The Soup
Dear Ian,
I am writing to say things change.
Things change.
Its December, as you well know...... the witching month; the one I dread the most. I approach it with a mix of longing and loathing. I have felt the weight of it laying on my heart again. The holidays are like food that I crave that has been laced with poison, and I damned well know it. And I kind of want to eat it anyway because used to be my favorite thing......my favorite time, you see? My house full of the people I loved the most..... Excitement at full throttle with the three of you and all of us infected with the spirit of Advent.
Full throttle Christmases.......over the top.......caprice and excess all draped in too many lights....it was my heart's delight.
Anyway, things change.
I am doing a little better every year since you transitioned. I finally tore the old puzzle apart, scrambled the pieces, cut off some edges and glued it back together in a strange new way. I trimmed off the parts that didn't fit and pushed them back together with equal measures of desperation and hope.
I have come to accept now that even if I am on the periphery of my own kids' lives, we still love each other and we are figuring out where we all fit. I have new people who have come along and seem to really understand me. The surprise of that has been huge.
I have even felt the glimmers of Christmas Spirit; with my neighbors, with Kent at the movie ELF wearing our green hats; with Nita at the Christmas fair....seeing dogs in costumes and such. It doesn't hurt so much when I see happy children because I have puzzle-pieced Hudson and Coy and TW over the holes that you left. Your brother and sister are amazing, grown humans and I love how they have turned out.
Things change.
New customs have fallen into my life like soft, quiet snow over the landscape. Mariana and Kam mess up my house the way you kids once did; I find leggos under my couch and it is lovely. Neighbors eat my cookies and I am making new stockings because Kenzie is coming home for a day! Chris and I hang Christmas lights. It is a bit solumn but always so magical....and that custom is absolutely for you, Ian. He does that in rememberance and of this I am grateful.
I had a bad night Saturday because I found out about a girl named Madison who used to date or sleep with you. She even came to your funeral and gave Michaela a hard time, because I think she still loved you. It twisted me up pretty bad all night and sent me into a spin of "what ifs" and memories of our terrible last days.
I was drawn down again into the place I cannot go.
Churning and awake most of that night and then wilted the next day.
But in the morning I did something different. I stayed home and mended; just let my wound be; I asked my tribe of souls, including you, to just help me. (I think I begged at one point).....
And then I took a nap.
Naps help when things are changing.
After all of that, last night Bridget and Jacie came over for a last glass of wine before she leaves for England. I usually host them; they eat a little food and drink whatever wine is in the fridge. My open wound was still there, I was aware of it, but somehow if felt different. I could feel it like the mouth of a cave, with cold are coming out.
There was an almost imperceptable shift in me. Instead of stacking the pain of Bridget leaving on top of my December horror-show-gloom.....I suddenly could not feel bad. In fact, this sense of warnth began to come and the chill of my pain could not find purchase. I could not feel it.
All I could feel was LOVE.
It was everywhere, all through my house. It seemed to even change the color of the room. It was as if it had been poured in through the chimney or the heater vents....It effused everything.
Perfect, palpable, sweet-as-water-from-a-spring.
Suddenly I could see the gift of these girls. It was as miraculous as how the three of us had met to begin with 5 years ago. Bridget gathering me up and getting me walking,,,,,
Jacie loving and loving and loving me as we watched endless hours of Game of Thrones and snarked at life like two angry crows.
Fists to the sky and chests heaving at the unfairness of our precious ones being taken too soon. Letting me love her in her darkest days after her Mom left.
Somehow in the churn of all of this, they became my daughters.
Last night when we were saying goodbye, it no longer mattered that Bridget is leaving or that Jacie is still stuck in a shitty place or that I am old. It did not matter that we come from different continents and vastly different times. Everything else is just the stories we live.
Things change.
Stories change.
Mine has and so shall theirs.
I went to bed content and at peace. My tribe of souls were a witness to the love of these great women. They were around us all night and they stayed with me as I slept. swimming and rejoicing with me in the soup of life. Happy for me, I think, and excited that I found a different door out of the morass of grief again, even if just for a moment, and happy that I could let things change.
And things do change
Except love, it is the constant.
Love,
Mom
