The last 12 days has been a series of moguls on a really icy run........
I used to snow ski in the late 60's - it was a rush - I yearned for it each and every day of the week until weekends would come and I could get to the mountain. There were not a lot of us. It was New Jersey for God's sake!! But we took it seriously, my friends and I. We were hard core...we hitchhiked to get there and back home. We rode with complete strangers, people who we knew, people who had too much to drink and people who had smoked too much pot. A ride was a ride. I skied under ridiculously poor, dangerous, moronic northern New Jersey conditions. I took lessons but bailed because as the instructor said 'I was a natural' - which was a lie. He wanted to take my virginity from me.
I was young, okay in the looks department but nothing special. I was also too smart for my own good and I wanted to go fast; I wanted it to be so icy cold out it would cause my eyes to tear and my nose to run. I wanted my tears to freeze on my face. I wanted to not feel my face. The colder and crappier the weather - the better I liked it. There were faster lift lines - nobody up there except crazies like me - the bars were full because the weather sucked, the snow sucked, the mountain sucked. Apres ski was pretty much the order of the day since you could sit inside and pretend you actually went skiing. Cold air (hopefully) and crappy machine made snow was all we had. We prayed for cold and we prayed for drizzle to freeze over the terrible conditions of rocks and tree branches and dirt lurking below the slightest cover of frozen water...we were die hard weekend bums on the attack......knees snapping up slamming into our chests, cutting edges keeping upper bodies level and straight while we did untold damage to our lower bodies. My earlobes froze and I actually had an earring tear out of the lobe and I never felt it. I didn't bleed a lot and my mother worried that she wouldn't be able to get the blood out of the ski jacket my father spent half a paycheck on because I was a good kid. He wanted for me what he never had.
I don't ever remember feeling any pain of any kind after any of my antics. Sometimes my mind would stray and then actually realize I'd not taken a breath since I'd left the top and then, without warning an edge caught some wood that had moments before been hidden just below the ice and randomly exposed itself. It was like nature wanted to show you who was boss. Then as your brain tells your lungs to fill up with the coldest frigging air - you eat it.
Mountain 1 Patricia 0.
I'd do that till 11 at night on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturday and Sunday I would stay home and study to keep my straight A average. My friends and I prayed there were sober people still there that had a car so we could get home. There was also a bus. Some school bus with a cool driver who'd play Led Zeppelin and Cream and Blind Faith.
It was so much fun that I don't know why it took till today to even think about it. There were cute guys all over the place. I was a teenager and life was great. I was 15, then 16 and I got away with all of these weekends, my parents supporting my addiction until a guy came to the front door for one of the very few dates I ever had in high school. I was barely 17 and when I was dropped on the doorstep at my curfew. Then without thinking on my part, my dad smelled wine on my breath when I leaned over him on the sofa watching Johnny Carson and kissed him good nite. That's how stupid I was. His fierce cross examination of my evening's activities ended up in a full blown fight of wills, words and trying to be grown up while not knowing what I didn't know. I didn't think it was a big deal the guy was 28 who was a Science teacher.
My father put me on lock down.
I just remembered all of this tonite while I was working on another blog...........
So excuse the random rambling. It's been a tough couple of weeks.
A son came home who lives in another state. He is a breath of freezing cold air in my lungs. He's full of life and hopes and dreams. He doesn't come home often. When he does, the aftermath of his visit leaves me wondering about that area of pressure and pain in my chest - I don't need a doctor to tell me there's a big hole within me after he leaves that is not terminal...and after 10 years of him living half a country away, it never gets easier.
My sons and my life are leaving me...just like the young girl from Jersey did a long time ago.
I'm on the down side of the mountain. I feel pain when I do nothing. There are medical reasons for it. Still the pain is real but when people along the Mississippi are losing homes and everything else, I don't have a problem in the world.
You have to put things in perspective.
Then there is Mimi.
A week ago we had to put our 15+ year old Jack Russell/Shitzu down.
It was love at first sight for me and I saw her the day she was born. It was only fitting I should be with her when she died. I named her after the crazy secretary with the overdone blue eyeshadow from the Drew Carey Show. Mimi had a good run and she had a good life. She made us laugh till we cried and she entertained with or without any prodding from us. We pushed her buttons to make her even crazier and she never let us down. She was nuts. Once, years ago Mimi vaulted off the bow of our boat and my husband's quick reflex saved her from sure injury and possible death. She wanted to get on that island so she just went for it.
Mimi never dug here at the house but she loved to dig at the island - sand would flail in every direction causing folks to move out of the way of torrents of sand being thrown their way. I would have to keep moving my chair as the hole consumed me. She dug and dug and dug till you couldn't see her eyes for the sand on her face.
Her last year was tough but she was tougher. Eventually she couldn't see, couldn't remember eating and always thought it was dinnertime. Oddly, she knew when you touched the cookie box or the clang of the stainless steel dinner bowls and what that meant. She never missed a meal, loved a good belly scratching and had a bark that would drive you to the brink of madness. She hated being bathed and was fired as a customer by two groomers one of whom came to the house. She was so freaked out all the time...till the day she left. She needed to be sedated to be euthanized. That, in and of itself, describes Mimi. She was a funny, fun loving dog - she was a good dog.
So here I sit, watching Dancing With the Stars and wondering about life: living it, loving it and leaving it. A dog made me think about those long ago faces and places who formed me into the woman I have become. We are, after all, a product of our life's experiences. A dog's death has me coming to the conclusion that leaving someone you love or somewhere you love to be - whether it's for forever or until next time you meet again is painful, but not really. The pain and tightness you feel in your chest is very real and it's not fatal. I'm embracing it because I know it is good because it is life.
I used to snow ski in the late 60's - it was a rush - I yearned for it each and every day of the week until weekends would come and I could get to the mountain. There were not a lot of us. It was New Jersey for God's sake!! But we took it seriously, my friends and I. We were hard core...we hitchhiked to get there and back home. We rode with complete strangers, people who we knew, people who had too much to drink and people who had smoked too much pot. A ride was a ride. I skied under ridiculously poor, dangerous, moronic northern New Jersey conditions. I took lessons but bailed because as the instructor said 'I was a natural' - which was a lie. He wanted to take my virginity from me.
I was young, okay in the looks department but nothing special. I was also too smart for my own good and I wanted to go fast; I wanted it to be so icy cold out it would cause my eyes to tear and my nose to run. I wanted my tears to freeze on my face. I wanted to not feel my face. The colder and crappier the weather - the better I liked it. There were faster lift lines - nobody up there except crazies like me - the bars were full because the weather sucked, the snow sucked, the mountain sucked. Apres ski was pretty much the order of the day since you could sit inside and pretend you actually went skiing. Cold air (hopefully) and crappy machine made snow was all we had. We prayed for cold and we prayed for drizzle to freeze over the terrible conditions of rocks and tree branches and dirt lurking below the slightest cover of frozen water...we were die hard weekend bums on the attack......knees snapping up slamming into our chests, cutting edges keeping upper bodies level and straight while we did untold damage to our lower bodies. My earlobes froze and I actually had an earring tear out of the lobe and I never felt it. I didn't bleed a lot and my mother worried that she wouldn't be able to get the blood out of the ski jacket my father spent half a paycheck on because I was a good kid. He wanted for me what he never had.
I don't ever remember feeling any pain of any kind after any of my antics. Sometimes my mind would stray and then actually realize I'd not taken a breath since I'd left the top and then, without warning an edge caught some wood that had moments before been hidden just below the ice and randomly exposed itself. It was like nature wanted to show you who was boss. Then as your brain tells your lungs to fill up with the coldest frigging air - you eat it.
Mountain 1 Patricia 0.
I'd do that till 11 at night on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturday and Sunday I would stay home and study to keep my straight A average. My friends and I prayed there were sober people still there that had a car so we could get home. There was also a bus. Some school bus with a cool driver who'd play Led Zeppelin and Cream and Blind Faith.
It was so much fun that I don't know why it took till today to even think about it. There were cute guys all over the place. I was a teenager and life was great. I was 15, then 16 and I got away with all of these weekends, my parents supporting my addiction until a guy came to the front door for one of the very few dates I ever had in high school. I was barely 17 and when I was dropped on the doorstep at my curfew. Then without thinking on my part, my dad smelled wine on my breath when I leaned over him on the sofa watching Johnny Carson and kissed him good nite. That's how stupid I was. His fierce cross examination of my evening's activities ended up in a full blown fight of wills, words and trying to be grown up while not knowing what I didn't know. I didn't think it was a big deal the guy was 28 who was a Science teacher.
My father put me on lock down.
I just remembered all of this tonite while I was working on another blog...........
So excuse the random rambling. It's been a tough couple of weeks.
A son came home who lives in another state. He is a breath of freezing cold air in my lungs. He's full of life and hopes and dreams. He doesn't come home often. When he does, the aftermath of his visit leaves me wondering about that area of pressure and pain in my chest - I don't need a doctor to tell me there's a big hole within me after he leaves that is not terminal...and after 10 years of him living half a country away, it never gets easier.
My sons and my life are leaving me...just like the young girl from Jersey did a long time ago.
I'm on the down side of the mountain. I feel pain when I do nothing. There are medical reasons for it. Still the pain is real but when people along the Mississippi are losing homes and everything else, I don't have a problem in the world.
You have to put things in perspective.
Then there is Mimi.
A week ago we had to put our 15+ year old Jack Russell/Shitzu down.
It was love at first sight for me and I saw her the day she was born. It was only fitting I should be with her when she died. I named her after the crazy secretary with the overdone blue eyeshadow from the Drew Carey Show. Mimi had a good run and she had a good life. She made us laugh till we cried and she entertained with or without any prodding from us. We pushed her buttons to make her even crazier and she never let us down. She was nuts. Once, years ago Mimi vaulted off the bow of our boat and my husband's quick reflex saved her from sure injury and possible death. She wanted to get on that island so she just went for it.
Mimi never dug here at the house but she loved to dig at the island - sand would flail in every direction causing folks to move out of the way of torrents of sand being thrown their way. I would have to keep moving my chair as the hole consumed me. She dug and dug and dug till you couldn't see her eyes for the sand on her face.
Her last year was tough but she was tougher. Eventually she couldn't see, couldn't remember eating and always thought it was dinnertime. Oddly, she knew when you touched the cookie box or the clang of the stainless steel dinner bowls and what that meant. She never missed a meal, loved a good belly scratching and had a bark that would drive you to the brink of madness. She hated being bathed and was fired as a customer by two groomers one of whom came to the house. She was so freaked out all the time...till the day she left. She needed to be sedated to be euthanized. That, in and of itself, describes Mimi. She was a funny, fun loving dog - she was a good dog.
So here I sit, watching Dancing With the Stars and wondering about life: living it, loving it and leaving it. A dog made me think about those long ago faces and places who formed me into the woman I have become. We are, after all, a product of our life's experiences. A dog's death has me coming to the conclusion that leaving someone you love or somewhere you love to be - whether it's for forever or until next time you meet again is painful, but not really. The pain and tightness you feel in your chest is very real and it's not fatal. I'm embracing it because I know it is good because it is life.
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