Farewell Beloved Summer

Three, four years ago, maybe, another labor day weekend at the Jersey Shore. C and I were still together but I came to Jersey to visit my mother alone. That last Sunday night of summer, before I had to pack up to return to New York and I loaded Eliza into the car around dusk, driving south just looking for the perfect playground, the perfect place to say good-bye to this wonderful summer.

But I never found it. I did find an odd playground with a spaceship like structure. It was practically dark by then but that didn't stop me from getting her out of the car, from dragging her through the playground to dig out one last memory of my favorite season that always goes by too fast.

Oh the heat gets to me and the summer tourist crowds. The mosquito bites, the sand in the diapers, the sunscreen that seems to go on like Elmer's glue: oh it all gets to me. Summer is far from perfect. But there's nothing better like the sheer joy of just slipping a pair of sandals onto your child's feet. There's no pesky sox to match, no jackets to wrestle on. the days are long and the nights cool and fragrant.

Like every summer, I've wrestled to enjoy every last drop. Going outside to chase fireflies, evening walks to the beach, tea parties on the back porch, pitchers of ice tea and visits to every ice cream shop: I've done it all. There are a few things we didn't get to; another trip to Six Flags, Storybook Land, the water park in Colts Neck. But this week I did manage to cross "picnic" and "outdoor movie" off my list.

This summer's end is particularly bittersweet. I'm going back to work full-time. Tonight I tucked my girls in for the last time this week. Tomorrow, I'll take them to my father's while I head up to New York for the night. We won't be finished until after the girls are in bed and we'll start long before they wake up. It's likely that I won't see them awake until Saturday. The weekend will fly by and then Monday starts the cycle all over again. I tell myself this is what I have to do in order to pay the rent and have health insurance. I'm lucky in this economy to have work that pays well enough and allows me the beauty of a summer at home with my daughters. I like the people I work with and often times we have a lot of fun. It will be good to be around adults, to leave work at the end of the day.

But still, I feel like the air is being sucked out of me, like the world is ending with this summer. Hi ho, hi ho, I hope I can do this.

So many moments, so much to love

My kids amaze and astonish me everyday. Of course that's not to say life's perfect--they can also drive me crazy but for the most part, I can't believe how much fun they are.

We did an overnight trip to NY to stay in our old apartment while their father is away. We do this from time to time and while it's great to have a free place in NY, it's hard to stay in a place that I once lived that's not mine anymore. Eliza feels the sadness too, really missing her father when we're there like any minute he might come home and we'll all be together. I'm glad that he's okay with us using the place as a hotel and his new girlfriend doesn't object to our presence.

At night, long after they should have been in bed, I chased them through the apartment, something we never do at home. I love chasing children around so it's odd to think that we don't do this and our apartment with it's variety of rooms that have more than one entrance is a perfect place for this sort of behavior. But I guess we switched into vacation mode and something about being in a home that wasn't our own freed us from the same old boring routine.

The following day was a marathon--after breakfast in a local diner where I was sure I'd have a nervous breakdown if our food didn't come now, right now, Eliza walked 20 blocks (with Elena in the stroller) to Times Square. While Elena napped in the stroller, Eliza and I ducked into a crowded deli for a smoothie. It was quite a challenge to navigate with all the people, rushing to pay for their lunches but we made it. Then it was on to the Times Square Toys R Us for a ride on the ferris wheel. Although I swore I'd buy no toys, absolutely nothing, we left with a barbie for each kid. Founding ourselves in the middle of seemingly wall to wall bodies on 44th Street, I managed to push us through to the Snack Shack on Eighth Avenue. I later found out that the mass of bodies on 44th was because the MTV building was evacuated following an earthquake we did not feel.

Back to the snack shack and us in a very narrow, twisty line to order the world's best fast food. This is definitely not the place for a single mother with a stroller but I wanted that fast food and I was gonna have it. With no tables available, I managed to get the girls to a large counter section and situate them on stools far too high for safety's sake. It was a tough lunch and the place only got more crowded but we made it and dammit, that fast food was worth.

Then onto my main attraction, the Discovery Channel's Pompei exhibit. This exhibit is so pricey, I really debated the merits of taking two small children. But oh it was so worth it. We had an absolutely splendid time and Eliza seemed to enjoy the history of it all. The exhibit also included a time lapse film that portrayed the volcano a bit too realistically. Perhaps that was too much for my girl but I carried her through and she enjoyed the artifacts from the ancient city. Elena kept bouncing around saying "POMPei POMPei," completely delighting even the most scowling, curmudgeonly adult. While people gathered around another short film showing footage of Vesuvius erupting in the 1940s, Elena started to perform her "Party in the USA" dance sure that all those people standing there were in fact her devotees. We capped off the exhibit with a visit to the Cake Boss bakery downstairs, probably the highlight of the girl's day. As they sat there with there goodies and I sat there amazed at how well the day had gone I realized I'd never wanted an conventional life.

As a child, the idea of a house, a picket fence, none of it ever appealed to me. I wanted to travel, to have some freedom, to see things and dive into new worlds. As a single mother, I long for that partner, that person to help me navigate with in these new worlds. And hey it would be great if I had that but it's not so bad having the life that I have now. I only pray that my body holds up, that I stay healthy and strong and that work continues to come in like it is now, just when I need it, to keep up this unconventional but really, a very great life.

Today is my mother's 73rd birthday. We spent the day with her and she's so weak, so tired but she did okay. She ate two helpings of the lasagna I made and didn't have any nasty afferaffects. She actually told me that after her second helping she felt much better than she had all day. Oh wouldn't it be great if my homemade lasagna could do that, could cure my mother of the cancer that is so deadly. My girls both sang happy birthday to her and gave her lots of birthday hugs. It wasn't dinner at the Taj Mahal but still, it was a pretty good day.

Capped off by the beautiful card Eliza made for my mother, all by herself with no help or prompting from me. She drew rainbows on the front and on the inside and wrote "I love you into the sky. You are the best." I did not tell her what to write. I don't know if my mom was that impressed but I sure as hell was. Eliza also picked out a yellow sunshiney card from the store that plays "You are my sunshine" when you open it. I could sing the same thing about both my girls and my mother too.

Summer lovin'

It's not all doom and gloom here this summer. Aside from our Disney trip, we've also managed to make it to the beach/pool many times and gather with friends on a regular basis. Lately, it's been so hot in my apartment we've been going to the beach in the evenings to cool off before bedtime. I leave a large soup pot on the back porch to rinse off the sand when we get home. It's sooooo hard to get the girls in the bathtub but boy do they fight for the opportunity to plant their naked butts in a soup pot filled with cold water! We can walk to the beach from our place which is wonderful. Now that we've started doing our "evening dips," I wonder why I waited until August to add this to our summer routine. There's still so many things I want to do before the summer ends but I know there won't be time. Oh how I love the long days and beach evenings with my wonderful girls!

Tubulence

I accepted a job this week that I should be happy about but I'm not. It's a new TV show on which the network has extremely high hopes. The show runner is a well respected playwright (this is why I could not say no) and we seemed to hit it off. I have a month to secure babysitting and get things underway. In some ways, I'm happy. I love the people that I work with and spending time immersed in something new, something that might actually be good might be just what I need.

But of course I'm terrified. We work really long hours. Who is really qualified to take care of my kids, basically be their full-time caregiver for weeks and weeks leading into months? I'm trying to assemble a team of babysitters, a paid for "village" so to speak but it's not like I only work 20 minutes away. To be honest, this is one of the reasons I lasted as long as I did with C. Without that full-time live-in partner, I always viewed long-term work as an impossibility.

So now I'm going to try to make it a possibility. My mother has cancer and Eliza is starting first grade at yet another new school so to say the timing is bad is an understatement. I want to do this job and make this connection with the playwright but that won't go well if my head is very divided. I basically demanded that C work some weeks from home, thus supervising our daughters with the help of daytime babysitters. He said this "wasn't realistic" but didn't say no either. He's enlisted for the first week anyway, the week that Eliza starts school.

And then after that, we're on our own. Oh how I long for a sibling or some one to share these children with. Not just for me but for them.

And here's more pictures from our disney trip. For some reason the prior posting didn't print them all. I put these pictures up to remind myself of what I'm working for.

Family Pictures, Part Deux

One of my most loyal readers posted a comment today that just made my world. My mother has pancreatic cancer and I recently posted about my complete lack of photos of my mother and me during my childhood. I only have one photo of myself with my Mom from my childhood and this makes me so, so sad.

I haven't posted any photos from our Disney trip but here's a few, including one of me with the girls. I want them to have photos of us together, so they can see all the great things we did do together. We found out about my Mom's cancer shortly before the trip and we nearly didn't go. But my mom urged me to go and my father said that he seriously regretted never taking us to Disney.

So not only did I just make my first trip to Disney, I accomplished something my parents never did for me. And I did it all on my own.

Family Pictures

My mother has always hated how she looks so there are very few existing photos of her. I have a polaroid of the four of us, her, my father, my brother and me taken at my grandparents house in the early 1970s. As far as I know, this is the only photo from my childhood with her and myself in it.

She agreed to be photographed with me at my cousin Bettina's wedding in 1998 and again at Eliza's Christening in 2006. I'm not sure where I put the photo from Bettina's wedding but I had it in a frame on top of my dresser for a long time.

I took my mother, the girls and myself out on a boat to watch the fourth of July fireworks. I didn't bring my camera but the boat staff took polaroids of all the guests. The tiny polaroids were then placed in plastic key chains I purchased for $7.00. The keychain is already broken and now the tiny photo is lodged in my wallet where it's sure to get lost.

The stupid thing is, my mother was quite good-looking. She always had a bit of a weight problem but as the handful of photos I've seen of her taken in the 1970s reveal, she was not half as big as she thought she was. There are no photos of her from the 1980s that I know of. Although I was photographed with my friends and with both grandparents at my high school graduation, there aren't any photos of me from that day with either parent.

While we attended my daughter's end of the school year picnic, I tried to take a photo of one of Eliza's classmates with her mother. The mother quickly moved before I could snap the photo and suggested I take a photo of her daughter with another friend. At the time my mother was in the hospital and I suspected or feared bad news and I nearly yelled at the mother, telling her that someday her daughter would treasure these photos.

The new on my mother's health is bad. My cousin was here throughout the 12 hour surgery and to distract and keep me standing for the past few days but now she's gone and I'm alone with my girls while my mother recovers from her marathon surgery in the hospital. She doesn't yet know how bad it is and I don't know when her prognosis will be laid out for her. She will not handle it well, just as I have not.

I've been offered a great job with great people that will dig me out of a financial hole and continue my much needed insurance coverage. But it will require me to be gone from my mother and the girls for too long so I don't think I can do it. I'm not sure if a shorter term job will come along and I might lose my benefits and commit financial suicide on top of losing my mother. But I don't see how I can leave my mother and the kids right now and work 60-70 hour work weeks two hours away when these might be the last few months of her life. Part of me wants to take it for me--I'll be immersed in work, surrounded by my work friends, earning a living and valuable.

But it's just a job and this is the life of my family and life is so much more important to me. So I'm holding out hope that a job that's a better fit will come along and that I won't end up on the street because I'm choosing now to be where I'm truly needed.

Being a mum

My mother, like any good mother, has made her fair share of mistakes in mothering me. But as parents we all try our best and sometimes, the mistakes she made came from loving me too much. And that's not a bad thing. My mother is far from perfect, my mother is not a candidate for Sainthood but my mom loves my brother, me and my daughters in a way few people are fortunate enough to experience.

And now she has cancer again and we don't even know if it's operable. I'm trying to be a cheerleader but I'm scared shitless. I have no idea how I'm supposed to live my life without her. No one loves me and loves my children as much as she does. My mother dragged her unhealthy, cancer laden body out of bed day in and day out to get my kids ready for school when I last worked some time ago. C can't get out of bed and care for his own children if he has a cold. The adrenaline that's necessary to care for young children comes from love. My mother's body is failing her but that love has kept her here, probably past her body's expiration date, because she knows my brother and I still need her. My grandfather always used to say that he lived as long as he did (104) because us kids still needed him.

And now I still need my mom but my needing her doesn't magically stop what's going on inside her body. I've been trying to stay positive and hope for the best but as the days pass and the wait for any glimmer of good news continues, I am collapsing. I have no one, no one to help with the kids except my mother's next door neighbor (thank G-d for her) but she's got her hands pretty full at the moment with her family issues. Now that Eliza's home from school, she craves constant activity and stimulation. I just don't have it in me to not only be the caregiver but playmate of a five-year-old.

Remember the good old days, when we had neighbors, when kids went out in the street and played with other kids? What happened to that? I moved to a little town where everyone kind of knows everyone and still feel completely isolated. Getting Eliza together with other similar age children requires a lot of texting, phone calls and leg work on my part. Eliza is a wonderful child and makes friends easily. She's not the problem--it's this new playdate, mom chaperoned safe vacuum world we've created that makes parenting today so hard. The fact of the matter is most moms are more inclined to make playdates with the children of their friends. So because I'm new here and I'm kind of shy and don't have any siblings or lifelong friends nearby with kids, I've become my daughter's current BFF. And I'm not being a very good one for the moment.

As a child, my mother was not my BFF but my mother. She cared for me, tried to guide me and did everything she could to make me love myself. She took me on special trips to parks and planned special outings for us but she was also just as inclined to let me watch TV for hours or send me off down the street to a friends without double-checking every five minutes that I'd arrived safely and was now having my healthy snack. She gave me the freedom to grow up, to learn how to function in this world on my own, to find and create my own sources of amusement when there was no one else there.

So now, why do I feel so completely incapable of functioning without her?