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 |   Reflections and ruminations from a modern day Alice - Life is Wonderland |
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Reflections and ruminations from a modern day Alice - Life is Wonderland  Welcome to the place were I chronicle my own falls down dark holes and adventures chasing white rabbits! Come on In, Take a Bite, You Never Know What You May Find... "Curiouser and curiouser." Alice in Wonderland    |
| I haven't had a lot of time to write, even though I have had plenty of fodder to fire my engine of creativity. Now, sitting down staring at this text box, I am simply feeling overwhelmed, perhaps for the first time, too overwhelmed to even attempt any sort of recap or rundown. The last few weeks have been difficult ones with hard lessons and even harder reveals but there have been some amazing, sweet and wonderful moments too. I'm drained but ready to move forward into 2013 without resolutions or promises or expectations..only an open mind and the knowledge that I am blessed. Last night Jaden fell asleep in my arms while we were watching tv, something she hasn't done for a long time. Rather than put her to bed, we passed her between us, alternating when our arms fell asleep or one of us had to refill our drinks or take the dogs out. It was sweet to hold her like that, as if we were preserving that little bit of baby girl still left inside her...if only for a bit longer. She will turn three this month and very soon we will say goodbye forever to those earmarks of toddlerhood...pullups and sippy cups, little nubby forks and peg puzzles. A few moments ago she called me and when I asked her a question, she answered me fully and clearly, a new development I'm still growing accustomed too...it seems sometimes that she must expand her vocabulary and comprehension skills overnight as each morning I am surprised anew by a whole fleet of new words, expressions and intentions. She is growing and developing at such a rapid rate now, it feels as I am an running to keep up with her. It is both amazing and bittersweet. As 2012 becomes part of our past, so do countless moments like last night - most of which I hope I have taken the time to memorialize for us in some way. Sometimes looking back is just as important as going forward. |
| I am married to a wonderful man and father. He would fix the world if he could, and try to hide his anguish when he could not so it would not bring us down. He wakes up every day with the drive to be the best husband and father he can be. He struggles, he fails sometimes but he never gives up. He is loyal, to a fault, and far more patient and understanding than I. He doesn’t possess a malicious bone in his body. He makes our daughter feel as if she is the most beautiful and perfect little girl in the whole wide world. He thinks I can wear anything and look good in it despite the obvious flaws and imperfections of my physique. He works hard to make our home secure and a place we can be proud of. He is generous with our friends and gracious with our families. He is pure and good. We are blessed to share our lives with him and no matter what path our futures take, I know he will make the best decisions he can to care for and protect us because that’s just who he is. He has had to endure a lot these last few weeks and done it all without so much as a grimace or complaint. He has had his values and virtues tossed back in his face and been punished and vilified without merit. I have stood by and watched it all happen, ready to mount a verbal assault at any moment in his defense…only to have him tell me that he only wishes for peace. He asks me to leave it alone and not wage a war he knows he will not win, but to simply let him walk away the bigger person. He is also wiser than me. So, my New Year’s wish is for him…that he know how much he is appreciated and loved and that he is every bit a husband and father to be proud of. |
| These days, when my mood seems to darken by the hour and I am reminded, almost systematically of how callous and really insincere people can be, the only thing that really lifts my spirits is my daughter. She remains to be the one truly and purely beautiful "right" thing in this whole mess of a life I'm continually appraising, modifying, adapting. Whatever happens, she is the constant. If not for her, I would surely become lost at times in my frustration, in my anger, in my dark spaces. Jaden is my reminder that God rewards our good and right choices and that I have a responsibility to remain above the fray, no matter how badly I would like to give in, let loose, give up. The person she will become will depend almost entirely on the way we choose to live our lives, on how we respect and love our friends and family, on how we treat others regardless of how we ourselves are treated. If not for her, I would not stop to remember the important virtues of honesty, loyalty, respect, compassion and forgiveness. I can not let my disappointment and disillusion invade her world at any cost. |
| Like the rest of the world, I watched the events of this last Friday unfold with an ever-increasing sense of dread and horror. When I learned that in fact twenty people had been killed, the majority of them children under the age of 8, I was overcome with sadness and despair. As a relatively new mother of a beautiful little girl, I could not begin to comprehend the grief and desperation that those parents would now have to confront and ultimately survive. I confessed to my co-worker that each day when I get off the exit to my daughter’s preschool, I always have the same terrible and fleeting thought, “what if she’s not there?” I know that it’s simply one of those ridiculous, paranoid thoughts that parents sometimes experience, born of anxiety, fueled by our greatest love and vulnerability. I know this, so I am able to dismiss it as quickly as it enters my mind. Yet in those seconds, the debilitating bolt of sheer panic and terror that accompany that singular thought, carry enough fear to shatter me mortally each day if I gave into it. I could not help but think of those moments as I watched the parents racing through the parking lot, their features contorted with that same fear and terror…believing, because they have to, that this is another one of those times when their irrational fears will prove to be nothing more than anxiety and they will find their children safe and sound. We all know now that this was not the case…many of those parents did not find their children waiting for them. The names of the victims were announced and heartbreaking photos of their young faces have been released...the beautiful babies and the brave teachers and administrators who laid down their lives to protect them. My grandmother has always told me to try to find the good in everything. She has been at a lost for words herself these last few days. Our conversations have bounced between anger and outrage, to tears and sorrow…neither one of us has tried very hard to find the good in anything. Sandy Hook could have been any school, in any town and the realization has torn away any semblance of safety and security for everyone. I left my daughter off at school today; I hugged her much more than just once. I spent more time chatting with her teachers, the fresh-faced and beautiful young women who spend more time with my daughter than anyone. I am grateful for their obvious affection for her and for all the little ones left in their care each day. I lingered, I kissed and hugged, and then I made sure the coded door swung shut solidly behind me as I left. I said a prayer to keep them all safe. I believe myself to be a pragmatic and practical person. And despite my heavy heart, I do believe that good can come from any situation, no matter how horrific…so by my nature this morning I am actively searching for that “good”. As a nation we are all doing the same things as a result of this tragedy…holding our children tighter, taking the time to appreciate our blessings, bonding together as a society, offering our prayers and support – those are all good things. The events at Sandy Hook will bring about more changes and improvements to security, safety procedures and emergency response training in our schools and those are all good things. This has started up again the debates and discussions on gun control and perhaps most importantly, conversations about mental health care in this country. We are sharing comments and perspectives, opening dialogue about topics from violence in video games to caring for adolescents with behavioral and emotion issues. Those are all good and important of conversations. We are educating ourselves on how best to make sure those innocents lost in Sandy Hook do not die in vain. September 11th was an attack on our nation. Sandy Hook is an attack on our humanity. I saw something on Facebook recently that read “We are Sandy Hook”, and I thought that message was so powerful and poignant. We are one nation, under God. We are all humans united by a love and loss, fear and hope. Keep the conversations going. Education and responsible actions are the only real ways to bring about change and to honor and redeem the lives of so many lost. |
| This past week much of the East Coast was ravaged by hurricane Sandy. I have viewed the images and watched the news and been dismayed by this storm's wide swath of destruction. We faired remarkably well personally, even managing to hold our power through the worst of it, something I am most grateful for. The local power outages did little more than upset our family's routine with Jaden's daycare shut down for the week without electricity. Our minor inconveniences seemed almost obscene in the face of what others where dealing with in the wake of this storm. In fact this morning driving Jaden back to school for the first time in a week, last week's interruption in our daily routines felt more like a gift. Jaden has been in daycare since she was about seven weeks old. I have battled with guilt and lamented over lack of time with her from that very first day I handed her off to the strangers who would play with and teach her in my absence. Last week, with her school closed, Jaden had the opportunity to be my little shadow for the first time. She became a more than willing shut-in along with her Dad and I. As the wind and rain battered the house, she happily made puzzles, created crayola masterpieces and watched her favorite Disney movies from our laps. When my office reopened she tagged along to work with me and behaved remarkably well, at least until after lunch, when her body began to demand her usual nap. She made the most of her time though, turning my whiteboard into her own colorful mural, taking walks with Grampa around the shop and helping me deliver mail and water the plants. I worked half days on-site with her, then we traveled home so she could rest and I could stay connected remotely. By the weekend, she and I were both getting used to having an all-access pass to each other. She helped me bake, clean, and learn a few new songs. The attachment clearly evidenced by her desire to be on my lap or at my heels almost every moment. Monday loomed large and I feared the return to normalcy would be as hard for me as it was for her. The drive in this morning was a fun as I could make it. We sang, we practiced our shapes and colors with the road signs and talked about how much fun she would have with her friends again. I wasn't sure either of us were buying it. I kept sneaking glimpses of her smiling face in my rear view and I realized how much I was going to hate leaving her again, even for eight hours. She wanted to be carried in, which is never a good sign. And when I dropped to my knee to take off her coat and hat, I felt her arms snake tight around my neck. Jaden buried her face in my neck and I could feel her body go rigid with tension. But then, Miss Troinell moved in the enticing offer of letting her pick the morning snack and we thankfully avoided any tears. When I left, Jaden was in the arms of her pretty teacher, her face a serious mask as she contemplated the snack choices for her classmates. The power is back on and the cleanup and recovery is well underway all around us. Our part of the world is starting to gain ground again on Sandy but driving into work, I feel a little at a loss. I am grateful, I am blessed, but I am already missing that extra special time with my little shadow. . |
| Last night Jaden woke up in a fit of frightened screaming. These were the high-pitched shrieks of a truly terrified little girl. It was heartbreaking to see her so scared. We finally woke her up enough to get her calmed down. She insisted she wanted to watch cartoons and spend about 30 minutes staring at the television without future expression. She was very disturbed but would not tell us what her nightmare had been about. I just assumed it was because she couldn't remember. Night Terrors, I had read about them. I just figured we had reached that unfortunate stage in her development when they might happen. We didn't press her, just let her fall back to sleep. This morning however, we could not resist one more attempt. Jaden sat up and very clearly relayed that her bad dream was about a big bug in her hair...patting the top of her head for emphasis. She then informed us that it was a black bug, a big black bug. I'm thinking I'll leave the large, hairy spider out of the Halloween decoration roster this year... |
| There are some moments in life that are simple and sweet and you realize that these moments are what keep us all beautiful and brimming with hope despite the tug and pull of what can be a hard life in a harder world. My daughter woke up around 4am, crying for milk, crying for me. I stumbled downstairs, heated a cup of milk and brought it back to her in my bed. She immediately drained it, then snuggled back down under the covers. She reached her tiny arms around my neck and pulled herself in close until we were lying face to face, her perfect nose resting against the tip of mine. I watched her falling back to sleep, long, soot-dark lashes above the sea green eyes that struggled to stay open. I wrapped my arms around her, cradling her warmth. She still seemed so small and delicate some times - even though she is growing ever closer to a three year old force of nature. I fell asleep with her sweet breath on my face and her body settled into the curve of my own almost as perfectly as she once fit inside it. I woke up hours later, feeling as if I must have slept for days. I was both alarmed and surprised to see I was already thirty minutes late. There is no greater sleep aid than cuddling with your little girl on a flawless fall morning. I dashed off an apologetic text to my co-workers and reluctantly leapt out of bed. I can't imagine a better reason to be late for work...a small price for such a moment of pure sweetness. |
| Some days life hands you the opportunity to take a good look at the person in the mirror. Some days you end up not liking the person you see there, sometimes you are simply left wondering where she's gone - that person you used to be. The face you expected to see, the smile, the bright eyes, the hope - replaced by fatigue, frustration and disillusion. How do people keep from changing? How do people accept that everything changes? My daughter changes every day, blossoms by the hour. Why do I feel as if I am wilting just as quickly? How will I encourage her to believe in magic and wonder when I know there are no such things, or that these things are at best fleeting promises to entice and engage us only briefly? Life is hard, a challenge that some days, I fail at miserably and often, so often now that it drains me. The last entry I even bothered to make was over a month ago. Have I really had nothing inspire me since then? That can't be true. Jaden inspires me countless times in a single day. Writing has obviously also made it onto the list of things I fail to do, or do well, anymore. I think I must be a fatalist at heart. How can I keep from passing that onto my child? I want her to experience a world full of hope and possibility and not be jaded by my own experiences and perceptions. |
| This weekend I'm planning to attend my reunion. It has been 20 years since I walked across that great green lawn and accepted my diploma with over five hundred of my fellow classmates. This morning in honor of the upcoming event, I changed my profle picture. The girl in that picture has major bangs and virtually no clue about the world she was about to plunge into headfirst. For me high school was more about preparation than fun with my free time spent in labs and building extra curricular activities like High School Aquanauts and Independent Studies with Mr. T that would fill out my college applications. Looking back, I think I was some kind of science nerd-hybrid who divided my attentions between Project O and third floor of Main Building and running around with my boyfriend doing too much stuff that we weren't supposed to. I never joined a team sport and did not belong to any traditional clubs or organizations. Still, I managed to attend both my Junior and Senior proms and a dinner dance here and there. I cheered from the stands for track meets and football games. I went to the drama club's production of the Crucible. I shopped in the student store and ate lunches on front lawn. I took creative writing class with Wally Lamb in the basement of Cranston. I hung out with Tammy Winter under the great tree. I was thrilled to drive my Toyota camry to school myself and park on Joseph Perkins. I even managed to duck out on Senior Cut day with a bunch of friends. We went to Scarborough Beach and I don't think my stomach stopped flip-flopping until we crossed over into Rhode Island. I raced to classes between bells and tried to devise fool-proof ways to avoid changing for gym. I once fell down the stairs in Main building, baked poached pears for Mr. Heffernan's world history class and did a stint as lab assistant for Mr. Bacshoutta which drove my boyfriend crazy. I funneled into pep rallies with the rest of the school. I participated, but my eyes were always on the horizon...my feet always ready to bolt when the time came. Just a few weeks after graduation, I would be off to Australia and New Zealand as a science delegate for People to People, and beyond that I thought, the rest of the world. The irony now is that 20 years and what often feels like two lifetimes later, I live barely a stone's throw from NFA. I have gone around the world to settle down in the one place I could not wait to leave behind. I take my daughter walking on campus and I marvel at how much it has changed. It seems that the place has always been in a constant state of evolution and something more, it is really beautiful. I'm not sure I ever stopped to appreciate the cherry blossoms with their plump pink petals or the alternating roses lining the athletic field or the aged and stoic appeal of the rose colored bricks of Slater. Back then, I wore the red and white colors with pride but I'm not sure I ever really appreciated the place or how the diverse student body, challenging faculty and sprawling campus prepared me for college and adventures beyond. I'm looking forward to seeing faces who, while they may not all be familiar, they are part of those years, part of that experience. It will be nice to take a night to reconnect and remember when life possessed a sweet and innocent simplicity. The recent forum posts from former classmates leaves me wistfully wishing I had paid just a little bit more attention to other things, spent just a little bit more time living in the moment than I did back then. Here's to hoping that 20 years is just long enough to catch up on fun. |
| Elson woke as if from a bad dream, sudden and violently, the thinnest sheen of sweat covering her delicate features. She rose up in the darkness on shaking legs and stumbled across the unfamiliar terrain of the rented room to the tiny bathroom. She snapped on the light, squinted with the sudden glare and deliberately did not look at her reflection in the grimy mirror. She tore the paper top off a glass and filled it from the tap, not bothering to wait until the water ran cold. She tilted the glass to her lips and noticed the small, italic P embossed into the bottom. She also noticed, too late, the tiny black hair stuck to the glass. She dropped the glass and gagged with revulsion. Elson had an almost visceral aversion to hair, body hair especially. She took great pains to keep her entire body free of the offending matter, religiously shaving and waxing all but her slender eyebrows. She even kept the hair on her head cropped to a brief, almost mannish pixie cut that she dyed the brightest shade of platinum blond money could buy. Her phone was charging next to the sink. She looked at the luminous screen and read the time as 3:40am. It would still be dark outside she realized and was consumed with the sudden and powerful need to run. Elson pulled ratty tee-shirt over her sports bra, pulled on a pair of biker shorts and laced up her sneakers. She pulled open the door to the motel parking lot. The humid air smelled like an aquarium, an odor Elson found revolted her almost as much as the errant hair had. She started off across the nearly deserted lot, drawing comfort from the solid thumping of her feet on the pavement. After a few moments, she felt her body slip into a perfect rhythm. Elson’s body was her temple, a tight and compact collection of muscles that she sculpted by a near compulsive routine of running and hot yoga. In her youth she had surrendered it to untold abuses and had spent most of her adult life regaining the natural force and power she had been born with. She was small but fierce. Her slight silhouette, soft mouth and blue eyes did nothing to convey the warrior confined within. A long-ago boyfriend had once jokingly compared her to a comic book character called “Tank Girl”. Elson had been flattered by the parallels he had drawn between her and the spirited heroine who piloted across a post-apocalyptic world in a great green tank. There had been a time when she had shared that character’s quick wit and good nature but those qualities had become casualties of her evolution, an evolution that had that strengthened her resolve and sealed off the great voids of pain in her soul but had also stripped her of her vulnerability and mirth. Elson’s feet pounded against pavement down desolate streets where the houses all stood in the same state of neglect, worn out and overgrown. She passed one after another, dark houses set in uneven rows; their unkempt yards littered with refuse and junk, barely indistinguishable from one another behind their low chain link fences. Street after street, it was the same story, low-income living in the armpit of Middle America. Elson’s stomach tightened with tension as she neared the trailer park. The whole reason she had chosen that fleabag motel with the sub-par cleaning standards was its proximity to this place. The battered blue sign out front read, “Paradise Park”, framed with a flashing neon flamingo that blinked a sickly shade of pink in the still gloom of morning. Beyond the sign were six rows of ramshackle trailers loosely connected by a series of gravel footpaths and a broken main road. Elson slowed her pace. One of those trailers would hold the individual who had become the very center of her world for the last several weeks. A vile and wretched waste of human space, David Cedars, career-criminal and child rapist. Elson had tracked him down and had journeyed here with the sole intention of killing him. Elson had no personal connection to this man. She did not know the toddler he had raped but the spirit of that broken child had called to her, had found a space in her soul and snuggled down, clinging to the part of her that was still mercifully human. The child had come to her at night, as had so many others, and whispered in her ear, speaking those terrible truths in a voice spiked with anguish and pain. All those tortured children with whom she shared a kindred spirit, a history soaked in shame and pain, had spoken to her. Their voices had become the haunted mantra she had used to evolve from a victim into an instrument of perfect rage. |
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