Saturday, February 20, 2010

Confessions of a Confused Mourner

My friend called me late one night this week to tell me that the young woman in the news who was killed in an early morning collision was the waitress that took care of him and his buddies on their semi-regular breakfast gatherings at a local diner. She was in her 30s, he thought, and had just dropped off her two kids and was heading to work when the wreck occurred.

Tonight, while reading Facebook status updates, I learned that another mother of two small boys had passed away. She was an incredibly creative woman, volunteering untold hours to create photographic inspirational journals of mission trips, pouring her wisdom into her children, and supporting her equally gifted husband -- all from a wheelchair, or bed, or feeble stance because arthritis robbed her of ease of mobility.

I am not a mother. Never have been, never will be. But today I felt the incredible joy of having a three-year-old hold me tightly as we spun around until we were both so dizzy the world kept spinning even when we stopped. She loved every rotation and, even as she weaved and held my pants leg to steady herself, held up her hands to me, and demanded, "Do it again, KK. Do it again." Because I love her and the giggles our merry-go-rounding produced, I complied, and complied, and complied.

Later, I was overwhelmed with emotion as this precious bundle laid her head on my shoulder when she was momentarily overtaken by a coughing spurt and I comforted and quieted her. She held on that time with no doubt that I would be there for her and, secure in that knowledge ,she raised her head up, took my face in her small hands, and kissed me.

My brief experience today made the news of the loss of these two women even more confusing.

Children surrounded by love are fearless in their expectations. Children expect mothers to drop them off and be back to pick them up, to be behind the camera and in the photos, to comfort their ills and cause their laughter.

These are not unrealistic expectations.

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Things that Made Me Smile Today

-- From someone's Facebook status: Women are angels. And when someone breaks our wings...we simply... continue to fly... on a broomstick. We are flexible.

--Saw a sign at the neighborhood supermarket indicating "pork shoulder butts" were on sale and wondered why I had never before wondered about that particular anatomical perversion.

--My friend texting me after she heard my sqeaky voice (due to cold) and the two of us deciding my Muppet name should be Snotty Spice

--Everyone's reaction to calls from the District Director for the State Representative (that would be me) calling on official business today and sounding like a Muppet or Munchkin or

Monday, February 01, 2010

I'm a Sap ... but I've also been sick so forgive me

I cried.

Booth and Bones were expecting nothing less than a horrible Christmas. Booth's son was heading to the mountains with his ex. Bones' dad is in prison. Even though she arranges for the "conjugal" trailer to be used by her brother, his wife, their kids, and her dad, she was going to Peru for an anthropological study. But even the trailer is a bust because they can have it but no decorations.

There's also a body and a killer and blah, blah, blah.

But the last scene got me. Booth's son doesn't go to the mountains and they get Christmas day together with "two trees." We don't know what that means. Cut to Bones who doesn't go to Peru and is in the trailer with the fam. Bones calls and tells her he and his son want to give her present to her. She says, "Later." And he says, "Look out the window."

There Booth and his son stand beside a Christmas tree with multicolored lights plugged into the car battery.

I cried.

Some day some one is going to know me well enough to know that that simple act would have made it the best Christmas ever for someone like me.

Until then ... I cry. Sappy, I know.