Saturday

I’ve finally gotten the baby down for a nap and have spent the last half hour zoning out to the computer screen.  Now time to play catch up–on this, bills, lists, etc.  We’re going away soon for our annual vacation to warm, sunny places while it is freezing here and it seems like there is SO much to do.  Packing for that third person really throws my system all out of whack.

My backyard is a sheet of ice and the poor dogs look like they are ice skating out there.  It is alternately really funny and so sad to watch them struggle as they sniff for a place to poop.  I’ve been out there trying to break up the ice a little but it’s not doing very much good.  Of course the places they want to go are the most slippery and I can’t get there either.  We need one good warm day or at least some rain to melt the ice, but then it will all refreeze…it’s an endless trap.  Ugh.  Springtime can’t come soon enough.

I’ve been thinking lately about my brother-in-law and what is going through his mind.  I am not in any hurry for any of this to happen…just been thinking about when he’ll go through Jen’s stuff.  Will he meet a nice lady someday and get remarried?  I think Jen would want him to be happy and I also think she’d want my niece to have a mother figure.  All this gets me to thinking about my own family.  What if I died?  Would I want my husband to find someone else to love and remarry?  Would I want my child(ren) to grow up with a mother figure?  The answer is YES to both questions.  I would hope that love and joy could be found again, all in good time.

But it’s not an easy subject to think about and usually I force my mind to wander down some other alley.  I suppose that some day soon I will have to have an actual conversation with my husband about this, just so he knows my thoughts.  Whether or not he would ever have to do that–or would do that–remains to be seen.  But I want him to know he’d have my blessing.  Does all of this sound weird?

I’m hearing rumblings among family that it is time my brother-in-law go through her stuff and try to move on.  This is not something that should be pushed or forced.  I’ve told him I want to help, if he’ll have me.  And I hope when he’s ready, he’ll call.

Monday

My friend Drew and his girlfriend Margie are visiting.  It is so nice to see familiar faces.  Drew and I have been friends for almost 10 years and there’s nothing like being in the company of an old friend, you know?

The link is to Drew’s website, which has not been updated in quite a long time but keep your eye on it in the coming months.  He and Margie are on a sailing adventure.  In September Drew crossed the Pacific in his 36′ sailboat and it is currently in French Polynesia while they are home for the winter.  They’ll return to her in March and spend 6 months in French Polynesia before moving on to New Zealand.  Wow.

So they’re here to meet my Sunshine and man, does she love them.  I haven’t seen one iota of stranger anxiety at all, whereas when I drop her off at my parent’s house, she whimpers and cries.

Baby is on the verge of crawling.  It is exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time.  But I am so proud.

Today it snowed–a lot.  Sunshine seemed less than thrilled and shook her hand quickly when I put a snowball into her palm.  If this is any indication that she will take after me, then I’ll just say we’ll be vacationing at the beach a lot.  Either that or she will learn to love the snow and go skiing with her Daddy while I sit in the lodge drinking hot chocolate spiked with liquor.  Lots of it.  Until then…

Memories

When my sister got married, she asked me to be her maid of honor.  I was 18, a freshman in college, young and stupid.  I had no idea what being a maid of honor is, aside from standing at the alter during the ceremony.  My mom’s friends threw bridal showers.  I don’t know who planned the bridesmaid luncheon.  I did drive home from college several times to go wedding dress shopping, audition hair stylists and make-up people.

I remember sitting in one bridal gown shop and deciding I no longer wanted to wear all those sterling silver hoops in my ears…there must’ve been 9 or so.  My parents bought me a tiny pair of dimond stud earrings for the wedding which I wore for 4  years, until I graduated from college and then they bought my a slightly larger pair, set in white gold.  I never take them out unless I am going to clean them.

It is traditional to give your bridesmaids a small gift, a token of gratitude I assume.  My sister gave me a small silver compact mirror with my initials engraved on the front.  It doesn’t seem like much but almost any woman will tell you that it is a must to carry around a mirror in your purse if you can fit it.  You never know when you’ll need to check your face (do I have something in my tooth?  a booger perhaps?  do a quick make-up fix).  She could have given me a plastic spider ring and I would have adored it.

I carried the compact in my purse for 9 years and then I lost it.  I mean, what the hell?  How could I have lost it?  It was a precious possession and it somehow got left on a plane or something.  I don’t even know.  All I know is that one day it was not in my purse and I had no idea where it was and I looked EVERYWHERE for it and it was gone and I was very upset/pissed/heartbroken.

My sister had not died yet when this happened.  So I still had her.  But then she did die and all of the sudden, anything she had ever given to me became even more precious than before.  The pj’s she gave me for Chanukah one year are threadbare and torn but I still wear them.  The Mickey Mouse blanket I recieved from her one year as a birthday present lays folded on the couch and I curl up with it every night in the winter.

Last night my parents came over for dinner and afterwards, my mom said to me, “Oh.  I have something for you.”  And out of her purse she pulls my silver compact, slightly tarnished and two years older but it is my compact that my sister gave me 11 years ago.

Apparently I left it at their vacation house two years ago and it got put in a drawer and for whatever reason, they were looking in that drawer and saw it.  And brought it back to me.  So now, even though I carry my sister with me everywhere I go, in my heart and on a heart shaped necklace that bears her name, I have one more thing, one more part of her with me at all times.  It is one of the best presents I could ever recieve, to get something back that means so much to me, something I thought was gone forever but was just hiding.  It makes my heart sing through my sadness.

January 8, 2009

Today my dearest friend Claire is having surgery.  Please take a moment to mentally send good thoughts her way, for her, her husband and their baby.