My husband claims to despise the television. He’ll stare at it with vitriol in his eyes and profess his hatred for the “blaring commercials” and “stupid plot lines”. He’ll screech about how much it rots his brain and steals his soul. However, turn on Fringe, or Dexter, or Curb Your Enthusiasm, or House, or any Rick Steves Goes to Some Random Place in Eastern Europe and Acts Like a Raging Dweebazoid, and he is glued. I mean GLUED. Try to talk to my husband while he’s watching TV and you may as well be talking to a fence post. Double concentration just doesn’t work for him, nor for my son. They’re brains become little lasers in front of the boob tube. Unlike me who was raised with a TV in her room and had never slept with one off until I met my husband, when I was 23. This is the first time in my life I haven’t had more than 1 TV in the house, nevertheless not had one in my bedroom. (Oh, the horror! Oh, the agony! Oh, the really good night’s sleep!)
On any given day, you could walk into our living room and have no idea a TV exists. Well, unless you know that TVs often exist hidden in armoires, in which case I expect you to pretend like you have no idea one exists. Preferably with an exclamation of, “WOW! I had NO IDEA that was back there! You are a GENIUS!” (Ego stroking will often get you carnitas, or cookies, or both. Just a heads up.)
I say “could” because, as of late, I’ve been turning on the TV way too much. In fact, every opportunity I get I’m turning it on. I’ve begun to judge when it’s time for The Boy’s nap, when it’s time to start dinner, when it’s time to inhale, by what time Curious George, or Word World, or God Forbid, Street Court comes on. TV is no longer an occasional fun thing for either myself or The Boy. It’s become an everyday, Good Morning, pee, breakfast, TV sort of thing. I’ve watched our days go from fun little crafts and ridiculously annoying repetitive storytimes to “Mommy, what’s going to come on next?!” It is sucking my time away with my son and it’s pissing me off. I am pissing me off.
I can always explain it away with the fact that, in winter, I am in pain. A lot of it. I start to move like the tin man before he was oiled. I’ve had arthritis in my joints since about 16. Bad weather brings on bad aches, and bad aches bring on the urge to hang out under a blanket and veg. I should be cleaning, but I can’t stand for long. I can’t do dishes because the water sends needles shooting up to my shoulders. The basement is where all my crafty mess stash is, but it’s also the most freezing part of the house. It’s easy to get complacent and not want to do crap but find out why that lady slapped that man with a knife on Judge Judy (really, though, how does one slap someone with a knife?).
But, if I’m honest with myself, there’s really no excuse for not taking an Advil and chugging along. Or, better yet, curling up under a blanket with the boy and reading all day. Or doing Starfall. Or writing. There are a million things I could be doing that don’t include turning that thing on, they just take a bit more work than pointing a remote. Bastards.
So, I’m setting a goal for the week. No TV. I want my family to talk to each other again. I want to eat dinner at the table, and not on our couch. I want our lives to be more about each other than what snarky comment Greg House is making to the newest dying patient in his ever so capable care. (FYI, if I’m ever dying of some unknown illness, take me to him. Yes, I know he’s not real. Can’t a girl dream?)
Please don’t get me wrong, if you’re a regular TV watching family and love it, that’s great. It works for you. Unfortunately, when the TV is on in our house, no one interacts. We don’t talk, we don’t laugh, we don’t learn, we don’t connect. It just doesn’t work for us.
When we first moved to this neighborhood, 3 years ago, we decided to be civically minded and join the neighborhood association. 4 months later, we went to our first meeting in the dining hall of the Russian Orthodox Catholic Church. I remember sitting in the meeting, doodling because I am completely incapable of paying attention to anything, when I heard a booming voice come from the other side of the room. A larger than life man, who greatly resembled Santa Claus dressed entirely in black, had begun to talk about one of the many times the city had tried to run rough shot over our little neighborhood. One of the many times he and his amazing wife, president of the neighborhood association, had stomped their feet, written letters and showed up to every meeting they could to get it turned around. And they did. They usually did. He loved this neighborhood completely and tirelessly, along with everyone in it.
After the meeting, he was introduced to us as Father Joe. He was the priest at the little Catholic Orthodox Church and the king of all Eastern European jokes you could possibly think of. The man had impeccable humor, and an even greater laugh. The kind of laugh that was positively infectious. Of course, most of the time, I wasn’t sure whether or not to feel bad for laughing at jokes that began with, “There was this Polack…”. And, really, pretty much all of his jokes did.
When I received the email earlier this week saying that he had passed, my stomach flipped. It just didn’t seem possible. I mean, he’s Father Joe, for goodness sake. He’s not the kind of guy that just gets sick and then that’s it. He’s the kind of guy that’s supposed to live until he’s 120, telling hilariously horrifying jokes and blessing babies the whole way. He’s the kind of guy that makes the world spin for everyone and everything around him. His passing was not one that fit him. Although, I don’t know what would have, short of a gigantic earthquake at the exact moment it happened. It seems as thought we should have felt his passing, not heard about it.
I don’t know what the church, this neighborhood, this whole city is going to do without such a great man. He loved this community more than one could imagine, and he loved everyone in it. He was sincere. He was heartfelt. He was everything you’d expect a good Father to be and we were so, so very lucky to have known him.
Tomorrow we attend his funeral and, while it’s extremely hard for me to ever think of it as a joyous occasion, I know that for him it is. He is with his Father, the God he dedicated his life to. And I’m hoping, because I know he is, that at least one person, at some point, says, “So, there was this Polack…” Because I picture him, at that moment, smiling at God and saying, “I have an even better one…”
We’ll miss you Father Joe. This neighborhood is going to be missing a giant piece of it’s heart, and so is everyone who knew you.
There’s a long standing “joke”* with my dad that everyone should eat bugs to get their protein. To which both my mom and I cringe and squeel, shiver, and tell him to shut up. So, it was no surprise that when the hubs and I brought up the idea of vermiculture (worm composting), my dad’s automatic response was, “OH! And you can EAT them if we run out of beef!” To which my similarly icky husband said, “Ooh! Yeah! We could eat them!” And I launched into a head shaking that was probably felt from a mile away. At that moment, my mom scurried in from the kitchen, looking slightly peaked, to ask, “What?! What about worms?” To which I only responded with a, “Nothing. They’re nuts.”
Later in the day, my mom pulled me aside for a Starbucks run, which is code for, “We have to talk about something that we must be sneaky about, for no apparent reason.” The moment we got into the car, she very worriedly said, “So, tell me about this worm thing.” I barely got the words, “worms” and “ordered” out of my mouth before she interrupted. “Are you going to eat the worms? Because I heard him say you were going to eat the worms. If you guys are having trouble with groceries…”
I’m not sure whether her thinking we were so poor we were going to eat worms is hilarious or really, really sad. Either way, it took me about 20 minutes of interruptions and reassurances before I could convince her that we were not going to eat the worms, that our house wouldn’t smell like poop, and that we weren’t going to be living in filth and flies up to our knees. Although, to be honest, I still think she’s going to be popping over with groceries every week from now on, just so that her grandson doesn’t have to have worm stew for dinner.
*This gets a star because the word “joke” implies that the object is funny. It’s not.
My beautiful grandma passed one week ago, today, at 11:22pm. My husband and I were the only ones in the room. We had sent everyone else to bed. I felt incredibly guilty about that and still do, but that’s for another time. I also feel so incredibly lucky and blessed to have been there. She awoke and smiled. I said, “I love you, grandma. There’s that beautiful smile” and was gone. She was 77 years old.
My grandma and grandpa met when he was in the army. His story is that she chased him all over tarnation. Every time he told this story, she would just shake her head at him. Grandma was not the chasing type. I have a feeling it was the other way around. That picture over there was a picture of her when she was 18. They were married 3 years prior and grandpa carried that picture with him all over while he was in the war. He said, “I’d pull that picture out of my wallet and say, ‘Look what’s waiting for me at home.’ No one ever believed me. She was so beautiful.” Now, my grandpa is no slouch, himself, but I still joke that he was pretty lucky to have her. They were married for 62 years.
My grandma had 5 kids of her own, in addition to raising 5 siblings. I’ve met more relatives in the past week than I knew I even had. I reconnected with my very, very estranged half-brother who, much to my and my family’s shock, brought his children (15 and 11) and wife to the memorial to meet us. My dad got to meet his grandchildren for the first time. It was…well…uncomfortable, but I know my grandma was proud of him and ridiculously happy to see everyone reunited. It’s all she ever wanted for us, to enjoy the family she’d created and, even though it was only for a few minutes, we did just that.
My family has amazed me over the past week. I expected an implosion. I should have known better than to think so little of them. We’ve pulled together in the way that grandma wanted us to before the cancer struck. I regret not doing so then. I want to make sure we make up for it now.
My beautiful grandma passed away, at home, on March 8th, 11:22 pm. She was married 62 years, had 5 beautiful children, 7 grandchildren, 8 great-grandchildren and too many friends to count. At 77 years old she was still as beautiful as that photograph at 18.
We love you, grandma, with all our hearts and we will miss you so, so much. Thank you for being the rock for our family and for being my grandma. I couldn’t have asked for anything more.
On Sunday, my husband and I celebrated our second anniversary. It didn’t quite go off as planned, but neither did it two years ago when we did it in the first place.
We had planned to drop the boy off at my folks’ as we did last year. Unfortunately, my folk’s opted to go “up the hill” (code for “going gambling just to tick Jess off and cause her to give us an hour long lecture on the economy”) the week previous and, as usual, came home sick. While my dad insisted that it was a sinus infection, I didn’t want to risk it. Something funny happens when you become a parent, you become downright terrified of any and all risk of infection because there is nothing worse than being sick with a sick child.
We had a nice, loud dinner at the restaurant in which Eric proposed (well, a sister of the restaurant), and then went grocery shopping, just the three of us. My anniversary present was a bag of my favorite lily bulbs and a million on-sale Yo Gabba Gabba shirts for the boy (it is the year for cotton afterall). Eric got more knick-knack boxes.
I forget, sometimes, how much Eric does for us, for me. He keeps our cars running (in fact, he’s outside doing that right now), he loves to cook, he’s happy doing the dishes (if only because he has to re-do them after I’m done), and he’s willing to put up with hanging up all the laundry because I not only despise it but am too lazy short to get them up there right. I’m much more grateful for him than I let on most of the time and that really needs to change. He should’ve gotten more than knick-knack boxes.
While our anniversary night out won’t be until this weekend, it will be without the boy screaming, “More agua! More WHEEEEE!*” which will make it at least 40x less fun. I must be the only girl who doesn’t entirely look forward to a date night with her husband. I should, and I feel kinda awful that I don’t but, really, I’m not sure if I know how to have adult conversation anymore. I have a feeling it’ll be a whole lot of, “I miss the boy. When are we going to see the boy? Did you see the boy when he did that ridiculously awesome thing that I bet no other child on the face of the planet has ever done? When are we going to see the boy again?”
On occasion, I get a little worried that I may have lost myself. Which would entirely suck, because it took a long time to find myself in the first place. Of course, if this is me forgotten, I think I’m okay with that. I have a wonderful family, a caring husband and a beautiful son. I don’t think I could ask for more.
Happy 2nd Anniversary, Eric. I love you.
* Wheee is the boy’s term for, “run me down the aisles in the shopping cart at break(other-shopper’s)neck speeds while I stare at the ceiling and yell, “WHEEEEEEEEE!”
