I'm still here

I miss being part of a blogging group. Last year was really good for me to have this connection to women around the country and English speaking world, frankly, reminding me of the song in my heart and playing it back to me in their own words and making me feel noticed and cared for during a very very rough year that began with my divorce being finalized and tumbled from there.

I moved into this cute button of a house in February, and then spent the spring building IKEA furniture with a friend and making this place into something I could call home. It is so clean and so tightly pretty. It feels like me.

I was walking around on a broken heel that whole time and finally took myself to the doctor and got that mended, and then followed it with physical therapy all summer and now finally a year later I don't hurt anymore mostly but sometimes in the morning.

This whole time too I was working on my masters in special education and already working in the field after losing the job before that in a career-shattering heartbreaking move that cost me many things but most of all my faith in the human organization of the Catholic Church. What was left of that faith anyway.

My oldest picked a college. My middle one picked a high school. My youngest merrily skipped along, easy with his classmates and a favorite of his teachers. Thank God. Something, somebody, needs to be easy sometime. He went back to speech therapy for one last shot at the apraxia and it worked a little bit. Some things will be who he is and I have to learn to love the pauses.

I grew a lot of tomatoes and got a little bichon poodle mix who fits this house and this new little life of mine. My girls settled in the attic and I got a barbecue grill.

And then I spent the fall fighting fucking crime again. And my roof leaked. I feared so much failure, my God, what if I've made a horrible mistake moving here?

But I hadn't. I threw a nice little graduation/Christmas party for myself and people came. Old friends and new ones too. My sister and her boyfriend stayed until after 1 in the morning.

The year turned over to 2019 and I got a roofer to come look at the house and insurance is helping to pay. Anxiety is heavy on us over college funding but we are still hopeful. The job, it's a hard job, but my boss celebrates me and I'm good at it, most of it anyway, and I don't own the heartache like I once did. It was a good rebound to land where I am, where I will likely remain until retirement if I can hack it. I don't work for a district as much as I work for an educational agency, county-wide, so I have some chance of fluid movement later as my seniority increases. I think this way now. Successes are fewer in special education but they are sweetly won.

My ex-husband has a girlfriend and his front porch is falling down just as badly as it was when it was my front porch and I sat there drinking whiskey and soaking up moments with my children, my neighbors, and that stolen summer I got to spend with John before he died. It's still broken-down, but I'm not.

I find dimes everywhere. I can't explain it.

Maybe I'm a dime.

There are things I won't say here because I'm more cautious than I once was and I think about that and the privacy of those I love. But just to say that things keep being hard, things keep being heartbreakingly beautiful and I am soaking up so many moments.

So I am still here. I was reading my old blog, one where I met many of you, South City Musings, which is now closed, and I realized I used to have a lot to say. Now I have a lot to do. But I miss it, the self-revelatory moments and the comments and the community. Without a church, I have fewer communities than I once did. Without my old block. Without that little school I helped found.

There's been a lot of loss.

But I've gained myself.

I am a dime, yeah, I think that's how I would put it now.

A nice little list

Mali made a nice little to do list for 2019. Here's mine:

1. Figure out how to do my own taxes
2. Get Sophia ready for college
3. Rehab this broken heel all the way so I can lose these 30 pounds and be healthy again
4. Plant some bird friendly shrubs in the back along the fence.
5. Replace the door to the garage (not the garage door, but the side door to the detached garage)
6. Get two tattoos
7. Have a new roof put on the house. And the garage.
8. Try not to work this summer beyond tutoring, if at all possible
9. Read 12 books
10. Finish my little basement room

A lot of house stuff. One huge big me thing (my heel still hurts after 9 months of healing--I have stamina and ideas and leads as to how to continue to make it better). I think it's possible. I want to be hiking in the mountains at least a little bit when I take Sophia to college.

Now it's written. Now to get started.

My Week with Rosie

Writing

I am in the process of writing a story. Or a book. I guess a book. I just finished the writing and have edited it three times. It's a (barely) fictionalized memoir of my time with the young man who lived with me for two summers and how I tried hard to save him but in the end learned you can only save yourself.

I love this story but I know I'm too close to it so I keep stepping away and then coming back. This afternoon I thought to myself, "my eyes have read these words too many times and I need to find a reader who will be brutal with it."

I have no idea what to do with it now. So it sits in my google drive and I drink tea and watch the waning light of this January afternoon pass into dusk.

Five by Five, Lima Charlie

One time I had to send a text to John's brother--John, the young man who was living with me off and on while I struggled to stay adult and focused on all the important everything. His brother was a vet, had been in Iraq and Afghanistan. I sent him the text and he didn't reply. I sent it again.

He wrote back: 5x5 lima charlie

I hear you five by five, lima charlie.

Loud and Clear. I've been listening and thinking and writing and things seem loud and clear.


I am back here at Euler, Not Venn. I am hoping for good things.

Right now, good things are a bichon poodle hybrid sleeping on my feet and a cup of hot chocolate. Amos Lee in the background. Kids going back to school in the morning. I have until Monday. My son, on his way to bed, asked what day of the week it was. That's a good vacation.

Grateful

I've been trying to write for months and the words aren't here for me. But a friend mentioned that she hadn't read any of my words in so long and she missed it. So here is a November Gratitude List for good measure. Most people do 30. I'm going to do 50. Because I'm super extra.

I am grateful for:

1. The beautiful fall we've had here in St. Louis. It's just been breathtaking.
2. Generosity of friends and relatives
3. Courage to stand up to my doctor and really have her see me and evaluate me based on symptoms instead of bloodwork
4. Soft blankets and cats who sleep on them
5. People who stand up for what they believe in and what they are passionate about and for justice and what is right
6. Google Calendar
7. Wifi
8. The kindness of strangers who invite me into their graduate school projects when mine falls apart because I lose my job and it was based there and when they let me tag along and "contribute" when really all I'm doing is drinking coffee with them and riding coattails.
9. Good coffee
10. 12 interviews in a month
11. Space to grieve
12. Friends who listened and let me say what I needed to say and supported me in many ways
13. Tutoring students who both pay the bills and feed my heart
14. Calculus
15. Crappy math teachers everywhere who make tutors stay in business
16. The fact that so many people were heartbroken when I left my job--not that I want people to be sad and not that I wanted to leave but the idea that I was missed made me feel wanted.
17. The interviewer from the district who told me "They will be calling you. You scored off the charts on this interview."
18. The job I was offered and was able to say no to.
19. The job I wasn't offered.
20. The job I was offered and accepted
21. The Missouri Public School Retirement System
22. Perspective
23. Time
24. Past supervisors who cared enough for me to write me recommendations
25. Professors who supported my efforts
26. The fact that I started graduate school this summer instead of not yet
27. New coworkers who want me to succeed
28. Friends who give advice
29. Friends who say I can do this
30. A clean quiet room to think in
31. Conversations
32. Girl Scout leaders who do it for me so I don't have to keep doing it
33. My 3rd grader's teacher who told me, "you handle your stuff, we've got your back here at school."
34. The counselor at my junior's school who woke up at 5 am the morning of the PSAT to be sure she got the accommodations she was entitled to.
35. The sixth grade teacher who complimented my 8th grader after the play and told me she was keeping an eye and ear out for her
36. The play directors in her life who keep seeing her and giving her chances to shine
37. The third grader's volleyball and soccer coaches who appreciate that he tries and he's a happy team player even if he will never be a great athlete
38.  The guy from the apraxia association who told me that yes, this is what happens next for kids with apraxia and it's ok
39. Hot showers
40. Tiny puppies
41. homemade cookies I didn't bake
42. Courage
43. Stamina
44. Knee surgeons
45. Melatonin
46. The fact that worst case scenarios rarely pan out but when they do, they are sometimes better than you could ever imagine they would be
47. Realizing it isn't my fault
48. Text messages in the middle of the night
49.Being needed
50. Being seen

Not our usual haunt

My friend Maggie and I are partial to Irish pubs. Actually, I think a better description would be "pubs with a British Isles bent" since the one we go to most often I believe claims to be Welsh, not Irish. It's all optional ethnicities at this point anyway, it's basically "pasty white folk bar".

We are partial to them, however, because I like Irish beer and we both like Irish whiskey. So when we go out and feel like maybe a beer sounds like a good idea, we have several to choose from but you know how it goes, you like a certain table, a certain noise level, a certain easiness of one place over another. And they also give you to-go plastic cups for your water and now you have enough to build one of those Tiny Houses on HGTV out of them.

So it was a Tuesday and she picked me up and we debated. Did we want to eat? Just get a drink? We decided eat. But we felt like maybe we were in a rut and was there someplace new we could try? I listed the standard ones we'd been to recently. Then I mentioned another one, one I hadn't been to since Brooklyn was an Irish dancer and used to dance jigs in bars the whole month of March. Because of course she did.

"Well, let's try something new," she said.

So we went down to Dogtown, which is where some Irish immigrants moved as the St. Louis red brick industry took off, and went to the tiny little Irish pub. As we were walking up to the door, a man a little older than us opened the door and my eyes met his. He was so familiar to me but I couldn't place him. We thanked him and went in. Got a booth along the wall and debated with the waitress about the fish and chips. I got a Smithwicks. We had the fish and chips and talked and it was all just like any other evening.

The man who held the door for us came in with an older man and two younger, very dirty, men. They sat at the table one down from us and I read the t shirt of the man I thought I recognized. It was from the union that Troy had worked for. I pointed it out to Maggie and explained. I was overcome by a bit of nostalgia and looked over at the the guys as they ordered fried chicken and beers and fries.

"You should say something to them," Maggie urged. But I didn't want to intrude. I was starting to put it together. I think I'd had a beer with the one guy, one time when I brought Troy his checkbook and wound up hanging out with them a bit before a union meeting. But they were busy talking and I never know where I stand, or where Troy stood, and I didn't want to intrude. I just didn't want to intrude.

But I eavesdropped like mad.

And then the young guy who had obviously come from some awful dirty job, said, "Well I'm taking the day off because Troy Cooper, he was a good guy."

I looked at Maggie. We both knew I had to go say something.

I went over and introduced myself. Told them I'd heard them talking. Explained that I saw the union logo and wondered if they'd known him. The two young guys started talking about Troy--one of them had been in his apprenticeship class--about how he wasn't that hard a worker but he always brought good food for everyone at lunch so they liked him. They talked about that power plant job down in Labadie and I found myself listening to them explain what a magnesium burner was and how Troy would use it...

Just like when he would sit at my kitchen table and bore me to death with stories about concrete and jackhammers and oh so many other rough hard jobs.

I left them to their chicken and beer and went back and sat down with Maggie.

We were in a bar we'd never gone to.
On a Tuesday.

The week after I learned Troy had died.

And four guys who knew him--and I haven't run into a a union t shirt since Troy lived with us--sat down at the next table.

And talked about him.

It wasn't our usual haunt.

But it was more than a little haunted.