthy when overlooked .

I ran into my first former classmates in the wee hours of Saturday morning. I had thought to call my old friend (and third cousin) Julie and hook up with her and whoever else on Friday evening, but after taking the kids swimming at the hotel and then dinner at my folks, we barely managed to meet my sister, Kate, on time for drinks in the hotel bar. Nine o’clock swiftly became 1:30 in the morning as we rounded off our night in East Dubuque at a local place where my brother-in-law cooks and tends bar as a side job. Back at the hotel, as we were making our way towards our suite on the third floor, we passed two drunken women at the snack machines loudly joking about their need for sausage. Later in the room, my husband commented on the “sausage” thing, and I replied that they can’t all be as lucky as I am. The next morning as we were waiting for the elevator, another loud-spoken woman approached and I knew the voice somehow. It struck some long-forgotten nerve. Funny how the most annoying people have voices to match their irritating personalities. It wasn’t until I got a good look at her face in the elevator that I was sure I had gone to school with her, but it was when she began idly, and again quite shrilly, chatting up a very young man in a tux that I was sure of who she was.

She was a cheerleader all through our high school days and possessed all the physical characteristics that were important back in the late seventies and early eighties. She was short. Thin. Blonde. And could fake idiocy without a trace of resentment. My only real memory of her was in the freshman locker bay after lunch one day. She was decked out in her cheer outfit and walking around with her shoelaces flapping. She never tied her own shoes. “I don’t know how,” she would simper like a southern belle from Gone with the Wind, again at quite an impressive volume for someone who was not much more than a midget, until some boy would tire of the charade and acquiesce to her ploy. I saw her again that evening at the lounge where the reunion was held. She flounced in fashionably late in a summery dress that was out of place in mid-October Iowa but then dress weather appropriate wouldn’t have gotten her the same attention, I suspect. My friend (and also another cousin), Gwen, pointed her out and I told them the story of the elevator. I also told them the joke that Rob had told me after I remarked to him that she was the woman from earlier. “What do some women wear behind their ears to attract a man’s attention?” I didn’t know. “Their heels.” Sums up Shoelace girl and her crowd fairly succinctly.

It was a pleasant evening. We arrived too early and very few people were there yet. Checking in with two of my former classmates at the door, I was asked to update my address. Seems they had lost track of me. I didn’t recognize either of them nor did their name tags provide much of a clue. My classmates who have appointed themselves the supreme planners of all reunions instituted a rather quaint practice of printing up name tags with women’s married names on them and nary a sign of who they actually were once. Of course this made those of us who remained single for ten or more years after graduating stick out, but I am thinking that was the point anyway.

The first person I recognized was Clete. We were friends from the end of senior year and for a few years after until we lost touch. His hair was shorter but he looked the same. Same smile. Same quiet manner. We chatted about superficial things. Jobs. Kids. Family in the area. After Rob wondered that my widowhood hadn’t come up and what that conversation might have sounded like, already knowing really because we have both had those types of conversations. But, I saw no need to lead the conversation in that direction. Clete is a nice guy but we are not friends anymore. We are two people who were once friends and are now just two people who share a pleasant conversation every five years. Julie and Gwen came next. I saw Julie first and saw as I approached that she was with Gwen and another woman, Sue. We ended up sharing a table for a bit and being a bit catty as our former class queens and other minor royalty sat at the table nearby. I had already seen most of these women earlier and had noted that they looked the same but with facial features more pronounced by the carving out that time imposes. They were all dressed liked middle-aged women who hoped that they were still as hot as they had been at eighteen. But they weren’t. No one is. And those of us who were never hot at any age have the consolation of not having to inflict such things on ourselves now. That longing for our youthful beauty. The truth is that youth itself was the beautiful thing if we had only known it at the time.

I don’t know all their names. I didn’t back then either. If you weren’t my friend, I didn’t really pay all that much attention. I was either hunched over a spiral writing stories and poems and letters or I was nose deep in a book. If I wasn’t doing that, I was daydreaming about the future. I was always far away.

I was even a bit far away that night, thinking about home and the novel I am starting to work on next week and about Rob.

Before we left the reunion - early, as we had a flight to catch Sunday morning in Cedar Rapids - I had to make a stop in the washroom. Rob was waiting for me when I emerged and I was obliged to run a short gauntlet of well-dressed women who, according to my husband, nearly broke their necks sizing me up as I flew past. He thought they were wondering who I was. Was indeed. Weren’t they surprised when they finally found out?

Coming Home

Even without a black cat sighting, our trip back was a tad bit trying. Neither Rob nor I managed to get more than a few hours of sleep Saturday night despite the fact that we were both exhausted. I don’t know if it was just the preoccupation with making sure all the details were in order or just the stress that occupies air travel generally these days. I was worried about crossing the border since my status is not yet official.

The Cedar Rapids Airport isn’t very big. Small jets that contract with larger airlines mainly. Checking in set Rob’s teeth on edge within ten minutes of our arrival. The touch and scan machine they have at the counter was backed up due to a passenger who either couldn’t read or didn’t understand the concept of touch screen or both. For some reason we weren’t allowed to choose our seats prior to check in which is annoying beyond words when you are traveling with small children. The woman in question was one of those who was trying to hang onto the best years of her life and these years were clearly her twenties. She was wearing tight jeans, a leopard print shirt just as clingy and was so expertly balanced on 3 inch stilletto heels with an open toe that you knew she didn’t own a pair of flats beyond the cross-trainers she probably wore when she went to gym once a week. Too much make-up for 7:15 in the morning and a shaggish type hair-style that doesn’t really suit people our age. I say “our age” because she couldn’t have been much older than I am and was likely a bit younger but that’s what tanning beds actually do for you. Having just spent the evening before at my 25th high school reunion, I was a bit more conscious of my peers who put a lot of effort into staying young. Rob fumed openly at the woman, and I didn’t blame him. The more I watched her, the more obvious it was that she wasn’t incapable of traversing the seating situation. She was one of those women who had lived her life getting others, probably men more often than not, to do things for her. As she explained to the employee who finally gave up trying to explain it to her and just did it for her, she had paid a lot of money for this trip and she was going to sit next to her girlfriend but her daughter and son-in-law didn’t need to be near-by if that was too much trouble. It was then I noticed the young couple tying up the other kiosk. The daughter was obviously her mother’s clothing and hairstyle inspiration and she was browning herself to an older looking middle-age in her mother’s footsteps as well. The younger woman was also a graduate of the school of dumb blondes, pretending incompetence as her husband indulgently guided her through the check in procedure.

The jet we were taking was being boarded out on the tarmac. We don’t always take advantage of the right that passengers with small children have to board ahead of our seats being called but with the walk out and carrying the carseat to check this time, we did. On the smaller jets they are very strict about the one carry-on rule. Even purses are deemed carry-on which is beyond stupid as most women don’t travel with backpack size handbags and many of the purses these days are very small. Mine you might not even notice if you saw me only from the front, which is the angle the flight attendant first spied me from as I helped Katy on and we walked past the attendant and a long-haired passenger arguing about his carry-on. It appeared he had quickly moved his cameras to his larger carry-on and was folding the camera bag to stuff in the first bag as well but the attendant continued to harangue him. Until she saw Rob. He was carrying his computer case and wearing the backpack that the three of us share and which also contained my computer. The flight attendant seized upon the chance to force someone else to check a bag, having failed with Mr. Pony-Tail. Rob quickly pointed out that he did have one carry-on and was handling mine because I was taking charge of Katy. And that is when she saw my purse.

“A hand-bag is a carry-on and you cannot have two carry-on.”

So now I was blocking the aisle, which always makes one popular on any flight and Katy was getting ahead of me and the other passengers were looking on with interest to see if I would make an issue and likely get us ejected.

“Okay, can I put the purse in the pack?”

Thwarted again, and clearly unhappy about that, she replied, “Yes, because you can only have one carry-one.”

I suppose I could have gotten uber-technical and pointed out that there were three of us and therefore we were allowed three carry-on. If I had wanted to be a real smart-ass, I could have handed Katy my purse (she loves carrying it) and taken the pack from Rob. I wasn’t in the mood. I was tired and worried about getting through Canadian Customs and thinking a bit about my dad, whether or not I will ever see him alive again, and the woman was clearly one of those people who saw the world from her eyes only. Whether or not she would have been kinder if she had known my circumstances isn’t even relevant. The world at large is not equipped to deal with us all as individuals with needs and feelings. Sometimes, you just suck it up and shrug it off as best you can later.

I was most of the flight and a while longer in Minneapolis “shrugging” Brunhilda off. It wasn’t until I had a skinny chai from Starbucks in hand and finished reading the last thirty pages of The Other Boleyn Girl that I felt more like myself. When we finally hit Concourse C and Katy was happily making friends with the other children in the play area, Rob wisely sent me off to the Starbucks which was a bit of a walk. The walk helped a lot. The chai and a literary immersion got me the last little bit to my “zen” place. The man knows me pretty well.

The flight into Edmonton is about 2 and 1/2 hours. We were late taking off because the pilot waited for a few passengers whose connecting flight was late, but we still made it on schedule. There was quite a bit of turbulence early in the flight. The kind that reminds you of a rollercoaster. Stomach-dropping. I wasn’t afraid as much as physically disconcerted. I am keenly aware of motion. I can feel the floor move and the sway of buildings. Air turbulence might as well be an earthquake in terms of what I feel. Fortunately it passed quickly though the flight didn’t. If it is calm, I can write and even read a bit. Bumpy and I have nothing to do but wait.

In Edmonton, customs turned out to be a non-event, as Rob had said it would be. We did get booted over to the Immigration Office but that turned out to be a good thing because we were able to get one of the clearest explanations of my status and what we needed to know and remember to do that we have ever gotten from Immigration. It was worth the wait.

The kittens went a bit feral while we were gone but on the upside, they are eating kitten food now and we should be able to hand them over to their new owners soon. I had to make a grocery run and nearly fell asleep over my cart as I schlepped around the Safeway. But, by nine we were all ready for bed and the bags were unpacked, put away and laundry was half done.

It was a good trip, but I am so glad to be home again.

My Dad is Dying

My father is dying. Odds being what they are it would be surprising if he made it to the new year. Ironically it was two years ago this coming week that I had to come back here to help out because he was having surgery to unblock as artery in his neck that was causing him to have small strokes. He hasn’t been well since but has fought very hard to regain his health and independence. He quit smoking and drinking cold turkey. No small feat for a a life-long smoker and a functional alcoholic. He probably would have beaten his way all the way back but for the pulmonary fibrosis which set in a few months after my late husband died.

It seems to me that Dad is ready to go now. He is finally allowing he and mom’s will to be revised to reflect that changes in our family over the last five or so years. He talks openly about not being around much longer. My next younger sister, Katie, told me frankly last night that he is not doing even as well as he looks as though he is doing. The tell-tale sign to me is that he spends most of his time in bed sleeping. It’s one of those that the hospice people would point out when Will was at Kavanaugh House two years ago.

In light of all this, I pinned my sister down last night and we discussed the details that I would never get out of my mother. My sister admitted that she wishes I had moved back here after Will died. She is tired of taking care of the folks on her won as our youngest sister is, as my brother-in-law puts it, “A forty year old with the mind of a sixteen year old” and that is exactly as frustrating and maddening as it sounds. Katie has the power of attorney for both our parents and will make all the decisions once dad dies or goes into the hospital, which I think is unlikely. If he is fighting at all now it is to die at home. Being in Canada, I be the one walking in after the fact and taking instructions. And dealing with Mom. That my sister is emphatic about. Truthfully, I deal with her much better than Kate does and, sadly, I will understand where she is coming from too.

As often happens when we discuss Dad and the final arrangements, the subject of inheritance comes up. My dad grew up quite poor. My grandparents were tenant farmers during the depression and eventually ended up living with my grandmother’s father and working the homestead for him. My uncle eventually managed to buy the place in the mid-sixties but died in 1972 leaving the place to my grandmother who when she died had it divided up among the surviving children. It wasn’t a fortune but it gave my dad the opportunity to invest on a much larger scale than his pay from the meat packing plant ever could. And my dad is one shrewd money man. I have realized since college that he was amassing quite the tidy sum. He has explained bits and pieces to me over the years but I have never factored inheritance into any of my plans the way my siblings have. As it is, a careful person with a head for investing, or a good financial planner, could live a comfortable life with what my dad plans to leave behind for his children and grandchildren. And even though I am not one of those who views insurance money or inheritance as “blood” money, I would prefer not to be made comfortable this way.

Today, we are going out to the old homestead. Perhaps Dad will come along if he feels up to it. I haven’t seen it in years. For some reason I want to visit the old places from my childhood and teenage years. Take pictures. Share memories. Maybe it’s because of Dad or possibly it is the move to Canada and the feeling that I will not live here in the states for any extended length of time again. Whatever the case, the rain has finally stopped and it is a certainty that Rob, Katy and I won’t be seeing sunny day in the low seventies until next summer, so we will be spending our last full day in Iowa outdoors.

Family and Friends

Rob asked me the first night back why I had wanted to make the trip here. This was after observing me with my folks when we finally arrived. Neither of my parents really listened to much of what I had to say and my mom especially would interrupt me to talk about herself. And that is just them. As I had explained to Rob before, no one in my family really gets me on a deep level or truly understands who I am. He has said himself that I am a “complex” person, though I am not sure why he thinks so. I suppose I am a contradiction at times but I am not sure that qualifies me for “complex” which sounds so much more interesting than it is.

I am not sure I wanted to come back as much as I just needed to for a bit. To check on my folks who are getting older and are not healthy, my father especially. Katy needed to see her grandparents and cousin, Luke. She has and is adjusting quite well in Alberta but she is still just a very little girl. The high school reunion thing was just a coincidence. As it turns out I will probably not see many people from back in those days. Everyone lives so far away and has significant people and family that have taken them far from Dubuque and the kids that we once were. It’s okay. I have never been one to have those BFF type relationships with people who stick with you for lifetimes and would come at the drop of the hat if called upon to do so. I find those types of friendships interesting but don’t know anyone personally who has one. And maybe no one really has someone like that. Maybe it is more the case that we have people who are supportive of us in ways we accept as good enough, often enough. If that makes any sense.

I think the biggest reason I agreed to take this trip was for the opportunity to show Rob where I came from and to spend some time off by ourselves which we haven’t had really since moving in together and marrying. My mom is a willing sitter and Katy has come to expect to be allowed to stay at my folks when we visit. This allows Rob and I the kind of one on one and intimacy that isn’t a given when you marry the second time.

My best friend, Vicki, took the day off and is driving over with her mom and daughter, Lindsay for a quick visit this afternoon. If I have a friend who comes closest to “drop everything” it is her.

Today it’s rainy. Iowa should be synonymous with “swamp” and “sub-tropic” and “Noah” as in ark. I do not miss the biblical rain season here which grows longer and longer as global warming picks up its pace. Rob and I will head out to Starbucks soon and then up to my folks. They enjoy our presence, and they enjoy fact that we are useful. We made dinner last night and cleaned up after. Rob changed the door nob on the bathroom door, so it actually locks again. I guess you can go home again, as long as you are just visiting.

Black Cats

Just as we were nearing the airport yesterday, a black cat dashed across the road in front of us. Off to the right we could see a coyote paused in mid-chase in the ditch. A more superstitious person would have immediately jumped to the conclusion that the day was now a wash and gone back home to catch up on sleep before the sun came up, but though I did wonder idly about the possibility of our plane plummeting to the ground shortly after take off, I didn’t give the cat, or its hue, another thought until we landed in Minneapolis to discover our next flight was cancelled.

“Cancered?” my daughter puzzled. “Why was the plane cancered?”

Why indeed and since it was a company that contracts with Northwest, we will probably never have an answer, but there we were. It was not quite noon and our one o’clock flight to Cedar Rapids, Iowa was now rescheduled for 4:45. We suddenly had a whole lotta time on our hands.

The first order of business, after visiting the washrooms, was lunch. And, I don’t know if you’ve traveled by air lately but though there are a great many food choices from very fast to sit down and hand over your Gold Card, not a whole lot of it amounts to much more than fat and sugar and the inevitable tummy ache. For me, eating out is a quest anymore. Trying to find food that won’t upset my stomach or aggravate my allergies or even weigh me, literally, down is hard enough to do in the real world but in the confines of a TSA secure airport it is nearly impossible. Once you enter the terrorist-cleansed zone, you aren’t allowed out without penalty. That being that you have to run the screening gauntlet again and explain why you left too I would guess. I would also guess that being hungry for edible food won’t cut it as a reason.

After a search we discovered a food court on Concourse C with an Einsteins and a place that made fruit smoothies as well as Asian cuisine and an A&W. When we were all fed, we landed at the play area and settled with newspapers and Starbucks and made ourselves as comfy and at home as possible while Katy played. It was a little surprising to me how once we were fortified with reading material and beverages that Rob and I kicked back as though it were a weekend morning at our dining room table with tea and toast. I kicked off my shoes and put my feet in his lap, and we read and exchanged information of interest as we came across it. The hours passed. Not all that slowly. It was relaxing in its own strange way.

Flight time finally arrived. It was a small jet that left the gate on time but taxied in circles for so long that Rob finally asked me if we were going to drive to Cedar Rapids after all. Once up the time went by and when we arrived it looked as though we might still be to my folks at a reasonable hour. But the black cat wasn’t quite done. The flight had been full and, um, weighty. Some of the heavier pieces of luggage were removed from the cargo bins just prior to take off. We had taken the two hard shell suitcases with us. One had most of our clothes and the other the car-seat. The car-seat arrived with us. The clothes, as we were to discover after another bit of a wait, would be arriving in another few hours. Fortunately we did pack a change of colors and other essentials in the carry-on case. Still, it was past Katy’s bedtime when we headed out in a downpour to my hometown.

Today the luggage was delivered to my parent’s house and we managed pretty well without it. As I said at the beginning of this piece, if I had been more superstitious, I might have run for cover, but I really don’t think that black cats or the number 13 or any other mumbo jumbo has much to do with the mishaps that occur sometimes. Not that everything happens for a reason, but sometimes things happen for the benefit of others and we just get caught up by that. It’s not a big deal. I spent the afternoon with my feet in my honey’s lap watching my daughter have a grand time playing and making conversation with the children that came and went in that play area over the course of an afternoon, and honestly worse times have been had by us all.

Flying

It could just be my naturally suspicious nature or it could be that the process is designed to intimidate and dehumanize, but I dislike crossing borders and security checkpoints. U.S. Customs was a non-event this time back. The last time it was just Katy and I, so I got the usual questions about where I had been and did Katy’s father know I had her out of the country. Since I always tuck her dad’s death certificate into her passport, it is right there for them to see, but they ask anyway. I guess they need to hear me say that he is dead. With Rob along however, the Custom’s official didn’t even open the certificate. Even traveling with different last names on our passports, because getting mine amended to reflect my new martial status is proving to be a hassle, the official just assumed that Rob was her father.

The TSA screenings are not as Nazi paced in Canada. After all, we are talking about Canadians who are never in a hurry do to anything job related. A marked change from the TSA at the Des Moines Airport who lacked only the snarling German Shepherds and people hollering “Schnell! Schnell!” As if it should take no time at all to de-shoe yourself and a small child while simultaneously dumping everything from your person into impossibly small plastic containers while presenting proper photo ID and boarding passes. Still, it has the feeling of one of those test dreams a person has from time to time even years past being in school. Wandering frantically up and down hallways. Searching for the right room and never finding it or arriving too late. I don’t think it would fit Amnesty International’s definition of torture but it is being brought to us all by the people who think that simulated drowning does not count because it’s not specifically prohibited by the Geneva Convention.

Once through and into the gate area the cluster fuck truly begins. Why do people rush to get into boarding lines? Boarding is a slow process that is actually made quicker by being last. I guess it is to snag all the overhead compartments rather than putting one carry on up and one under your seat. Again, a behavior based on the false assumption that disembarking will be made quicker this way. I can’t count the number of times I have waited patiently with my carry on secured and me ready to leave while nearly every one around me struggled to free their luggage from the upper compartments.

As soon as you board the plane, you are greeted by the impatient glares of the first class passengers. All twelve of them who sit grumpily with their drinks and ample leg room waiting for the rest of us peasants to please hurry up and sit our fat bums down somewhere behind them. Of course everyone glares at you when you are the last to board because it is surely your fault the plane isn’t already taxiing down the runway. We were in the dead last row. Good because it puts a person right next to the washrooms. Bad because there is no reclining. Good again because it’s a done deal that you will be the last people off, so there is no pressure to hurry.

My daughter is a jaded air traveler already. The wonder of flight isn’t lost on her but it has become routine, which I find interesting and I am hoping bodes well for the future because I have a feeling we might travel by air more and more frequently. The downside of travel for me though is the tendency towards motion sickness that has plagued me since I was a child. For some reason I can write and read but not simply read and that makes flights above two hours a tad bit tedious. On this trip both Rob and I, uber-geeks that we are, sit with laptops out. He catching up on work email and me writing this blog piece. Rob to my right and Katy on the left, engrossed in the SpongeBob episode playing on the iPod.

It’s 9:21 Edmonton time and we are due into Minneapolis at 11:30 Central Time U.S., and since the flight attendants are busily collecting snack trash I expect that within the next twenty minutes or so it will be time to begin landing. Why does landing take so much longer than taking off? Although I am still a bit apprehensive about the return trip through Canadian Customs, and I imagine it will be a lengthy sit in Immigration again, I am not going to let that spoil the trip to see my folks and extended family and friends.

A Random Thought about Writing and the Widowed

We are heading back to the states tomorrow for a short visit. Per usual there is too much to still be done and probably only just enough time to do it and nothing more. I can’t figure out how my life went from being empty, open spaces to this crammed full existence that still feels as though I need more minutes at the end of every day. It seems as though it shouldn’t have as simple as falling in love with Rob and moving here to be with him, but in more ways than can be imagined, it was just that.

Which brings me to a thought. Rob and I have been talking a bit about writing. About his promise to write about Shelley’s ordeal with melanoma and the difficulty that presents in terms of digging up the past and the occupying pain, but also in terms of how does one take such a sprawling topic and pare it down to an accessible essence? The path that leads some of us to widowhood is winding and long, and there is so much more to it than just the symptoms of the disease and the doctor’s visits and the treatments. The emotional side is as vast as an ocean and twice as deep. So, what to save and what to toss? In school I would teach my students to identify the audience and make their content match the needs of their readers or listeners. I am not sure if that applies in this case. But, it’s Rob’s story to tell and knowing him I imagine that he will stick to the facts and approach it from a logical “what would someone need to know” stance. It makes sense.

He got me thinking about my own story, which I am beyond weary of telling to the point where I don’t even want to hear other people’s stories. I don’t like sharing widowhood on the loss level anymore. Not that I ever enjoyed it, but there was a time when it made me feel less alone. Not as unique or novel. These days I prefer to share moving one stories. And it’s not about being positive or practical, it just is. Who I am now is a woman who was widowed. It happened. It sucked. It’s over? No, but it isn’t my now and hasn’t been for a very long time. If I were to write about my experiences, I would start with the beginning for this year and work through the beginnings of our relationship, Rob and I. There is so much out there on loss. On coping with loss. On surviving loss. On wallowing in it too. But, there is not much on moving on by people who have actually done it and not been overcome with buyer’s remorse once they got there. Beyond blogs and posts, the movies and books are a little to sugary-coated and belie the churning of emotions that nearly make you sick with fear, hesitation, second-guessing and more concern for the opinions of the world at large than for yourself.

When I think about it, my blog has been about moving on, and that is all that I have been willing to share really. The first blog was about loss and the frustration associated with jump-starting my idling life, but I shared that only belatedly, after most of it was written and past and it was no longer a true reflection of me.

I need to ponder this a while longer. I haven’t a deep need to write about myself beyond this blog right now. I am not sure how the world would benefit from another story about widows finding love again. It has the feel and the makings for a cheesy chick flick. Besides every widowed person I know talks about writing a book as though writing was a gift that came along with widowhood like the parting gifts game show contestant losers are sent away with at the end of a show.

Real Writers don't Blog

A columnist in the Daily Mail and Globe (Christie Blatchford), which is the Canadian equivalent of USA-Today minus the excess pictures and celebrity suck up section, wrote her Saturday piece about bloggers. Her disdain for the genre and the poor writing. She holds the common opinion among those of us who can write that writing is not for everyone. I agree. Writing is a gift that some of us are born with and develop over the course of our lives, but it isn't something that just anyone can do. It's like singing or dancing or painting. It's an art. Having said that, I don't think being a person of average writing skill should preclude anyone from writing and seeing that writing published somewhere. There are people who sing and dance and paint who haven't much skill either but sometimes that's not the point. We all deserve an artistic outlet regardless of whether we are truly talented. What someone might call a hobby is someone else's great soul fulfilling passion.

I think what puzzled this columnist the most is why anyone would put what she considers to be no more than a diary up on the web for public display. The simple answer is that writers, good, average or really awful, want to be published. The only medium to which people have a fairly democratic access is on the Internet. To someone who writes for a living, and to whom the finished product is a matter of a paycheck, it would probably seem odd as well that anyone could write for free or without benefit of copyright. However, to someone who just wants to write and would be happy of any audience, blogging or Facebook or just an online community can be a welcome opportunity.

Another point of contention the writer had was with the concept of online communities and the idea that you can have relationships with "virtual" people. Like most who have never truly experienced this, she falls back on the snotty superiority of the fact that she not only prefers REAL friends, she actually has them too. While it is true that there are many people for whom online communities are their only social outlets, it's not true for all people. The majority of those I have met via message boards have families, friends and rich REAL lives. They came to the different boards during times in their lives when they hadn't anyone in their lives they could connect with for various reasons. One group of women I have been messaging with for over six years now came to be when we met on a site called BabyCenter. We were all "older" women trying to conceive and most of us didn't have peers are our age to relate to when it came to trying to get pregnant in your late thirties or early forties. As we one by one became mothers, we moved our group to a private message board and continued to share our lives with each other because by this time we were friends who had move to talk about than just ovulation charts and birth stories. Two of us became widows in the time we have known each other. There have been location and job changes. New babies to celebrate. Some of us know each other offline and those of us who travel quite a bit meet up from time to time when things can be arranged. I wouldn't consider any of us freaks or even freakish.

I met my husband Rob through an online community for younger widowed people. We started off as email pals much in the same vein as the old pen-pals of yore. Another member of the same community is a friend to the point that she attended our wedding, and there are several others we keep in contact with via email and their blogs. The community itself has produced a viable offline network of events and countless friendships and romances (some that also have led to marriage) have blossomed because of this. I think it is easy to look down on or even make fun of online social networks but it would be a mistake to think that everyone engaged in this rather recent means of meeting people is just for the desperate. My husband's two twenty-something daughters have met some various nice people via Facebook and we use the site as a way to keep in touch with them and with extended family and far off friends. In a world where we are so far from the "neighborhoods" we grew up in and Grandma doesn't live just a few blocks over anymore, it's a good way to stay connected.

Going to the Movies

Going to see a movie, even watching dvd's at home, is always a hit and miss affair. I think it is safe to say that Rob and I haven't managed to find a film yet without references big and small about death and grieving. Last night's movie was in keeping with the trend. Despite the fact that we were running late from dinner, we decided to catch the new Naomi Watts and Viggio Mortenson flick titled, Eastern Promises. About ten or fifteen minutes had passed by the time we walked in and found seats on the left wall. The theater wasn't very crowded but we found ourselves sitting behind and in front of couples. Not an awful view despite the lack of stadium seating, but I did hear the woman behind us make a disgusted sound when Rob sat down in front of her and then proceeded to quickly peel off his pullover. Some people don't deal with the "public"aspect of cinema very well. The simple truth is if you want to view a movie without the inconveince of other viewers possible spoiling your pristine cinematic experience, stay home and wait for the DVD.

The Mortenson character in the film was a Russian named Nikolai who worked as a driver for the Russian mafia based in the city of London. The first scene we took in was of this character being called upon to dispose of a body. To say that there were grisly and violent scenes in the movie would be understating quite a bit. There were only a few deaths, but they were graphic. I am not exactly more squeamish since the death of my first husband. But once you have actually watched someone die, the "Hollywood" take will never seem quite as realistic no matter how well done because you know that it's not real. The actor got up when the director yelled "Cut" and went home to family or out to dinner with friends. It can never be as real as real is.

Naomi Watts played a midwife in the story who gets involved with the mafia, Nikolai, after the death of a 14 year old Ukranian prostitute. The girl had jut given birth and it stirs up memories for Anna (Watts) because she has recently miscarried her own baby. Between the grief and the murdering, it was a good movie. The acting was wonderful and it was visually interesting. The story was well told.

After the movie, we sat and watched the credits, listening to the soundtrack too because we like to collect soundtracks that are particularly well done. As the credits rolled it came to a dedication to the production unit manager, Lisa Parker, a 40 year old Irish woman who had died suddenly this past June. The woman behind us had been babblingly loudly to her companion during this time. Mostly about nothing and it occurred to me that perhaps she and the gentleman she was with were on a date. Maybe even a first or second date because women have a tendency to talk far too much in early dating situations out of nervousness. It's only later when you know a man well and are sure of him that you can let the quiet be quiet. The dedication rolls on and the women reads the dates of birth and death and does the math to come up with Parker's age, which she announces too. Then makes some inane comment about what might have happened. It wasn't what was said but the conversational tone that struck me and told me that this women had never lost anyone. If she had, it wouldn't have been a matter for trivia or simply filling spaces in the air.

We got up to leave after the screen went black. The woman and her companion were still seated and she made sure to give Rob a dirty look. Of course he didn't notice. If this woman knew my husband at all she would have saved the effort. Rob pays no attention to strangers because the things they have to say or the "looks" they might throw at him aren't of interest to him. It's one of the the things I love abou him, the fact that he doesn't let random people get to him. I noted her look. I also noted that she was my age but trying to look younger with heavy make-up and dyed blonde hair styled to the point of being wind-resistant. She was jowly and her belly rolled over the waistband of her too tight pants. I don't know what my look said to her. I think I smiled.

Among the widowed there is a small sub-set which treat grief as something you can "self-help" your way out of with a bit of effort. They refer to this as "griefwork" and certainly there is wisdom is the early months and through the first year and a bit to let yourself be sad and mourn all the losses that come with losing a mate, but I reject the idea that the intensity of grief is something that will consume years - two and three and four - at a time until a person can hope to rebuild and reclaim. At some point, in the second year, normality, and the need for this, take over and grieving becomes intermittment and usually triggered by the memories that the randomness of our lives throws at us. But, it's not long-lasting or crippling and not reason to schedule an intervention for yourself. Like last night's movie showed me, again, that I will never look at some things in the same way.

Chapter 43 and 2/3

Today marks the 201st entry on my original version of this blog (see link below). I began blogging on Tuesday, March 13th of this year, just a few days before Rob arrived from Alberta for our trip to Devil’s Den in Arkansas. Just six day before he asked me to marry him. In some ways this blog has been a chronicle of the next chapter of my life.

Some widowed people mark the chapters of their lives in terms of significant others. Following that example my life didn’t begin until I was 34 and met and married Will, and my life stopped with his physical death in January of 2006, not to begin again until December when Rob came into my world. Personally, I find the idea of my life being so insignificant that it isn’t worth a mention unless I am mated to be a tad insulting though I can understand why people who have always been with someone would feel this way.

If my life were a book, it would have covered many pages through a variety of chapters of which Will and Rob are characters woven into the richness of the text. More significant than most of the other characters but not sole standouts in a desolate landscape passing for a life.

Three months from yesterday I will be 44 years old, and in many ways I feel quite new to all this life stuff. Who knows how many chapters I will write between now and then.

Fight

"The best thing one can say of anyone is that they fight," Doris Lessing, British novelist. She wrote this in The Golden Notebook, her 2007 novel that won her the Nobel Prize.

I found the quote above in this week’s Newsweek article about Doris Lessing. It spoke to me. I think that you should fight until you haven’t the strength to take one more swing, and then after a good night’s sleep, get back in the ring and start swinging again.

I was often chastised in my early days of the widow message board by my “elders” for not accepting the status quo, but I have since come to realize that making a plan and executing it is too much a part of who I am. Doing nothing has never solved any of my difficulties or made my life better. What it leads to, in my opinion, is frustration and bitterness, and a deep sense of helplessness. Some of my battles have been long. Some were short. Sometimes I received assistance. Often I was expected to go it alone. The point is though that I came out of the other side of the struggle better for it whether the outcome was preferred or not.

I think that it is Dylan Thomas who writes about “raging” against the coming of death, but his comparison is not too much different from Lessing’s advice. Life is meant to be lived and forcefully if necessary.

Soup and Sandwiches

Last night it was vegetable barley stew with tuna sandwiches. Tonight it will be minestrone, romaine salad and fresh bread. Did I mention the soup will be homemade? Like last night’s stew? No, well it will be. How did this happen? Me cooking.

When I was young and my mother wanted to teach my sister and I to cook, she meant baking. The kinds of things that my father liked to have around that were time consuming to prepare, and she didn’t feel like doing herself. While I don’t think my parents had children with the intention of fobbing off their least favorite chores on us, over the years that is what happened. I am sure that I was never taught to cook a meal though my mother claims otherwise. I am sure for the simple fact that my father wasn’t someone who wanted his meal ready and on the table when he arrived home from work in the evening. He wanted to read the paper. Have a few beers. And then a few more. Smoke the cigarettes that had been burning a hole in his pocket during his ten hour shift at the meat packing plant. While our friends were having dinner, we were playing outside,waiting for them to be done, but by the time they were finished, it was dinner time for us. After enduring family meal, a ritual that became more and more arduous as the years rolled by, my father’s drinking got steadily heavier, and my parent’s relationship more strained; my sister and I would hurry through the clean-up the hope that would still be enough daylight left for play or homework or whatever. As a result, I never learned to cook a meal.

When I went out on my own, meals were haphazard affairs. I am the kind of person who can eat the same thing for weeks and months on end without thinking much about it. Variety never had much to do with food for me. Even now, I have certain preferences and if not for Katy and Rob, I would rarely spice up my routine beyond my few favorites.

My late husband liked to cook, and he was easily bored with routine. He did most of the evening meal prep when we ate in, but because we were childless for the first while, we ate out a lot too. Later on his illness effected his appetite to the point where he didn’t eat much, and Katy was still a baby, so there was no need to prepare meals in the traditional sense. I got into the habit of feeding the two of them and then eating breakfast foodmyself, if I ate at all.

Rob had limited rotation of meals when I first met him. When it became too tedious for his daughter to bear, I think, then Jordan would cook to change things up a bit. So, when he and I blended our lives nightly meals became something that I to truly deal with for the first time in my life. At first, I left it to Rob, who was pretty good about it despite the fact that he had to work all day and come home to the additional work of preparing the family meal. He would give me jobs to do like vegetable prep or salad making. From there I progressed to making lunch for everyone, as Rob came home most days, and it was a bit like making supper but with a less demanding menu. After a time the occasional meal became my responsibility. And now, I am making soup from scratch.

I know that many women would find my pride in this accomplishment laughable especially because in my peer group, many married young and have been juggling husband and children and jobs and cooking for decades now. But for me, I am still quite impressed with myself. First I am writing regularly, and now I cook. On par as far as creative endeavors go? Perhaps not, but both are outlets in my quest for personal growth and discovery.

Challenging

Last night the immigration paperwork was finally completed. Rob had all the proper documents, plus photocopies, organized Virgo style and ready for us to read through and sign. He had also taken some time to call the CIC and ask about the possible consequences of our up-coming trip to the States because along with the application for permanent residence a request for an extension of our visa needs to be sent. However, our leaving the country, even for a few days, will effect the latter as we will re-enter before that application is granted. Truthfully, I have been a bit worried. As a spouse the likelihood of being denied re-entry is minimal, but what they say about border guards and customs officials is true. They have ultimate authority and really aren’t answerable to anyone when deciding who is in and who must turn around and go back. Consequently, the CIC officials in the “home office” will never give a straight answer on matters of re-admittance.

When I questioned Rob about what he learned, which was the usual mealy-mouthed stuff - ie: not much we already didn’t know - and his assessment, he told me, “I think we will be okay.” To which I replied, “You think?” Using a tone that was meant to imply that I wasn’t reassured, and he took as “ What do you mean by that, dumb ass?” He then proceeded to tell me that while he had heard other women challenge their husbands in such a manner, it was a first for him. A statement I instantly doubted given what I know about his late wife, Shelley, and he later confirmed for me when we discussed it again. So, I turned it around and asked him what his response would have been to someone who only “thought” something was correct. The look on his face told me he would have responded in kind. My reply to that was “Well, I am your evil twin.” And he just laughed.

The other night before we fell asleep Rob was musing about opposites attracting but how much different it is when two like-minded spirits are drawn together. And he is right. Not that there aren’t the odd moments when our similar styles mean that one of us is forced to come at things from unfamiliar angle, but the more we are together, the easier it gets to know when that is, or isn’t, required. Although we both have known what it was like to be with someone who accepted us for ourselves, it is no less a miraculous thing the second time around. It’s actually more special in some ways because we are so much more consciously aware of the gift. Still nothing worth having comes without effort, and even work, at times. If there were no friction at all, then how could you know if the other person was truly being themselves and not just going along, stuffing real feelings that have to surface sooner or later? Better to challenge and have those discussions that promote growth and deepening ties. Relationships are give and take not go along to get along which I see so many people do. Out of fear? Perhaps but more likely out of the romantic misconception that if two people are in love, they never disagree or argue or get angry or need space or are still an individual with individual needs at all. That might work if all that is wanted is a hearts and flowers for a few years before trading up (or down) for the next bliss-outed encounter, but for a relationship to last reality must be acknowledged and dealt with. Sometimes the house needs to be cleaned and garbage needs to be put out on the curb. Kids will demand. Jobs will ruin plans. Extended family will require attention. Couples will actually see things from differing points of view. And it’s how those moments are worked through that reveal the true love in a relationship.

So last night, it was immigration. We have been a long time working on this and it’s important to get it as right as humanly possible. After the paperwork was done, child was bathed, read to and finally asleep, we curled up. Rob at his desk chair and me on his lap because he wanted to show me some funny email he’s gotten from a friends at work. We talked about this and that and just basked in the coziness of our life. Nerdy though it may appear from the outside, it’s working.

Writing Contest is a Mystery

I have come to the conclusion that the mystery writing contest in the Edmonton Journal is part talent and part crap-shoot. The two preceding chapters have been good but not really great. This last chapter even contradicted the first chapter on a fairly noticeable point. The author who began the novel and will write the last chapters is obviously looking for writers who are competent and further the story, but since he has to tie up all ends in the last chapter, it’s highly unlikely he went into this contest with no vision at all of where the story might or should end up. He is looking for certain elements and a writer will hit it or not. Which explains the choices for the second and third chapters. So based on this, I wrote a draft of the fourth chapter based on what I think should happen next and if it falls within Thomas Wharton’s tentative vision, great and if not I will try again next week. Here is chapter four. Enjoy.


Chapter 4 – Bert Gombrick

Emmy ran back to her van. She knew she wouldn’t be able to catch Gombrick’s truck, but she knew where to find him. When she arrived at Bert Gombrick’s house, she didn’t bother hiding. She pulled right into the driveway. Emmy wondered for a moment if she should be more frightened, but she remembered the look in Jack’s eyes. Defeated, but not necessarily scared. If Jack really was worried about her safety, he wouldn’t have asked Emmy to drop the case. He would have told her to do it in no uncertain terms. Certain in that knowledge, Emmy marched up to the front door, but as she raised her fist to knock on the door, she realized it was slightly ajar. She pushed it open slowly and stuck her head tentatively inside. The room was dark, blinds drawn, but there was a light coming from the kitchen, streaming into the adjacent dining room and drawing her inside. Stifling the urge to announce herself, Emmy tiptoed cautiously through the living room toward the light. Halfway across the living room her foot caught on an area rug causing her to bump forcefully into an end table next to the leather sofa. The lamp atop it wobbled precipitously. Emmy caught it with one hand before as it fell, righted it again slowly and continued toward the kitchen entrance pausing for just a second to force herself to take a deep breath. She’d all but stopped breathing normally ever since she entered Gombrick’s home, taking such short shallow gulps of air that she was beginning to feel a bit light-headed. Steeling herself, she took a few more brisk steps until she found herself about to round the corner that led into the kitchen. She stopped again, took another deep breath and rounded the corner.
It was a kitchen. Surprisingly like the display she and Chelsea had been admiring at the IKEA in South Edmonton Common just the weekend before last. Honey-brown Akurum/Nexus cabinets with stone effect black Pragel countertops and a Bolomen double-bowl inset sink set in a breakfast bar between the appliance area and the eat in kitchen. Emmy had to will herself to stop admiring Gombrick’s surprisingly similar taste in décor, but she couldn’t prevent herself from wondering, did this particular kitchen define Bert Gombrick as a person and if so, what did that say about her? Gombrick was sitting at the table. The same dining set that she had been hounding Jack about just before he announced he was leaving her for another woman who, ironically, owned that very same table set according to Chelsea. With a start Emmy noticed Gombrick was staring right at her. Or rather, he was just staring. His head at an angle. One arm dangling at this side. The other arm stretched out across the table as though reaching for something, but the only thing on the table was a pen. The kind banks hand out free to customers opening new accounts.
Before dialing 911, Emmy moved in for a closer look. Careful not to touch any more than she had already, she crossed the room to the table and took a long look. So, this is what a dead body looks like, she thought slightly amazed that it was slightly less creepy than she would have imagined. A murder victim. Or so she assumed. No blood or visible wounds that she could see. Biting her lower lip and swallowing the revulsion, she placed two fingers on the side of the dead man’s neck, looking for a pulse she was very certain she wouldn’t find. The skin wasn’t cold but it wasn’t warm either and had a slightly bluish pallor. His mouth was open, jaw slack and his eyes filmed and half-closed. He looked a bit like a fish on a dock in mid-gulp for air.
Pulling her hand back, Emmy was about to reach for her cell phone when she noticed the pen again. It seemed odd, but it was as if Gombrick was still reaching for it. Getting as close as she could without disturbing anything else, Emmy tried to make out the writing on the pen’s exposed side.
Sherwood Park Fitness and Yoga.
Even though she knew she shouldn’t. Emmy scooped up the pen and pocketed it. Minutes later when she was safely standing on Gombrick’s front lawn, she called Jack.

“What were you thinking?” Jack wasn’t yelling, but he might as well have been. Emmy sat next to him in his department issue Caprice Classic as a small armada of EPS swarmed Gombrick’s home. Police tape cordoned off the section of sidewalk in front as neighbors began to gather.
“What was I thinking?” she countered. “What were you thinking? Not telling me the truth about him? About the case? I wasn’t expecting to find him dead, you know.”
“Em,” Jack sighed. “You shouldn’t have gotten this involved. Did you think I would warn you off out of pettiness? I just can’t give you the details. This is a high level investigation, and Gombrick was just about our only inside lead. Please, Emmy, if not for my sanity than for Chelsea’s sake. Drop this case.”
Even though she knew he meant well, Emmy looked him in the eye and lied, “Okay, Jack. You win again. I’ll go home and forget about Ixion and Bert Gombrick.”

Jack Budge sat just around the corner from his old home until just after dawn. He was cold and cramped and wishing he was wrong when he saw the van pull out of the driveway. He waited until Emmy drove by and then started his car. Pulling a u-turn, he took out after her. You never could lie to me Em, he thought as he followed her onto Yellowhead Trail not noticing at all the black 4x4 following behind him.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving

Heading down to Saskatchewan in a while for the holiday weekend. Got to hand to it Canadians, they know how to space their holidays. Back in the States it's feast of famine in terms of time away from the grind but up here the year seems to be evenly broken into a plethora of official holidays that result in three and four day weekends. That's another thing about Canadians, whenever possible, they hold their holidays on Monday. The school year, which would break the back of the average American kid, is ten whole months long but it has all these lovely holidays in addition to the official provincial and national ones. Yes, that's right. Provinces can schedule their own holidays. Puts U.S. states' rights in its rightful place, right between "weenie" and "wuss".

Monday is Thanksgiving here. We had planned to lay about. There is work to be done winterizing and since it seem to be snowing all around us, though not here yet, it's something we need to be moving a bit more swiftly on. However, Rob's mom is moving to B.C. in a few weeks and needed him to come down and take care of a few things his younger sister can't help out with. Yeah, there is a story there but I am not at liberty to tell it. Suffice to say that are issues and I am sure you can imagine the rest without any further assistance. I am just standing over here in the corner of my blog, not saying a word.

Saskatchewan is an eight hour drive through terrain that makes Nebraska seem interesting. Since I have made it once before, and much of it is on two lane highway (Canadians do not believe in mega highways like Americans do. Back in the states there are four lane highways in the middle of nowhere simply so farmers can get from the homestead to the back forty fifteen minutes faster). It takes forever to get there. Though once there, Regina is a somewhat interesting place. A place I won't see much more of this time than the first time I was there in June. Perhaps I will get a bit of real writing done as I will be internet inaccessible, but more likely I will work on yet another attempt at winning the mystery story contest in the Edmonton journal. Some other SAHM won it this week which means I have to read another chapter in this increasingly boring story. But, I am nothing if not pig-headed and single-minded when it comes to at least seeing this damn contest through to its end. I suppose I could write one of those "thankful" lists that people do when Thanksgiving comes around. When I was in grade school the nuns had us do this every year. It was a bit like having to think up sins for confession once a month. Not that I haven't much to be thankful for but the holiday itself is such a sham. Below the 49th it is sold as the day the pilgrims sat down with their friendly Native American neighbors and gave thanks for surviving their first year. Of course the real story behind the Plymouth pilgrims is more on the order of the sordid stuff that would have made it an awesome reality show had there been such a thing as television back then. Then, of course, is the reality that Thanksgiving was actually a propaganda tool of the Lincoln administration during that unpopular war he was stuck with known as the Civil War. But whatever, I am not at all sure what meaning Canadians have attached to it beyond the fact that it's been about six weeks since the last holiday Monday around here.

I am thankful for the six or ten of you who read this blog and want to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving from Canada.

The Lovemaster

One of Rob's favorite comics, Craig Shoemaker, has this bit he does called The Lovemaster. Being a better than average mimic, Rob has the voice and timing down pat, and I have to admit I love it when he goes into that Looovemaster voice. "I'm four inches, baby......most women don't like it that wide." or "I'm two inches, baby,...from the floor. I can stir your drink from over here. I'll knock your front teeth out from up here, baby. Yeah, that's me tapping you on the shoulder, baby. I'd show it to you, baby, but it's stuck in my shoe." Okay, it's funnier with the voice, the sly smile and the bedroom eyes that Rob throws in just because he knows it makes me laugh harder, which is probably why he started reading his spam to me.

Have you ever heard this, "God! Your penis is so small!"?
Didn't you feel stupid?
Don't let girls prefer vibrator to you! Megadik will improve your situation once and forever! You should simply rely on this magic preparation!
"Oh! Your penis is so large!" Isn??t that what you just love to hear?
Soon you'll be the only one girls will hunt for! Megadik is your real cure!

Thanks to the unquestionably annoying miracle of email forwards, my husband's email address has been exposed to the world of penis spammers. A particularly vile, and probably very icky, group of people who prey upon male insecurity and entice them to part with their hard earned credit by purchasing all manner of enlarging devices and enhancement supplements. I can't begin to explain, without permission anyway, how truly ironic that is on several levels. Nor have I any idea why any man with a working penis would jeopardize its functionality with untested medicinals and unproven devices. It's not like women's breasts after all. If a woman still has a viable top layer of epidermis over a set of pecs, tone doesn't even matter, a good plastic surgeon can whip her up a serviceable pair of knockers in no time. But a penis is more complicated and, frankly, once it doesn't work anymore a man is left with only a paltry, and rather sad, set of options. Still those penis people are out there wooing the weak, pitching their wares because apparently size does matter though I would venture to say that given the choice between an anaconda-like member just lying there across a man's legs and an upright unit that's ready to go, without the need of a hoist, most women would choose the latter.

Choose your size with Manster!

Finally you won't be concerned with your size any more.
We have a new product that will make all your 'se^xual desires real.
Forget what you've known before. The new era for you begins!
Women will go crazy!
Friends will be jealous!
And you will Finally your new life! Like a real man with a real penis!
Try MegaDik and take advantage of your new size!

But you gotta love the names these people come up with like Manster! Wonder what brain trust thought to congeal the images of man and monster in the same thought process. Did they worry at all that someone might think they were talking about a genetic melding of man and hamster? Or the felching images this might conjure, even? There is something I don't quite understand here, however. How does size equate to pleasure? And is it more for her or for him? And does size really matter at all in drunken hook-up scenarios or when the whole "soul mate" issue is at stake? And how will a man's friends know about the manster in his pants? Do men talk about dick size the way women trying to conceive discuss the color and consistency of their various secretions? Do they go shopping for Speedos together? If they do, they really ought to be giving each other more practical advice like "Dude, if you lost the muffin top the member might stand out more." Finally, enhanced breasts don't make a woman "real". They just make her the chick with fake boobs. So wouldn't a man just be a guy with a fake rod?

Women will never complain.

At last you will never worry about your size any more.
We have an offer that will make all your 'se^xual wishes real.

There are many things sexual of which a woman might voice complaint, but size isn't one that I have ever heard discussed unless it was to remark on over-endowment and ask for discomfort remedies. But as an example of a bad complaint, speediness is never good. Truthfully, a tad more foreplay and a working knowledge of the female anatomy would serve most men better than a pee-pee growth potion or whatever scary contraptions might arrive through the post in brown wrapping. Worrying about appearances is really the last thing anyone should be concerned about when clothes start coming off and juices are flowing. I don't know how many articles in women's magazines I have read that over and over reiterate the fact, one that men confirm by the way, that by the time they are naked with us, they really aren't noticing much in terms of cellulite or rolls or wrinkles or anything else. While I admit that women aren't that oblivious, we do not equate size with function. We equate function with function. It just needs to work. But, if a gentleman is really worried then merely demonstrating his understanding that the tongue is a multipurpose tool should save him an embarrassing credit card statement.