Piggybacking on the heels of Obama’s pause, I read something on Huffington Post that was equally touching, an article by a woman coming to a realization that as much as there are first times — milestones — that we focus on with a child (and I would argue, any human being), there are also last times.  She writes,

I just now understand that in anticipating my son’s “firsts,” I’ve forgotten to appreciate what he’s left behind. The firsts are monumental, celebrated and captured on film. I reveled in Little Dude’s first steps, jotted down his first words and am prepared to save lost teeth. There isn’t a first I haven’t recorded in some way. I’ve paid less attention to his “lasts.” I’ve ignored the finality that comes with moving from one stage to another.

It struck me not because I suddenly realized this truth as well, suddenly thought about the lasts.  This article stuck with me because of the not-quite-as-touching, more-than-a-little-neurotic inverse of Obama’s pause: I am so cognizant of the concept of lasts that I don’t think I’ve ever rocked in the glider with the twins without thinking this could be the last time. Even when they were newborns, though certainly now.

I wake up in the morning thinking about lasts and I go to bed thinking about lasts, and in between, I spend a lot of time (and have my whole life) thinking about lasts while I go about all my other daily activities.

If we were to look at my thoughts like a wedding cake, constructed like a wedding cake… well… do you know about wedding cake construction?  There are supports inside the cake to keep the different layers from collapsing into one another, with a thin platform holding up each layer of the cake.  So when I make a wedding cake, I place the largest cake on the bottom and ice it.  Then I push in four plastic supports directly into the cake and rest a thin plastic disc on top of the icing and supports and then slide a slightly smaller iced cake on that.  So the cake is actually resting on the plastic disc and supports and not the cake below.  If I didn’t do it that way, as I added each layer, the weight of the cake would cause the top layers to collapse into the lower layers.

So I see my thoughts like a wedding cake, held in place with support rather than collapsing in and crushing me, but a wedding cake of lastness thoughts nonetheless.  The bottom layer, the largest layer, encompasses long-range thoughts.  Will this be the last cuddle, the last bath given, the last time I’m asked to tie someone’s shoes?  Those are all about wanting to be needed, and feeling loved via that need as well as an opportunity to give love.  Someone wants a cuddle and only I can provide the comfort that comes with that cuddle, and without saying any words, my child tells me that I am loved and I tell my child that they are loved.  It’s simple.  The same is true for every time Josh expresses how he needs me, and I meet that need.

That bottom layer also contains all my thoughts for the future that come with the fact that there are lasts built into everything that begins: will my children still want to be with me when they’re older, will my husband still want to be with me down the road, will I still feel relevant in society; in other words, all the things I enjoy now, will they burn out or will I still get to enjoy them in the future?  Will these things that bring me such pleasure today come to a point of lastness?  Because if there was a first kiss as Josh and I fell in love, it stands to reason that there could be a last kiss where we fall out of love.  It happens.  I’ve seen it happen to family and friends; we know this possibility exists: that anyone who chooses us can also unchoose us.  Will I ever have to endure a last of my favourite things?  To live days of my life without my favourite things?

(To be fair, I promised you that this wasn’t quite-as-touching and was more-than-a-little-neurotic.)

Back to the wedding cake analogy.

The middle layer consists of the lasts that I am resigned to because they will happen whether I like it or not.  There was a last day of college, and I thought about that last day the entire time I was at college.  There will be a day that my hair is no longer brown.  I can dye it, but I can’t stop my hair from greying over, stop my skin from going soft with wrinkles.  There will be (G-d willing) graduations for the twins and marriage and children (if they want them) of their own.  These are the things I want to happen as much as I dread these lasts because the alternate is too terrible to consider.  If my hair doesn’t go grey it isn’t a happy thing: it means I’m either dead or don’t have hair anymore.  So I both grieve these endings long before they happen and also know that I don’t want the alternative to any of them.

And then lastly, the top layer becomes the last time I see a person.  I think about this every time I leave a person, whether it’s for two minutes or two months.  Will this be the last time I get to see them, the last time I’m with them, the last time I can touch them?  You never know.

Sometimes this constant cognition of lastness brings us good things.  A few weeks before Josh’s grandmother died, we went up to see her.  She looked great.  Yes, she was old, but she seemed vibrant.  We took a walk, went out to a garden where I snapped dozens of photographs.  I took the photos because I was thinking to myself, “what if?  What if this is the last time we see her?  I want more photos of her with the kids; more photos of her with Josh.”  Perhaps there is a touch of my lastness obsession in the twins as well, because I had brought with me the family tree that I was working on, and when she started looking at it, telling us stories about people on the tree as she looked at their names, one of the twins suggested that I get out my digital recorder and make a record of it.  And I did — an hour long recording of her telling us stories about her childhood and marriage and other family members.

And it did turn out to be the last time.

Which is why I can’t necessarily wish away my cognition of lasts, even if this knowledge is also something that feels sometimes like an albatross that I’ve been carrying around my neck for 38 years.  Because amongst all those useless minutes of fearing a last, every once in a while, those thoughts bring us something perfect like that, where I get to capture and frame a last and have the comfort in knowing that I used my last time well.

I literally can’t imagine living the life of the writer of that article where the concept of last dawns on her somewhere in middle age.  It sounds, on one hand, blissful.  To be in the moment.  Not half in the moment and half thinking about all of your fears for the future, but just being in the moment.  And on the other hand, it sounds like she inadvertently misses a lot of lasts whereas someone who focuses on the lasts tends not to miss a single one.  Unlike her, I can tell you the last time my kids drank from a bottle, tell you the last day they used a binky.

Where are you on the continuum if 1 is entirely living in the moment and 10 is closer to where I exist constantly thinking about lasts?

Josh pointed out what has now become my favourite part of the Inauguration, which is a moment when Obama paused while leaving the ceremony to turn around for one last look.  He quietly tells the people around him who are waiting for him to continue, “I’m not going to see this again.”  And then he stands, surveying the area, taking in the moment, marking it.

It wasn’t even my moment to capture, but I love him for doing that.  For being mindful of the magnitude of the day.  Of not being afraid to show that emotion.

It was the best piece of advice Josh and I received for our wedding, and one that I’ve passed along to others.  We ducked into the corner of the room in the middle of the party and just stood together, watching our friends and family.  If we hadn’t mindfully paused to take it all in, I’m afraid the whole day would have raced past us.  Even with that pause, we could barely hold onto the joy we felt, the excitement of having everyone together, the enormity of all that love.  Moments like that are just too damn heavy.

Think of this as a reminder to pause today.  To take 10 seconds to notice something that you may never see again.

Because, who knows, the ChickieNob said.  “Maybe his wife will become the President in the future or one of his kids, and then he will see it again.”  And that’s it; you never know.  So soak it in regardless.

I just wanted to set this out there because I know everyone hates to miss an opportunity to be sad.  It would be like suddenly realizing that you missed Valentine’s Day on February 15th, or discovering that — crap! — you totally forgot New Year’s Eve on December 31st.  Today, Monday, January 21st, is Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year.

I’m with you — this was the first time I’ve heard of it.  When Rita first mentioned it, I thought she was talking about the New Order song.

It could be because my people are immune to Blue Monday, which apparently is depressing due to its proximity to Christmas.  You see, my people do not celebrate Christmas — it’s just a day to go to the movie theater or do volunteer work — and therefore, we also don’t have strong feelings when it’s over, mostly because we can still go to the movie theater and do volunteer work.  It also takes into account debt accrued during said holiday, and since we do not accrue massive amounts of debt because of Christmas, our bills in January are no more depressing than our bills from February — December.

If you live in the Southern Hemisphere, you might also be immune to Blue Monday, since it takes into account weather, and I’m going to guess that your summer weather doesn’t feel too craptastic right now. (And if you are a Jewish Australian, I feel like we should feed you to Christian Americans like a vitamin because we can’t even fathom the level of immunity you have to this day.)

But the rest of you finally have an explanation for why you feel so crappy on the Monday of the last full week of January.  I mean, except for the fact that it seems to have been chosen somewhat randomly.  But other than that, it’s science.

I wanted to give you this heads up that you’re going to be sad today so you can prep for it.  Make sure you are stocked with tissues, sad movies, chocolate bars, fuzzy socks, a charged cell phone, and a good book.  And then take a day to wallow.  Because it’s back to normal levels of despondency come Tuesday.

Too Many Fish to Fry has a great post that asks an interesting question: do you strive to be original?  I started writing a long comment on her blog, but when it crossed into its third paragraph, I decided to move it to my own blog rather than use up that much space on hers.

I think it’s a question without an answer.  Not because we should all be striving for originality, but because I don’t think we are the best judges of our own originality.  Once we start getting that conscious and thinking that hard about originality, we start moving into either conformity or rebelling against conformity.  Neither of those states are true originality.  And even worse than conforming or rebelling against conformity is being a colourless, definitionless blob that only holds form as a comparison to others.  That isn’t very original either.

I think originality, much like free-spiritedness — is something OTHERS use to describe a person vs. used by the person themselves.  I once had a person describe herself as a free-spirit while she was speaking to me.  All I could think was that true free-spirits are not trying to define themselves.  Therefore, by definition, that woman was not a free-spirit.  It’s an Escher-like trick!  Once you label yourself, you no longer are the label.*

And I think originality is a lot like that too.  It’s a word that we can use to describe others, describe their projects, ideas, etc.  But it’s not really a word we can apply to ourselves and do it authentically.  You know how you can always tell when someone is trying too damn hard to be quirky vs. someone who is naturally quirky?  I think striving for originality, stressing about it too much, can have the opposite effect on being able to march to the beat of your own drummer.  Because if you’re defining yourself like that, you’re thinking too much about what other people think, comparing yourself to much to others, caring too much about what others are doing.

In other words, you stop listening to your own drummer in order to listen to everyone else’s drummer just to make sure that your drummer is playing a different beat.

Some of my favourite work is derivative of others.  Some of my favourite blog posts are derivative of others!  This blog post is derivative of Jjiraffe’s.  I like it when people riff off of one another, expanding, changing, bending, and folding ideas or visuals.  And remember, originality isn’t always admirable.  There are plenty of horrible original ideas floating in space, ideas that you hopefully wouldn’t want to own or have attributed to you.  I think originality is held up as something we should want to strive to be, but I would argue a different world formation.

I’m not a fan of leadership.  I neither want to be a leader, nor do I want to follow a leader.  I am fine with the concept that someone needs to be in charge at times, and I can get behind the idea of a boss.  But overall in life, I prefer to surround myself with people who neither lead me somewhere nor follow me.

I am someone who is much more comfortable with the concept of sideways. Of tossing out ideas, conversing, building, supporting.  I hold the original idea sacred, and I believe all incarnations of the idea after that should honour the original thought, but I think there are millions of ways to do that, and all of those offshoots become originals in their own right once they have legs to stand on.  I think whether or not we strive for originality, we end up — inadvertently — with originality.

Hence how none of us are replaceable; why the world changes when any of us enter or leave it.

* I’ve used this Jedi-mind trick on the twins in so many ways.  People who call themselves stupid can’t truly be stupid because if they were, they wouldn’t be cognizant of their stupidity.  People who call themselves mean can’t truly be all mean because they care enough to recognize their cruelty.  And people who call themselves original probably aren’t that original because in order to know whether or not they are original, they need to spend a considerable amount of time looking at other people’s work to know whether or not they are repeating it.

Inauguration is this weekend, and I wish I could tell you that I was going.  Except I can’t.  Because it is too cold.

I know that makes me sound like twelve kinds of wimpy, and that may be because I AM twelve kinds of wimpy.  But I’m an honest wimp who doesn’t believe in pushing herself too hard, and I don’t do cold.  I don’t stand outside in winter.  I don’t move outside in winter.  I don’t even do things like ski, which takes place outside, near snow.

Now if the President ever wanted to hold his ceremony in a cozy library and serve hot chocolate, I would be all over that.  I would wait in line (not outside, but inside) for tickets to that.  But as is, I’ll watch it on television.  In sweatpants.  With fuzzy socks.  And warm drinks.  Though to get in the Inaugural spirit, I’m hanging a sign on the bathroom door that says Port-o-Potty.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Our Trip to Riley and My Trip Down Memory Lane” (The Empty Cookie)
• “Just Culture” (Searching for Our Silver Lining)
• “Sleep: A Tragedy in Four Parts” (Clay Baboons)
• “Let All the Rest Go” (Mrs. Spit)
• “The Hourglass” (The Misadventures of MissOhkay)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Lavender Luz has an interesting post about viewing open adoption in terms of a grid instead of reducing it to an amount of contact.  Within the grid, every adoption situation has the potential to be met with openness, even when contact is not possible.  It is a totally fascinating way of looking at open adoption.

MoJo Working has a brilliant post about how she reacts when someone tells her that they’ll pray for her when they hear about her infertility.  She asks, “And yet, can anyone seriously look around at our society today and tell me that G-d has been handing out babies only to his faithful? He isn’t fucking Santa Claus. You don’t get a baby because you are good, because you say the right things, or because you pray fervently.”  She gives the reader a lot to chew on in the post.

Always My 3 Boys has a post that is only 18 words long, including the title that runs into the first line.  The simplicity of the thought, the emotion behind the words, punched me in the stomach.

Inconceivable! has a post about Harry Potter, and finding the Snape in herself.  For anyone who has jealously stared at a pregnant woman’s stomach, this post is a must-read, especially in discovering her Snapeness, also deciding how she wants her actions to differ.

Lastly, Still Life with Circles has a gorgeous post about Googling her daughter’s name and finding other lives for Lucias who are still here on earth while her Lucia is gone.  She writes, “There are 13,200,000 results. People all over the world named the same as my dead daughter. She has two twitter accounts, a sex tape, and a Facebook.”  Her search leads her to an artist who emotionally brings her on a road to the child she misses.

The roundup to the Roundup: Watching the Inauguration on television because I don’t like it when my nose hairs freeze.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between January 11th and January 18th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.