Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

Last weekend, everyone in the family got to choose an activity that everyone else had to do too. I chose returning to Shepherdstown to get tea since we never actually got my Assam black the last trip. Was it worth an hour-long drive for scones and clotted cream? I think so.

This is the teahouse below. It’s this wonderful, Middle Eastern themed teahouse complete with red gauze curtains and a fabric ceiling. You feel as if you are inside a tent rather than a West Virginian town.

You may notice that I have stickers on my ears. These are my “earrings.” I allowed the ChickieNob to make me fancy before we left.

And because I had to pee in Urbana again, here is the sign that sparked our new favourite term. Apologies, it was taken out of our dirty windshield.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (hint: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name). The list is open from now until late Tuesday night and a new one is posted every week.

Some people have already noticed it, so I thought I should explain…

Okay, I’ll give you a second to look around the blog and try to find the change.

No?

It’s the new forums and more button under the header.

I was speaking with a new friend this week and she asked me if I knew about Ning, which I didn’t, but now I do because I created a space over there for anyone in the ALI (adoption/loss/infertility) community to use. It is a website of bulletin boards, support groups, videos, photos, events–pretty much a spillover space (and more interactive space) for everything we do on our blogs and especially LFCA.

How does it work? Well, you click here to access it (you can also use the button under the header).

We have been circling the question since October. For months, she has been stepping right up to the edge and then stepping back the moment the conversation turns towards truth. She recently started trying out the word:

Dead

Die

Death

She wanted to play a game with me last week. “Eat my foot,” she told me. I pretended to eat it and she smiled triumphantly at me. “It was poisoned!” she announced. “You ate my poisoned foot!”

I pretended to choke and sputter my way across the kitchen, dying a Sarah Bernhardt-like death on the titled floor. I lay still with my eyes closed for a moment. The Wolvog jumped out of his chair and kissed my forehead with an intensity that would have broken your heart. “I brought you back with love’s true kiss.”

Because that is what happens in the fairy tales. With the exception of Bambi and a few parents, princesses die all the time and come back to life with enough love.

Last night, they were taking a bath and the ChickieNob was testing out the word. She was making an animal sponge float in the water. “It looks dead.”

“What does dead mean to you?” I asked because we really couldn’t avoid the topic any longer.

“It means you’re asleep,” she answered, almost as if she were also asking if that could be the correct answer.

“Does that mean you die every night?” I questioned.

She laughed and said, “no! You tell me what it means.”

“It means your body stops working,” I tell her, remembering the numerous times I have practiced Tash’s words for this moment. “It means you can’t see anymore or hear anymore and your body can’t move anymore.”

“Like if I ran in the street and a car hit me,” she said. Because that is what I always tell her; that there are times a doctor can’t fix you. Like if a car hit you and that is why it scares me when she runs towards the street. “Is that the way you die?”

“Or you could be very old. When you get very very old, you die.”

She asked if her great-grandmother was dead and I told her that she was alive; we could still see her and talk to her and she still moved about which means that she’s alive. And then she broke my heart and looked at me with this full innocence. “But one day, will she die?”

And I had to answer yes because I don’t make promises that I can’t keep.

She asked if I knew anyone who had died and I told her I knew many people–that is what happens when you grow up, you meet more and more people and sometimes you learn that one of them has died. In fact, I tell her in what I hope is the most matter-of-fact voice in the world, you were named after someone who died. That’s what we do in Judaism, we name people after someone who has died.

And then, as quickly as it began, the conversation ended and she went back to pretending to be a mermaid and asked if Marina Del Ray in the new Little Mermaid movie has her ears pierced.

She didn’t seem different afterward. I guess I expected that this black chasm would open and suck into it this modicum of her innocence. I thought she would cry or worry that she’d lose me (she already is extremely concerned that pirates will one day take me and I have to explain to her 1000 times a day that pirates would never want me. I’m a nobody, uninteresting. They want mermaids–not frumpy women in sweatshirts with frayed wrists).

But she just flitted around the bathtub after checking in with me that the main ways to die are to get hit by a car, get really old, or eat a poisoned apple. And I agreed; those seem to be the main ways I can think of off the top of my head as ways people die.

Because the truth of it frightens me even if it doesn’t frighten her. And I’m so thankful for that. I am just so thankful for that small good thing right now and my heart breaks for the thirty-four-year old ChickieNob who will know too much.

A few of these have children mentioned…

Perhaps someone works in a photo shop and explain this to me:

On Monday morning, I realized that I hadn’t printed out pictures of the Wolvog for a classroom project. I dropped the twins off at school and ran by the photo shop in town, intending to print them off a disc and then return to the school with the photographs. The store was closed–no problem. I’ll just go to the drugstore where they also have a print-while-you-wait machine. Except that it was broken.

I wait the 20 minutes in the cold outside the store, shivering without a coat (why don’t I have a coat? Because I’m an idiot; there, is that what you wanted me to say?). Finally, the store opens and I discover that their machine is broken as well.

Now anyone sane can get a whiff of crazy-woman-on-the-verge-of-tears as I ask what I should do considering that I need to drop off the pictures now and can’t pick them up later in the day as she suggests. I live in a small town and then next photo store is twenty minutes away. She shrugs her shoulders as I stand in her completely empty store and insists that it will take an hour to print out my three photos. It can’t be done while I wait. It will definitely take the full hour.

Seriously, are the non-instant machines that much different from the instant machines that they can’t print three pictures in under an hour? It doesn’t even take that amount of time to print three pictures in a dark room from film.

I didn’t time this Virtual Lushary to coincide with St. Patrick’s Day (which is generally celebrated in America with a lot of green beer) but since we’re here, can we turn to one of my favourite Irish traditions? The wake.

Apologies; I know that was sort of a buzz kill.

It’s not that Jewish funerals are so different–we use Shiva to reminiscence about the person. But today is St. Patrick’s Day–not Pesach–so we’re going to go with the Irish tradition of toasting the person after their death, remembering every good point about them.

I hate the idea of people saving their best words for when the person can’t hear them.

I know it is helpful for the mourners–after all, funerals are for those left behind, not those already dead. But I read something this week that really struck me. I was reading about the Hudson River plane crash in People (and I swear that I read more magazines than just People; it’s just that I find so much to quote in there) and it said, “she’s heard from friends who have been out of touch for 20 years. ‘It’s as if I went to my own funeral and didn’t have to die to go,’ she said. ‘There’s been such an outpouring of love’.”

No one should have to die to go to their own funeral. I can’t tell you how good it feels when someone writes a kind comment or simply tells me how LFCA has positively affected their day. You carry those words with you all day.

Therefore, I propose today, in addition to catching up everyone on your life, you take a moment to write something kind about another blogger. Why another blogger? Because they’re most likely to read it here vs. your Great Aunt Mildred who probably isn’t skulking around on blogs. And the point is to make sure that they know your words. I don’t want to call this a massive funeral for the non-dead because that just feels…wrong. But I think you all understand the sentiment.

Let the world know–very publicly–how much you appreciate the other person. Because that is part of the wake too–that the words are spoken in front of others. Please link to the other blogger in your comment or give the title of the blog so people can find them via the blogroll. And to make this clear, let’s all start with our compliment and then finish the comment with our own news. You may leave as many compliments to others as you wish. The more, obviously, the merrier.

Because isn’t there some saying that on St. Patrick’s Day, we’re all Irish?

As always, it has been about a month since we met, bitched, cried, comforted, and caught up each other on our cycles and lives. Pull up a seat and I’ll pour you a drink. Let everyone know what is happening in your life and a compliment for another blogger. The good, the bad, the ugly. My only request is that if a story catches your eye, you follow it back to the person’s blog and start reading their posts. Give some love, give some support, or laugh with someone until your drink comes out of your nose.

I have a ton of assvice in my back pocket and as a virtual bartender, I will give it to you unless you specifically tell me that this is simply a vent and you do not want to receive anything more than a hug.

So if you have been a lurker for a while (or if this is your first open bar as someone who found this space through IComLeavWe), sit down and tell us about yourself. Remember to provide a link or a way for people to continue reading your story (or if you don’t have a blog–gasp!–you can always leave an email address if you’re looking for advice or support. If not, people can leave messages for that person here in the comments section too). If you’re a regular at the bar, I’ll get out your engraved martini glass while you make yourself comfortable. And anyone new, welcome. I’m glad you found this virtual bar.

For those who have no clue what I’m talking about when I say that the bar is open, click here to catch up and then jump into the conversation back on this current post.

So have an imaginary cocktail and tell us what is up with your life.