I had to do the Alt Side Parking dance this morning. You know, move the car out of the way for the street sweeper. Also, if you didn’t hear, we had a real snow storm on Tuesday. Though most of it’s gone, what’s left is the snow that melted and then refroze. So there are patches of ice everywhere. And as I was walking to my car this morning, I stepped on a patch. I lost my balance for a second but was able to catch myself and stop from falling. To do this, I had the yelp in a frightened manner and wave my arms around. The point here is that I didn’t fall though I might have looked silly. And I know this because a guy driving by rolled down his window to yell, “We all saw you almost bite it!” New Yorkers will never miss an opportunity to bust someone’s balls. Ahh.. it was funny. I laughed it off and the guy wishes me a good morning.
I have now reached the age where friends are not only starting to post pictures about their pets and kids, but also on how they have to go get colonoscopies. I mean, when you reach a certain age, you should get it checked out, so I don’t view this as oversharing. More like Gen-X is ready to take on cancer.
Christmas time is here again, just in case you didn’t know.
The year has flown by. The tree is up, and we are getting ready to start doing all of the Holiday stuff. You know, shopping, wrapping gift, baking cookies, seeing friends. The usual. And I do enjoy celebrating Christmas in New York City. For all the things this City is famous for, it really is a Holiday Town.
It’s taken awhile for Christmas to start feeling fun again for me after the passing of my Ma. The absence of a parent during this time of year seems to hammer home the void that has been left. I think I have been doing a good job with trying to keep Christmas fun for the kid, and I do worry that my sorrow and mourning might affect her enjoyment of the Season. I think I have succeeded in this effort.
I can also admit that slowly, year by year, the joy of Christmas has started to slowly return to me. It’s still not the same, and certain things, traditions, still don’t ring true as they used to. But now, I feel the kid’s excitement of this time of year, and that is a replenishing feeling that helps alleviate the experience of loss.
And that is where I am now. I miss my mother, and I know that my Christmas will never feel the way they did when she was around, and that’s okay. My Christmas now is about my family, and making the kid have memories, and building something new on top of the love that was shared with me.
I guess it was this weekend, that I started to notice that I was getting edgy. The wife refers to it as “being feisty” because I find reasons to argue over little things. It’s not like they are real arguments, more like just contradictory comments – never ending comments. Either way, it gets on people’s nerves.
And it first, I don’t know why everything is rubbing me the wrong way. I have a twitch in my eye and jaw, FYI. Then I look at the calendar and see that on Saturday it’s been five years since my mom’s passing.
Now it makes sense.
After my mom passed, I remember reading an essay about how the author was dealing with their grief, and how the week of their parent’s passing, they would find themselves angry, and lashing out. They knew why they were doing it, and even though they tried to stop it, they couldn’t.
I feel like that. I feel I should know better, and not do it, but also, doing it feels correct.
What I was surprised by was forgetting, or a better phrase to use would be, not remembering that my mom’s passing was coming. A little of it was avoiding the anniversary. Another bit was that I actually forgot. I went into October thinking about Fall, leaves, gourds, apple picking, and Halloween. Like you should. This was the first year where October didn’t mean “mom’s death.”
But sub-consciously, I did know. Maybe it wasn’t at the forefront of my mind, but it was rattling around back there. It was always be there, and that’s okay.
Earlier this week, I talked about going to the eye doctor to get a new prescription for glasses. I also mentioned my thin-skinned-vanity about not wanted to get bifocals just yet. Well, I did not get prescribed bifocals. The Optometrist suggested that I get readers, and also gave me a prescription for that. So, I think I split the difference here. I don’t need bifocals, but I no longer can see close, nor far away.
I didn’t know this was a thing, but I should have known it was a thing. When NFL teams release their schedules for the upcoming season, they make a little video for it. Makes sense as everyone releases a video for everything. Most are okay, but two stood out for me. First was the Chicago Bears which was a take-off on the show “The Bear.” (And if you haven’t watched The Bear, do it!) The other one that made me laugh out loud was the Tennessee Titans asking people on the street to identify other team logos.
The A/C’s are up and running in the apartment. Summer has officially begun!
Mother’s Day is this Sunday. Call your mom. Don’t text, actually call. And if you can, give her a visit. The wife and mother of my kid wants to go to a yoga class and have lobster rolls. I think I can do that for her. And let her know that we love her. Which is what mom’s want. That and visit more.
I had mentioned in my post on Friday that my family and I were going out this weekend for some apple picking, and I had joked about how silly the act of picking apples was, but deep down I really enjoy doing it. The place we went was Apple Dave’s Orchards in Warwick, NY, and we’ve gone there for several years and have always had a really enjoyable time. I recommend you head out there, and get the apple cider donuts while you’re at it.
And after the apple picking, we ran a few errands in New Jersey before we headed home to Harlem. While we were running these errands, I felt myself getting edgy. I didn’t have an outbursts, or get mad at anyone, but I could feel this slight level of annoyance building in me. I know myself well enough to know that I needed to remind myself to relax, and not take anything serious.
But for the rest of the weekend, this feeling of frustration never left me. It was also a feeling of stress and anxiety. My shoulders ached. I got a canker sore in my mouth. I had trouble sleeping. I was feeling like I was falling apart, but I could think why? I’m having the normal stresses in life, such as nothing has changed recently. We are plugging away, trying to get ahead like we have been trying for the past two years. Life’s normal.
As I was taking our laundry to the laundromat this morning, I started thinking about my weekend, and how I might want to write a blog about apple picking. I took some pictures of our apple adventure on Saturday, and thought I might want to use them in the blog, which reminded me of the first time we went out to Dave’s Orchards with my parents, who had come to visit us in the fall of 2017. And the reason we go back to Dave’s every year because it is a place that we have fond memories with my mother, who passed away four years ago on October 14th.
And then I knew.
I had forgotten about the anniversary of my mother’s death. Well… consciously I had, but not sub-consciously.
I know that my mother is dead. It’s not like I forgot that. I am at the point now that I can talk about my mother without an issue. I can even talk about her death and the awfulness of losing her. What does get to me is thinking about the things Ma isn’t here for; birthdays, holidays, and a simple phone call. It breaks my heart not being able to share things with her. Whether she wanted it or not, I did talk a lot to her.
It will be a tough week, and I’ll be subdued while just feeling sad. It’s not like I won’t be able to function this week, or that I will be angry or something. What it’s like is having a blanket of melancholy around me, and all events will be filter through that feeling. And that will be manageable.
I just miss my mom, still. That’s all.
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