How It's Going Without Mom

Just posted this on my mom's blog:


April 24th, 2012, we learned that Mom didn't have diabetes, she had pancreatic cancer. I was near the John C. Fremont tree in Henry Cowell State Park, at a picnic table with kids and friends and snacks, when...

This has been a remarkably hard start to a blog post to write. This is my fifth try. I'm trying to avoid writing: "When I got the phone call that changed my life." Because a cliche that big is just reallllly a big cliche. Too big. Like in the top five cliches the world over. Now I understand why people use it, because that is what happened, but I can't in good conscience write it down. Unless I just did?

April 24th we got the news, everything about everything changed, and we are today still muddling along. In some ways things seem to be better, getting easier without her, we are more accustomed to her absence. On other levels, though, it is so deeply, wrenchingly sad sad sad. In the beginning it was hard to get through the day/hour/minute without being sad. Now I feel sad less often but what I have lost is so much clearer to me after time has passed. And that is acutely sad.

Last weekend we put her gravestone on her grave, in the Felton Cemetery if anyone happens by. Dad made it, in true Dad-fashion. Dad and the boys (big boys, not little ones) hefted it into place. We cried and stood around sad together, which was somehow reassuring.

One of my responses to Mom's sickness is to try to be healthier. My success at being healthier varies from day to day, but I have read some helpful books, which I feel confident about recommending: Anticancer, by David Servan-Schreiber and Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease by Robert H. Lustig. Eat more veggies, people, seriously. Recalibrate your sweet tooth. Amen.

April has a slew of birthdays in the Beck family, so many people I love are having their "first" without Mom. Sad. Tomorrow is Dad's. Sad.

There have been several things that have made me want to overuse the saying: "She would be rolling in her grave." Sad. That she can't be spitting mad with me and the living is sad.

Jayden is getting signed up for kindergarten. Elijah needs braces. Mom would have been all over that stuff. Sad.

Orthodox Easter (Pascha) is coming, and Mom will be greatly missed. Wielding only a small (but piercing!!) whistle, she commanded the Easter Egg Hunt. For years. There are so many different reasons to miss her.

That's how it is, today, April 24th.

Spring is Here!

The girls with our dogwood tree, in the first of what will forevermore be an annual photo of the three of them.


Fancy Day at Kindergarten! What a great way to have easy fun. All the kindergartners participated, and Eliana and Annea did, too. We don't pass up opportunities to dress up around here. Fancy is serious business for my girls! I'm considering implementing a Fancy Day with the high school students I teach.

First Backyard Picnic of the season. We've already had a few more since this picture was taken.

First lost tooth! Adessa lost her first tooth, age 5 3/4. Very exciting stuff. Since I started writing this post weeks!? ago, now, Adessa has lost the neighboring front bottom tooth, as well.


Well. What to tell you, Posterity? These girls are growing up. Annea is almost one, which besides being shocking for the visual reminder of the passage of time, is shocking because I remember thinking if I could just make it until the baby was one, all would be well. With Eliana, at about 11 months I began to pop my head up out of the foxhole of small children and look around at the world again. I expected it to be similar with Annea. With Annea, however, I've been so busy and... crazed? I forgot to remember to be excited about this potential milestone. She is almost one, though I don't know if I'm anywhere near the top of the foxhole.

I know it is maybe just a symptom of our time, but I have been feeling anxious lately, the most anxious that I've ever felt, anyway, that I'm missing things and dropping the ball and going to forget something important or mess my kids up irreparably. It is comparable to the unease I feel when I forget to wear my watch on a day that I have an appointment. Or when I know that I have an appointment, but I can't remember what day it is. Until I figure out the day/time of the appointment, I can't rest easy, my brain is always trying to keep track of it in some level of consciousness, bugging me always to check my calendar, don't forget, don't over-schedule.

There's such an abundance of mental traffic trying to keep on top of this life we've created, and I never have a pen and paper in hand when I need them-for list making-- which in the past were my solution to worry and brain-chaos. There are so many things to do, micro and macro and the worst part is I can't keep track of them on a list big and encompassing enough and therefore it feels like I'm not getting anything done. Which is actually pretty accurate much of the time. This morning, for example, my day off, I started out with a great deal of industry. I made two batches of freezer pancakes (about 30 cakes/five or six breakfasts!) started the laundry and the dishwasher, and was prepared to be out of the house all morning, stroller, Ergo, lunch, grocery bags, all. Fabulous, really, commendable, yay Keidi. Except... now, at 3:30 in the afternoon after hours back at home, the laundry is still in the dryer (but clean!), the dishes are still sitting (clean!) in the dishwasher, and the lunch tupperwares and crumbs are all over the kitchen (not clean). There is also no dinner cooking in the crock pot, nor ideas for dinner cooking in my mind. And the other things on my list are scattered around the house, dirty and long overdue. So. My spurts of productivity are countered with lots of mindless staring at the computer screen, trying to put the baby to bed while playing Mah-jong on Mom's ipad, which I need to ceremonially burn because of all my hours wasted that it now represents, and not accomplishing anything. There's a whole other discussion on the American obsession with productivity. I can have a good day without getting anything done, but... I wouldn't really say that I'm having good non-productive days, either. Hm.

Also on my list of anxiety causing items, is my parenting. Parenting seems overwhelmingly impossible to do well. For me. You could add, "...Dummy!" to the end of most of the things I tell my girls, from the tone I use with them. They are kids! I should give them a break! But I haven't been. I can't seem to separate Eliana's "No" response to my direct instruction from this figment of the future, a rebellious disrespectful teen. If I don't jump all over her now, she's going to do drugs and drop out of school and get STDs. Adessa is still having freak outs, about things like exclamation points (I wrote a birthday sign for my sister and committed the dastardly deed of adding an exclamation point,) which caused much wailing and door slamming. Sometimes I can react well, calmly helping her through her emotions. Most of the time after a few minutes, though, my good parent hourglass runs out of sand and I freak out, too. I am resolved to do better, because they are such good girls, and I don't want them to think they are bad, or to feel shame about not being perfect, or to not be close to me because I'm hypercritical of them or whatever bad mojo I've been creating around here.
That's me.

The girls are fine. We were healthy for a few weeks, hooray, after pneumonia (1 each for Adessa and Eliana) and ear infections (2 for Annea), but are now on the brink of colds. Adessa has a crush on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and blushes and gets flushed when she recounts every confusing detail of the episode she most recently watched. (A treat is watching Turtles or My Little Pony on the computer. Well, it's a treat or it means Calvin and I want to watch Netlix on our big TV while they watch on the computer). She and Eliana are doing ballet right now, preparing for a big recital in June where they will be music box dancers. They are excited and adorable, and even surprisingly coordinated, when they're paying attention.

Eliana loves to play. She would be happy to stay home all the time, literally never leave, and just play. She keeps herself busy in any spare moment coloring, with her horses, dolls, blocks, books, baby toys, whatever she decides the amusement of the hour will be. She has found her stubborn core and is flippantly found saying "No" to me frequently. Not fabulous. After the run of difficult we've had with Adessa, I have little tolerance for Eliana's attempts at control.

Annea is a butt-scooting proficient, these days. She can even carry things as she sits upright and slides her buns across the floor. She likes to take her sippy cup for a scoot, or whatever contraband item she's found that belongs to her sisters. She is almost one! Crazy. She is happy most of the time. She loves Calvin, as all the girls did at this age. When he gets home from work, she screeches until he picks her up, shrill and serious. When he holds her she tucks her head under his neck and tucks her hands under her body, so happy to be with him. If he puts her down before she's had enough of this special snuggle, she screeches some more. She's learning things so quickly, blowing kisses, trying to put on her socks, opening twist caps!, and trying to pay for things at the cash register. If I let her get close enough, she will push all the buttons she can and if she gets ahold of my credit card, she knows it gets swiped. She's caused quite a stir a few times as bystanders can't believe she looks like she's been shopping for years. Tap tap a few buttons, then swipe the card, then tap tap a few more buttons. She doesn't bag the groceries, yet, maybe next year.

Upward and Onward! Happy Spring!

The Now Famous Rainbow-Striped Jogging Outfit

Part of having three girls and a large storage area means putting the girls in the same little outfits. It amazes me to see the three girls this way, same place on the bed, similar ages, and such similar looks.
Annea's rainbow shirt photo-shoot:















Eliana's rainbow-striped shirt photo shoot:



















Adessa's rainbow shirt photo shoot:

Disneyland!!

At the end of February, we achieved a within-the-girls'-lifetime goal to get our princess-loving selves down to Disneyland. It was great! We packed a lot into our four days down in So Cal, and thereby had no downtime or swim time or even watch TV time, which is a first for me at a hotel. We got to see lots of friends who live in the area, though, and got in two days at Disneyland. We learned, again, lessons about traveling with children, three children this time. We got a suite, which seemed like a fool-proof plan, but... the girls had coughs and other bizarre traveling illnesses which seem to plague our vacations, and the sofa sleeper bed was *shock!* lumpy and horrible. In short, we did not sleep well.
How fun, though. Disneyland lives up to the hype, we really did have a great time having fun together. I get it, now, why it's so magical. There were countless moments of wonder and joy, where we would all look at each other with amazement and ecstatic disbelief at whatever fun ride or street show was there, just for us!

All dressed up and ready to go, first Disneyland day.


Some of their first steps into the magical and amazing Disneyland.


Our little fam. We made it! I feel like after the long time we've talked about Disneyland and planned and saved, the fact that we finally did it means we may just be able to do anything! See the world! Fly places! Go camping! Go on a date?


Us girls, just taking it all in, with Amy Castillo, our very own personal Disney guide.


Adessa on King Arthur's Carosel


Eliana on the "parasol", as she called it, alternately calling it the "Merry-go-Around."


Annea, on her favorite ride. She really got that she was doing something special, she held on and shook her head and leaned out and back and loved it.


All of us girls on the carosel.





My favorite picture of the trip!


Annea and Eliana's backs on the storybook ride


Three girls from the back on Storybook ride


Calvin and the girls on the storybook ride.


With Alice in Wonderland and the Mad Hatter. (We happened to eat lunch by a secret door where the "cast members" took their breaks, so we saw these guys and Rapunzel, though she was obviously ready to be done with crowds and managed to look like she was skipping merrily to her break.


Though we avoided many of the princess lines, we did stand in line to go through Minnie's house and meet Minnie.

Eliana in Minnie's kitchen.

Minnie's dishwasher

Minnie hugging Adessa,

Minnie hugging girls

Minnie, all of us


We love a parade! The first day we rushed back to Disneyland after naps to watch the parade. Quite a spectacle, great fun. The girls were delighted (as was I! I really love parades.)

Daddy and Annea at the parade.

Girls soaking up the magic of the parade.

Fun at the parade!


I took this picture to remember this Disney moment, involving cotton candy. We pushed it a bit too hard. We hurried from the parade to the submarine ride, and were the last riders of the night. We came out 20 minutes later and the park was pretty much closed down, which was unfortunate because we had talked about getting cotton candy all day, and... there wasn't any to be seen. As we exited the park we turned heads since Adessa was crying so loudly. This nice Disney "cast member", Caitlin, made a big fuss over the girls, telling them how no one is allowed to leave Disneyland sad, it's the happiest place on earth, etc. etc. shut up already. No, that's what I was thinking, she was nice to the bone in true Disney fashion, and she wondered what she could do to help. The girls told her our woeful tale, and she started to call back the cotton candy maker, who was probably already in the parking lot. We stopped her, as our girls can deal with disappointment, they just don't do it very gracefully. So instead she wrote them a special coupon for free cotton candy the next day. Very nice, but Adessa wasn't having it, and once she realized that Caitlin wasn't going to whip cotton candy out of her bag, and that worse, Caitlin was trying to get her to be happy about a coupon and cotton candy tomorrow, Adessa went right on crying. In an interesting twist leaving me unsure what lesson Adessa learned from all of this, there was an open cotton candy cart right outside Disneyland in Downtown Disney, so after all of that wailing, she did get cotton candy.


After much deliberation due to potential sea-sickness, we went on the teacups and didn't spin at all, only revolved slowly around the ride. Perfect!

Teacups!


In an effort to avoid princess lines, we splurged for a Disney Character Dining Experience. Whew! A whirlwind of food was thrust at us and then five princesses made the rounds, all at breakneck speed since they fit in three! lunches. Our camera stopped working mid-way, so Calvin's phone took these pictures and will at least give you the gist.
Waiting for our turn to meet Ariel!

Ariel's Grotto

Adessa, not so interested in the food, anxiously awaiting her princess friends.

Eliana, ready for the princesses.

Belle.

Aurora.

Cinderella


These ladies were amazing, and I really had a moment where I felt severely, that even more than children's television, I had missed my calling. I would have been such a good Disney princess-person. Except for the make-up, I could have murmured and posed and curtseyed enthusiastically for hours with the best of them. Maybe I would have been too tall, or too muscular in my arms, but I like to imagine I would have been a fabulous fit. It made me want to spend a day with the princesses, write an interview, and see what it was like to spend fast-paced minutes fulfilling little girls' dreams.

Overall, so fun, worth the gobs of money and inconvenience of travel to be at what must be at least one of the happiest places on earth.