Day 14: "What Is Something That Adds Sweetness To Your Life?"

 Love adds the largest dose of sweetness to my life.

 I have been blessed to have the two greatest loves of my life. First, there was Rich. He came into my life at a time when I was sure I would never marry and never have children. But he, with his gentle and loving ways, showed me that there could be a marriage of spirits that didn’t include bitterness and domestic violence.

 

I lost him in 2001, when he was only forty years old. At 28, he’d had congestive heart failure due to cardiomyopathy. After a consultation with a cardiac surgeon at Johns Hopkins, a geneticist was called in. Rich was very tall, severely myopic, double-jointed, and had unusual stretch marks on his shoulders. The geneticist determined that he had Marfan Syndrome. The cardiac surgeon replaced Rich’s leaky aortic valve with one made of metal. When all was quiet, the kids and I could hear Rich tick like a watch. In fact, he put all our cranky babies to sleep by placing them on his chest.

 One morning, we found he was gone. No more ticking.

 Rich, as his health declined that year, said he wanted me to go on and find someone else after he passed away. I was horrified. I didn’t want to think of the possibility of Rich’s passing. If he did, there could be no other.

I blogged earlier about how I came to meet Ted.  I signed up for a 3 month membership with a dating service because I was lonely and looking for a pen pal. When Ted’s profile first appeared in my email, I deleted it. His photo reminded me of Rich, and his interests were similar. I deleted a lot of other profiles, too. There were one or two who lived in the Midwest that I corresponded with briefly, but we didn’t have enough in common to continue. I decided to cancel my membership.

Just as my membership ended, Ted’s profile showed up again. As my finger moved to the delete button, I heard Rich’s voice say, “Give him a chance.” So, I did. Ted lived in New Jersey and the kids and I lived on Long Island. We began emailing each other. We had so much in common, and he really was a lot like Rich. It was semi-painful but also comforting. We began calling each other and spent hours chatting back and forth. Then we began a real long-distance relationship, taking turns visiting each other and going out on dates.

 I didn’t think I would ever find a love like the one I had with Rich. It’s almost miraculous that I have such a strong love again with Ted. It’s the same but also very different. At this point, Ted and I can just about read each other’s thoughts, finish each other’s sentences. We are in tune, body and soul.

 

There is even more love adding sweetness to my life: my children with Rich, Bill, Heidi, and Kristin. I couldn’t be prouder of the wonderful young people they’ve grown to be. I look at them in wonder sometimes because in their growing years, I was full of mothering doubt. Was I like my mother, who was mentally ill and abusive? Sometimes I felt confident I’d learned enough not to be. Yet there were times I became angry and yelled. Did my face look demonic then, as my mother’s had to me? But now as I reflect, I believe I must have done something right for the way they’ve turned out.

 

When Ted and I married, we blended our families. He had two grown daughters, Michele and Linda. Michele was already married then with three little ones and Linda was dating a young man named Kennan. Blending wasn’t easy. Michele and Linda missed their mother dearly. My kids missed Rich.

 

Over the years, though, we’ve learned to accept and love each other. Michele was widowed a few years ago. Recently, she re-connected with a guy she knew from her high school years, Gary. Just a couple of weeks ago, we celebrated their marriage. We supported Michele all the way. We’d been in her shoes, and we knew the fall out from kids missing their deceased parent. Michele and Gary are in the midst of blending their families.

 We have eight grandchildren between Michele and Linda. Sadly, all but one live far from New Jersey. Three are with Linda and Jay in Virginia; Michele, Gary, and Michele’s adult kids are all in Tennessee. One grandchild is in New Jersey, Linda’s firstborn with Kennan. Tomas is and has been a source of love and joy for all his nineteen years.

 

I absolutely cannot leave out our four-footed feline babies: Gus, Bandit, Bootsie and Nugget.

 

 

Nor can I leave out the love of my dear friends.

 My life would not be so sweet without all the love that’s been added to it.

I am participating in the American Cancer Society’s challenge to write for thirty minutes each day in May. I do a lot of writing and I can meet this challenge. I plan to make a blog entry each day with what I’ve written.

I wanted to participate in memory of loved ones who fought cancer bravely but succumbed:

My brother-in-law Jeff

My sister-in-law Ann

My dear friend Kay

My Uncle Bob

My Uncle John

 

I also wanted to help raise money to support research and a cure for those currently fighting this vicious disease.

My Facebook to the fundraiser is here. 

Day 8 Writing and Cats Are Good for the Soul

 

I started keeping a diary when I was about 11 or 12. It was a little pink book with a few lines provided for each day of the week. I used it mostly to write up a little synopsis of my two favorite soap operas: “Dark Shadows” and “One Life to Live.” Sometimes I would note something that had happened daily but hesitated to do much of that.

I also wrote creative stories, filling composition books with my scribblings. I was writing a story about a family with an evil stepmother. My mother thought it was all right to read the story because I left the notebook out. She was outraged, thinking that the stepmother was really her in disguise. She was right about that but continued in such a rage that I was nervous about writing anything else.

With this little pink diary, I found that the few lines they provided for each day of the week were not enough. I filled it out fast and so, with my allowance, I bought a larger-sized diary. I’d moved on to junior high and had a positively miserable year. It started all right. I had been placed in the highest track, which was supposed to lead to an earlier high school graduation.

The trouble started with an English creative writing story. We were supposed to write a fairy tale.  I wrote about a talking cat with a magic flying carpet that flew around the world. The cat met and befriended everyone she met in the world. It was quite unlike the stories the other students wrote. I guess I was socially immature for my age. The teacher asked me to read my story and while she was charmed, the rest of the class howled with laughter. To them, I’d written a babyish story and they wouldn’t let me forget.

I wrote about the daily torments and how I hated to go to school. Writing released a lot of the anger and hurt I felt inside but I wondered what my parents would think if they read this new diary. I began to hide it in different places to keep it safe from Mom’s prying eyes.

I was writing so much I soon filled that book too. These little diaries were pretty but not nearly large enough to fill my thoughts. I bought a three-ring notebook. That would be big enough and, not only that, but my parents also wouldn’t be suspicious about the purchase. Three-ring notebooks were part of a student’s school supplies.

I felt so much freedom. I didn’t have to confine myself to a few lines for each day of the week. I could write freely for pages and pages, or I could write nothing at all.

Writing in a journal is so cathartic. I felt apart from others to begin with because my parents were Deaf. They also drank too much. There was domestic violence in our house. Sometimes when they would fight, Dad would hit Mom. Sometimes they battled each other. I would hide in my room, locking myself in with my cat. I would write and write.

Mom had an undiagnosed mental illness, possibly bipolar. Her moods would fluctuate between calm, annoyance, and uncontrolled rage. She would turn on my brother and me and hurt us. I wrote about all that too. My journal and my cat were my therapists. I hid the notebook well, changing its hiding place often.

Not so very long, that notebook was filled and so I bought another one. Over the years, I must have gone through six or seven notebooks.

One year, we’d convinced Mom to see the doctor about her depression and rage swings. She went to our family doctor; there was too much shame in consulting with a psychiatrist, which is who she really needed. The doctor prescribed a drug called Sinequan. I don’t recall that it helped.

What I do recall is that after one of my parents’ fights, I had trouble rousing her one morning. Then I found an empty pill bottle on the floor. Frightened, I looked around her night table and found a note. The Note.  I ran downstairs to tell my father and then got on the phone to call for an ambulance. Dad hung up the phone. He didn’t want anyone to know what was going on.

After getting the emergency operator off the phone and while Dad was upstairs trying to rouse Mom, I called the doctor. He first asked, “What do you want me to do about it? Call an ambulance!” I suppose he must have heard the fright in my voice because then he advised, “If you can, get her up and walking.”

I went upstairs. Dad and I dragged Mom out of bed and then walked. At first, Mom was barely conscious but then, thank God, began to awaken. Once she was alert enough to brush us off, I ran downstairs to call the pastor of the Deaf church. I was beside myself.

The pastor said, “Pack a bag and get out of there. Come down here to the church.”

The first things into my suitcase were all my journals and then a few clothes. The suitcase was very heavy, but I hauled it to the bus stop and caught the next bus to that church. The pastor and his mother were waiting for me and, when I explained why my bag was so heavy, they couldn’t help but burst out laughing. They didn’t realize that those journals were the most precious things (next to the cat) that I owned.

Speaking of cats, all of my precious ones have been a part of my life since babyhood. At first, the cats were my mother’s. When I was about 8, I began bringing them home. My mom liked cats too and so she never told me ‘no’ when I asked to keep them. Petting them and listening to them purr always soothes my soul. Don’t get me wrong, I like dogs too. I am just a cat person and over the years have become a crazy cat lady.

I still write journals and stories but not with pen and paper. Rheumatoid arthritis has invaded my fingers so that it’s difficult to grasp a pen or pencil for long. Everything I write is done on my laptop now.

Do I still have my handwritten journals? Alas, no. I shared them with my first husband, Rich, in the 1980s. He cried. He said, “I don’t want you to have these memories for you to fall back on. I want to make new, good memories with you.” He asked if we could throw them away. I’d been rereading them and was experiencing what was later called PTSD. I wanted to feel better and so I said yes. We drove to a dumpster and threw them away.

Sometimes I regret that. Sometimes I don’t. I still remember a lot of what happened anyway, even without the raw and emotional words to remind me. What I do know is how valuable they were to me at a time I needed them most. And I currently have four cats.

I am participating in the American Cancer Society’s challenge to write for thirty minutes each day in May. I do a lot of writing and I can meet this challenge. I plan to make a blog entry each day with what I’ve written.

I wanted to participate in memory of loved ones who fought cancer bravely but succumbed:

My brother-in-law Jeff

My sister-in-law Ann

My dear friend Kay

My Uncle Bob

My Uncle John

 

I also wanted to help raise money to support research and a cure for those currently fighting this vicious disease.

My Facebook to the fundraiser is here.