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17 novembre 2023
Fifty years.
On this date in 1973 my parents got married. Five years ago was the last time we all celebrated together. Now, when I look at that picture, I can see how sick she was. But when you’re in it, you don’t have any concept. It’s all-consuming, all around you and then, when it’s over, it’s like the air being sucked out. You can’t breathe, you aren’t sure what to do.
And it comes back to this, the most simple of truths – the only way out is through.
And perhaps we will never be through grief. I still have nights when I sob myself to sleep. Missing my grandmother who died in 2007. Missing my mother who died in the final days of 2018. Missing the people who made me inherently me. Tired and scared of navigating this life without them. But without any other options.
So I choose to celebrate this day, the dawn of our family. The joining of Penelope Jane Allan McLeod of Edinburgh, Scotland to Louis Francis Simone of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania United States. They got married at the Park Shenley – Jennie J would have it no other way. My mother wore a quintessentially 70’s gown with a fur muff, her bridesmaids in pink and deep maroon. My mother had a magic about her, in the curve of her smile and the twinkle in her eye. She lit rooms up with laughter and conversation and every person felt special because of her and to her. She and my Dad made a handsome couple, and were always up for fun, adventure and new experiences. My Dad tells stories now of the road trips and open windows and Allman Brothers playing on the stereo. I think of my young mother, a new wife in a new country, and I wonder at how she managed it all. I watch my father, nearly five years alone, still fulfilling all her wishes. Still keeping her alive in every way he knows how.
Once upon a time, I thought everything was so simple. There was a right way and a wrong way. It was black and white. But age and life experience have taught me that life is all shades of gray, but rarely if ever black or white. There is nuance and choice and perspective. Marriage isn’t one thing or another, but rather all the things, rolled up and shaken about. Life is heartache and loss as well as happiness and triumph. It is all the things.
When my parents got married all those years ago, they had no idea what they would build. Dave and I weren’t even glints in their eyes. They were adopting a puppy and playing golf and laughing and living and stumbling and getting back up and trying again. And now we are here, living testaments to who they were as parents and as people. Picking up where they left off, and doing our best to make them proud.
I can’t imagine having better parents than mine.
Cheers to my Mama and my Dad. Cheers to the forty-five years they had together and cheers to the day, fifty years ago, when they promised forever. Thank you.
10 octobre 2023
Every time I think I’ve gotten myself caught up I glance at my calendar and realize – with sinking finality – that there is no break in the action coming any time soon.
And in so many ways thats a great thing. I get to see two of my bests this weekend, revisit my high school days and share it with John, I get to see my brother and sister-in-law and then a family Thanksgiving (a little early but when people live on different continents you make adjustments). Then more friend time and game time and then another (different) family holiday, more friends and cooking and football and then all of a sudden it’s December and we have tickets to see John Mulaney and birthday trips and work holiday parties and then … it’s next year. Whew!
Currently, Eli is away at Puppy Sleepaway Camp (aka training) and we are both enjoying sleeping in while simultaneously maniacally stalking the social media pages of his training facility. We miss our Tiny Terrorist.
There are also men putting up a fence around our back yard which will be a nice surprise for TT when he gets home next week. I have a project list an arm’s length and rather than do anything, I’m sitting and trying to type using my left pinkie for the first time in nearly five weeks. I have a doctor’s appt this afternoon and John & I meal-planned for the first time in weeks, so I know what the plan is for tonight (which really takes a lot of pressure off). I’m starting to feel … settled? (Shhh, don’t say it too loudly, it could get jinxed!)
This move has been incredibly character-building (aka hard as f*ck). We are nearly at the end. Rosehilll is sold and we only have four more guests (and four more times cleaning and doing laundry for people I don’t know – what a relief!)
I might be getting on a plane in less than 365 days to go see my fam bam in the UK and that fills my heart with happiness. Eli might come home and not boop me in face which would be a huge win. Hubs is adjusting to his new work role after the big shake-up at the start of the fiscal year. He has a week of hunting planned with his boys visiting and crashing at the house for early rises and daily treks around local, public lands. (The joy he gets from his trail cam is a mystery to me but I love it for him).
I realized that all the things I thought I wanted to do when we lived in Chester County have changed now that we live up here. I’m working on figuring out who I want to be in this era of life (to reference, for no apparent reason, Taylor Swift). I think I’ll be okay.
I didn’t know if I’d ever get here. I’m glad we made it. I don’t know how, but as Robin says (often) in her rides, the only way out is through.
And we’re getting through.
Xox, g
10 fevrier 2023
Time is so tricky. It feels so long … and then as though it slips through your fingers like grains of sand in an instant. It heals, but also, sometimes it freezes and is inescapable.
I was thinking about this yesterday. My mother died over four years ago. Which sounds like a long time — it *is* a long time. But it’s also as though time completely stopped when she died and began again in a completely different way. As though my life is divided into two distinct periods – one when my mother was here, and the other when she is not. And they cannot bleed into each other, they are not the same.
Sometimes the pain is as though it happened yesterday. Everything still lives so clearly in my mind – the hospital, the doctors, the nurses, the sounds – beeping and plastic furniture, clog shoes on linoleum floors. The pile of her clothing that she would never wear again, that we would carry home like a pile of hopelessness, a pile of things that no longer had any purpose. Confused as to what to do with it – where to put it. And then remembering that it happened so long ago, and that coat and those shoes are long gone. Cleaned out by Lenny in her fervor to check boxes, to keep order.
I am two people – the human that my mother molded and encouraged and taught. And the human who has had to forge herself – alone and cold in this world. No longer protected by her mother’s unconditional love.
I cling to small things that bring me joy – hot chai tea lattes and fresh cut flowers. Clean sheets and jars and jars of skincare. I vacillate between strength and weakness, confidence and insecurity. I wonder – often – who I am. What is real and what is concocted out of a basic need to survive.
February is here and the days are a little less gray and we are a little closer to our home being built. And I am a little less sad and a little more tired.
Xox, g
3sept22
I should have been in Ireland today, celebrating twenty-five years of my cousin’s marriage. But life didn’t work out that way and we had to cancel flights and rearrange our schedule … and then rearrange it again … and again. And now, I’m spending today alone, sitting on my back deck, reading yoga texts and contemplating taking a shower soon (because I dragged myself to yoga this morning – worth it, always!- and I’m gross and stinky and really need to clean up).
When I left Zavino all those years ago – more than five, whew! – I had no idea what I was going to do. I knew I wanted out of that job and that company, I knew I wanted out of the commute and the stress of restaurants, but I had no idea what else I was qualified to do. That debate quickly took a back seat to spending time with my mother as she battled cancer and eventually succumbed followed by two years of surviving the ever-changing landscape of a global pandemic that metamorphosed into a country massively divided.
But I’m young and I can’t ‘do nothing’ forever. In fact, my body and my brain massively object to doing nothing indefinitely. So earlier this year I endeavored to finish my yoga teacher training. And I’m hoping to be able to teach plus incorporate my life practicing yoga into my new endeavor with Danielle. My brain feels happy – challenged and overwhelmed and blissfully content. It’s funny what direction and purpose can do for a person.
I had this strange moment yesterday while John and I enjoyed a coffee date on our back patio. I thought about how we’re all racing to accomplish something – become someone – make our mark … but to what end? I thought about all the joys of my life, the hard work J+I have put in to crafting this little slice of happiness together, and I thought to myself – I’m ready to just sit back and enjoy it for a bit. Enjoy our homes and our decks and our patios and our cars. Enjoy where we live – Longwood and Marsh Creek and West Chester and State College and Beaver Stadium – and all the trappings that come with this life built in rural pockets of Pennsylvania. I want to just … be. And not feel like I’m racing or completing or rushing or reaching. Because here – where I am – is more than enough.
My younger brother lives in the French Alps. He travels nearly constantly – he summits mountains and ice-climbs and skiis and surfs and white-water rafts and reads loads of books and writes screen-plays and has a million friends who love him. He visits the sets of Scorsese films and hosts epic Halloween parties. He lives life extremely well. And I have moments (more than I’d like to admit but – I believe – understandably so) when I wonder how he lives such a rockstar life, and I sip chai teas in Chester County and shlep into Philadelphia routinely for medicine infusions. How is my life so … boring … compared to his?
It always takes me a beat to remember that my life is actually exactly what I want. Just as his life is exactly what he wants. I don’t want to sleep on a mattress in a van – no matter how cool & adventurous it sounds! – because I like sleeping in my nice bed (or any bed for that matter) and being able to shuffle to the bathroom without getting dressed and putting shoes on. It’s really hard to remember that when the romanticism of his existence tugs so constantly on my soul. I have to begrudgingly remind myself that I am a creature of habit, that I enjoy seeing my baristas at my Starbucks and my yoga friends and teachers and my dad on a regular basis. I like having roots and routine. Those things feed me.
But I was raised by parents who travelled everywhere, and to whom travel and adventure defined success. I know – am more sure than anything – that my Dad loves me, but is he as proud of me and my life as he is of my brother? Maybe. I don’t know. My American father married my British mother. My American brother married his French wife. I married an American man whose young life kept him in a small town in north central Pennsylvania. He didn’t have a passport until after we met (and not because of me – because his job sent him to Costa Rica for long stretches). I think about these things more than I want to because I think being human means being afflicted with some kind of insecurity. Mine is not living up to potential. Not taking advantage of opportunities. Not having purpose.
Heavy. I know.
Anyway! The breeze changed directions and I got a whiff of my stinky self so I am off to shower and do wildly exciting things like balance our check book and rearrange our cleaning supplies and the laundry room. I bet my brother is doing something epic – like watching a famous race or attending a crazy celebration. That’s okay. It’s better than okay. That’s life. And I am grateful for every day.
Xoxo, g
17222
Life is not fair. It isn’t even kind very often. We work hard for those things with our humanity. But it is a human thing, I believe. The idea of fair and kind.
We all have choices to make every single day. How we live, how we exist in this life we’ve been given. How we deal with the hand we’ve been dealt. Dealing with people who make incomprehensible decisions is a challenging place to be. It is even more soul-crushing when it is breaking the heart of the person who matters most to you.
I’m in a run of bad days. Bad MS days, bad family days … just bad days. I know that the bad will not continue forever. Life ebbs and flows. We are ebbing right now, pretty hard, and it feels awful. But eventually the tides will change.
Eventually the tides will change. I believe that.
Xox, g
16222
Life has been anything but easy lately. Not just my father-in-law’s health, but my own and how to manage my disease while being supportive of my husband as he navigates the unknown waters of post-surgery delirium.
This moment is the other shoe dropping.
Things happening in clusters – first a run of really good things and now a run of really challenging things. Moments that remind me again and again how far I have to go on my journey of self-development and self-discovery.
How do you know the line that differentiates self-care from selfishness? How do you give without giving up everything … your self-worth, your mental health, your personal peace? I wonder these things as I sit in my headache purgatory. As I order groceries online to be delivered. As my legs buckle beneath me, giving up or giving in …. On the verge of giving out.
How do I walk this tight rope of personal preservation as my husband transitions to permanent care-taker? Is it even possible?
This is the other shoe dropping. Loudly. With a definitive thud.
Xox, g
13222
Lucy runs our lives.
These photos aren’t from today. Today it snowed and everything was covered in a blanket and we walked across the fields, leaving a trail of footprints.
And then we watched the Rams win the SuperBowl. And we were happy because it meant a ring for Matthew Stafford and Odell Beckham Jr and a whole host of other men who play this game at the highest level.
Galentine’s Day. And I spoke to no one but my husband. My New Years Resolution to be a better friend hit a pot hole.
Am tired. Want to fall asleep to the sounds of Frodo and the shire.
Xox, g
11222
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about personal responsibility.
The idea that not only do we get to choose how we show up in the world, but we also get to choose how we want to live. Unless everything is predetermined. But that’s a whole different conversation.
I spend most of my days existing in the world in a way that does a couple things – allows me to be as comfortable as possible (health-wise, in our home, etc) and allows me to fall asleep at night feeling at peace with who I am, what I did/said/acted upon/put out into the world. I’ve spent so much time in the past few years reading philosophy and religion (and everything in between and around) and there is obviously no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to be.
Every time I start to get frustrated (for various reasons, but currently due to the opposing positions that my in-laws and I take on pretty much everything) I remind myself that all the things I’m wondering — how do they sleep, how do they feel okay with the way they behaved, etc etc – is because they frame their lives, their interactions and their opinions within a completely different framework than I do. Like most of us (myself included) they are the heroes of their story. So even though they are not heroes to me —and from their point of view, I’m the villain- their belief would be that they are behaving in the correct way and everyone else is incorrect/rude/wrong. So we are stuck at odds, believing totally different things but also NOT believing totally different things (morals, etc) just framing them and interpreting them completely differently.
I don’t know that they spend any time considering my position in the same way I consider theirs but …. perhaps they do. I just don’t know.
I find my heart full of angst and my brain full of frustrated questions about how they can possibly put themselves into the world in the ways in which they do, only to circle around to the fact that they do no believe they are doing anything harmful, but rather that harm is being done to them.
I could not imagine myself not taking responsibility for myself, for my own personal well-being, for my safety and for my understanding. I just … I don’t understand. It makes me work hard to not only comprehend, but have compassion.
Xox, g
07222
Today has been excruciating.
I think I hit what might be identified as my breaking point. I got to the point where nothing seemed worth it to keep up a charade that has been slowing eating away at my self-worth, self-esteem and happiness for years.
But reaching that point has also put a glaring light on something that John + I never discuss/deal with/acknowledge. It’s been our dirty little secret for most of our relationship. And having to face it has pushed our relationship into a pressure cooker. He feels attacked, trapped … whatever he’s feeling that I don’t know because he gets deadly quiet and doesn’t talk at all. And I’m feeling sad and alone. But also unable to apologize or make things ‘right’ like I have in the past because doing that is in direct contrast with taking care of my own mental health.
On the plus side, for the first time in the years that we’ve been doing this dance with his parents, he conceded that they do treat me the way I say they do. That he sees it and he doesn’t know what to do. Which sounds awful typing, but was actually a relief for me. Because until that moment, I was sure that he just thought they were justified in their behavior. And I turned a blind eye, because I love my husband deeply. It was like an unspoken agreement that we would just stay quiet about it all – but especially the really tough stuff. That our love would somehow get us through it every time.
I know that the pain he must be feeling right now is awful. Facing the infallibility of our parents isn’t easy. It sort of disassembles so much of what we as people grew up believing. And that can be devastating.
My heart is sore but I also know that I cannot stay stuck in this loop of denial and avoidance. Because inevitably it leads to me getting physically and mentally sick. And that just sucks.
Anyway. Today has not been the best day.
xox, g
06222
It’s one thing to talk the talk. It’s entirely different to walk the walk.
Today was an epic fail of me walking any type of decent human walk. I know I don’t usually get into specifics but we spent the day driving my in-laws to the hospital for my father-in-law to have surgery later this week. The hospital in question is NIH and the drive from their house is not short.
It’s a lot of time in an enclosed space with humans who just don’t share many of my thoughts or ideas about life. That’s a wide net to cast, but it needs to be because I have very little in common with my in-laws. Other than my husband. And I continually find it hard to believe that a man as good as my husband came from two people who just … aren’t that good.
Anyway. It’s very easy in theory to understand the dynamics between John and I and his parents. But in practice, in real life, all that rational thought goes out the window and I struggle to just be basically kind. It’s such a constant onslaught of uncomfortable conversations, judgement and condescension that I lose myself completely. Only after it’s all over and I’ve had a little time to decompress do I realize that I have once again failed.
And then I get to the point of fatigue with the repetitive interactions that I decide it’s all insanity on my part — repeating the same actions with the hope of a different outcome – that I don’t want to try anymore. Haven’t I learned?
But you don’t get that reprieve with family. Family never leaves, family never relents. It’s ongoing and stressful and unrewarding.
And that was today. And Wednesday. And then hopefully not again for a very, very long time.
Xox, g
D5 Creation