Like last year, I am not writing my blog right now because I need to navigate the twins returning to college. I scheduled these posts so the blog wouldn’t be empty and I could have space to process my feelings. A cop-out, but forgive me. Having them go is really, really hard. I need mental space to feel what I am feeling, help the kids through the transition, and sit in the quiet for a moment on the other side.

I don’t even know how to begin this. I could take it back to the natural start, our cells, our DNA. I spent the earliest hours of the morning dreaming about brightly-coloured, twisted ladders.

***

The first time I met Josh’s grandfather, I was sitting beside his chair and I remarked without thinking, “oh! You two have the same hands.” It made him so happy that I noticed, that I had picked up without prompting this trait that they shared. It meant something.

***

I am waiting to make a left turn, an anxiety-inducing left turn across many lanes of traffic. As I wait, I can feel my lower teeth pressing against my upper lip. This is not my stress reliever. I crack my knuckles. This is a face I have seen my daughter make as she concentrates, a monster grimace, a nod to one thousand Halloween Frankensteins. I have co-opted the face that I love, the one that is so completely her own invention. It is traits moving backwards. Mannerisms on rewind.

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Like last year, I am not writing my blog right now because I need to navigate the twins returning to college. I scheduled these posts so the blog wouldn’t be empty and I could have space to process my feelings. A cop-out, but forgive me. Having them go is really, really hard. I need mental space to feel what I am feeling, help the kids through the transition, and sit in the quiet for a moment on the other side.

The Wolvog came to this awful realization during the first week of school — that this was it. That every year, it would start anew, but it would all repeat in a different formation. That from now until 18, he’s in school. And then he’s in college. Then he’s maybe in grad school. And then he’s in a daily job. But every year, at least until he’s 18, he will keep up with the race only to find himself back at the starting line every September.

When you see time stretching on ahead of you like that and how much you still have to get through, it’s overwhelming. And when you look backwards at how quickly time actually passes, it is equally overwhelming.

Read the whole post here.

Like last year, I am not writing my blog right now because I need to navigate the twins returning to college. I scheduled these posts so the blog wouldn’t be empty and I could have space to process my feelings. A cop-out, but forgive me. Having them go is really, really hard. I need mental space to feel what I am feeling, help the kids through the transition, and sit in the quiet for a moment on the other side.

This is how I came to wear a turkey cutlet on my boobs at the wedding last week.

A month or two ago, I called my cousin with a proposal. She likes to shop; I do not. I needed a floor-length black bridesmaid dress. She met me at the mall with my list of requirements. I had the dress instructions from the bride, a price range, and a request to make the shopping portion of the trip last under a half hour. She moved us through the mall like Michael Phelps in the 100 meter butterfly.

She whipped through a rack of dresses, yanking down two and thrusting them into my arms. She moved through the store, sniffing the air like a meerkat to identify a break in the clothing racks that led to the dressing rooms. I held up the first dress dubiously.

“Really?” I asked.

It was pretty much the most un-Melissa dress you could find. Sleeveless, backless, plunging neckline and black. But it fit.

“We only have 22 minutes,” she reminded me.

Read the whole post here.

Like last year, I am not writing my blog right now because I need to navigate the twins returning to college. I scheduled these posts so the blog wouldn’t be empty and I could have space to process my feelings. A cop-out, but forgive me. Having them go is really, really hard. I need mental space to feel what I am feeling, help the kids through the transition, and sit in the quiet for a moment on the other side.

My mother bought my kids a new book called Little Quack’s Bedtime and we were reading it at dinner tonight for the first time. It’s about a mother telling her five ducks to go to sleep. It’s a simple tale of ducks being scared of the dark, but of course, if you think as I do, you can see infertility references in everything. The ducks point out all the things that are scaring them about the dark and the mother reassures them.

And then that last duck…goddamn Little Quack…had to twist his figurative knife into my literal heart.

Read the whole post here.

Like last year, I am not writing my blog right now because I need to navigate the twins returning to college. I scheduled these posts so the blog wouldn’t be empty and I could have space to process my feelings. A cop-out, but forgive me. Having them go is really, really hard. I need mental space to feel what I am feeling, help the kids through the transition, and sit in the quiet for a moment on the other side.

What I do remember from the movie is a witch with an eye that you could look into and see how you would die. Not just how you would die, but you would see yourself in the moment, so you would know your age, whether you were in pain, if you were alone. For years after seeing this film, I would think about that witch eye and wonder what I would do if I were facing that witch. Would I ask her to lift her eye patch? (As you can imagine, an eye like that must be kept under a patch lest the woman buying a cantaloupe next to you in the produce aisle would learn as she glances your way that she is going to drown in a boating accident about two years from now.) Would I be able to walk away from that knowledge knowing the information is right there for the taking?

Because I fear that I’m the sort who can’t really walk away from information, even in knowing that being cognizant of your death date could bring more stress than comfort. If I saw that I was going to die in my nineties with Josh by my side, and the twins and their children gathered at the end of the bed, I might go through life a tad more relaxed. But if I saw that I looked about a year older when the witch lifted up her patch, and I was dying alone, bleeding to death in an alleyway, I might not really enjoy the last twelve months of my life, especially those moments when I start to walk down an alleyway and realize exactly where I am.

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