My Level of Awareness

Yesterday morning, I was carrying my son down the stairs to the kitchen for his breakfast.  He is perfectly capable of walking down the stairs (without even holding the handrails and carrying a two-fisted burden of toys, no less), but it is our morning ritual.  He wakes me up by tickling me and pinching my nose, and I say “Would you like some breakfast?”  And he says “Okay!” and holds his arms up to be carried down.  On the way down, I always say “Good Morning, my big man, Mommy loves you.  Do you love Mommy?”  And every morning he snuggles his head into my shoulder and grips me tight around the waist with his legs.

Yesterday was different.

Yesterday, I asked him “Do you love Mommy”  And instead of snuggling down, he picked his head up from my shoulder and he turned his big brown eyes to mine and very seriously stated:

“Of Course.”

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One year ago, today, I wrote this:

My husband and I were in the car together this morning, and at 8:22 am, he turned to me and said “Happy Anniversary.”  One year and three minutes ago, our lives irrevocably changed.

This short exchange sums up almost every reason I love my husband.  He has this way of working small miracles.  He turned one of the greatest tragedies of our lives into a celebration of our ability to endure as a family.  Hardship can tear people apart, or it can knit them together inseparably in bonds of survivorship.   We are more than husband and wife, we are veterans in arms.

 Another year has gone by.

It feels like a lifetime.

Over the last year, our lives have been rocked by a different kind of hardship - one with a more private face.  But every word I wrote one year ago, I still believe.

I still believe that we can learn, love and endure.

I still believe that, in the end, we will celebrate our survivorship together.

I still believe that through the tears and the heartache that we will find the lasting core of love and respect that has sustained us for over nine years.   And we will remain.

I still believe in small miracles.

MTAME, my love.  One year later.

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My horoscope for today says:

Pleasant conversations with highly energetic people can make today delightful. You should, however, prepare yourself for more honesty than is comfortable. It’s not that you don’t like the truth, but you still go out of your way to avoid being hurtful to another person. Your consideration is noble, but it may be better to stop protecting others from who you really are.

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I just came back from a meeting between a government agency and a ”special interest” group in Washington DC.   Yep,  as ironic as I find my current position to be, I am, for all practical purposes, party of a lobbyist organization.

Now, for all my DC area folks, this is old news, but I got an enormous chuckle out of this:

Yes folks.  It really says that. 

The fact that you get this in return for paying your car registration, which is, in essence, a tax, amuses me even more.

Truth in advertising.

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Never in my life did I think I would ever have the occasion to utter the words:

Stop eating the elephant’s butt!

And yet I have said this twice today.

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As I mentioned before, I choose to be Southern.  I have lived in the South now for over half of my life, and there is so much I love about it.  The pace of life.  The general lack of winter.  The warmth and friendliness of the culture.

But over the last few years (and really, only over the last few), my mind has wandered back to the chillier land of my birth, and I have found myself a bit homesick for New York.  Not so much to LIVE there - a one week winter visit in 2005 disabused myself of that entire concept - but to be able to share so much of my early years with my husband and son.  There is need for a sense of history, a sense of place, a sense of how I became the person I am.  And so much of that is intricately linked with that place that is New York.

There is a saying that people from New York or Texas will find a way within one minute of introductory conversation to let you KNOW that they are from New York or Texas.  This was unashamedly true of myself in the first five years after I left my home state.  Further, in true form, it is immediately followed up with “…but I am from UPSTATE New York.”  It’s a disclaimer that always seems necessary in the interest of complete disclosure.  There is a mental image of “New York” that the casual observer has in their minds from years of media stereotypes that only capture a fraction of what is “The City” and are at complete odds from the world I knew.  People tend to forget there is an actual State attached to that Big City.  Sometimes the New York legislature itself tends to forget it.  New York City is a very big tail wagging the political and cultural dog.

The New York I know is universe away from “Law and Order” or “Sex in the City”.  I grew up passing back and forth between my mother’s home in suburban Rochester and my father’s dairy farm some distance south, in Livonia, NY.  

From the Finger Lakes, nestled in the Catskills, to the worn, ancient beauty of the Adirondacks, to the tiny islands of the St. Lawrence, this is a New York that not many people know.  Rural.  Conservative.  Colloquial.  Life here is more “Southern” in pace, but has the closed door quality particular to the stoic, Puritan, New England heritage.  Pleasures are simple.  Pain and grief are to be borne without tears or complaint.  Life simply is, and there is no point into looking too deeply into it.  Things are done because they have always been done that way.  You don’t ask more out of life than is given.

Which could be the reasoning behind why the long winters haven’t driven people out of New York State in droves.

Or it could be because it is breathtakingly beautiful.

A drive through New York will take you through the heart of milk, wine and orchard country, picturesque enough to be right out of early Winslow Homer.  It will take you through untouched woodland hills, waterfalls, and ferned glens, so incredibly gorgeous it can make you cry.

I miss home.

But for many reasons, past and present, I can’t bring myself to go back right now, or for the forseeable future.

And that fills me with a deep sadness.

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Sometimes only pictures will go where words will not.

Sometimes you have to keep going, even when you can’t see the destination.

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Everyone needs a pacifier, now and then.

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I have alluded before to my general anti-social nature, but, to a certain extent, I exaggerate.  There are a number of regular contacts that I generally keep a running conversation with, and I have friendships that have attained family status in their longevity and intimacy.  I rarely initiate conversation, but when approached, I can be more than chatty.  In fact, as a general rule I am fairly verbose.  My circle of friends tends to the small, but close.

And there are all you dear folks out there, who I know by face, name or just writing style, who have followed me on this journey in “My Level of Awareness”.  I treasure every comment, even though I don’t always respond.  I’m just shy that way.   But lately my reticence for interaction has nothing to do with my inherent introversion. 

Then again, maybe it does.

As I look over my life, I take a certain level of pride in my resilience.  I have survived a lot, and survived it with scars of pride rather than permanent wounds.  But right now,  I am going through times in my life where that resilience is being tested and I am not the kind of person that is “into” sharing that kind of pain.  And my closed circle has commented on my sudden disappearance from their midst.

I am a person who draws pain inward and curls around it and does my best to own it, to master it, and to pass through it.  This leaves me with little energy to reach outward and touch fingertips with those that I love.  There are those who hold my hand through the dark - you know who you are.  But for the main, I prefer the quiet of isolation to sort my way through the night.

It takes the starch right out of me.

I guess what I am saying is, no, I don’t want to talk about it.  But don’t take it personally.  Be patient.

I am still here.

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