The Real Love of My Life

I am sitting at my desk trying, trying, trying to put a cohesive sentence (paragraph/entry) together to no avail. It is just too damn nice out and I can't concentrate. I had forgotten this feeling. I'm in high school all over again, working to finish my 11th grade research paper so that I can pass English (of all fucking subjects) and make it to 12th grade. This was the best red pen moment of my entire school career. First of all, the paper was on the "hidden" drug references of Alice In Wonderland which gives you a little insight into what my interests were at the time and why I was struggling so hard with deadlines. And because I turned it in on the last possible day that I could for any credit, all I could earn was an F which indeed was plopped right at the top of the page with a note that it was "potentially an excellent paper..." Not too many F's come with that accompanying sentiment. The best part is that my Mattie, who is a year younger than I (which explains why I'm so much mature) turned it in for his 11th grade research paper the following year since he had a different teacher...and got a C! Considering the project was supposed to have taken most of the latter half of the school year to complete and I gave it maybe two weeks (and that's a big maybe) worth of effort, I stand by that C. And so does Mattie. (By the way, I just checked to see if I still have that paper---I do, which explains why the Spoffice is what it is--- and 16-year-old Mattie had crossed out the F and written in an A+ "3D's such dedication, determination, and desire. That's friendship.)

It's moments like this, when I can share a 13-year-old memory with someone else who remembers it, that I am so grateful for our enduring friendship. (I just texted him to see if I could tell the story of the 11th grade research paper and he wrote back, "Of course you can...The truth will set me free!!!") The opportunity to see Harry Potter in the flesh is another perk of our love. The video above was shot last Friday at the Drama League Award in New York City. Mattie, the world's next great host, who will eventually push "Seacrest Out," flew in from L.A. to work the red carpet before the award ceremony and asked me if I'd come down to serve as videographer since it was a last-minute thing. Having never videoed anything besides the occasional sex tape before, I was terrified that I would ruin the whole deal but it ended up being a fantastic time and another fabu memory to add to our treasure chest. (And Mattie, fuh real, I apologize for going so heavy on the zoom button. I don't know what was going on there. I'll do better next time, I swear!) The whole event was incredibly interesting and it was just one of those days I would have never planned on living. The red carpet scene is so fast and intense (the other cameramen and hosts were only inches away from us...and those bitches kept hitting into my tripod) and while I was sweating it out, Mattie just worked it and was so at home with all the pretty people. He had thoroughly researched each nominee so that he was familiar with all of their stage work and could just talk so easily to them. My boy's a professional and I'm feeling mighty proud of him. He just launched his new website www.matthewrodrigues.com and I encourage you all to get to know him now so that he can get you seats at Idol 2012...and at the Oscars in 2013.

So while today I was planning to write and post something very deep and profound and important about our last hour with Oprah and how she got me blogging again, my ADD is winning the battle and instead I am paying tribute to the guy who presided over my wedding in 2007 and with whom I shared a "fake" make-out session on stage during the school musical in 1998. We've come a long way since Alice in Wonderland, my friend. Thank God we finally grew up...

Oprah's Farewell

Gig and I watched together...

As I was laying on the ground trying to take this picture I had to say out loud, "Oh, Mom, I know you're laughing your ass of right now watching me do this." (The tulips in the background? Dan brings 'em home every week since they were Gig's faves...good man.) (The mountain of crap on the table? That's all me.)

I think Oprah may have inspired me to return to this blog. Long-winded explanation of my absence coming soon. (And if not, then there will be a long-winded explanation of the absence of the aforementioned long-winded explanation coming less soon...)

Happy Mother's Day

Six months today.

Mattie sent this song to me in an e-mail just days before...

There have been many times that I have used the phrase "I cannot express" to express something. I cannot express how thankful I am. I cannot express how stupid I felt. I cannot express how shocked I was. Had I worked a little harder, I could have probably expressed those things. And, as a writer, I probably shouldn't be writing that "I cannot express" anything and should instead be reaching for the words. That said, I cannot express, I cannot convey, I cannot even understand how disconnected I feel from the passing of time. It has been six months to the day since we lost my mom and I cannot express how untrue that feels. It was days ago to me. A week at most. Truly, that's how it feels.

Truly.

I woke up and she was gone. Sitting next to me, she was gone. It could have been yesterday. It could have been this morning.

I've heard (and tried to study without much success) about time not being a real scientific concept. Something to do with quantum physics and a fourth dimension. I have no comprehension of it and I'm certainly not going to try to explain it, I can only say that six months have passed since that morning and I don't know how I spent those months; I'm not sure that time actually occurred.

I wish I could tell you otherwise. I know people want to see and hear that time has been doing its healing thing. I can see it in their eyes. Make this easier for me, their eyes beckon. Tell me you're okay.

"I'm okay," I say.

I am okay. I'm breathing. I'm waking up and getting through my days. But I am also living with a constant and sickening sadness in my gut that, were I not bearing it, would seem unbearable. All my sisters are too. Sometimes we just bear it on our knees. And since time has stopped, since its passing is no longer real, this feeling has not dissipated. In fact, and my sisters and I have discussed this, things seem to be getting harder. Probably because it's spring and that means she's everywhere. Every popping crocus, every saluting daffodil, every brilliant tulip---they are her. They are reminders of the joy that spread over her face as the world found color. They are the joy and color of her.

I'm not seeking sympathy or even understanding (I would have never understood this before losing someone to whom I was this close) but I just have to be honest about it, at least here. She was just beside me this morning. Just last night, as I did the night before she died, I told her, "Even though I'm grouchy sometimes, Mom, I love you so much." And I hugged her.

"Oh, my girl, I know that," she said and hugged me back. I know that.

We (Cherie, my mom and I) were watching a movie at the time, Little Women, and as the March girls greeted and hugged their Marmee, I began to cry and said I was sad that I wouldn't be able to hug her always. That's what got me to rise and cross the room and go to her and she said so tenderly, "Oh, you're sad to lose me," and held me tightly. Less than ten hours later, she was gone.

She hugged me back. I love you so much. My girl, I know that.

I know how lucky I am that I had that. I know all who loved her wanted that hug and I hope in writing about it, I am sharing even a piece of it...

I don't dream about her with any consistency. As much as I've tried to meditate on the thought of her, running my fingers through the tassels of her blanket as I fall asleep the way she used to do, I can't bring her to me whenever I choose. But last night, she came. In the dream I was in my parents' house and all of a sudden she walked into her kitchen, beaming with the warmest smile. I said, "Mom, what are you doing here?" and I ran and threw my body into hugging her. She hugged me back. I know I am lucky for this too.

You think you're out of tears and then there they are. Today, I was texting with my aunt who had knee surgery this morning and got sick from the pain meds. I said I wished I could be there to hold her hair, rub her back and hand her a tissue. This was my routine with my mom, I told her, and she wrote back and told me that she knew of this routine...that my mom had told her. Even those little things, my mom appreciated. The tissue. The colors.

"My Laura," my aunt reported that my mom had said. My girl.

And there they are. More tears. Colors.

I couldn't have loved my mom any more than I did and all I ever hope for is that she knew. Even now there's something in me that is trying to communicate with her, trying to say, I will never stop thinking of you, I will always love you...I'm still waiting for you to come back if you decide, you know, maybe you want to. It's absurd, really. Dan and I always laugh about how when the power goes out it's like our short-term memory malfunctions. You go to turn on the light...oh yeah, the power is out. So then you walk into the kitchen and throw a piece of bread into the toaster...oh yeah, the power is out. That's what losing my mom has been like. A hundred little moments during the day when I say to myself, oh yeah, she's gone.

And it's like those hundred little moments are really just one moment. I wake up, I look beside me and she's gone. Oh yeah, she's gone.

Today, six months later, and it's still, oh yeah, she's gone. Time hasn't happened. Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed since everything changed, I mean.

But when I have a dream like last night's I want to believe she's visiting me. That she wants to bring me comfort. That she knows I'm longing for her still. Knows that I would do anything to have her back. That I wish I had loved her harder. I wish I had said it more.

That I wish I had woken up earlier.

And she is trying to tell me, I know that.

Oh, my girl, I know that.

A year ago today...

Made it to 30 in one piece, mama. Love, your Laura

I didn't think I could show my face here ever again.

Before



After



So sometimes I throw ideas up here---Hey, I’m cleaning out my closet. Look at what a mess I’ve made!---with the thought that posting it will motivate me to see it through. I couldn’t possibly post pictures of the squalor I am living in as a result of having emptied my closet without later showing you the pristine order I manage to make of it. Solid plan, right? Right?

Well, no, it turns out.

Apparently, I can’t publicly shame myself into cleaning.

(Apparently, I have no pride whatsoever.)

(Apparently, it’s all your fault for not motivating me.)

I went down swinging guys, I really did. For 10 days I kept that closet empty, navigating boxes and totes to make my way to the desk. For 10 days I sucked the air out of vacuum storage bags, confident that it was all my puffy winter sweaters that were making this apartment so damn crowded. For 10 days I believed the feat was manageable.

And then...I didn’t anymore. Then I realized that my place was looking like something you’d see on an episode of Hoarders and that no amount of snapping was going to Mary Poppins that shit into order.

I would enter the Spoffice all ready to tackle an area---Oh, today I will go through the foot-high pile of magazine clippings that I’ve set aside for my future scrapbooking/vision boarding endeavors!---only to find myself paralyzed.

Well, I can’t put the clippings in that drawer because that’s where my manuscript (ha!) is going to go and maybe I could put them in a tote but I’m out of totes (and forbidden to do any more Target runs until I make some more progress) so that means freeing up a bin by going through our (2007) wedding pictures first and finally getting them into an album and oh what a job that is and I couldn’t possibly throw these magazine pictures out because the only thing standing between me and every dream I’ve ever had is completing a vision board which depicts all the treasures and satisfaction I am going to manifest by simply looking at them all glue-sticked onto a piece of cardboard. (Right Oprah?) (Glue-sticked?) Maybe I should hold off on this area for now but does that mean I’m backburnering my dreams and why am I always doing that?

A few days in row of this started really taking a toll on my mental health.

Seriously...it came up in therapy. I kid you not, my therapist told me to put the shit back in the closet. She said, “Put it in the closet and shut the door. Sometimes you have to do that. You know it’s there and when you’re ready to go through it, you will.”

Two notes on this.

1) Um, usually I’m not talking about household chores in therapy (c’mon kids, you know there are waaaaay bigger dysfunctional fish to fry here) but some whining about how “I can’t even finish cleaning my fucking closet,” may have occurred.

2) “Put it in the closet and shut the door”? I’m going to ride the hell out of that metaphor.

The fact is, I got overwhelmed. By the closet. By grief. By life. And tackling it all at once was unwise. And impossible. And driving me to drink. Yet, for a minute I felt committed to doing just that. (Committed to taking on every challenge at once, not to drinking...although I was pretty committed on that front as well.)

And here’s why: I’m turning 30 on Saturday so there’s been a rush order put on accomplishment.

I’ve attempted many a blog entry about how fucked up about turning 30 I am (and how disappointed I am in myself for being so fucked up about it) but suffice it to say that if all the other stuff that’s gone down in the last year wasn’t enough to get me reflecting on life (and it’s plenty...Plen. Ty.) then entering my thirties sure as shit is. And all this reflecting? That’s what turned me into a coked up cleaning lady, ravaging every corner of my home and soul with a dustpan and broom. I was going to enter my thirties with a clean closet and a detailed life plan which was to be all drawn up, laminated and framed by Saturday. Except, as with the apartment, trying to force order when I don’t even know half of what’s going on inside is unwise. And impossible. And driving me to drink.

(Isn’t this metaphor fun? I was hoping I would have some childhood memory of being locked in a closet that I could weave into things and really get good and deep but no such luck.)

If I was turning 29 again (and maybe I’ll become that lady) then I would simply be depressed about going into this first birthday without my mom on the planet and that alone would be enough of a derailment. And it is. I will miss her homemade cake and frosting. I will miss my name written in her beautiful cursive on the front of a birthday card. And I never thought I cared about this kind of thing, but I’ll even miss her telling me that another year has gone by and she is proud of who I’ve become. (I hate to get preachy but next time your mom says something like that to you, really take it in.) I am sad that my mom is not here to see me turn 30. Indeed, that alone is enough to take on.

But because it’s 30, there’s another set of anxieties that come with this birthday---the “Am I proud of who I’ve become?” of things. This is when the drinking usually starts. In certain respects, I feel okay about it. I’ve loved as deeply and generously as I yet know how, I’ve tried to be brave when it felt easier to surrender, and I’m striving to, more than anything else, treat life as a gift. But on paper? I’m up six pounds and unemployed. Which parts do you think I’m choosing to focus on? Wisdom has a way of fleeing the scene when your jeans are cutting into your love handles.

I’ll be entering my thirties with a mess of a closet and plenty of unmet goals. Not what I envisioned (not that I had a clear picture in mind...or even a hazy abstract) but then who could have seen any of this coming? I think I’m doing okay (in that feeling mostly shitty seems appropriate) for a girl (please don’t tell me I have to start saying woman) whose mom died and whose dad was diagnosed with brain cancer only three and half months later. (He’s doing very well, by the way.) I feel so at the mercy of circumstance and emotion that even my inner control freak is throwing up her hands like, “Bitch, why you messin‘ with me?” But, then again, if you can’t fall apart in the months following the loss of your mom---when every single day the yearning of your heart is what wakes you up in the morning---then when can you?

A bit of advice (from a person who has no right offering any): Don’t wait until the last minute to cram for success, you never know what could happen. (I didn’t even manage to vanquish procrastination.) I’ve talked with my siblings and we all agree that it’s getting harder, not easier. All of our hearts are broken in a way we now know will never truly be fixed and it’s unrealistic to think that things are going to relax into some sort of steady, predictable rhythm just yet. Most of the time this life doesn’t even feel like my own anymore. It’s a sad chaos of despair and worry and sorrow and anguish (with almost as many laughs as there are tears thanks to Dan and some funny-ass sisters) and I simply can’t expect order right now as I never know what the day will bring. I have to get comfortable with the limitations that come with this even if it means not accomplishing everything I ever wanted to by Saturday...or even by this time next year. (Can I please have my shit together by 40 though? I mean fuh real...)

You know what I'm saying here, right? I have to learn to live with my messy closet. It’s too much to take on at once so I’ll have to go box by box and have little expectation when it comes to a timeline. Of course none of it is going anywhere. (Unless I get robbed; I don’t really know how the metaphor would extend in that situation but I’d hope to be able to use the phrase, “the missing bobbleheads of my heart.”) The fits and starts of crying and cleaning and writing, the inconsistent beats of joy and laughter followed by silent stretches of this deepest pain are the rhythm of things now and even though it’s a song I’ve never heard (“Bitch, I don’t like this music,” the control freak says) I’m going to have to get used to it.

The Spoffice is my sacred space again with most of the mess back behind closed doors. Dan walked in last night and said, “It looks nicer every time I come in.” Some days it does. Other days I’m sorting through an area and the piles take over the bed. Or I’m working on a piece of writing and there are scraps of paper everywhere, notebooks strewn about, plates of half-eaten food on the floor. Sometimes I fall asleep on the bed amidst the notebooks and piles, my reddened face on a wet pillow.

My therapist suggested I try spending a week in bed without showering to see how it felt. (Want her number?) Dan has said the same thing many times. You wouldn’t know it from the state of things, but I’ve kept busy. Sometimes I’ve just kept busy with telling myself I have to keep busy. I think they both just want me to sleep. I’m tempted to try it if only for the pictures I could post here. The worry, of course, is that there would be no “after” shots of that either and I would never get out of bed again.

But who am I kidding? You-Know-Who would be all, “Bitch, not on my watch...”



There has been some progress. A few of the little bottles on the spice rack up top have Scrabble letters in them. The others have tiny sea shells or buttons...this delights me. Also, I think a future post will be dedicated solely to the painting of this desk. Pink? Not so much.



My favorite part. Hello, vision board! (Using the over-the-door shoe hangy apparatus for storage is a Becky Breslin Design.)



This is a kitschy hoarder's version of minimalist decor.



That's just good Chi.



My real favorite part. Those are our first baseball gloves...my mom's and mine.

No "after" shots just yet...

And it might be a while.

It's just...I'm still surrounded by mess. My aunt, organizer extraordinaire, suggested a goal of two hours a day so that's all I can aim for at this point. I'm not gonna lie, I feel like shoving everything back in the closet. That's what I feel like doing but I won't...not yet. The overflow to the rest of the apartment is starting to take its toll on me. I wouldn't call myself a neat freak but I do require a certain level of environmental order especially if the goal is relaxation in said environment, which it usually is on the weekend. When Dan wants to hang on the couch and read books together but I can see messes shoved into corners, it's not good for me. I'll do it, but it's not good for me.

The sun is burning through the clouds now so a lazy Sunday seems unlikely (though don't count it out completely...Dan has power over me; he's the pull-you-back-into-bed type and I'm not always able to resist his snuggly magnetism). I am hoping for progress on the Spoffice front but I make no promises.

Dan and I used to have what we called "History Sundays" (I can't believe I'm admitting this) where we would spend a few hours (or an entire day) either watching documentaries about a period or event (think Ken Burns' series, "The War") or boning up on the geography/culture of a random place we'd pull out of the Sunday paper. It's been a long time since we've observed History Sunday but we discussed the possibility of hunkering down today and getting our history on. (Geek.) I think it's time I learned a little more about Libya though, let's be honest, I'm really just looking for an excuse to break out my colored pencils and geography coloring book. (You're really such a fucking geek.)

I don't know, it's 9am on a Sunday and I'm brainstorming here. I've got a blank slate ahead of me if I can manage to ignore laundry, spoffice implosion, groceries that need buying, e-mails that need writing, bills that need paying, floors that need vacuuming and washing, a world that needs dusting and a life that needs planning. If I can back-burner those trivial worries, then I'm quite sure the day is mine to fill as I see fit.

I find myself leaning towards History Sunday. I think I will find the unrest in Libya quite calming at this point.

Happy Sunday.