Dear Kelsey (Part II)

Dear Kelsey,

You left us a year ago today.  I guess, technically, it won't be a year until tonight, but it's close enough to a full year that I can safely say that it has been both the fastest and the longest year of my life.  It feels so long since I've seen you, but I can't believe a whole year now separates us.  As I said so often in the first weeks, it's so weird.

I always thought I was prepared for it on some level because you had been so sick for so long.  But, you're never really prepared for something like this, and you always believe that a miracle will happen.  I always thought we would figure it out somehow.  Marissa really believed that.  She would comfort me with that idea sometimes.  She believed in you completely.  I confess, and I know you know this, I lost sight of you sometimes in The Beast.  That is one of the many things I'm left to wrestle with.

It's hard to know what to say today because I think you've been watching.  I sense you sometimes when I listen to my music, much of which you introduced me to.  Some of which I introduced you to, but I find it's really more the other way around.  I listen to the lyrics and believe, maybe because I need to, that you are communicating to me.  I have been sustained by that very often.

I would tell you, however, what you also probably know that if you're trying to reach out to your father, he's not receiving the signal.  I worry about him more than I worry about anyone else, although all the family has been impacted by this and feels the loss.  I don't know what to do for him, probably because he's not sure what to do for himself, but you know how he can be:  closed off.  If you could do anything for us from where you are, I would ask you to reach out and make sure he hears you.  I don't know what you want to say, but you'll know the right thing.  You and he had a bond that was different than ours.  He feels like he's less without you.  Make him understand that he still has you, just not in the flesh.

Do you see people you know in the afterlife?  Are you with Mother?  If so, please tell her that I hope they are letting her drive everywhere all the time.   I hope you now know that the way she acted toward us the last several years was her disease and not the real grandmother.  I know she was hard and hurtful sometimes, but her dementia was like her own Beast.  What I hope is that you both are at peace now.  I hope you can re-establish the relationship you had when you were little.  She loved you and your sister both, she just didn't understand the eating disorder so she misunderstood you as a result.  Can you blame her?  None of us really did either.  Get her to tell you the story of the party that prompted the photo of all the women crashed out in their basement that I found in their old slides.  I think Mother is the one face down on the floor.  She had a side to her that you and I never really got to see.  I would have liked to have known the free spirited Ruth, I am sure you would have too.  Now's your chance.  Neither of you need to worry about the earthly constraints any longer.
Your sister misses you so much, but I am so proud of her that she has not stopped living her life.  I think this is best way to honor you.  Somedays are hard for her.  I don't know if that will ever change.  She will never forget you, I know that for certain.  And she will, I fear, feel a pull of sorrow on days that should be her happiest; you won't be standing as her maid/matron of honor at her wedding.  You won't be there to hold her hand when she's in labor.  And, you won't be with us in the stands when she graduates college, which I sincerely hope happens before the other two.  But, while there will be some sorrow in that knowledge, I know you want her happiness, and I know, as you have done for me, you will let her know you are there in some way.  I believe you will always be there for her.  I know you loved her as much as she loved you.

Tum-Tum is doing well.  But, she's been agitated the last few days and a little demanding.  Hard to know if she's reacting to the wonderful skunk incident and the resulting smell that we still haven't quite got rid of (were you watching when that whole thing went down?!) or if she somehow senses what this weekend is.  I wonder if she still expects you to come home, and she's just using us as company in the meantime, but, sadly, I think she knows by now that we're all she's got.  She tolerates us and maybe even has some mild attachment to us by now, but I've never been greeted by her the way she used to cry for you when you came home.  You remain her one true love.

Finally, there are so many apologies I owe you.  I can't list them all here.  I'm sorry that the last words we spoke to one another were in anger.  I am so very sorry I spent so much of your childhood at work.  I am most of all sorry I couldn't figure out what it would take to make you well.  Maybe we can help someone else.  I hope so.  But, if I help a hundred people, maybe even a million, it won't make up for the one I was supposed to help.   I couldn't do it alone, you would have had to help, but I wish I had tried harder.  I wished I hadn't given in to being so tired and hopeless.  There's not much else to say about that right now.

Whatever we did, we did always love you.  I think you know that, I sense that you do.  For now, that gets me through.

Much love,
Mom

Rush Hour

"Suddenly you were gone

From all the lives you left your mark upon"

 - Neil Peart, Alex Lifeson, Geddy Lee

I was receiving subliminal messages through my iPod to keep conversing about Rush today (it shuffled in Ghost Rider followed immediately by Ceiling Unlimited at work, and then when I went to work out, it began with Afterimage and then spit out Distant Early Warning, so I decided it was a good idea to obey the persuasive powers of the inanimate object).  Much better than dwelling on the particular anniversary we're staring into this weekend anyway.  Much more fun.

So, why don't I tell you how I became a Rush fan?  The fact that a late middle-age suburban former Disco Queen listens to a band like that is in and of itself interesting, but considering how I could not STAND them in high school, it's actually all the more so.  I wonder sometimes at the look of disbelief and horror I would have engendered if I could somehow travel back in time and tell my 17-year old self that I would one day be so utterly enamored of the band and their music that tears of joy would well up in my eyes when they took the stage.  The younger me never would have believed it.  The younger me not only did not like them, it felt an active disdain bordering on disgust.

I definitely knew who they were back then.  Bozeman is on the southwestern side of a very large state, but Canada is our northern neighbor, and we were exposed to a lot of their culture.  We had a Canadian television station (that showed uncut R rated movies, by the way) and lots of travelers back and forth.  Some Canadian passions caught on and some didn't.  Hockey, ironically enough, didn't back when I was growing up.  Not really.  But I did know and understand the game better than I do even now.  I think the Canucks just sort of radiated Hockey-ness, and we were bound to pick it up almost by osmosis.  And Rush is a Canadian product that they are very proud of.

We were also close, relatively speaking, to Seattle, which always claimed to have introduced Rush to America and really nurtured their beginnings here.  The documentary I saw over the weekend gave the credit to Cleveland, but I'm happy to believe the Seattle version for a couple of reasons.  (Yes, one of which is because Cleveland is home to the Browns, okay?)

Anyway, and however it happened, they had an early fan base in some of the kids I went to school with.  I referred to them as the Black Lit Poster Crowd.  The kind of nerdy malcontent male who is surly, ill mannered, ill kempt and consistently stoned.  The kind of guy that I had the mental image of being locked up in his room with his black lit posters and lava lamp, sneaking joimts, being anti-social.  And, to a large extent, I probably wasn't far off the mark.  There were other Black Lit Poster Acts:   Alice Cooper, Meatloaf, Black Sabbath to name a few, but to my mind Rush was the head of the pack.  That cover art - the naked man in front of the Pentagram - what was up with that?  And then that lead singer!  He sounded like he was a cat being strangled!  What a joke.  I couldn't stand them.

I remember specifically a special on Canadian television featuring Rush in their new studio.  As I mentioned, they were already Canadian icons, so they got a prime time gig to talk about what would end up being the Moving Pictures album.  The all-time definitive Rush album.  The album that gave you Tom Sawyer, Red Barchetta, YYZ and Limelight - and that was just on the first side.  But, at the time, all I could think of was what a waste it was that such a beautiful studio was being used by such a horrible band.

Not long after I saw that, I moved down here and began listening to the local rock station KLBJ.  By then, those songs were all getting ample radio play, and I found I didn't hate them.  As a matter of fact, that Tom Sawyer ditty was actually kind of catchy.  Then I noticed that everything they followed it up with I actually liked.  Hmmm.  Maybe they were changing, I thought to myself.  Yes, they were, but so was I.

Then it happened.  One Sunday afternoon I was at our little rent house, a newlywed, polishing a bookcase I kept in our hall that had belonged to Greg's grandfather, who was due for a visit, and a song came on the radio.  Mystic Rhythms.  And I was in love.

Hardcore and long term Rush fans scoff at the period that produced Mystic Rhythms, but that's probably also when the band picked up most of the female fans it has.  It worked on me to be sure.  I still resisted for a while.  Presto had to come out before I actually bought a CD, but I've been slavishly devoted ever since.  Mainly because they are amazingly talented musicians, but also because their lyrics speak to me.  They have touched on everything from politics, relationships, genocide, suicide, vanity, global warning and free will.  I can find a Rush song to meet any mood I am in - funny, sad, angry, introspective, you name it.  And, in the last year, I can particularly relate to some of the lyrics, particularly those Neil wrote after coming off his long time on the road.  This statement would make them uncomfortable I think, but their music is me.  And I am their music.

I love a lot of music - I was pretty ecstatic over Tears For Fears in the 80's to the point where I read about Primal Scream Therapy (what a crock!), and I love U2, the Moody Blues, the Foo Fighters, and the list could go on.  But none touch Rush.  I am never without their music.  Long before there was an iPod to send me messages through song choices (and, yes, I'm kidding - I'm not totally nuts - not totally...), I took Presto with me everywhere.  When my dad was in his last days, I found a copy of Power Windows and held it.  Not having a way to play it, just having it was comforting.

But, they're not for everybody.  And I get that.  The beauty of music is it's so individualistic.  I still think Black Sabbath sucks, for instance.  But, I have dear friends who love that crap.  They hear something completely different than I do when it comes on.  And that's cool.  It's hard to define the power of music in a blog that's already too long and rambling, but you know it when you experience it.  And you know what it means to you.  It's the soundtrack you live your life to.  It's what sustains you through hard times and makes happy times happier.  I love music.  Kelsey loved music.  She loved Rush.  How could she not?  Everything she did as a young girl was punctuated by their music.  It united us through all the horrible years.  We never lost that.  And maybe I love them most of all for that.

Whatever it is you listen to, may you always Rock On.

Nelson Mandela, Neil Peart and Me

What do the champion of anti-aparatheid, the greatest drummer of all time and a clerk in a collections department have in common?  We have all lost something more dear than we can measure.  Allow me to explain.  In a round about way.

One of the places I do love about Austin is Alamo Drafthouse.  So, I was giddily excited to attend a limited showing of the documentary film called Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage at the Alamo close to our house.  There I was, surrounded by fellow Rush fans and my family, watching the story of my all-time favorite rock band in my favorite movie venue.  What could be better?  Well, maybe having Geddy, Neil and Alex actually there to narrate, but all things considered, it was pretty to close to being a perfect evening.  However, I knew at some point the film would have to deal with It.  The Thing that almost everyone in the room knew had happened because our lives as Rush fans hung by a very thin thread for a very long time.  The Thing that, at the time, I felt grave sadness over, but also a wild sense of relief when it became clear the band had emerged intact from.  The Thing that changed multiple lives forever.

The Thing is that on August 10, 1997 Neil Peart lost his 19 year old daughter (his only child) in a single car accident.  Ten months later, eerily on June 20, his wife succumbed to breast cancer.  Neil Peart stepped away from music and the life he had known for what seemed to be an eon and drove his motorcycle 55,000 miles, pretty much up and down North America, reflecting on his grief and trying to heal.  Rush was on hold during that time.  That seeming eon was in fact about four years.  I remember that time as a Rush fan as one long anxious void.  I felt bad for Neil as a person, but I didn't really understand.  I was more afraid that they wouldn't come back as a band.  Of course, at the time both my girls were young and my biggest problem was that I was working all the time.  By the time Rush's return album was released in 2002, I was a little more empathetic to personal pain because Kelsey had begun the long, slow slide, but I could never really relate until last year of course.  Yet, even now, I don't know exactly what he went through, and I hope I never know the full level of his pain.  I've lost one member of my immediate family.  I'm not looking to lose more.  Yet, I know more about his grief that I ever thought I would when I first heard about it.

He's a private person, never as comfortable in the "limelight" as his band mates, and his level of loss is extremely personal, so I was interested to see how it would be handled in the film.  I thought it was done very well.  There was no ignoring it or glossing over it; it was a extremely important chapter in the story of these men, but the assumption of the filmmakers was that the core audience would already know what had happened, and they could focus on Neil's reflections on his time on the road and how and why he decided to return.  There wasn't a lot of gory details about his family.  Unfortunately, I was also a little worried about how the treatment of the situation would impact Greg.  The idea of retiring from life for a while and just hitting the road is a romantic notion.  But Neil Peart is a highly successful musician and writer.  He could afford it.  We're not in the same tax bracket.  Yet, I was the one who had a strong reaction to the story.

Marissa was already keeping a tight leash on me throughout the film, trying to make sure I didn't mortify her completely by rocking out a little too much or maybe breaking out in song along with the actual singer.  So, she was watching me closely when I actually uttered a noise in reaction to the interview with Neil when he choked up.  I swallowed it, sinking back a little more in my seat, trying not to react too strongly and cause undue attention to myself and embarrassment to my Rush-fan-kid.  But, there it was again.  Evidence that this feeling won't go away.  That I won't ever feel like me again.  It's been over a decade for him.  He's remarried and has a young child.  The band continues to be a force with a slavish devoted following.  He is, without question, the most talented drummer going.  He is a highly intelligent, talented, published author.  He has it all.  Yet, there he sat in front of me and became emotional talking about a time over a decade ago.  He doesn't have it all, as it turns out.  If he's that way, what hope is there for me?

So, I came home, both highly excited by the fact that I just spent two solid hours bathing in the glory of being a Rush fan and thoughtful about what I had seen.  I pondered the loss suffered by Nelson Mandela a couple days before, when his great granddaughter was killed in an auto accident.  It occurred to me that these two very different, yet very great (to my adoring eyes), men and I suddenly could be locked in a room together and actually have something germane to say to one another.  We have the commonality of our grief.  Wow.  This is not the connection I ever wanted to have.  I wish, for all our sakes, that we did not.

"Stratospheric traces of our transitory flight

Trails of condensation held
in narrow paths of white
The sun is turning black
The world is turning gray
All the stars fade from the night
The oceans drain away
Horizon to Horizon
memory written on the wind
Fading away, like an hourglass, grain by grain
Swept away like voices in a hurricane

In a vapor trail

Atmospheric phases make the transitory last
Vaporize the memories that freeze the fading past
Silence all the songbirds
Stilled by the killing frost
Forests burn to ashes
Everything is lost

Washed away like footprints in the rain

In a vapor trail"

- Neil Peart, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson

The Art of Doing Nothing

I sit here, at 9:47 AM on a Saturday morning, more or less where I've sat for the last hour and a half, messing around on the computer, ignoring the siren's call of the unclean bathrooms, the cabinets that need put back together after my husband and his contractor pulled everything out to repair my broken kitchen drawers, and the bedroom carpet with the distinct pee stain that really needs shampooing.  Instead, I have spent a little time on Facebook, a lot of time peeking into people's homes in the Pittsburgh area courtesy of Trulia, and now this.  Sigh.

There was a time in my life when I never would have allowed myself this kind of down time.  Or if I did, only as a rare reward for something extraordinary.  It's not that I didn't do anything fun.  It's just that I didn't do nothing at all.  But, it occurred to me yesterday, after I got home from work to an empty house, Greg off playing that video golf game he's addicted to and Marissa out of town with her boyfriend's family, and plopped down on my bed to stare somewhat mindlessly at an old Seinfeld episode that I've come full circle.  I am back to the point in my early 20's when I did my job, which carried with it no particular ongoing responsibility once I left the office, came home to only the dogs wanting/needing attention.  My time was my own in essence to do whatever I wanted within the means I had available (which wasn't much).  I could do nothing if I wanted to and there would be no one there to care.

But I rarely did back in those days.  Because I thought it was slovenly.  When I did just sort of sit around, I felt horribly guilty about it.  I felt as though I was wasting my life and my youth.  I needed to be up doing something productive.  Anything.  Of course, on the other hand, there was the lost night when the Austin area first got MTV, and I sat almost transfixed in front of my little portable TV just watching hour after hour of music videos.  I remember watching U2's Gloria over and over, fascinated by these unknown boys from Ireland.  Trust me, that totally counts as doing nothing.

What I failed to take into account back in those days was that I should have savored the ability to just laze around because once I began a true career, started a family and became responsible for my own house with more than a few tiny rooms, there would be absolutely no time at all to sit and simply reflect or watch the sunset or ponder the existence of fireflies. 

Now I'm full circle.  Back to where the dogs crowding around my feet are the only ones who truly need anything from me, and even they are more often than not fed and watered by my husband.  All they really need from me on a lot of days is affection.  The difference is that now I can accept the value of sitting and doing nothing.  (Fantasizing about bumping into Mario Lemieux at Home Depot after pulling off a move to Sewickley completely matches a lost night of MTV - maybe even trumps it.)

I know now that just contemplating the sound of the cicadas in the dark is healthy for the soul and recharges batteries worn down by the corrosion of time and experience.  I believe in and relish in the power to do nothing, absolutely nothing, but take up space in the universe for a little while every now and again.  The bathroom will be about the same amount of dirty in 30 minutes as it is right now, when the birds are chirping and the wind chimes are singing.  Right now, they seem more important.

But, wow, what a strange, hard road to get back here.

Shadowy Reminders

I've learned by now that we can't run from our memories.  They follow us along like shadows, disappearing for a while here or there, but always ready to return at a moment's notice.  And so it was in New York, and so it has been since coming back home.  And I have to accept that sometimes the memories will be painful.  I am beginning to wonder if the answer to surviving the loss of a child is to accept that this is the case instead of wondering when that will stop.  And maybe you don't want it to.  Maybe if they stop being painful that means you've stopped caring. I doubt that's the case, but if you feel something, even if it's bad, is that better than feeling nothing at all?

But, while you're trying to figure it all out, how are you supposed to live your life?  I've tried getting out there, jumping off the proverbial high dive and just trying to live life.  This is what happens sometimes when I've done that:

After Marissa and I finished up at the diner, where we'd talked about Kelsey a lot, we walked silently and somberly back toward our little hotel.  Alone, the two of us, in the sea of people that crowd the city streets at all hours.  Part of the crowd in these areas are hawkers whose job it is to try and get you to buy tickets to Whatever:  a tour bus, a superfluous sightseeing packet to the Empire State Building, comedy club tickets.  We had been assaulted by them all day.  I had gradually learned to ignore them like the natives do.  But, we ran into one young man on the way back to the hotel, who, with the bounce and energy of his youth, approached us, walking backwards to keep just a little in front of us and looked straight at Marissa.  "Well, hello ladies.  Why do you look so sad?  It could be worse, your sister could be here with you."  This is no joke, this is almost verbatim what he said.  As I will tend to do when stressed enough to want to kill something, I will smile.  It's been pointed out to me that I do this at inappropriate moments by victims of that ironic little smile.  I smiled at him and said, "You know, we're here because yesterday was her sister's birthday, and she's dead now.  So..."

His face fell, and I am sure he wanted the uneven city sidewalk to open up at that moment and swallow him whole.  For all his youth and brashness he didn't misread that smile for one of a joke.  He knew what I was saying was true.  Maybe it was how Marissa must have looked.  I don't know, but he was completely undone, and stuttered a number of apologies.  We merely walked past him.  We didn't talk about it.  Not that night.  Not since.  I took a bath and curled into a fetal position on the bed and watched that horrible excuse for Game One in the Stanley Cup Finals.  Marissa went downstairs to the little courtyard and wrote in her journal and smoked and drank the hotel's coffee.  We were done for the night.

The next day we shook it off and went to the museum.  I think we've gotten more elastic with time.  For that I am glad.  But, the following weekend there was no museum to throw ourselves into.

And the memories were sure to come...

This past weekend was Marissa's 21st birthday.  She was born in the middle of a cluster of Veldman family birthdays:  her father's is May 24, Kelsey's was May 28, her cousin Amy - the eldest of the Veldman grandchildren - is June 2, hers is June 5 and her uncle Randy's will fall on the anniversary of Kelsey's memorial service (which will also be the anniversary of Michael Jackson's death).  In years past, we did a group celebration on Memorial Day weekend.  This was important for Amy in particular, since she grew up in Ft. Worth, a little removed from all the intimacy of the clan, as it were.  This was her opportunity, in addition to Christmas, to spend some time with her relatives.  When Kelsey and Marissa began being absent for periods of time, it eroded and finally stopped altogether when Marissa was in Alldredge for her 18th birthday.  Somehow I got it in my head that the best idea would be to make it as much like the old gatherings as possible.

But, the old adage "You can never go home" has some merit.  Some things simply change with time, and without a magic dagger filled with mystical sand to press and roll back the clock, you have to just accept that is the truth of it.  Already a week later than the norm, and without some key components, like Amy's mom Cathy and her other two younger cousins who are in Arizona for now, it was not going to be the same.  So, we'd work with what we had.  We did the basics: swimming, Greg grilling hot dogs and burgers (turkey and veggie), cake and presents.  As much as everyone tried to keep it light, at some point in the day, the absence of one of the birthday girls became overwhelmingly apparent to every party there - except maybe to the new addition, my brother-in-law's girlfriend, who was meeting most of us for the first time and must have been thinking, "WTF?"

I managed to keep a game face on until everyone left, then I went out by the pool and sat for I'm not sure how long, drinking, until I was cried out and drunk simultaneously.  My husband tucked my inebriated butt into bed at some point, and then sat awake until 3 AM, lost in his own thoughts.  Marissa had her moment earlier, when she had to leave the party for a while and go upstairs.  Amy, I could tell, was weighed down as well, begging off on plans for an evening movie.  Problem is:  how can you have a family celebration without a key member of the family present?

And for those of you wondering where Mother was in all of this - well, she was present for several of the birthday bashes, although the heat generally kept her inside watching TV instead of on the back patio like everyone else.  But, she chose not to come sometimes as well.  This was a Veldman tradition, not a Bleiler one, and she felt a bit outside the fold.  But, I thought of how she would have been proud to see her favorite grandchild reach this milestone birthday.  And I was sad she missed it by such a narrow margin.  Yet, I have to be blunt:  there just is no comparison to losing a child versus a parent.  I feel a sense of relief that Mother is released from her failing, ill mind and body, whereas I just weep for the loss of my child and all her potential.  And I am so heavy with the regret that Marissa had this shadow cast on this particular milestone birthday.   Yet I am so proud of her.  What an odd mix of emotions.

Taking a Bite Out of the Big Apple...I Mean Cupcake

I, like just about everybody else who ever goes to a movie or watches TV, had all these images in my head about New York City, so it was with a little trepidation that I chose to spend such a tenuous weekend there.  Was I going to find the city of Se7en, so dark, dirty and devoid of joy that a woman would despair of bringing a child into it?  Or would I find the sharply defined grids of racial enmity that Spike Lee showed us?  Or, would it be the quaint, cozy little ethnic neighborhoods, like in Moonstruck?  Or would I be lucky enough to find the robust, rich intellectually challenging world of Woody Allen?  Or the dazzling city of excess of Sex and the City?  In my brief time there, I found that it is all these things.

New York, more than any other city I've ever visited, is whatever you want it to be.  It is so large and so diverse that it can afford to have many faces, all of them equally real.  The one thing it can't seem to do is to settle down and be quiet.  From what I saw, it truly is the City That Never Sleeps.

I saw a lot of beauty there.  In the buildings, from the art deco facades of the Empire State Building to the little neighborhood church across from the hotel.  In the green spaces carved out of the concrete; I gasped at the sight of the vista across the water from me in Central Park, and I drank in the atmosphere on a sunny weekend day at Bryant Park.  In the art:  we spent an an entire day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and didn't make it all the way through.

 

But I saw a lot that wasn't beautiful.  I saw buildings losing the battle to the smog and grit of the city, their once lovely surfaces caked with the black decay of the city.  I saw homeless men and women with lost, empty eyes, begging for change or unabashedly digging through the trash, oblivious to the people walking past them, just as the people walking past didn't seem to be fazed by the scene they were passing.  I saw apartments set above the little shops in Chinatown and Little Italy where the windows were thrown wide to try and catch a bit of breeze, an old sheet or blanket serving as their curtain, their laundry hanging from the fire escape to dry, and you knew these people were living on the fringe, scrambling to get by.  And you know, vaguely, some miles away there are parts of the city that make these cramped little apartments seem positively luxurious.

People were either friendly or they weren't.  Some were clearly nuts.  Like the woman with a toddler in a stroller who was yelling at the poor little boy for losing his shoe in the middle of the street.  And sure enough, there was a little brown slip-on in the middle of the crosswalk on busy 8th Ave.  We all watched in fascination as cab after cab rolled by without hitting it, thinking she would run out and retrieve it when the light changed.  Marissa and I were on the other side before we realized that she was still standing on the opposite corner, yelling, "I can't believe you did that!  Now what to you expect me to do?  What do you think Mother is going to do?"  Over and over and over, her hair a bit disheveled and wild, like the look in her eyes. I don't know if she was high or just crazy, and I don't know if someone finally offered to grab the poor child's shoe or not.  I know we didn't.  But whatever personality you have, something about New York gives you free rein to express it.  I know it's cliche that New Yorkers are rude.  Some were.  The very attractive, petite woman working the front desk at our little hotel could barely be bothered with me the couple of times I interacted with her.  Yet the porter was extremely nice, polite and helpful.  The woman at the information desk at the museum was nearly horrible, but one of the staff who greeted us as we first came in, looking apparently a little lost and overwhelmed, was as warm and friendly as he was exotically handsome.   So, finally, I decided that the city allows people a measure of anonymity, which grants them the freedom to just be whoever they were born to be.  Whereas in the South, there is a certain expectation of behavior, a forced politeness that covers up the natural grump within.  I don't know which I prefer actually, but the thing about it is, if people are rude to you, then you feel no compunction to be anything but rude right back, and you can see how it takes on a life and a reputation of its own after a while.

And, speaking of cliches, they are all true.  Every thing I'd ever heard or seen about the city and its people, I heard or saw in my brief time there.  From the woman who, after coming dangerously close to being bumped by a cab as she walked against the light, yelled at the driver with great bravado, even turning around once past him to send another volley of insults back at him.  To the street vendors, selling pretzels from stainless steel carts, to cabs that careen at breakneck pace down the avenues for the brief block or two they have a lane before coming to a halt in a gridlock of other cabs and businessmen with cell phones glued to their ears (we never saw a speed limit sign anywhere we went).  To the fact that everything is referenced by cross streets.  I always thought that was a Law and Order dodge to avoid using specific addresses, sort of like the fictious "555" prefix for phone numbers.  But, when I gave a cab driver an address the first time, he looked back at me like I either had a contagious malady or was an idiot or both, and he asked what the cross street was.  I didn't know.  Thank God for cell phones with GPS, or we might be bouncing around in that cab still. 

The one thing that caught me by surprise was the cupcakes.  New Yorkers seem to love their cupcakes.  Of course, they are famous for their pizza and their bagels, but the only reference I have ever seen about cupcakes was the SNL Digital Short, Lazy Sunday.  Marissa and I always just thought they were featured because a) it was funny and b) it rhymed.  But, no, New Yorkers seem to like cupcakes.  I first caught that clue when we walked past a place called The Cupcake Cafe.  Then, a few hours later, I saw a little cafe advertising pasta and cupcakes, and looked into a glass case filled with rows of little cakes.  And, of course, there really is the Magnolia Bakery of Lazy Sunday fame in Little Italy.  Finally, I had seen enough cup cakes or signs for cupcakes that I desparately wanted one.  So, our final morning there, Marissa and I trudged down through the heat and the humidity that were already threatening to make the day an oppressive one, to the Cupcake Cafe, and I got a $5.50 cupcake from a man who seemed to embody both the stereotypical New Yorker rudeness with a sense of being helpful ("Are you going to buy one of those?" he barked after we took a couple of pictures, to "It's better if you let it warm up.").

What an interesting city.  I have to go back someday soon.  There is so much we didn't see and do that we wanted to.  But, at least I can always say that I got a New York cupcake.

Manhattan Melodrama

You may well be asking yourself, "What in the world were you doing in a New York diner when your husband is unemployed?"  Well, for one thing, the trip had been planned for a number of months.  I even met with Mother's care team to make sure they thought I could go, and what the plan would be if she took a turn while I was away.  And, I did it the way all Red Blooded American Women do things:  I charged it.   Of course, that's more about how I came to be there, not really why.

Why is more complicated.  There are a number of reasons why.  For one thing, neither Marissa nor I have ever been.  For Marissa, that's not that shocking.  She's 20.  I've got a few years on her, and it's arguably the most dynamic city in the world, situated right here in our hemisphere.  It's therefore both more shocking and shameful that I've never been there.  But, I generally have traveled for one of three reasons, a) family, b) to seek out grand vistas and woolly four legged things or c) to follow my Steelers.  As a result, New York just never really fell into my travel radar.  No family members live there, no treatment centers we considered are there.  There is the Bronx Zoo, but for the most part, it's a concrete jungle, not a natural one.  And, neither the Jets nor the Giants actually even play in the state, and it was never a practical location for an away game.  But, it's on my bucket list.  If only so I can say I've been in the place where Ed and Lennie trolled for criminals.

The larger reason is that we are in the midst of our personal Mean Season.  That period of time that began with Mother's Day and will hopefully end with Father's Day when we were faced with those dreaded series of Firsts to endure without Kelsey and now without Mother.  May saw not only Mother's Day, but Greg and Kelsey's birthdays.  June will usher in Marissa's 21st birthday, Father's Day and the anniversary of Kelsey's death (which happen to be the same day).  I told a friend today, if we can survive this gauntlet, then we can say we did it, and we can know that we can do it.  Each subsequent year will, we therefore hope, get easier.  I have worried for a while, however, how to help Marissa get through her sister's birthday, so close to her own, without a major fall.  I had the idea that I would just distract her completely.  What better way to do that than fly her into New York and take her to a Broadway play.  And so that's what I did.  I had us fly in Friday midday, check into a little boutique hotel that was a converted brownstone, then attend Wicked that night.  Then we would spend the weekend being tourists.  If Marissa had time to think of Kelsey, it would be brief and it would be muted by the activity around us.  That was the plan anyway.

And, I have to say, it's not that it didn't completely fail.  Yet, it was a trip that affirmed the saying, "Wherever you go, there you are" as much as it did anything else.  Our overloaded luggage wasn't the only baggage we dragged up there and back.  One simply cannot escape the weight in our hearts or the absence of the individual who would have loved the pulse of the city most of all.  And there were moments when her absence was brought into sharp focus, as I will relate by and by.  But, we were distracted and busy enough to get through it in one piece.  And, while I can't speak for Marissa, I can tell you that I learned a lot about the city even in the brief time I was there.  And I learned a little bit about myself in the process.

I will share my tales of the city, but for now I need to get up early, so I'll leave you with some pictures.  A very small sampling of the over 400 shots Marissa and I took between us!  Yes, we might has well have been wearing plaid shorts, we were that quite obviously tourists.