And now I'm in Dublin with a broken heart

It’s 2011 and I just had a vacuum repairman in my living room on a Sunday morning. (Dan and I keep calling him the Hoover-Fixer-Sucker-Guy and singing the song from Once.)

He was here to assess my mom’s Rainbow. Just “My Rainbow” to her. It had been making an awful high-pitched noise and there was a terrible smell of burning last time I used it so I wanted to get it a tune-up. Since the shop is an hour away and he lives here in town, Brian, a third-generation vacuum repairman whose father owns the place, offered to come out and have a look. A new hose and some basic clean-up and the machine should be good as new.

Anyone who knew my mom well understood that this vacuum was her most valued possession. She never cared for cars or furs but---with five long-haired daughters and various cats, dogs, and litters of puppies along the years---a good vacuum was important to her. She would extoll the virtues of her Rainbow to anyone who was in the market for a new vacuum. So effusive was she, that the Rainbow representatives who came out to our house to repair or upgrade her models over the years asked her to work for the company.

The Rainbow, an R2-D2-looking thing, locked into a water basin which sat on a wheeled ring on which you dragged the whole apparatus. There was a long, elephant’s trunk of a hose and various wands and attachments for dusting and upholstery and crevices but the water basin was what gave my mom her sense of vacuum superiority. There was no risk of all the dirt and hair and dust and bugs she sucked up erupting out of an over-filled bag. The spiders were dead. The dust was drenched. It all whirled in a cyclone around the basin so at the end you were rewarded with a gruel of dark water and sludge.

As a kid I was mostly just annoyed with the noise of it. If I was watching TV, the sound of the vacuum's wheels hitting the linoleum as my mom turned the corner from the dining room to the kitchen sparked irritation in me, aware of the impending interruption that would occur when she reached the family room. It was loud and it was cumbersome and I got annoyed whenever I was asked to schlep it from one part of the house to another.

Schlep it, not run it. She preferred to do the vacuuming herself than have us break her machine. You could borrow her sweater and stain it, you could shatter her favorite pitcher and my mom would have laughed. But I was scared of breaking her Rainbow. I once asked her if I could bring it up to NH to give my apartment a solid cleaning (the kind an electric broom just couldn’t handle), and though she let me, I saw a hesitation on her face that I had never before seen when I had asked to borrow anything. Of course before I could take it anywhere, I was first subjected to her Rainbow orientation speech which stressed, above all, the importance of not leaving the water basin attached after you’ve finished as condensation in the engine would prove fatal.

Thinking of her ambivalence now, I love it. I almost wish she would have told me no.

It wasn’t until last year when I was vacuuming her house every week that I finally understood the machine’s greatness, its efficiency and power. When I told her the floor attachment kept coming off she was stern----“That’s because you’re not putting it on right”---before showing me how to do it. It was a simple fix, you just had to know the machine. I took pride in the fact that I knew how to do it right. That she knew I knew. She was as grateful that I was cleaning her home as she was that I was respecting her machine.

She laughed when she saw me detach the water basin even just to take a bathroom break.

When she started losing her hair, I vacuumed twice a week if I could. The hair would amass in broad, thick webs on the couch cushions and floor and I tried to keep up with it all, protective of her pride. Once, after the hospice nurse had just been to the house, I eyed a small hair nest on the rug and grabbed it up with my hand, trying to be nonchalant about it so she wouldn’t see.

“Was that hair?” she said, missing nothing, and then she asked if I thought the nurse had seen it.

The day she died, after making arrangements at the funeral home, we came home to the family and friends who were still at the house and my mom’s hospital bed was gone, the furniture back in place, the floor vacuumed. The gesture was meant in kindness but I was disarmed by how gone it all made her. I missed even the threads of her scattered on the floor. Whenever I visited the house in the months following her death, I wished that I had vacuumed less and I would scour the rugs and floor, even around the toilet, hoping to find a little web of her hair.

Before she died, she told me she wanted me to have the vacuum, knowing I was the only one of her daughters who didn’t have a good one. But she had said this to only me and when my sister was moving into the house to help my dad out, it didn’t seem right to say anything or take it when there was still all that house to clean. My sister gave me her Kirby to use knowing I didn't have a solid vacuum.

“Mine is far superior,” was what my mom had to say of the Kirby when she was alive and she was right. I hated it. Fortunately for me, my sister and dad didn’t like the Rainbow and we traded back. I was ecstatic that I was actually getting it, but back in my apartment I found that its hose was ripped and had been duct-taped and it wasn’t working well. Then Dan accidentally broke the caddy for the extra attachments. Initially I felt intense irritation that it had been so mishandled and then I felt grateful for the chance to restore it.

The entire time Brian was here this morning, I fought a strange mix of tearfulness; I felt the pride a son might in fixing up his dad’s old Cadillac. The whole thing---a Rainbow man in my living room, my offering him coffee the way my mom would have---made me feel so much like her. She would be so glad that I’m putting the money into her Rainbow. “It’s a good machine!” she would say.

I told Brian I would be a Rainbow customer for life---one of those moments when I hear myself sounding exactly like her---but I wasn’t ready to spend $2,000 for a new machine.

I want to keep this one alive as long as I can, I told him.

I’m not even sure how old it is, though I think it’s the second one she owned. It could be over 20 years old. Brian said some people keep them running for 40. I’m sure somewhere my mom wrote down when she bought it. If it hasn’t been thrown out, there undoubtedly exists somewhere a manila folder held closed with an elastic band, which contains all documentation on her Rainbow complete with notes from the day she bought it jotted down in her warm scrawl. ”Brian---nice guy!” she would have written of today’s visit.

Walking in on me writing down my own notes after the appointment, Dan smiled. “Gig!” he said.

I kept writing.

9/25/11...Option to trade-in, refurbished models available...

But there was one piece of information provided that I didn’t need to write down: Brian’s warning about leaving the water basin attached when the machine isn’t running.

When he said it, I arched my eyebrows at Dan. He has been warned about this several times.

Lifetime Movies present - A Writer's Dilemma: The Lola Mellowsky Story

I take every opportunity to post this photo. The power of visualization.

So, there I was---“writing.” When I put it in quotation marks it means I have the document on which I am supposed to be working open on my desktop but am instead engaging in “research”. ( For example, today it was integral to my “writing” that I watch the Jim Carrey/Emma Stone video ). (The Spanish subtitles made it somehow better for me.)

Then I got to thinking of the really important stuff.

I got to planning which, as any successful human knows, is something regular people think successful people do a lot of. (This is what I’ve heard. Being neither successful nor particularly regular, I can’t speak with any certainty.) So I’m sitting there and I’m doing my planning thing---if I write for a few hours before tomorrow’s dentist appointment and then return e-mails afterwards from the coffee shop then I’ll have plenty of time in the evening to check and see if Emma Stone made a response video (she really should). It was then that I realized that I have left the most important detail of my writing career---perhaps the most important detail of my life; perhaps the most important detail of all the details in the land--- completely unexamined.

What picture am I going to use for the book jacket of my as yet unwritten book?

HOW COULD I HAVE OVERLOOKED THIS?

This is way more important than unquotationed-marked writing.

Shall I hold a cup of coffee? French-pressed or cappuccino? Should I be snuggling with a dog? Do I need to get the dog now so it will like me enough by the time I publish to sit through the photo shoot? A well-bred black lab or an orphaned three-legged mutt with cataracts? Will a downtrodden dog upstage me?

Should I smile warmly from a riverfront porch or try for depth and intelligence against a backdrop of bookshelves and a Manhattan skyline? Do I put my chin in my palm? Should I be on a swing set laughing joyously in long braids? Should I start growing my hair out now?

Do I need to start working on my Blue Steel? Should I sleep with the photographer so he goes heavy on the air-brushing? Should I use a picture of Emma Stone instead?

Should I wear a vest?

Do you think vests will be in by the time I publish?

Are vests in now?

Should the caption under the photo say “The writer at her home in NH” or “The writer on a water slide” or the “The writer making a ham sandwich”?

And what of the “About The Author”?

This is Lola Mellowsky's first published work though she always wished she had come up with the idea for the Encyclopedia Brown books. She looks forward to embarking on her own young adult series, Thesaurus Blue.

And the acknowledgements?

I wouldn’t be here were it not for the generous spirit of a kind-hearted many who let me blow them to get published. And this book certainly wouldn’t have come together without the CVS clerk who let me blow him for the Scotch Tape.

Of course a shout out to my 11th grade PE teacher is in order for flunking me and thereby cementing my understanding that I would never play professional badminton but I was hoping to save that for my Oscar speech.

Now that I've identified this oversight I'll be sure to give it far too much undivided attention.

But not now. Now I must go and "write."

Thesaurus Blue isn't going to write itself.

Besides, I'm pretty sure I've found the perfect photo.



The writer after Nog-Bombs on Christmas morning.

Home stretchin'.

I am now on my third leg of this Tour de Niece watching Molly Moo for the rest of the week and into a bit of next. I can handle the child with no degree of difficulty. I am going to murder the new family dog. She’s a puppy still at six months old and she is a giant pain in the ass---chasing the cat around, spazzily prancing from couch to chair, eating pillows when nobody’s looking. I am bottomlessly grateful that Dan is allergic to dogs and cats and this will never be my fate. (Also, I kind of love the little barking shit and am happy her sleep crate is in the room I’m staying in so we can engage in psychic snuggling. I would let her in the bed but it’s against house rules.)

Last night Dan and I helped Mol with a little homework project which had her cutting off the top half of a cereal box to be used in her classroom as storage for library books, folders and whatever other presumed crap a fourth grader acquires throughout the school day. After the adult-guided scissor portion of the exercise, Molly was to decorate the “book box” as she wanted. While the kiddo was out of earshot, Dan and I brainstormed potential decorating schemes. Swastikas and pictures of horse genitalia were our first ideas. Writing “White Power” in bubbles letters along its side was Dan’s next suggestion. We shall not soon be parents though I think I’ll take several birth control pills tonight just to be safe.

The niece-nuzzling time certainly has its rewards though. Last night Mol and I took turns reading aloud at bedtime and both of us performed the piece in animated British accents. Blimey, the little wanker is good! I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of her than I was listening to her deliver a big book of animal facts as though it was a National Geographic documentary. The kid is funny which is really much more important than having manners or proper wiping technique ( both of which---I will clarify because she’s almost nine and it would be disturbing were it not the case--- she has). Bottom line, I just like the kid which soooooo helps when it comes to the whole not-beating-her thing.

The first night I stayed over Mol didn’t sleep in the bed with me which is a departure from my typical stay-the-nights which always have her asking me,”Lola, can I sleep in your bed tonight?” as soon as I walk in the door. I was sure to let her whenever she asked because I knew it wouldn’t last forever, and when she stayed in her own room that first night I was sure it was the end of our slumber parties. (Were she not the type who sleeps horizontally I might have been broken up over it.) But last night she returned to my side (as in, her feet in my side) and first thing this morning she asked if she could sleep with me again tonight. I won’t lie, I love it. There is such a peace to looking over from my book and seeing her sweet little freckly face.

Yesterday I drove Mol and a pal to dance class and realized I’ve been picking these kids up from school and schlepping them to that studio since they were three years old. On the drive over, Mol’s friend, A, told me she had been telling another fourth grade girlfriend how Lola was picking her up from school and that I was---and these are A‘s words---”so awesome.” She used her stretched arms to indicate just how awesome she explained me to be. To which Mol remarked, “Did you tell her she’s my aunt?”

Fourth graders---my target demographic.

When I dropped Mol off this morning and she showed me a flash of too-cool-for-Lola, I lectured her, “Remember, the girls are talking about me on the playground these days. Your aunt is sooooo awesome.” Then, after she jumped out of the car and was heading into school I rolled down my window and started shouting, “I love you, Molly! I’ll miss you! Have a good day! You’re the best little girl in the world! Be sure to use a napkin at lunchtime! I love you!” She laughed and smiled back at me.

Sooooo awesome.

Hopefully she still feels this way after the rest of our time together. I am as tired as it gets from all this house-hopping. No, this is not true. I just left a house where my sister was taking care of a two-year-old and a newborn...I could be a breastfeeding zombie, which I am not. (Not a bad idea for a Halloween costume though.) But it’s all catching up to me and l look forward to locking myself in my apartment for several weeks once all of this done. I suppose I’ve just recognized the rhythm of my life---surges of family and friend-focused energy and output followed by plunges into isolation. I guess that’s just how I do.

But just so we’re clear, I’m not leaving you guys hanging on summer camp stories. I've got something in the works though I may have to wait to post it until I get home again. I want the time and quiet to release it naturally and gently. But it’s coming, I swear. I need to relive it on paper to be sure it really happened.

Guys, it was sooooo awesome.

I beat the crotch!

Though, in the end, I suppose the crotch was also a victor.

Evangeline Lynne is here. Katie and bro-in-law Gary waited a bit to settle on a name (though Dan spread a pretty far-reaching Facebook rumor that her name was Eunice Gertrude and that she was close to fourteen pounds at birth...she was eight pounds three ounces) but the kid came home a titled person. Despite my flight out of Boston being delayed an hour, and having only twenty minutes to sprint through the Atlanta airport to catch my connecting flight to Dayton, and a cab driver who didn’t seem to understand the significance of ten centimeters dilated and pushing, I made it to the hospital in time for the birth. Though Katie and Gary seemed shocked by this, given the fact that Katie had been in labor for four day and at the hospital since the night before, I was certain the universe was working to get me there in time. Between my telepathic directives to my unborn niece to wait me out and having a sense that Gigi was pulling all the strings, I just knew it was going to play out exactly as it did and, indeed, I was in the hospital room the moment little Eva Lynne inhabited a body and came to earth. Four days of labor is not a pretty tale no matter the ending, but Katie and Eva are healthy and well as is the rest of their crew. A family has grown in size and happiness.

Today I held my little bundled niece and wondered aloud, “Who are you going to be?” and it’s such a point of curiosity for me. Of course she already is, in many ways, who she is going to be---but who is that? Who just entered our lives to change and shape our world in her unique way? And what way will that be?

I’ve been a witness to two births and one death in the last ten months; the richest of years in sorrow and joy. Holding a newborn---a new person in the room where there wasn’t one before---feels like the closest proximity, the closest connection to that which we don’t know. That other world. But I have to say, I felt the same way about my mom dying at times. Like I was just as near to that which is---in a different way (or is it the same?)--- miraculous. The last night my mom spent at the hospital, about ten days before she died, laying in her bed in and out of sleep, she told me that she felt the presence of others in the room. She laughed even, saying I probably thought she sounded crazy but she felt them touching her fingers playfully. When I asked her if they scared her, she said no.

“They’re guiding me,” she said.

When I speak of a year rich with sorrow and joy, I’m not sure which category this story falls under. I feel as grateful to play with the little matchstick fingers of my new niece as I am to have seen my mom laughing about the unseen playing with her hands. Grateful to have been able to go that far with her.

It’s moments like these that I am remembering now. Those which were too painful to recount for some months. All I want now is to remember, so I’m going back even as things move along.

Katie and Gary are sleepless---balancing the needs of a two-year-old and a three-day-old with their own food, rest and showering requirements. I am equal parts envious and relieved that this is not my life. When the babies cry at the same time, that ratio shifts. I feed Savvy pad thai, empty the dishwasher and reheat Katie’s cup of coffee when I can, trying to make myself useful.

I’ll leave here Wednesday and have a handful of days to unpack, sleep with my husband (get your heads outta the gutta...or don't), and put a few things in order before heading to my sister Bec’s to stay and watch Molly for a stretch while she and Jeff are in Hawaii.

I feel like I’m heading from family member to family member right now---painting walls, reading books to nuggets, holding babies. I’m not patting myself on the back here; none of this is up to me.

I’m touching miracles again (my island retreat, the lips of a newborn) for one reason:

She’s guiding me.


Swaddling a miracle. (Mother and child photos are pending final approval so an auntie and child photo will have to do.)

Leaving on a jet plane.

I should be ashamed of the lack of creativity here, but I'm boarding in ten minutes and I have to pee!

Been on a whirlwind tour since my writing retreat, so my apologies for holding out on camp stories (it was too wonderful for tidbits). I ended up staying in RI for five days, helping Cherie and bro-in-law Pete as they ready to move into their first home. I packed, I primed, I got sawdust in my eyes and Dan said I came home a little bit tougher now that I'm a laborer. It is such an exciting time for them and as long as Hurricane Irene doesn't screw things up, they will be in their new home by this Sunday. It was fun to watch a sweet little family heading into one of those rest-of-their-lives moments.

I'm at the airport now flying off to Ohio for another of these moments, as my sister Katie is due to deliver her second daughter any moment. She's been at the hospital since last night and my flight doesn't arrive in Ohio until 3:45, so I feel like I'm playing beat the crotch. I'm hoping to be there for the big moment, but what can ya do? They grow up so fast but I'm sure a few hours won't make much of a difference.

While all of it may be taking me away from my writing, it is also setting me at the center of life's truest elements---first homes, babies, airport stank.

These were Dan's suggestions for how I spend my week away:

Thing you should do while in Ohio:

1. Enjoy the moment for what it is.
2. Squeeze Savvy often.
3. Make some time for yourself (a morning walk, an afternoon drive, journal in the yard).
4. Talk to your Mom. She’s on your shoulder these days. I hope you can feel her.
5. Miss me. I’m adorable.

He's right---he is adorable. And I do feel my mom on my shoulder. She's the one bossing me around, having me romp about tending to all her girls.

While I can't promise updates since I'll be hanging out with two-year-old Savvy when not nuzzling a newborn or caring for my sister, I will try to get some pictures up.

Wishing you all more of these rich life experiences...and less of the stank.

Happy Birthday, Mom.

I promise I will write all about summer camp soon. I've been home for only five days and now am heading down to RI for a three-day Ocean State jaunt. When I settle and finish the laundry, I will return to all you Spewers in full form. (I am, of course, a changed Lola after this week.)

Today, however, is a Gigi-post day. It is her birthday. I find myself wondering if the expression "another year younger" fits now. Like there's some Benjamin Button effect that has her aging in reverse out wherever she is. I like to think she's 42---the age I kept her at for years in my head---and that she's dancing and laughing her laugh and feeling proud of herself and her girls.

Mom,

If I could, I would rub your feet today. I'd make you coffee and we'd have it on the deck and then go to Reidy's for breakfast. We'd drink lemonade later. I'd make up a pitcher and we would drink it down in the yard and maybe we'd go in the river together. I wish I swam with you more. I would love you up. I would look in your wise blue eyes (gorgeous, those eyes) and say, "Thank God you're mine."

Thank God you were the mother I got this go-around because it's made life a gift. I get to see what you showed me. Real things, not distractions. I get to feel another's heart when I look at her face because you taught me how. I can open my body in laughter--freely, loudly--because you showed me and let me. Your laugh, Mom, I get it now. It was also your tears. It was also your life. Your joy. Your generosity. Your intimacy. Your gift. I will have it always and give it always because that's what you did. Thank God you were my mom.

Happy Birthday, Mama. I miss you, I feel you, I love you.

Your Laura

Alabanza!

Me again, your substi-spew blogger. I am here to report that Lola is alive and doing well on her island writing retreat and she is actually having an amazing time. She is still fairly isolated out there and contact with her has been limited to a few random texts throughout the day and perhaps a brief phone call at night. But, every message from her has been so filled with excitement and joy about what she is doing, that I know this will be a week of her life that she will cherish forever. She deserves one.

If you wonder what you do in a writing retreat as I do, apparently, it seems you write. You write, and read, and revise, and write. Throw in some time for meals and perhaps a glass or wine of two, but otherwise, it’s all business. I will hear from Lola in the morning and she will already be writing (usually having her morning cup of Joe with the sun on her face). She writes all day with her group. Then she writes at night. I usually get a call as I am going to bed, and Lola is just finishing up. She’s writing and writing and writing.

My only fear that she is just filling up journals by continually writing, “All work and no play makes Lola a dull girl.”

But I don’t think so.

She is so pumped about the whole experience. She loves what she is doing. It has made her excited about doing more and is she is just relishing the supportive environment that her new writing friends provide. She loves the serenity of the island. She is overjoyed by the guidance of Joyce Maynard. She is appreciating every moment and all her surroundings. She is just soaking up every minute of this experience.

Alabanza.

That’s a new word that I fell in love with this week. For some reason, one day this week, I woke up singing the title song from “In the Heights”. It’s a Broadway show, one of Lola’s favorites, about a neighborhood in New York and the people. Definitely has a Spanish flair to it, but with a slight hip hop twist – my Lola can, and will, bust it out. But this day, the song got stuck in my head. So, I decided to listen to the whole soundtrack. That’s where I found “Alabanza.”

Alabanza is a word that Abuela, the grandmother of the neighborhood in the show, uses when she appreciates the small little blessings in her life (glass Coke bottles, breadcrumbs, a sky full of stars.) It means, as they explain, to raise this thing to God’s face and literally, to sing praise to this. The song has a sad tone to it, given the occasion upon which it is sung, but the word has such a subtle and profound beauty to it, that it keeps ringing through my head. How many things in our everyday life which we take for granted deserve our praises? We all need to cherish the blessings of our life.

So to this workshop and retreat that Lola is in the midst of, I say, “Alabanza!” I sing your praises. It’s a little gift to Lola to be where she is and to having the time she is having. It’s a blessing to have her feel the freedom where she can write all day, without worry, without interruption, without guilt. It’s just her and her pen. It’s a blessing to give her time out on a peaceful island where she can appreciate the rolling sounds of the surf, the squawk of the seagulls, the smell of the ocean. It’s time for her, time to feel her Mom with her, and time to breathe – deep and long – soaking it all in.

Alabanza.