I can’t believe it’s been a year since the Universe roared, pounced, scooped me up in its fat hand, shook me like a rattle, suddenly realized its mistake, and set me gently back down again (shame-faced, muttering apologies, ‘Here, are you hurt, I think you dropped your beer, sorry again.‘)

It’s been one year since my mom was scooped out herself, examined, and cleared. This afternoon she has her one-year follow-up procedure, and I am doing what I do best: worrying obsessively about what is most likely nothing at all.

I mean, even though in the end it was nothing it was still some of the worst nothingness I’ve ever felt, you know? Because really, how much of our reality is what actually happens and how much is how we feel about what happens or could happen or might happen or what? You know??

[sigh]

I am here today to distract myself. You’re stuck with me. Hi.

What should we talk about?

So my blog redesign is almost done — yesterday Pare and I had some drinks, caked on some make-up and took about 800 pictures (just your average Wednesday afternoon) for use in my new blog header and after the shock wore off we got to talking about how much we like it when bloggers relay conversations with their spouses, you know those ones? They are some of my favorite posts, partly for the glimpse into the lives of people I stalk respect, and partly because the conversations generally border on genius.

And so I said to her, I could never do that, even if I wanted to, and she laughed in agreement. And this is why.

****

Me: “Hey hon, how was your day?”

Dave: “………..”

Me: “Don’t forget I’ve got book group tonight.”

Dave: “Brett Favre.”

Me: “Have you seen Gretta’s school supply list?”

Dave: “I saw a deer on the way home but I didn’t shoot it.”

Me: “What should we do this weekend, babe?”

Dave: “Andrew grabbed my butt today — which is totally understandable.”

Me: “Have you given any thought to that birthday party we’re invited to?”

Dave: “I’m gonna go caulk a wall. Maybe a window.”

Me: “What would you like for dinner?”

Dave: “Think I could break our patio table with one chop?”

Me: “You should check out this book I’m reading, it’s so awesome.”

Dave: “Brett Favre.”

****

So you see, I can’t really do those posts, and you’re welcome. [Updated to add: This was not an *actual* conversation with said husband, it's just an example of what one would *probably* look like if I were actually paying attention and documenting it. Thank you.]

(I’m sorry I exposed you in this way hon, you know I’m usually pretty good about not doing that. But today I’m losing my shit (just a tad, nothing to worry about, stay where you are, do not pass Go, do not collect your crazy wife) and I just wanted to babble a bit. Also, I’ve been trying to work Andrew’s name into a blog post for a while now, I know how much you’ll both appreciate that. Hi Andrew. Stay away from my man. I love you.)

(Oh, and mom, I know you said not to freak out and I know you never read my blog (ha!) so you won’t know I broke my word and did you remember to pack that sandwich in your purse? And what are you doing right now, shopping? You’re at the mall or something, right? )

(Oh, and to the rest of you — hi, are you still here? — it’s a good thing I can’t seem to fix that Wordpress bug that’s got my entire posts showing up in your feed readers even though I tell it to only show summaries, huh? So that you don’t have to click over here if you don’t want to (like today, hi.) But fair warning, I’m trying to fix that bug, so enjoy it while you can. But for sure you’ll want to click through when my cool new re-design is finished, right Sam?) [Updated to add: So, really, you wouldn't like it if I fixed the bug? Summaries or full feeds, what's the consensus? Anyone?]

Have I mentioned my mom is totally at a spa right now, reading a great book and sipping chardonnay and eating all the food she wants and she is totally not having any kind of follow-up procedure?

[deep sigh take two.]

Awesome post, huh?

You’re welcome.

[Update: Just took the girls to lunch with Katie, then stopped by a local gift shop. The lady behind the counter recognized us and said, "Hi, how's it going? What's your mom doing today?" And I said, "She's having a procedure" and then we turned around and left. I bet my mom doesn't get me a birthday present this year.]

[2nd update: This is officially the worst post I have ever written. Don't feel bad if it isn't here tomorrow, you're not losing your mind.]

[Most important update of all: Just got off the phone with my mom, after a conversation that I have no doubt she will not remember tomorrow -- but the news is good, all good. All good. I must go now and puddle into a melted mass of relief.]

[Final update: I will never, ever figure out Google Adsense (see below). Feel free to click anyway, though. You could probably sell those pictures on eBay....]

Let me ask you something.

A young man dies unexpectedly, tragically. The funeral home is packed with mourners, the vast majority of them friends, because his family has been disintegrating for years… his parents are long divorced, his father suddenly disabled. There was abuse, abandonment, alcoholism; a cornucopia of woes to feast upon his entire truncated life. Everyone is devastated. He was gentle and fiercely loyal to his devoted circle of friends.

After the service, after the mourners have gone back to their cozy homes and functional families, officials take his remains and deliver them back to the morgue. And that’s where he lies now, a body in hock.

His family can’t afford to bury him. His friends are planning a fundraiser for next week.

I am choking on sadness right now. Are you?

If you are, let me ask you this:

Does it change anything for you to know it’s this kid?

.

I don’t understand how he’s doing it, my dad, this thing, this whole thing, right now, down there. I don’t understand, my mind can’t stretch itself around, its arms reach out, fall short, grab air, grab nothing.

It’s not that he isn’t strong, he is. He is strong and good and brave, I know these things. He is generous, too, always. For years, all my years, I’ve watched him give, I’ve watched him never tell, I’ve done it myself, I’ve tried to be just like him. He models it, character, doing the right thing, all the time, even when – especially when – you think no one is watching. He is quiet and he is dignified and he never, ever lies. He is a survivor.

But he’s also a hermit, a crab, inside a shell, inside himself. He goes from his home to his office and scuttles quickly back home again, home, where everything is familiar, worn and smooth. Where each creak of every floorboard whispers only the oldest songs. He has his habits, slips them on like dressing gowns, returns them to the barest of closets, where only three or four of them hang in all, still, and stoic.

So how is he doing this now? How is he doing this, 2,000 miles from home, 2,000 miles beyond the borders of his comfort zone, all alone, by himself? How is he learning to lie, whispering the necessary evils into his own father’s soft, sick ear, breathing the words that will keep his heart rate below the danger zone, the lies that will keep him alive? How is he sitting there, with that back pain of his, the pain that makes sitting nearly impossible, how is he sitting there at that bedside minute upon minute upon hour upon hour upon day upon day upon day? “I’m afraid to leave the room,” he says. “He doesn’t like it when I go,” he says. How is he suffering every beep, every tube that slices my grandpa’s insides, a bread knife upon the newest, pinkest flesh, in and out and please god not back in again.

“This is no fucking way to live,” my grandpa’s raspy whisper, yesterday, the first he’s spoken in days.

How is my dad doing it?

I want to be there, I want to fly, run if I have to, walk, crawl, knees bloody.

My dad says no. Neither of them want me there. This is their time. Something necessary. Something beyond my comprehension again, in the old way, the way of children, children who accept what their parents say and don’t even try to understand.

This is their time.

And here, homes are breaking in two. Dams have broken, an entire lake has disappeared. Flash floods and freak funnel clouds, tornadoes touching, skipping, dancing. Here, floods and famine and yet I can’t bring myself to care about any of it, can’t focus, can’t muster up the give-a-shit’s. All I can think about, every minute, is this thing, this place, down there, and these two men, and how how how on god’s flooded earth are they doing it, now, down there. And here, the water is rushing, wiping out solid banks, flooding basements, flooding hearts, flooding my mind, drowning them, drowning me, in guilt, in regret, in why’s.

And here, deadlines are looming and children need entertaining and dishes need washing and it’s all slipping by me, slippery, fish through my fingers, wandering these stacks, fingering these books, sucking in this heavy air, wishing and hoping and praying and worrying and wondering.

Wondering.

How is it, tell me, how is it that the deadliest storms bear in their wake the most gut-scraping beauty of all?

[last night, from the top of the driveway]

It is once upon a time, 34 Septembers ago, and a woman with apple cheeks and Pantene-commercial hair goes into labor. Her husband puts down the beer, sells a shotgun, and uses the $40 to drive 50 miles to the nearest hospital. They bring their baby Girl home to a cabin built by their unpracticed hands on a deep, black lake choked with lily pads, place her gently in a cardboard box crib and go on about the business of living on love, if nothing else.

422 miles away a six-year-old boy palms treasures of frogs and fish, proudly presents them to his mother between distracted back-of-the-wrist swipes to his runny nose, already looking so much like the daughters he is yet to have.

*

The Girl grows. She endures many little things and a couple of bigger, unwritten things. Her parents keep the love but opt for money, and the family, now three-children large, moves to Wisconsin. The Girl gets glasses. She earns the best friends she still banks to this day. She dances in Russia, she travels to Europe, she learns to ski, to get good grades, to get along. She plays basketball because all of her friends do, where she covets the hair of a stranger. She yearns for the breezy charm of other girls. Her self-esteem is a fresh-born fawn on shaky, slimy legs. She gives her heart (among other things) for the first time to a boy not equipped to hold it, a boy who crushes it inside his fist with a series of surprisingly gentle squeezes. The next time she gives her heart it is to a Boy who works with the Girl’s aunt, a Boy whose hands once held frogs and fish. He cups her face with the same gentle wonder. Five years later, they marry.

*

Life swirls in magnetic, unpredictable eddies. The Boy sells auto parts, builds roofs, manages tenants, walks tall. The Girl goes to college, sells advertising, makes babies, makes a home. There is love, there is loss, there is growth, there are births. When the Girl learns she can make a living writing, she does–article after article, some fascinating, some droll, all necessary. It is the right-est thing she has ever known and she’s not sure how she ever lived before, if she ever lived before. She starts blogging–at first hesitantly (okay, fine, dammit), then fervently. She finds her tribe, builds a community, watches strangers shape-shift into friends, feels her voice rising louder, braver. At her day job she works hard, builds loyalty and trust, earns the gift of an exclusive interview with an icon, learns. The icon is coming to town to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Domestic Abuse Intervention Services, a place the Girl has only heard of in passing. She is inspired. She is made different. She fights for a story, a story giving domestic violence survivors a voice, a fight that takes a year, an article that forever changes her map. She follows the new purple line.

Nothing can go back to the way it was before. It’s not enough. With the help of her blogging community she then creates a site. Survivors speak out and are changed, affect change. The executive director of DAIS–the same woman who helped the Girl find survivors for her magazine article–embraces the new venture, sings its praises, links it up, bestows a community award at a big, terrifying banquet. It is all thrilling and celebratory except when it isn’t, except when there are defeats, losses that defy comprehension, like the day the stranger girl with the pretty hair from 8th grade basketball and her tiny daughter are brutally murdered by their abuser. Turns out she wasn’t a stranger after all, because her cousin dated the Girl’s Boy back in the day and the Boy has known their family for 20-some years. At the funeral, mother and daughter are buried together. The Boy says to the Girl, “That was hands-down the hardest thing I have ever seen in my life.”

The Girl stops for a beat, sits, tries to remember her purpose, searches for her strength. Her community bolsters. The family of the slain girl discovers Violence UnSilenced, writes the Girl kind emails even in their pain, posts comments in support of survivors. Lisa posts on VU a letter to her slain sister that cracks the Girl’s soul wide open.

The Girl’s heart is swollen, bruised. Sometimes she feels too small. Sometimes she wants to pull the plug, to hide, to duck on out. Then she spends a magical weekend with 25 women eating cupcakes and shifting paradigms. She is rejuvenated, filled to brimming with a love for this art, for these people, for this purpose. They feast, and she is full.

*

It is last night and the Boy and Girl drop the kids off at grandma’s and go to a party. Except it’s not a party, it’s a fundraiser for DAIS, the place that has been so kind to the Girl, the place that the family of the slain girl and her daughter are now working with in their memory. The event is held on what should have been the girl with the pretty hair’s 34th birthday. There are hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of people there.

The Girl finally holds in her arms Lisa, the sister of the slain woman, the one who posted the letter. They cry. This sister holds the Boy, too, because they are classmates, they graduated from the same small high school together. The Boy and Girl see and hug the cousin of the victim, the Boy’s ex-girlfriend. They see and hug the executive director of DAIS, the woman who works so hard to save lives, the woman who works so hard to help VU. They watch that executive director hug that sister.

They see and hug the Girl’s former coworker from her advertising career, because she is the lifelong friend of the mother of the slain woman. Another woman approaches tentatively and introduces herself to the Girl–they are Twitter and Facebook friends, knitting comrades, and they hug though they have never met in person before, because that’s what bloggers do. The Girl is astonished the woman found her in this sea of faces. Her worlds smash and collide like meteors.

The Girl looks around the room, draws line after line after line but soon grows dizzy with it all. She has never in her life felt so solidly in the right place at the right time, though exactly when and where that is feels slightly fuzzy right now, cosmically smudged. It is hard to swallow the lump in her throat back down where it belongs. She stares instead into her drink, pinches the slim straw and stirs the ice around and around and around, infinite motion.

There are $20,000 worth of donated raffle items. When the numbers are called the Girl who never wins anything like this blinks stupidly at her ticket. She has won the cupcake package.

*

The Boy carries one sleepy potato-sack child over each shoulder, just as the Girl has seen him do on so many nights before. They move past each other in the dark with an easy precision. Dogs go in and out, beds are turned down, fires are stoked, face cream is applied in short, certain swipes. They lay their heads on pillows of down beneath a window framing crisp stars. They rest.

Seventeen years now and the Boy’s and Girl’s connections are a constellation; vast, exquisite, inextricably tethered, impossible to fully know, too many hot prick-points of light to count.