Pink Giraffe Musing

I don't like calling death anniversaries "angelversaries", but lots of people do.  Whatever you call it, this Sunday will be 7 years for us.  It's unfathomable really.  7 years.  And just last week I was thinking I needed to tell him something.  Yes.  Crazy, I know.  It only happens when I am super tired and get lost in my head.  It's like I forget somewhere on some level inside my brain.  It's not uncommon.  A friend's mom has been widowed since I was in college, and she says it still happens to her. Grief is different for everyone and from what I can tell it is different every year. Despite my best efforts, I have not mastered it by any measure.  One of the hardest things for me is not knowing what my kids need.  I want to be there if they need me.  I don't want to smother them if they don't.  I don't want to make them think they should feel any kind of way.  It's a fine line.  I just wish it could go...

I love lacrosse.  I love watching my son play lacrosse. I mean what mom doesn't love to watch their kid sing, play tuba, or dribble a basketball with skill?  But for me with lacrosse it's much more than that.  I love lacrosse for what it is my son and his life; for him as a boy.  And,  I love what lacrosse is for us as a family.  I don't always (read never) love the early mornings, sitting in the rain, or sweating in the heat.  But, all in all, it's the kind of thing I know I will miss one day.  Enough so that sometimes I just sit back and take it all in, sort of like savoring it.  In some strange way, I do love it, each rainy, hot, steamy, tiring moment.  I am happy to be there and lucky that my son has taken me on this journey. Lacrosse is, of course, a sport just like all of the others he has played through the years.  It makes him think.  It gives him the chance to him push himself.  It forces him to make quick de...

Anticipation. It is often better than a surprise.  Anticipating something special makes the mundane more tolerable. It makes the heart feel full and happy.  Last week, all week long I was anticipating the weekend ahead.  I had the usual schedule of volleyball and lacrosse, but along with that was my son's first performance in a musical!!  The anticipation for that was immense!  It was ever present!  It was with me when I was driving, teaching, or falling asleep.  "Only two more days until the musical", I would tell myself while I ate lunch.  Then my body would fill up with a little burst of excitement.  By Friday afternoon, I texted my boyfriend, "I am so excited, I think I might burst!".  I didn't know what to expect.  I was nervous and excited. This week, I live through a different kind of anticipation altogether.   The anticipation of March 17th. Those of you who knew me then will remember hearing the news; at part...

"I don't know how you do it".  I keep getting this lately.  The truth of it is, neither do I.  I just do it because I have to, because it needs to be done, and there is no one else to do it.  I work full time at a school that is difficult.  I leave work feeling angry and frustrated far more often than anything else.  I work out a lot, because it does something good of my brain, and helps manage the feelings of grumpiness, and despair I feel at work.  I have also decided that it is good for my kids, because they are already getting a tired and less patient version of me than they deserve (and it sets a good example).  My kids are active (my friend says they are "joiners") and busy. While I am happy they are successful at the sports and activities they love, it is EXHAUSTING (and expensive).  Add to the list, that I run a home based business, which brings me GREAT JOY, and, I am dating. As a result of all these AWESOME and AMAZING things ...

In August of 2016, I hosted a Wildtree Freezer Meal Workshop because I wanted to have some easy meals prepped and ready to go before school started.  Almost immediately, I was impressed and a little bit amazed. Everything was easy (like no brainer easy) and so good.  It was an answer.  It filled a need.  It kept me out of the drive thru line.  The products were ORGANIC with NO PRESERVATIVES and no GMO.  This was how I liked to feed my family, but not how I was feeding them with the demands of work and life and sports.......I know you know what I mean. During 2011, I went on a transformative health and fitness journey.  From couch potato, to fit and active.  As a part of that transformation, I started to feed my family healthy, organic meals.  I was a stay at home mom, and I loved to cook, so it was my pleasure to whip up delicious, healthy food for my family.  I would spend Sunday afternoons looking up recipes, pinning things to tr...

Everything I ever needed to know, I learned at Boot Camp.......... When I was 38 and then again when I was 39, I had a plan.  Sort of a plan.  A plan that resided inside my head and was known only to me.  A plan to get fit by the time I was 40.  A plan that I acted out in no way, and told no one about.  Thirty-eight came and went, and so did thirty-nine and then I found myself kind of fat and 40.  Not only fat and 40; fat, forty and gaining.  I had been holding steady at my post baby weight for quite some time, until the winter months of 2010-2011, when the scale began creeping frighteningly upward.  Now, fat is a relative term, and subject of much debate in our culture, so I am going to say fat for me.  My whole life I was "skinny".  It was part of my identity. That skinny girl with the blond hair…..that was me.  I used to hate being called skinny, until I saw myself as fat.  That seemed much worse.  Clothes didn'...

I've been thinking.  Maybe it is my age.  Or the fact that for the past 2 or 3 days I have had the time to slow down.  Whatever the reason, I have found my self taking a little trip down Memory Lane.  For those of you who have lost someone, that is a road that can be sad, bumpy, and difficult.  But for me, this time anyway, it has been okay.  Quite good, even.  My kids seem to have joined me, and are doing well too.  As a friend said to me yesterday, maybe it means there has been more healing in my heart.  I don't know the reason, I just know I feel happy, and like a fog has lifted, and I will take it! I don't know how Christmas looks at your house.  As I have aged, I have learned it looks vastly different in different homes.  Some people wrap Santa gifts, some don't, some don't even do Santa.  In my house, the bigger the tree the better.   When I was a girl, Santa brought my tree (my poor parents!!!).  My ...

Widow.  Who wants to be a widow?  Nobody.  Not even a 90 year old wants to be a widow.  At the beginning of this journey, I remember hating the word.  I remember promising myself it would not define me at 41.  But, I hated it nonetheless.  The pity, the sad glances, and awkward pauses, it all makes a bad situation worse.  And widowhood, more than widowerhood seems to be riddled with judgement and stereotypes and expectations. In those early days of widowhood, it was like a new name.  I tried it out a few times.  It was always awkward, or shocking to the other party.  You're what?  No one expects someone "my age" to be a widow.  But, I was.  I remember crying before I started my new job thinking how everyone there would only know the widow me, the broken version of the formerly awesome me.  The widow version.  It was hard to think I would be meeting a whole new group of people who would only know me,...

9 months and 11 days.  The number of days between the death of my husband and then my father.  The number of days between the loss of the two most important men in my world.  The number of days between two events that robbed my children of their father and grandfather.  The number of days between having our hearts shattered not once, but twice. It has been 2 years and some months since my father passed away, and 3 years now for Michael.  After that time I can see, that while we can be happy, it is going to color everything.  Forever.  You don't get better.  You heal in lots of ways, you move forward, but it's there.  And it gets your when you least expect it. I miss my dad.  He was quiet and we didn't talk a lot.  He loved by doing.  I look am my house and there are just things that need to be done.  He would do them when he came to visit.  He always had a creative solution to the little odds and ends that...

        A sucker punch is defined as, "an unexpected punch of blow".  That is exactly what happened to my family last night. By all rights we had a great day.  Just regular really.  I worked out, and we all sort of chilled.  We read, and  played , did the things  children  and teachers  should  do in the  summertime.  And then………. And then we went to see How to Train Your Dragon 2.   Oddly enough, I was the one who wanted to see it the most.  The truth is I kind of begged them to go.  I love the animation.  I loved the first movie.  It was a happy time.  Everyone seemed upbeat.  We went to the theater, like a normal day, and encountered a sweet autistic boy.  My son befriended him over popcorn and icee's and I was feeling rather grand.  The boy's mom even thanked David for being so kind to her son who didn't understand "personal spac...

I did a lot of thinking this morning on the way in to work today.  It's amazing how a 20 minute drive can be filled with such a flurry of thoughts, or some mindless morning talk radio.  Today is my last day of work for this school year.  It's two years now that I have worked here.  Two years since a fragile, new widow walked through the door of this place.  I remember walking in, tears stinging my eyes, thinking these people will never know me as "Michael's wife".  It was profound to me; meeting 60 people at once, and so soon after, who only knew me as a widow.  It has been two years that I have known these co-workers, many of whom I now call friend.  Two years.  I think the woman who walked through those doors is in many ways the same woman I have always been and yet simultaneously a completely different person. Looking back, I think I was just functioning in those early days.  Putting one foot in front of the other, as people te...