Bitter.

It's been a day of nasty discoveries.

I'm not the sort who floats through life on a hope and a dream. I know how it is. I get it. I learned early on that shit does, in fact, happen, and there's a lot of stuff that sucks in this world. Yeah, yeah, you're all rolling your eyes at my melodrama. But really. I'm well aware of the grittier aspects of the human experience.

Anyway.

As it turns out, my twentieth high school reunion was last weekend. No, I did not go. I didn't even know it was happening until after the fact. I would not have gone had I known. I don't remember all those people. I really don't. I have no idea who they are. None. Hmm. Must have been my hard living after school, but I have very little recollection of my teen years. Oh, yes. I did spend the majority of my high school time hanging out in bars. Suppose that might have contributed to the fuzzy recollections.

Anyway.

There are some specific events I do remember from high school. Oddly, the costars for two of my favorite moments are now dead. How terribly, awfully sad.

Here is one:

It was a snow day, and a beautiful one. No school. A boy named Paul phoned me. his dad and mine worked together, don't remember exactly how that was, but not important here. I didn't know Paul well. I saw him at school, and at dad-work-related functions. He was shy, quiet, very polite. A Nice Boy. I, on the other hand, was a Troubled Youth. Sullen, unhappy, disagreeable. So it was odd, to say the least, that Paul called me that day. He invited me over to play in the snow.

So I did. We did all the appropriate snow day activities: made snowballs, built a snowman, rolled down snowy hills. I laughed more that day than I think I ever had before. It was FUN. An unusual concept for me. Paul was nice, we had a great time. We discovered we had much in common. I went home happy and exhausted. I wondered if maybe he and I were beginning a friendship. Or something.

The next day, it was as if nothing had ever happened. Paul was shy and quiet again. I was too tortured by my own insecurities to say anything to him. We were polite, yet distant, at future events.

Then I moved. So did he. I never heard what happened to him.

Until this morning.

Paul drowned about 15 years ago. Possibly suicide.

He deserved so much more from life. Yes, I am bitter, for the very nice boy I knew and liked so well. Another example of shit that sucks.

I'm sorry, Paul. If you see my Dad, he can catch you up on what's been going on with me. And, hey, say hi to Bill for me, would you?

As for Bill...he'll get his own post. Later.

Returning

I have been gone.

I have been gone for some time, and the place where I was is not a good place. It was my place of grief, and fear, and sorrow, and loneliness, and self-destruction. It was the only place I could be for all this time.

The other day my husband said to me, as I recuperated from a wild laughing fit of no apparent origin, that he had missed me. And he was glad I was back. And in his face was more sadness than I have ever seen in him. And more hope than I have seen in him in a long time. It was the first time I considered what my anguish had cost the two of us.

I will grieve for my father forever. There is a big, empty hole inside of me that will not go away. Nor do I want it to; missing him is important to me.

Back to my point: I have been gone. I spent three years on my island, isolated in the wind and the cold, doing the hard work that is grieving. I was buried in it. It consumed me. It ate me alive.

Somehow, I survived. There were so many, many days I thought I would not. I did not want to. But I did.

And here I am. I have returned. I am not the same person at all, but I am back. There are deeper shadows around my edges, and wispy, swirling, dark things behind my eyes. We've all agreed to work together, at least for now. And there are moments now and again in which I feel almost...alive.

Never whole, but alive.

I set forth cautiously, as my kind and patient husband hopes for the first time since the year we married, which was, unfortunate timing be damned, the year my world exploded and I vanished into the dark.

I set forth with bated breath, and I am truly astonished to be here. Alive. Returning.

Waiting

Something our modern society is no longer capable of is waiting. Food is fast, marts are quickie, all the preferred services are instant, immediate, in a flash. Many things happen "while you wait." But that's just a saying, as you don't truly have to wait for very long. The unfortunate result of this world of instantaneous fulfilment is that we have become impatient. Multitasking has become an art form, as nobody wants to take the time to do one thing properly, then begin the next. Do it all half-arsed, all at once! Hurry hurry! Woe unto the clerk in whose queue one is expected to stand. The people on line mutter in discontent, mutinous and angry at being asked to wait their turn. On the highways of America, frenetic drivers are speeding faster than the already absurdly high speed limits, texting and eating their fast food while road raging at slowpokes following the letter of the law.

I am not immune to this need to have it all, right this second. I tap my foot. I roll my eyes and exhale upward to ruffle my hair, anxious to GET ON WITH IT.

Right now I am forced to wait. I am waiting for an entire month to have a new home in a new town. I am waiting to find a new job, new friends, new places to shop and play. I am waiting for my husband to come back from deployment. And there is nothing I can do but wait. It has been difficult to unclench my jaw, relax my tense muscles, and just...wait.

I thought, when planning for this interlude in my life, that I would do so many things "while I wait." It was my intent to multitask the month away, so I brought projects and supplies for dozens of things to while away my time. And yet, I have done very little of them.

I know that when the month is over, I will be on the mouse wheel again, rushing and hurrying to do it all, right this minute. For now, though, there is nowhere to rush off to,nothing urgent I need to do. I have plenty of time. I can relax and enjoy this slow-paced existence, a little one month vacation...while I wait.

Fathers

Fathers Day is coming around again, and I am sadly now without a father. More to the point, I am without MY father. It hurts.

One night this week I spent with my sister-in-law watching movies. We selected three seemingly unrelated films to watch. All three of them, it turned out, were about fathers. In the first one, two children with no father found a surrogate male role model in their wacky uncle. The second one involved a young woman trying to determine which of several men was her father before her wedding. She ended up with three wonderful fathers. The last film was about another young lady who went to live with her father, who was a bit cranky and set in his ways, but he loved her desperately.

All of this cinematic fatherness got me to thinking. My husband is in the peculiar circumstance of having two fathers, both great guys and wonderful dads. I have none. In fact, I haven't anyone even remotely resembling a father figure in my life now.

See, my dad was a huge presence, the hugest, really, in my life. There was no room for any other fatherlike entities, and I wouldn't have wanted one getting in the way. I never had a grandparent or aunt or uncle, or any of those other auxiliary relatives. I had a dad, a mom and a brother. And now I have no dad. Like I said, it hurts.

My dad was smart, kind, compassionate, fair, tough, funny, and he loved me more than anyone has ever or will ever love me. (My husband disputes this, but I know the truth. My father's love can't be outdone. Even by my dog.)

I miss him with every ounce of my being. Constantly.

But here I am, facing fathers day, wondering what to do with myself. My dad was a great one for bringing home strays--folks with no local family, someone needing a meal, whomever. He adopted people into our family life for a few days, or years, or forever. It was the kind of person he was.

Maybe I need to find a faux-father to adopt me, for a little while. Maybe it will dull the pounding, aching emptiness, at least for awhile. Maybe not. But it would be awfully nice to have someone kind of like my dad (but not precisely) around to do all the dad things with. I miss that.

Green Mansions

After three years on a windswept, Aleutian island known for its harsh climate, violent and rugged beauty in the shape of desperate rocky cliffs dropping hundreds of feet into crashing and frigid seas, I am restful in a new location and a very different climate.

Here I am peaceful, nestled in layer upon layer of variegated verdant wooded hills and winding roads. The sun glows through waving green treetops and glares off the surface of a slightly mossy pond. I am calm. I can breathe. There is space.

Tiny spotted frogs and silly orange salamanders challenge my steps and my dog's snuffling nose as we make our way deeper into the (rather buggy, but lovely) woods each morning. I have adopted this hundred acre wood as my own green mansion. It's not quite a jungle, but it will do in this short pause before we move on to another coast and another life, and time speeds up again.

Is that a nun in your attic...?

The moving truck comes in one week. They do not pack attics. Today we spent hours vomiting the contents of our attic of dubious accessibility into...well, the rest of the house. I had no idea all that stuff was up there. I spent the rest of the day consolidating the piles of attic crap, and loading the jeep with donations to the thrift shop.

In the midst of it, I found a treasure.

Inside the jacket of a record (those big, round, shiny black things old people used to listen to in the dark ages prior to the invention of ipods) was a story about a nun in Brussels (whose singing was on the record). And tucked in behind the story were four little watercolors she painted. They are simple and lovely, economic in stroke of pen and brush. Precisely what one imagines a nun would do with ink and watercolor. The subjects are taken from her daily life: the beams inside the nave; the exterior of her church; a nun sitting at table, in prayer; another nun at work.

I am thoroughly charmed.

I cannot wait to reach my destination and have my little nun watercolors framed.

Wallet, watch, volt meter???

In my latest perusal of the Scotsman, I noticed the headline of this article and as I dearly love my own dog, it piqued my interest. Then, after reading it, my only thought was....

a passerby with a volt meter???? Really??? How in the fuck does THAT happen???

So, tell me: do you carry one in your handbag, or trouser pocket? Am I missing some trend in personal items carried about regularly of late? Do they come in fancy colors now, and should I knit myself a volt meter cosy?

I've not yet got one, so if you are looking for a gift idea, there's one for you. I'd like a small, yet easy to manage model, perhaps with a carabiner to attach it to my bag, and if I can synch it with my ipod, so much the better, thanks.

http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Dog-dies--in-freak.4957343.jp

Would you stop?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnOPu0_YWhw

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule. A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theatre in Boston and the seats average $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?