The season of the big ouch
October 2, 2022
About three years ago, Sophie the Sweet, was diagnosed with liver and kidney failure. We were warned she didn’t have much longer to live.
I jumped on the internet and started making recipes for low protein low fat meals, most of them ended up greyish brown or brownish grey. Sophie the Stubborn never ate a bite.
We found her a ‘healthy” dog food that I would eat after I covered it with slabs of bacon, shredded mozzerella cheese, meatloaf, chicken skin, and catfood. We would place her bowl at the top of the basement stairs, behind the door, and stand on the other side to listen for slurping or toenails on cement heading downstairs.
For months after the first visit to the vet, tears would spring at random. Was this our last walk at Houghton’s? The final cookie party? The final glimpse of her gobbling a rabbit smeared on the driveway left by Michael, the cat?
But she went on. So we did.
Just last week, she started limping. My husband diagnosed her as needing a day at the spa. The pawdicure didn’t work.
For the past three days, I’ve been carrying her inside and out of the house. The healthy dog food is going to my son’s puppy, Nell.
Tonight, I fed Sophie a chicken enchilada, tore every morsel into tiny bites, and left out the bits with tomato, in the middle of the living room while Nellie tried vigorously to climb my right leg. I’m not sure what exactly Nel was trying to accomplish, but when she stopped, she looked like she wanted a cigarette.
Tomorrow, I’m thinking Peking Duck for lunch. It will be Sunday, and Chinese food tastes best on Sunday. We’ll take her to the vet on Monday. Maybe there will be another miracle.
Right now, there is a miracle dog in my living room. I”m going to go read a book and hope that she can read my heart as I sit on the couch, near her, in her bed, on the floor.
Tomorrow we’ll visit Houghton’s so that she can swim before the weather turns cold.
Winter is promises to be bitter this year.
Homecoming
October 6, 2021
I’ve been thinking about my high school reunion since the invitation came last May.
There was Covid to consider. And the memory of the last one I attended where the night ended with me falling up my friends stairs and splitting my forehead open. There was the twenty pounds I wanted to lose, and the people I didn’t want to see, and the people I missed.
One night, I finally clicked yes on the Evite, knowing I could always cancel. It was late Spring of 2021; I wanted a plan to get out of town and see some faces that I hadn’t been seeing for the past year and a half.
Amy, one of my best friends, still lives in Mountain Lakes, and she volunteered to go along, even though she wasn’t in my class, and isn’t much for cocktail parties.
A week before the party, my friend came to visit me in Boston. Taylor, Amy’s daughter, had been found in bed by her roommate, unable to open her eyes and mumbling into her pillow. Her roommate called an ambulance.
Before she left, she laughed nervously in my living room and asked me- “Maybe you can come down anyway next weekend? And take care of me? While I look after Taylor? I mean, I know you have your reunion…” I hugged her and thought there was no way I’d drive five hours, miss a party that I had given up Ben and Jerry’s for, (mostly), so she could lean on me while her daughter recovered from a really bad case of the flu?
It wasn’t a bad case of the flu.
On the Thursday before the reunion, I flew to New Jersey. Amy’s husband picked me up at the airport. On the way home we talked about my daughter’s SAT scores, how much harder it is to pack for travel by plane than to load up a car, and that my husband thinks Facebook updates on his phone are actually text messages to him. No one knew what was wrong with Taylor for a while. Now they think it’s encephalitis. Tonight, John, Amy’s husband, let me know Taylor hasn’t had any seizures all day. This has made all of us who love her giddy with joy.
She hadn’t had any seizures for twelve hours. It’s going to be a long time before she gets better. It’s going to be a long time before she comes home.
I didn’t visit Taylor. I stayed home and matched socks, made smoothies, one bad pot roast, a salad of strawberries and goat cheese, and enough Bolognese sauce to last them until spring. Or until I go back.
I made it to the reunion. I found friends I didn’t know I had, and connected with people that I love as much as I did when I was in high school, when most Saturday afternoon’s we’d drink too much beer and exchange drunken, slobbering hugs, while declaring undying affection. Since I’ve only stayed in touch with a few, it was nice to know that those promises all those years ago were true. My affection for these people is undying and I am glad to know, and have known them.
I’ve changed a lot since then, I guess we all have. But when I stood in that room, I knew I’d made it to Homecoming, even though it had taken a long time to figure out what that means. These people knew the awkward, bumbling seventeen year old and were happy to see the tired, worried, friend who badly needed a night out. I didn’t get the chance to talk in depth with many, and I regret that. I was distracted with guilt about being away from Amy and John and trying to decide if my outfit looked better without the sweater.
When I walked up Amy’s stairs that night, and Gigi greeted me at the door, I was home there too.Home is where we choose to be, where we offer and accept love or acceptance. Where we pretend to remember things we don’t remember, and when someone gets drunk, we drive them home, partly because we don’t want them to get sick in our car, partly because that is what we do for the people who have known us our whole lives, and remember what we looked like with big hair and braces, and partly because a lot of us have been the drunk in the room that needed a ride.
These days, I have a crooked smile, I can’t wear heels. I could still lose another twenty pounds, I’m a little pissed off that I work out every single day and I will never, ever have Michelle Obama arms. One of my classmates does, and I adore her anyway. I will not share her name but we all know who I’m talking about.
Thanks for being there, my friends. And for those of you who couldn’t be, I hope to see you the next time. I like us better now. Please, let me know if you ever get up to Boston, or are driving through on your way somewhere else. I would like to hear what you’ve been doing all these years, and I’m sorry there wasn’t more time.
I think I’ll go to the next one, I can’t wait for the next one.
And thank you, Amy and John. It is an honor to be there for you. I changed my cell phone settings so you can call anytime. You have your own ringtone. Call anytime.
Taylor, girl, come home soon. You have the best home in the world, or it will be, when you are back in it.
Mixed Emotions/ I’m going to my high school reunion in two weeks.
September 19, 2021
I live in Massachusetts and I grew up, mostly, in Jersey.
But Facebook means that even though it’s been years, I know that Jim is a doctor and just got divorced. Laurie just had a grandchild, Emma is a professor and Allan is killing it in real estate.
Facebook means there is a place where everyone from Mountain Lakes shares memories, obits, updates and asks for help- tracking down an old friend, prayers during a battle with cancer, supporting a business, a page, or a cause.
This is the thing, and I’m being careful because the reunion is next week, and I love my hometown. I have connected with people on social media who I didn’t know when I saw them every damn day in the hallways at the high school or in the parking lot at Del’s Village.
When people reminisce about Mountain Lakes, many talk about the town, and their youth, as if it was a spectacular aberration.
Yes, we had parties, and people played guitar. Yes, the parties were really good parties, and the Stanfield’s were the coolest family in the world, they had a fire pit, an open door policy, and their kids were and are some of the best, smartest, funniest, and most amazing people I know, as well as you can know someone years after you shared a beer with them in their backyard.
The football team won all their games. We skated all winter and swam all summer. We went to the Market for sandwiches and Roma for pizza, and the pizza was better than any pizza I’ve had since, including New York. Well, maybe NY pizza was a little bit better, I’m in Massachusetts. I’m deprived.
Mr. Fox was a magical art teacher. I remember what Mrs. Smith taught me in freshman English. Mr. Hoke recited Shakespeare in a baritone that I can still hear. There were bluegrass festivals two towns over, New York City was a bus ride away, I wrote poems on scraps of paper and people read them and said nice things, even though I don’t think they were that good.
I have pictures of me smiling in a black tuxedo and fishnets during something called GAA. a competition between two teams, Blue and the Orange, that happened each spring after months of preparation. Each team would pick a story, and perform it, like a musical with the songs being used as vehicles for different dances and gymnastics. I was excited when I made the the modern dance team, even though I was picked as second substitute. There’s a photo in the yearbook, I had thick thighs and a huge smile. (I didn’t smile between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, or so I’m told, but in that picture, I’m grinning.
Yes, it was a magical wonderful time. But it wasn’t all bonfires and pancake breakfasts.
It was being picked last at gym. Starting to drink beer because it made me a little less shy. Getting crappy grades because I always forgot my textbooks in my rush to be on time to watch General Hospital, bumming cigarettes during lunch, people getting sick of me bumming cigarettes during lunch, getting pinkeye every summer from swimming at Island Beach, not eating much and lying on the floor to put on my jeans because I’d had cereal for breakfast. Smoking pot and feeling dumb. Taking up beer and Marlboro lights with the enthusiasm some reserved for field hockey and making the honor roll. Not ever having a clue about what was coming next or where I wanted to land.
These memories aren’t specific to being a young person in Mountain Lakes. They aren’t specific to being young in the 80’s, young and privileged, young and female.
They are just some of the things I think of when I look back.
For many people, in Mountain Lakes, NJ, and Milton, Massachusetts, our memories are where we like to linger because now is so damned hard.
We tell ourselves and our children about life back then, and it all sounds glorious.
But I’m pretty sure we leave stuff out, or forget the worst. I do.
Because the now, with the sore hip and the Covid, the retirement looming and the dental bills mounting- it’s nice to look back to anything other than what I see in the mirror before I’m ready to look.
I just wanted to say Mountain Lakes was a great place to grow up. So is Milton. So are a million other places.
But, it was’t perfect. For me anyway. I still can’t wait to go back.
It will be nice to walk down the Boulevard and stand on the beach by Birchwood Lake.
It will be good to see people in three dimensions, especially after this past year. It will be nice to look back on all of the hard parts, the stuff I’d never talk about on Facebook, or with anyone. For me, growing up was one quarter bliss and Bruce Springsteen and three quarters braces and diets, wondering what to say next and wishing I’d said something else or nothing at all.
I’m grown, and I’m in pretty good place right now.
It’ll be nice to take a weekend to remember how I got here.
Deep sigh…I don’t know where to start.
I started a new job that requires eight hours a day of training, in a tiny office just off the tv room, next to the pellet stove, five feet away from the back door. I work in front of one lap top and two huge monitors, one of which is pushed to the back of my desk and is dark. The training is challenging, the others in my class are rock stars, my leader is patient, funny, and patient.
I start every morning at 8:50 am, and am in my chair until 5. Lunch is glorious, and usually consists of avocado toast, eaten during class time so that during my allotted hour, I can take Sophia the Amazing for a walk, clean the kitchen, or workout in the living room, while Sophie watches from the couch or tries to climb up my thigh.
Dinner is a work in progress, either oven fried chicken, (Sophie’s favorite,) smoothies, (Katy and I ate too much at lunch,) or whatever looked good the night before when I googled recipes for what we have in the fridge.
Most nights, there is a workout, just because my body and my soul feel the need to jump around after spending the day in a chair learning things.
When I’m lucky, there is tv with Katy, at the end of it all. We watched Anne With An E and have moved onto Designated Survivor. I miss commercials, sometimes. Sometimes, I remember the pause button.
Sometimes, I wish life had a pause button, and then I remember it does.
Bed is early. Before sleep, I watch The Office, because it’s leaving Netflix, and there is pressure. I read.
From time to time, I collapse on the mattress, find the sheet, turn out the light, and fall asleep, like it’s easy to sleep, these days.
In between, I floss, sweep, check the headlines, call my mom, fold laundry, wander around Amazon, sip coffee, ask Sheldon if he’s ok, use my water pick, sweep, argue with Katy over the state of her room, how to load the dishwasher, or whether or not it is bad manners to not respond to a cheery “Good morning”. She says any response, even if it’s a sigh, behind a door, under sheets, blankets, and a cat named Maurice, counts.
I miss Facebook and Instagram- looking at pictures of what everyone else is eating for dinner, hearing about bad days, and victories, checking out dogs, cats, kids, and home renovations.
I miss likes, conversations, writing things out, rewriting, saying something, and being heard.
We are all missing so much right now, and making adjustments.
My life is good, and different. I am lonely as hell, contented, scared, and grateful.
How you doin’?
Thanksgiving. Covid. Colin.
November 27, 2020
My son is twenty years old.
I lost him about the time he was halfway through his sophomore year in high school. I’m not going into details here, except to say that was the point where I began to realize I could ground him, shriek, take away his phone, and nothing worked.
I made threats and he offered intense promises on the ride home from the police station. My husband and I shared nervous trips to the court house, endured discussions with parents on the courthouse steps, searches on google for an air freshener that eliminates the smell of pot, searches on google for a place for kids like him, conversations with friends that ended quickly because I didn’t know how to spin any of it.
Colin is twenty now.
There is my baby boy who wouldn’t fall asleep without plastic zoo animals, couch pillows, his favorite pot holder and a special blue blue blanket in his crib.
There is Colin of elementary school, who tried karate, loved his bunk beds, and wanted a dog more than anything.
There is Colin, the teenager. He played football, partied in the woods, set the table, had friends over on school nights and hid them in the closet, woke up for basketball practice without an alarm, asked for a waffle maker for Christmas, and was a genius at making his sister do his chores.
There is Colin, the young man on house arrest. A picture with him in the driveway was part of the senior scavenger hunt.
We fought with his probation officer to let him play basketball in the driveway, and sometimes he’d shoot hoops when the weather was nice, but mostly, he’d sit outside the back door and look at his phone.
And there is Colin now.
Tonight, I sat next to my son during dinner. It’s Thanksgiving, 2020. We were at a restaurant, and our masks were all placed in front of our silverware.
He lives five minutes away, but he took an Uber to the restaurant.
It’s been six months since we shared a meal.
I don’t know what he watches on Netflix, who he’s sleeping with, if he still eats Lucky Charms for breakfast, takes thirty minutes in the shower, and twenty minutes to dry off and drop his towels on the floor.
I don’t even know why he came to dinner.
I don’t care if Colin smells like 1969, is twenty minutes late, or wears a jacket that costs more than what I spend on groceries.
I love him more than spring, Springsteen, or the little boy he was, when it was easy. (Maybe it wasn’t easy, but looking back it seems like it was easier than now.)
If you offered me a million dollars, I couldn’t tell you Colin’s favorite color, how to make him laugh, or the first thing he remembered.
I know he is amazing, and will do amazing things. Not sure why or when, but there is such a thing as unconditional love and faith.
That is pretty big, I think.
The Things I Can’t Throw Away
November 22, 2020
Colin’s football jersey from 2017. My son is twenty now, and I don’t know him anymore. I knew him then, and he needed me to drive him places.
A potholder with a picture drawn by Katy in third grade.
A black silk bathrobe I ruined long ago in the wash that I bought during the height of my “I’m never going to get old, rainy days are for sleeping in, and I love the dressing rooms at Lord and Taylor’s!”.
A picture of my friend Cici, who died so long ago, I’m not sure that’s how she spelled her name.
A necklace my husband Sheldon bought me at some club that looks like a dog collar for a dead stuffed poodle owned by someone who misses the 80’s and his pet, and has watched everything on Netflix.
So many single earrings and broken necklaces.
Two unopened bottles of coriander. I must have seen an incredible recipe somewhere, but I must have thrown it out.
I didn’t hold onto baby clothes and wish I could find the homemade Mother’s Day cards.
I don’t know where the tickets stubs are from the last time I saw Bruce or a baby blue sweatshirt from my friend Rachael. She left it at my house, and finally gave it me when I begged, or maybe I offered her something in return. It was the right shade of worn out blue, soft, and perfect. The cotton had a tiny blood stain on the sleeve from a car accident she’d had just after she learned how to drive and faded spots from where she’d tried to wash them out with bleach.
It’s funny I don’t have any regrets about everything I’ve sent to Goodwill or tied up in big, black, bags and left at the end of the driveway.
I still have sorting to do, and it appears I will have the time to ponder what stays and goes.
I have time to consider, reminisce, and hope.
Well, not much time, actually. I just started a new job.
My daughter is a vegetarian, my husband is a diabetic, and my dog has kidney disease, so making dinner is complicated.
I like to workout in my living room, read novels so thick I can use them to make myself look better on Zoom, and it takes me forty-five minutes to walk Sophia around the block. We have a fenced in back yard, but I don’t want her to get bored.
Watching Sophie sniff the same patch of grass for four minutes, and then move on to a bush for two minutes is incredibly boring.
But anything is better than choosing what to throw away and what to keep.
Well, not anything, but you know what I mean.
Happy Mother’s Day
May 11, 2020
At this point, we’re all taking care of somebody, whether it’s your fish or your dog, your kids, your mom, or a friend, your heart, your waistline, or your health.
I couldn’t sleep this morning. Since I became a mom almost twenty years ago, this day feels like a low-key, brunchy, Christmas. I remember the handmade cards, the scary looking eggs, the Mother’s Day at First Parish that always began with me trying to get them awake and out the door by 7 am, dangling the words “it’s Mother’s Day” like a threat.
My seventeen year old Colin recently decided to quarantine with a friend, and Katy will probably sleep until eleven. That’s fine.
They couldn’t be more different.
Colin makes choices that make me mad, crazy, sad, and defeated. He values sneakers more than books, smells like weed most of the time, and eats so much takeout, he should buy his own landfill.
He is also funny, generous, and kind. He is my boy, though he has forced me to accept he is does not belong to me anymore, and never did.
He smiles and my heart falls out of my chest. He sounds worried, I want to gather him into my arms, and make it better. I can’t.
All I can do is love him. So I do that, even when I want to smack him in the head.
Katy has been the light of my quarantine, which was not what she wanted for her sixteenth birthday. Every day she teaches me patience, while I wait for her to finish her room, her homework, her conversation. She says she learned this from me, and I tell her I’ve earned the right to keep her waiting. She thinks that’s funny, and goes back to whatever she’s doing, but does it more slowly.
Katy was thrilled to put time limits on Facebook on my phone. She worries about the cost of everything, but vegetarian sausage, because she says that’s worth it.
She is careful, uses actual measuring spoons, understands chemistry, saves her money, and doesn’t care what people think. Except me, she cries when I snap at her.
I need to remember that even though she may seem like a remarkably mature thirty-five year old, a mother’s words have the power to sting like they did when you were six and in trouble for eating all the Oreos.
She listens when I speak, as long as it’s not too early, and I’m surprised and thrilled by this. (If I’m giving the lecture about being on time, or clean clothes, or dirty clothes, she pretends to listen, if she’s feeling kind).
Katy reminds me a lot of my mom.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.
You tell me often how proud you are of me, and between you and me, I’m a bit of mess.
I’m still working out what I want to be when I grow up, my daughter acts like the parent half the time, my cabinets are more disorganized than Trump’s, and I know absolutely nothing about retirement plans. (I do have a good recipe for chicken thighs with artichoke hearts for the NYTimes I’ll send over later.)
If you say I’m amazing, I must be. You’ll always be the smartest person in the room, (with Katy right behind you.)
I love you,
Julie
Day 21- Not Getting Any Better At This
April 7, 2020
The sun is out, 2nd day in a row.
My daughter is laughing upstairs at a video, already completed on workout with me, and has promised another.
Sheldon suggested we order takeout, so now I don’t have to chop vegetables, boil water for pasta, or do dishes. (I don’t think he’s a huge fan of my cooking, which actually works out pretty well sometimes.)
I’ve been for a walk, used a coupon, had plenty of work today, don’t need toilet paper, have given up on my hair, caught a really cool performance of one of the songs from Hamilton, completed morning meditation…
Did I mention the sun was out?
I’m feeling cranky, irritable, angry, and not happy.
To feel better, I’m going to-
Eat dinner. (I might just be hangry, this might have nothing to do with 20 days quarantine-pandemic-people are dying-who knows when this is going to end- issues).
Call my mom. It amazes me we still have something to say. We’ve been talking almost every day for twenty years, and we’re not terribly interesting people. She is, actually. When she’s not trying to get me to watch Big Brother.
Do Zumba with Katy- this is an issue. If I dance before I eat, I might faint. If I try after, I won’t want to, and then I will be cranky and bloated. Maybe I’ll eat an apple now.
Have a long conversation with Sophie about how she is the very, very, very best dog in the whole wide world. Hope that she somehow communicates I am the very best human, because that would be helpful right now.
Remind myself- Even though I am privileged and able to isolate with family at home, inside our home, and have a job, it is fine to be pissed off sometimes.
I apologize for the language. But I’m having a day.
Thank the Lord for the nighttime.
I need to play that song at full volume- “Thank The Lord For The Nighttime,” by Neil Diamond. He always makes me feel better, except for “Love on the Rocks”. I’m also not a fan of “I Am, I Said” and have never considered speaking to a chair, no matter how cranky, irritable, angry, and not happy I was. Though I might try, if my spirits don’t improve.
Here’s hoping none of us end up speaking to the furniture anytime soon.
Julie
Day 11- Why am I still counting?
March 27, 2020
We are okay. We are healthy, Katy is upstairs coloring her hair, Sheldon is working, the dog reluctantly joins me for walks, Quincy College is going to let staff work from home next week, we have plenty of peanut butter and I am lucky to be alive but damn.
It’s really hard some days.
We meditated. Walked in the woods. Spoke to family and friends. Read. Talked to friends from work and reached out to some students I know from town.
It’s a beautiful day.
I’m sad and there is a glorious sunset outside.
I never thought I’d be nostalgic for a month ago but tonight, I miss picking out my clothes, packing my lunch, and negotiating with Katy over how she would get to school.
I miss needing coffee in the morning, parking where I probably shouldn’t, picking up the phone on my desk and knowing an answer.
I miss knowing an answer the most.
With love from a blue corner of the world this evening,
Julie
Day Seven- Just Before Dog Walk Number 5
March 23, 2020
Going forward, it’s a given that every day we meditate in the morning, or are interrupted meditating in the morning, I eat more than I should, I walk the dog.
I read, we watch tv, we visit the ocean, I venture into stores for necessities like art supplies, or tonic water.
Katy and I laugh a lot, about her choice of teeshirts, the way I can’t ever find the cinnamon, and the look she gives me when I suggest she feed the cats- a little bit of hysteria creeps in sometimes. We’ve also taken to dancing around the kitchen to Shakira, Chicago, The Romantics, whatever is playing on the radio, again. This irritates or arouses Sophie, depending on whether or not she’s had breakfast.
I talk to Colin every day. Every day, he tells me he is in the middle of something and rushes to get off the phone. Maybe he’s working with his buddies on building a pyramid, he’s writing an opus, or training for the Olympics.
We gave his basketball hoop to a neighbor for her little boy. When she stopped by to pick it up she told me that Collie used to play ball with her son at the bus stop a million years ago. I loved her a little then.
Katy and I watched the ensemble comedy, “He’s Not That Into You,”. Movies feel weird since our reality feels more dramatic than Gennifer Godwin figuring out that if a guy doesn’t call, it’s not a good sign.
I’m heading out for dog walk number five. It is almost 10, cold, windy, and I just want to let my headphones swallow up my ears, and keep them warm. I want to run a little, I’m not a runner, so it’ll be more a sad jog, but I feel the need to do something a little different tonight.
Stay amazing. Be kind, to others, and to yourself.
Peace.
Julie
March 22, 2020
julierichmond 