me neither...

i remember sitting at kitchen tables and scrawling out empty plans in long lists, but i don't think i ever accomplished any. corrine and i used to make lists together. resolutions, trips we wanted to take, silly photo shoots we wanted to have. we had aspirations and enough energy to try to make them happen.

i don't have that energy this year (thanks to you, talula... oh yeah, and getting old...) but i do have some goals for this year:

1. move on from emily.  
   finish the divorce, sell the house, move to LI to be near my amazing family.
2. be more honest.
   no sense lying anymore... plus my filter is gone, so not a lot of options!
3. make things and finish what i've started.
   from weaving to music and websites – make like i used to, when inspiration flowed so freely.
4. just keep going.
   simply, keep living, keep growing and don't hold yourself back.
   
   my mom and i were talking about the people and ideas we've let hold us back in the past. no more. i will go for what i want and honor my needs first. i will not play second fiddle again by giving all my time and energy into making someone else's dreams come true. i'm the lead in my own story.

2 years later: january first, two thousand and twenty four

did i accomplish any of this?

1. yes!
   i moved to long island in may of 2022, the house sold and the divorce was finalized a few months later.
2. yes!
   the broken filter has helped here for sure, but more than that -- i feel more confident in who i am, what i'm about and how i want to behave.
3. sort of?
   still many 'works in progress', but i do still intend to finish them. the music is slipping away, but the websites and weavings have been coming along and i'm making consistent progress.
4. sort of!
   i did put mom's needs above mine this year and focussed a lot of my energy on her new website and business. but, it was not at my own expense – i am involved in the business, too and it has been an amazing growth opportunity for me. two years ago, i would have fought with her on several business decisions (like pricing). but i didn't. i told her the lead was hers and she was the final decision-maker. she took that lead, i kept my mouth shut, we did great and we're on track for a great season next year.

after two years of living and growing with purpose, i'm feel like i'm able to approach life from a place of love instead of fear. which feels like huge progress. this year, i'm going to skip the new resolutions/goals, honor that progress and just keep going.

hearts.
.a

i had so much fun playing pinball!  

the vibe was great – it was competitive, but friendly and supportive. it was social, but not toooo social — you didn’t have to talk to anyone if you didn’t want. you’re playing for points, but the points are almost random. i mean, if i could beat chad, anyone can win.

the other thing that struck me, talula, is that all these flashing lights and sounds did not affect my brain the way flashing lights and sounds do on the computer. at no point did i have an aura or fear that i would have a seizure. i'm not sure why, but i'm so happy to have found something fun and visually stimulating that i don't have to worry about going to the ER over!

pinball seems like play for the sake of play, which i don't think we have enough of today (at least i don't...). i looked into belles and chimes chapters near me -- nothing too close to where i live, but there's one in nyc that typically meets in brooklyn. they have a tournament coming up in december on a saturday afternoon in manhattan. since it's an hour+ for me to get there, this is a perfect chance for me to get involved. BUT... registration was supposed to open today... and upon visiting the event page, i learned that it was cancelled... so i looked at their regular league-play schedule... they meet in brooklyn late on tuesday nights... which is not only terrible for travelling back and forth, tuesday nights are my favorite yoga class, so... ::sigh::

diane says i have to start my own chapter near me on long island. someone recently opened a pinball-only arcade not far from me with ~100 machines, so there's a venue, at least, but i'm not sure if there's a crowd for it, and ... i am not the type to organize groups like this... so... we'll see...  

hearts.
.a

picture it. brooklyn. 2012...

two friends and i had just moved to an apartment on a busy block in a polish neighborhood. it was three doors down from the train station, a great bodega, an incredible donut shop and was on a busy street that would eventually be full of hipster bars, restaurants and shops (once we were done gentrifying it...). there was a ymca right around the corner that offered a gym and yoga classes and at ymca prices, i could afford the membership.

i loved the saturday morning yoga class. my friend corrine lived nearby and she and i would usually go together, hungover or not. it was great, especially because we did it together and then hung out all day after. one of our favorite after-yoga activities was to go to the park and sit on a bench watching hipsters run around the track as we smoked cigarettes and ate hot dogs.

obviously, i was not accustomed to most gym-related activities. i was not a sporty spice. i was a music and theater nerd. we sweat, but not because we ran -- the stage lights we were under were really hot.

so, i decide for some-unknown reason to go for a run. at the gym. on the treadmill. those are in a small room of maybe 18-20 machines and it's half full with hipsters, so i get on a treadmill in the first row, get my iphone all setup with my wired headphones (we didn't have wireless at the time) and start walking. it's going great, so i start picking up the pace and i'm feeling really good about myself – i'm actually working out! and look, here i go up to a jogging pace – go me! i've got this! – and then uh oh – my phone drops from in front of me onto the tread so, i've got this -- i'll just bend down and pick it ...

NOPE.

next thing i know, i'm on my ass, looking at the treadmill in front of me and i realize that was NOT the best idea... i had done a sommersault and the treadmill rewarded me by spitting me out, ass first.

i threw my hands straight up in the air and shouted "woohoo!" like i had just come to the end of a roller coaster. then, i got back on the treadmill and walked for a few minutes, trying not to look as mortified as i felt.

and though i continued to pay for the membership, i never went back there again.

last month, i joined a new gym.

my new neighbor told me he was going to a yoga class, so when i asked him where and he said "the gym!" i was not too thrilled. but i was really eager to get to a yoga class now that i'm pretty much healed and getting back to 'normal' life, so i signed up for the trial and went with him.

the yoga classes are great, to my surprise the people at the gym are really nice and welcoming (is it just because they are NOT hipsters? could be...) and i like going there! the best yoga class for me is on thursday nights and i really like the teacher. the gym has other classes and she teaches one just before the yoga class that is called 'strength', which intrigued me because that's one of the reasons i need to go to the gym - to build strength.

since you were on my left side, talula, when they took you out, the muscles on the right side of my body got weaker and i have a little less control over them. it doesn't help that i was laid up for about a year with my treatments and all of my muscles almost atrophied or that i spend most of my sitting in a chair at a computer... the right side weakness is from head to toe and though it's not severe, it's noticable to me. especially on days i do things like walk around the city or play a lot with my nieces. i get tired really fast and then feel bad that i can't keep up. it's what has motivated me to get in better shape (that, and going up sizes from an x-small to a medium...).

i went for physical therapy and learned some ways to strengthen my right side, but it wasn't enough. i don't like the regular weight machines at the gym - i don't know what to really do on them, which ones to do, in what sequence; i don't like waiting for someone else to finish, watch them NOT clean it off and then having to clean it before i go on... so i was curious about this strength class.

i started going two weeks ago and it's been awesome. i thought i just hated working out, but in a class like this - it's different and i don't hate it. i like that there is direction, that she tells us explicitly what to do, how to do it, how to modify it if we can't do it that way; that other people are doing it with me and struggling as much as i am but still pulling through it like me; that there's good motivational music pumping through the room, not just in my headphones and most of all – that i don't need to feel embarrassed about any of it. i don't do everything right, i'm not very coordinated, i go with unshaven legs and pits, i sweat like a beast so i stink to high heaven by the time i get to yoga class, and i don't worry about any of it. i just show up and i do my best.

i'm kind of over feeling embarrassed about things i do.

that treadmill incident at the gym was probably one of the most embarrassing moments of my life, and i've had my fair share of them. so many that corrine's favorite thing to ask me was "what is wrong with you??"

i sometimes have a hard time hearing what people say, but i also love being quick-witted, so sometimes i mis-hear what someone says and respond so quickly i don't realize that what i've said is completely innappropriate! it's gotten me into trouble, it's gotten me into relationships, it's gotten me laughs, it's been... a thing... that usually leaves me embarrassed when i can see through hind-sight how i went wrong.

while that still happens on the regular, i don't feel so embarrased by it now.

and talula, i know it's because you've brought me a newfound perspective, but i don't know how to describe it or why it makes me immune to embarrassment. is it because you made me confront my own mortality and so the stupid little things don't matter so much anymore? or is it because all that negative energy was what you fed on and now that you're in a tumor bank instead of in my head, i can just let that all go?

i feel this new perspective and outlook on life all around me, almost every day. last weekend, i treated my beloved aunt diane to a concert at lincoln center. we bond over the music we love that no one else we know listens to - depressing female singer-songwriters. one of our favorites, natalie merchant was going on tour with a small orchestra for the first time in years in support of her lovely new album of her first original songs in years, so i got us tickets.

when i lived in brooklyn and wanted to be 'cool', i never would have gone to this show. i was too embarrassed by my love of this music. none of my friends liked this stuff, and some of them even made fun of me for it, so i kept it quiet. on top of that, this music was too much a part of my 'old life' with my first girlfriend in boston, so i was always worried that this would 'out' me.

natalie merchant put on an amazing show.

usually, the songs i love most are the saddest, most heart-wrenching ones an artist has ever written. for natalie that's my skin and beloved wife - songs i love and that remind me of my 'old life.' but this show, the songs that hit me so hard i stood up and sang along with were just the opposite – the most hopeful and soul-warming songs she's written -- life is sweet and narcissus.

oh, they told you life is long
be thankful when it's done
don't ask for more, be grateful

but i tell you life is short
be thankful because  
before you know it it will be over

'cause life if sweet
and life is all so very short

i'm nothing but living, breathing, flesh and blood, alive
can you feel me?
i'm nothing but the clear and empty skies above, i'm light
can you see me?
i'm cursed, repeating words that have no sense, no meaning, lies
can you hear me?

i can't get them out of my head, so i just keep listening to them. and i'm cool with that. i even blast them out of my car windows and sing along so people outside can hear.

and i'm not embarrassed.

hearts.
.a

lesson learned, i had to go back and create images of each combo in Photoshop, export and embed each into the page. uuuugh! (we were called "WebPrimitives" and – "ugh" was our mascot and motto).

all my boss had asked me was "do you want to learn how to make a webpage?" and that was the beginning of my career in web design. the company couldn't hold on to a graphic artist, so eventually my boss asked me (the only person on staff with any artistic sense) if i wanted to do it. i of course agreed, having no training and/or experience and i got along ok.

i learned Photoshop, Quark(!), HTML, PHP, a little Flash and CSS (which was still new) and i built a lot of things while building my chops. i had a band, i made us a website. i had friends who were musicians and they needed websites. everything was built in tables, nothing had alt text, everything needed meta tags, there was no social media or sharing and "analytics" was a free counter at the bottom of the page. rollover images were new and i used them for every navigation option i could. i never thought of contrast or other devices. i 'streamed' audio using real media player and everything special on the internet required a plugin, including our math software, which was built to share math on the internet and make it interactive. it was cool – you could create a "notebook" and upload it/embed it in a webpage and then users with the free plugin could play with your notebook - no paid software required.

but the Flash plugin was necessary for a lot of sites. and folks made Flash content/cartoons especially like mad. Homestar Runner was a constant source of laughter and inspiration. i look at it now and think "how did they do all that for FREE?" servers cost money to run (even then) and this is well before ad services figured out there was gold in them thar hills and sites like this could get sponsorship in the sidebars and get paid per hit.

no one ran a blog yet. no one shared a site with any followers. word of mouth was actual word of mouth. the internet was fast. we had a T1 line at work and at school and i could have had one at home if i wanted. downloading songs on napster was a breeze. i lived on the campus where it was developed, across the street from his dorm and i quickly (and all night) was obsessed with the platform. until it was so rudely shut down by those Metalicca douchebags. that year, i was taking a course called "Computers and Society" and wrote my final paper on Napster. that professor was the best. we never touched code in that class and i still think about it all the time. i'd teach a course like that now if i could.

society and computers have changed so much since then. as an older "milennial" i feel the need to keep the younger gens linked to the past – a time before everyone had a super computer in their pocket, had to think about how spell something, had to use their voice to communicate with other humans and didn't walk around with their heads burried in a screen.

was it better? i think so.

it was a sweet spot when we didn't know how good we had it.

i did a lot of thrift store shopping in high school. like a lot a lot... and i had a thing for green sweaters. loved all variety of green sweaters. wool ones, cotton ones, acrylics, blends, pullovers, cardigans, one with frogs, one with whales, all shades of green... oh my god there are so many... the brighter, the bolder, the better. not only did i love the color green, it paired easily with plaids from the 70s, which my friend and i were fond of at the time.

the salvation army didn't have a large selection of women's bell bottoms, but they did have racks upon racks of old men's plaid pants from the 70s in the most amazing color combinations. and though i was petite in stature, that didn't stop me from sporting some dead grandpa's beer-belly-gut-sized golf trousers to biology class. with a cute belt. and a green sweater.

when i got to college, they became "happy green sweaters."

i packed as many green sweaters as i could and they were the foundation of my first wardrobe choices for college. green sweater, over a polyester shirt with a loud print, a pair of equally loud plaid pants, birkenstock sandals (no, no socks... come on...), my classic ll bean backpack and the knight rider lunch box i carried as a purse. this was my signal to the other wierdos at college that i was awesome and we should hang out.

it worked.

there was a big group of friends in the music and theater departments and within a few days of the start of the semester, i started hanging out with them. one day, i think at lunch, someone complimented me on my sweater and told me "your sweaters always make me so happy. they're all different but they're all happy... like happy, green sweaters." and for the next while, we all celebrated my happy green sweater of the day. sometimes, other people would wear their green sweaters and somehow the idea to all do it on the same day and have a "happy green sweater day" came about... and then i was bringing all my sweaters to the hill where we hung out and people who didn't own a happy green sweater were putting them on and then we somehow got everyone together for a picture (this was 1998, no selfies yet...) and we really did have a happy day. we shared joy in something simple - a color - for a simple reason - because it made us smile.

green still makes me smile.

i just bought another green fleece today.

when i lived in the city, i only bought black. or very dark grey. cuz that's what you do in the city. that's the color. black. so i bought black. i wore black. i loved black. i thought my heart was black. i smoked cigarettes so my lungs were black. black was dark. black was dangerous. black was unknown. undefined. so was i. so i wore black.

but black fades. and since there's no such thing as black dye, all blacks fade differently. so faded black jeans with a faded black acrylic sweater and a faded black knit tank top can look like a sad mixed-up mess.

you know what happens when you mix shades of green?

happy.

there are so many shades of green - infinite shades, really. it's nature's color. green is all around us and we are accustomed to seeing it in all variations at the same time. we see it in forests, in gardens, in our food. the green part of the visible light spectrum connects to something positive in our brains.

talula, you weren't something positive in my brain. i don't know what color you are in real life, but in our mri, you're the big part in the middle that's black.

i still love wearing the color black, but i've been buying more green clothing than ever. this season is all about green for me. new green fleece today in a different shade of green than the last one. new green puffy winter coat. green sweat pants. green hat. green gloves.

i wear them together. different combos. there are infinite permutations of this perfect palette. and this winter, i'm going to find joy in as many as i can. because simple ol' green still makes me smile.

hearts.
.a

staying up til midnight?? ugh... no thanks... it's always been something i have begrudgingly celebrated and always insisted on either celebrating at home or very close to home (like, next door).

or not celebrating at all. there was a year when i was freelancing and i was working on an online store migration, and new year's eve seemed like a good time to pull the trigger (no one shopping for coffee online... right?) spoiler alert: it wasn't... but that's a boring story about making the internet and ... no thanks...

but, talula, this new year's eve was actually fun. the first two new years since you left were uneventful, but now that the divorce with emily is almost final and i've got my new place pretty much setup, i am feeling good and was able to relax and enjoy time with my family. we played my nintendo sports bowling, we all brought waaaaaay too much food, ate waaaaay too much food, watched the ball drop and ended stayed up til 2am. that's right, talula, i hang out with some reeeal party animals these days... yup, my parents, my aunt, her best friend and her best friend's mom who will be 90 next week... all bowling champs and funny as hell.  

my aunt and i spent the night.

new year's morning at breakfast, we were talking about how cute my two nieces have been lately. my parents watch them twice a week and were telling us about taking the girls shopping last week. the two-and-a-half-year-old was at target, pointed to something, said "i want that" and so my parents said "ok!" and bought it. my brother had complained to them that he had taken her to target and she did the same thing, and then melted down when he said "no, you got enough toys for christmas".  my parents told him "well, we're the grandparents, so when we go shopping and our granddaughter wants something, we can say 'ok!' and get it for her. you don't have to because you're the parent, but we're the grandparents and that's what we do. that's the kind of grandparents we are!"

i said "i didn't have those kind of grandparents." and dad and aunt diane laughed and agreed. dad said "no, not our parents. but they didn't buy anything for us, either. if we wanted something, we had to earn the money and get it ourselves. i remember buying myself a bike with money from my paper route." aunt diane told us how dad was the only one in the family who didn't try to wiggle his way out of his work. while other siblings would have made her do the dirty work of collecting the money for the subscription, he never did. my dad has been an honest, hard-working guy his whole life, even if it cost him money, like his paper route did.

mom said her mother would have been that kind of grandparent if we didn't live two hours away and she had the chance to take us shopping more.  

so i started thinking...

what kind of grandparents did i have?

talula, you only knew them when they were in their 80s, but you missed their active grandparenting years. no, i did not have the kind that took me shopping and bought me whatever i wanted.

i had the kind of grandparents that were there; that showed up. the kind that helped my parents get things done. the kind that could be relied upon.

the kind of grandpa who went out of his way to pick me up and bring me home for our church choir practices. who would pick me up and bring me home from after-school rehearsals three days a week. who instilled a love of creating visual and musical art, preserving history and nurturing plants.

the kind of grandmother who came to our house every week and spent the day helping my mom with laundry, making sure my dad had freshly pressed shirts for work. who would make us amazing home-cooked meals, like tomato sauce with the most delicious meatballs imaginable. who instilled a love of cooking, of preparing and sharing a meal with your family.

the kind of cool, independent, single grandma who would travel by ferry on her own just to see me in whatever school concert, play, church event, anything and everything i was in – if i was on stage, she was guaranteed to be in the audience. who would have a pillow fight with you on vacation and sit with you when you were too scared to go on a rollercoaster*.

those were the grandparents i had. the kind who showed their love through time and energy.

which is also the kind of grandparents that my parents are, but to the n-th degree. they are so full of love for these girls and cherish every moment they have with them to the bottom of their hearts. so, these beautiful little nieces of mine get to have both.

it's going to be a good year, talula, i can feel it...

hearts.
.a

* but not a haunted house... nope, scared of the haunted house? doesn't matter... still have to go on that ride... and will have to hear about it the rest of your life... about how funny it was that you just learned to read, so you kept pointing at the exit signs, saying "i want to exit"... nope, not the kind of grandmother who would deprive your family of that story...

in high school, i decided to go to college for music and it was clear i'd have to learn to play the piano. so, a friend of my aunt had a son a year or two older than me who was a great piano player and our mothers conspired to hire him to teach me.

as soon as i opened the front door and saw his 70s vintage fur trimmed tweed coat, i fell in love.

which meant it was impossible to sit next to him on the piano bench and say anything coherent, let alone anything flirty or smart. and i never practiced. which made him angry with me. like every other music teacher i ever had to let down on a weekly basis my whole life because i just HATE TO PRACTICE. i know i know i know that practicing is the ONLY way to get better and actually learn but i have always found it so boring and tedious and that's not me.

i like doing and playing NEW things. i like improvising, sight-reading, trying something new and falling into that flow state that only playing music with another person one on one can bring. there's a friendship and an intimacy achieved that you can't get any other way – but not like sex... not that i had any experience with that in high school... i just dreamed about it, and for sure i dreamed about having sex with chris. maybe if i had spent that time practicing instead, who knows, i might have had a better chance...

my lessons didn't last very long, but the next summer, i went to band camp with chris' best friend dan and a bunch of folks from our local private catholic school. it wasn't far from where i lived and me and my friend thommy kept in touch and hung out with them all the next year. i got to see chris, and for a bit, i played tenor sax in his band. you weren't born yet so you wouldn't remember, talula, but i do – we were playing "don't let me be misunderstood" by the animals and he had given us all the line to play and on the repeat, i played a harmony line, and after, he asked which of us did that and he smiled when i took my credit for it. right there, i knew he loved me back...  of course! right? he SMILED at me = he loves me. duh, i know math...

his friend dan played bass and he was as sweet as chris was salty. he was always introducing me to new music, like ben folds five and belle and sebastian. chris didn't seem to like anyone but dan, but he let me hang with them. then chris and dan went away to college in boston together. and this was before facebook or cell phones and we still paid long distance phone service by the minute so we didn't keep in touch except during summers and it was only with lots of other people. so, i let my crush just rest at a natural smoldering place.

i had plenty else to distract me. i went to school to study music (without having learned to play piano), then i moved to boston to study math, got a job making websites, graduated and one day, i was in a record shop buying a jazz cd and there he was. there was chris.

that's when the chase begun. i had fallen in love with, dated and broken up with amy and was trying to get over this whole 'being gay thing' and here was my old crush. in a record store down the street from where i was working in harvard square, which meant "we were meant to be" and so i went there... a lot... i didn't even have a record player at the time, but everyone traded in used cds then (which i still do).

one night, my friend fraenzi and i met chris and a guy he worked with at the record store at a bar next door to the shop after their shift. this guy was so goddamned good looking and so is my friend fraenzi, so i thought for sure there'd be a spark there. i also assumed this was a double date. but, no matter how much we drank, there was nothing between them and nothing between chris and i.  

then, one night a few weeks later, i finally decide that i was sick of this shit and i was just gonna talk to him, so i met him at a bar near his house. we started talking about that night and he told me that the other guy from the store came to that bar to see ME and had been asking him about ME. he said 'do you know how many girls come to the store just to see HIM?' to which i replied 'no, i don't. but i feel pretty stupid, as the one coming to the store just to see YOU...'

and that was the last time i saw him or dan.

when i used to hang out at their apartment in brighton, they introduced me to some great music. i'd go over to their place to try to make out with chris and instead, he'd make me listen to The Donnas, The Cramps and watch music documentaries.

we'd go to shows. one night i went with them to a show at the Lizard Lounge to see a local band they loved called helms. i didn't need to know anything else – i trusted their taste. and oh my god i was NOT let down. just 3 people but the sound of a thousand mighty horses. an octopus of a drummer, a master of hammers on guitar and sparsest of vocals, and tina helms on bass. fucking brilliant. i bought the album and listened to it at full volume every night to go to sleep. it was like having the day beaten off my face with a sledgehammer made of gold.

over the years, i've seen them again but they play so infrequently and mostly only in boston. but they are coming to williamsburg this weekend and i am going with khalil and i can't wait. the drummer dan is also an incredible visual artist and i follow him on instagram. he plays the drums and literally sounds like 2 people playing at once. i'm psyched to buy a special print he's making for this show that will be a map of williamsburg and cover the blocks near the venue, which is near where i used to work, play and live.

do you remember going to shows talula? i don't... this will be my first in two years thanks to the 'rona...

hearts.
.a

she did not. she started leaving me little notes and drawings. she was (and is still) a very talented illustrator. it was what "drew" me to her in the end. she also loved puns... one day she brought in some drawing she had done the night before. they were plants and flowers and waves and cosmic entities, all in perfect radial symmetry – all by hand. i was so impressed. we were looking for material from Hudson artists for our own publishing project and coloring books were a big thing that year, so i proposed we make a coloring book of emily's black and white drawings. the project was agreed upon and emily produced a handful of new drawings – each better and more complicated than the last (i later found out this whole project was fueled by adderol, not inspiration...).

we asked a local printer to help us print (we were big into the "local" thing then – everyone was...) and asked him for 200 copies. i had done the math and in order for each of us to earn ANY money on this (and pay back our "investor"), that's how many we needed to sell. it was ridiculous. we had signed up for a craft fair and my "oh my god, we have to have enough" psychocotic italian brain that thinks of food 90% of the time, so we made cards and postcards and i even sold pencil cases that my mom made.

emily and i worked the table and she brought copies of her book – a 3D popup book about bees. the day before, the printer called and said he only had 100 of the coloring books ready. amy asked me what to do about it. "you decide..." she said. i said "we need the 200. i'm sure they'll sell and i don't want to come home with any..." essentially, she let me shoot myself in the foot. the first hundred were beautiful, but the rushed 50 or so were rushed and looked it. guess how many we came home with? about 125. by the time we got into this, coloring books had gone so mainstream, most people who came by had already bought cheaper ones they hadn't finished yet, so on they went. emily did sell some books, and my parents came from 2 hours away, and the craft fair was basically a failure except that emily and i fell in love that weekend. amy and i decided to part ways soon after and i didn't mind because it meant now i could ask emily out. and i did.

i don't want to go back, i just want that feeling back.

hearts.
.a

on the way back, we stopped at a merch stand and she bought me my very first concert tee. i ditched it years ago in a furious purge of clothes and how i regret that now. i remember swimming in it but wearing it anyway. my cousins had bought the tickets at their local record store, looney tunes in west babylon.

last time i was on long island, i got the chance to hang out with lisa and her family. her oldest son michael had just gotten a record player from his grandmother (my aunt) and he wanted to go to looney tunes to get some records with the money he's earning at his new job. i was happy to go, i hadn't been in years. the store was MUCH nicer now, twice the size and everything was 10 times the price. :) he's 18 and this record trend is just hitting him and now they are producing more and more current popular music on vinyl.

he loves lady gaga but they didn't have the record he wanted so he decided to save his money. i bought a sweatshirt. and then when i was in san diego with my brother andrew,  i bought michael ABBA Gold to celebrate his high school graduation.

michael loves to dance. he spends every holiday gathering trying to get us to play the 'just dance' video game. if he can't, it doesn't matter. he will dance anyway and yes, he will dance to the avatar that looks like an anime cheerleader while singing along to "come on barbie, let's go party (ah ah ahh yeah)" and he will be having a better time than anyone else there. i join him for a song or two when i can -- his love of the game is infectious -- but i get tired.

at his graduation party, there was no 'just dance.' michael's friends from school came and they went in the pool and goofed around just like regular ol' high school kids do.

it is so nice to see him growing. he's very comfortable with himself and came out to our family a few years ago. our family isn't known for its overwhelmingly tolerant and accepting manor, so i was impressed. i like to think that my marraige the year before helped make him more comfortable but now i see he didn't need that at all. i am the one with more to learn.

michael texted me the other day - it was a short clip of ABBA on his turntable and he thanked me again and told me this was his favorite. i'm thankful to pass music on in our family. that's what nancy and lisa did for ed and i. they were older than us by just enough that we thought everything they did was cool and we wanted to listen to what they listened to.

we were behind the trends because we were young and suburban and there was no internet yet. so our big-haired, hair-metal-loving cousins were the ones we followed. we listened to all the grunge before anyone else in our school and then laughed at them when they latched on to "jeremy" ... the worst song on that pearl jam record...

by sharing music with us, they connected with us beyond age and location. and that's what i'm hoping i can share with michael. even though we don't see each other often, this is a way to be together and share love. nancy and lisa and i have ebbed and flowed over the years in terms of staying in touch and hanging out. since you came out, talula, we've been in touch more and i really like it.

oh, and that stupid t-shirt is on eBay for $750 now. i'm not buying it...

hearts.
.a

i will know my savior, i will come to him, by the mark where the nails have been.

they were singing in harmony, but it was hard to pick out which was the melody. it was as if the melody was just a jugglers club they passed between each other. i was enamored from that moment on. they are so in sync. they blend so well when they need to, but otherwise they complement each other in such a way that neither is complete without the other. it seems magical but i think it’s just love. they share love and turn it into music.

amy and i used to do that – it's why we went to the festival. we had been playing and singing together practically since we met. as one of the only women any of us knew that played the guitar, i often accompanied anyone who want to sing a popular song instead of a show tune. amy loved Harry Chapin and 70s folk music. she also loved contemporary artists like Ani DiFranco and Dar Williams. our first “gig” was at a talent show on campus where we performed “When I Was a Boy” by Dar Williams. i had transferred away from that school and had to fly back to play it. i didn’t know it at the time, but i had fallen in love with her and was ready to do anything for her (she needed an accompanist…). she had a voice so crystal clear and beautiful, it filled any room with light (neighbors would ask “who’s singing” and insist she NOT stop).

that voice and her initial “i don’t give a fuck who you are…” attitude drew me in – she was a challenge – i had to prove that i was worthy of her time. so, when she graduated and agreed to move in with me in Boston, i was elated.  i had just gotten a job with a small software company that shared office space with the venerable folk venue Club Passim. they have an open mic every week and once amy moved to Boston, we went every week, even if we weren’t signing up to play. i like the unspoken social agreement that is open mic. no matter who you are or what you sound like, we all agree to listen to your 15 minutes on stage, so that we may have our own.

meanwhile, at home, amy and i were growing closer and eventually there was a kiss (awkward as it was) and eventually we spent every night in the same bed (how our third roommate didn’t catch on, i don’t know…) and then we got our own apartment but tried to say on the down-low and we decided that was too much, so we moved again and in with another friend. amy had told her parents about us by now, but i didn’t tell mine, and because she came to our house for holidays etc, it was awkward. my family now knows i had a relationship with a woman around this time of my life but they can’t seem to figure out who…

on the hill at Falcon Ridge that day, someone asked “if you could have a super power, what would it be?” my answer was spontaneous combustion. i wanted to be able to explode myself into millions of particles and not worry how/if they ever went back together. in the end, that is what happened with amy and i – i exploded it and it never went back together.

i just hung up the print i bought at the market at that festival – a bright gold sun with intricate detail. it is rising, as am i.

hearts.
.a

he was diagnosed 15 months ago and today, he died.

talula, i am sad for his family but i also feel gratitude and confusion. why him and not me? why am i so lucky? why didn't you kill me, but his tumor did? i am so grateful that my family doesn't have to go through what his family has to go through right now. i am so grateful i'm still here. still alive and still able to function with limited deficit. was it my world class care? was it my "favorable mutations"? was it my deceased relatives who seem to show up in times of need? or was it just dumb luck? the statistics probably support dumb luck, but i haven't seen any studies or data, so i can't be sure (i love statistics...). my radiologist once said "there are statistics, there are anecdotes and there are real life people with unique biology and environments. you never know." no one ever told me a life expectancy or would even venture a guess. i appreciate that and i'm just glad i got more than 15 months. bye, trevor.  

hearts.
.a

there's a nice photo of me, my mom, my two sisters-in-law-to-be and my grandma. it's one of the last photos of us. i love that we have that photo. emily hates that photo. it reminds her that she wasn't there. my mother has a copy in her living room - she doesn't display many photos, but this one is treasured. it represents her branch on the family tree, especially now that the other two are happily married to my brothers and have their own kids.

knowing emily hated the photo, it made me uncomfortable while we were there. i never knew when emily might break down into tears over something like that. she was unpredictable that way, but i knew odds were good something would elicit tears every visit we made to my parents house, so, i got used to hearing about it from her.

at the time, i was bothered by it too. not the photo, but what it reminded me of – that i let my mother completely control that situation when i was certain my grandmother wouldn't care that i was gay – she would just be happy i found someone that made me happy. i thought she deserved to know that. but mom insisted that grandma would be upset and so she didn't need to know. always the good daughter, i agreed not to invite emily – she was hurt, but was ok with it (what i didn't know at the time was that she hated family parties like these). i didn't like that my mother didn't give her own mother the benefit of the doubt to accept and love her granddaughter as she is, while here i was giving her total control over the whole situation.

and now that emily and i are no more, i actually am so grateful she did that and i can't get enough of that photo. i see all these other photos of my family with emily and all i can think of when i see them is the awful time we had behind the scenes that day. the fighting, the crying - like i said, always crying... and these are photos where supposedly we are just another happy couple in the mix. but it's all a lie. we were very rarely happy, especially in those moments – weddings, big parties, anything that made her 'uncomfortable' (which was a lot of things...new ones popped up everywhere).

a few weeks after my surgery, my sister-in-law set up their extra bedroom for emily and i. we had been staying at my parents but things there were stressful. emily and my dad had been quietly hating each other and arguing over my care. why emily thought she knew better than a nurse practitioner of over thirty years, i have no idea... but she did and given his pre-existing condition of "pissed off because she didn't show up the morning of my surgery" – they were a caustic combination.

in the bedroom my sister-in-law set up, she included several framed photos to remind us of the family who loves us. you know, for healing. and there it was - the thanksgiving photo... we had to put it away... because... it was not healing...

now that emily's gone, the photo is on my dresser.

i came home from work early this week (you were making me sick, talula...) and emily was at the house. it was the first time since she left that we were face to face. i had a wonderful thanksgiving with my family and before i left, i had made apple crisp and i gave the extras to emily. we had been being nice to each other, and i knew she'd be alone with her aunt. she'd been to thanksgiving with my family 4 or 5 times since the one she wasn't invited to and yes, usually cried about something. when i asked how her holiday was, she said "the best ever."

as soon as emily had moved out, i took down all of her drawings, that were hung literally everywhere. and then i went through my camera roll, picked out my favorites of the family without emily, printed them and have them framed all over to go along with that thanksgiving photo that i am so grateful for.

that's when he told me that we were old friends and he said these kinds of tumors start early and can grow for years without needing to be taken out unless they start causing symptoms.

you were giving me seizures, talula, so, i'm sorry, you crossed the line. it was YOU that went too far. i hate to place blame but come on... you are the tumor... not me.

it's funny how the threads of a situation can be tied into knots to justify our own actions and make it seem like we are the victim.

emily was good at that. she's managed to pin our divorce on my mother and my whole family. and i know she needs to be mad at someone so she doesn't have to be mad at herself, but she has no case to make that my mother is the villain. my mother stood up for emily when no one else would. and more importantly she stepped in for emily the morning of the surgery.

so let's talk "strike 2" in this game of divorce. another abandonment. the morning of the surgery, i spent most of it crying in the hotel bathroom. and that's how i know she was full of shit when the next morning, she cried to my mother that she was up in the bathroom sick all night. she said she thought it was from the popeye's chicken sandwich she had the night before (the same one that the rest of my family ate).

she didn't come to the hospital that morning. that broke my heart. again.

so we got in our cabs (my brothers and parents stayed the whole time) and drove the three blocks to the hospital. i cried the whole way there. i couldn't believe she would do this to me again... she made the whole situation about HER. somehow, even though i was the one with the life-threatening surgery looming over my head, she staked her claim on "victim" that day.

it was about 6 months into covid, so the hospital was strict about their only-one-visitor policy. earlier, we decided that my mom would escort me to the surgery while everyone else waited in the lobby. when i came out, emily would be my first visitor. so, literally, all she would have had to do is ride in a cab for three blocks, sit for 5 - 10 minutes, give me kiss and then she could have gone back to the hotel to sleep. instead, she showed up at the hospital lobby a few hours later and had no problem eating the lunch that my sister-in-law in san diego sent for everyone. even across the country, she was there for me that morning (in her way). but not my wife. she just couldn't do it. she just could not put my needs before her own.

and even then, after watching me cry the whole way from the hotel to the hospital, my mother defended her and told everyone else (they were all furious with her) to chill out. "emily is a problem for another day. today, we get you through this surgery." mom and i went from the lobby where everyone could wait to check in for the surgery. she was cool as a cucumber and comforting in her infinite-mom-energy way. i was glad i chose her to bring me in. while we waited there, my stomach started complaining. i hadn't eaten a chicken sandwich, but my stomach did not care about that now and i went into a private bathroom and literally shit my brains out. still crying, i came out and they were ready for me. we went in an elevator and they showed us to the prep area. a very kind nurse helped me get setup in my gown and fantastic non-slip tube socks. my mother again reassured me that all would be well and dealt with at the right time.

i vaguely remember anything after that, but i do remember another very kind nurse getting me onto the operating table and talking me through as i slipped into the anestheia's gentle embrace. the next thing i knew, i was a mummy in a hospital bed.

my wife said she was there when i came to, but i don't remember that. i spent another two days in the hospital hopped up on steroids and painkillers. i remember all the medical staff being suited up in full-body protective gear. i remember seeing my dad and my mom. i remember emily's eyes filled with tears as she looked deeply into my own. i couldn't tell what was behind her eyes, but there was something. was it fear? was it relief? or was it guilt?

hearts.
.a

it was on a Zoom conference with a neurosurgeon, one year ago today.

that was your first photo shoot. and here's one from the spring. you can see that you're not really here anymore. my neuro-oncologist says if you are there at all, you are beyond microscopic. the dark part is just residual swelling. my doctor shares the scans with me. the first time i asked him to see them, he was surprised, as if he is never asked that question. i was excited to see pictures of my brain, but i guess i'm in the minority (nerdz)...

speaking of nerdz, i remember in sixth grade, we had to do a research paper on something scientific. i chose MRIs which were pretty new at the time. my dad worked at a hospital at the time, so he took me in to see one in action. i heard it bang and clang from the control room but i never imagined i would be in one, hearing it from the inside.

this was my first MRI of what i'm sure will be many. i feel like a pro at it now. it's not that bad, if you don't think about how close your nose is to this thing. i have my breathing down and i try to string the banging and clanging into some kind of polyrythmic symphony.

talula, i wonder what you look like now in the tumor bank. did they freeze you? what kind of container are you in? is it crowded at the bank? do they serve drinks?

hearts.
.a