The Hound Dog Wedding was an unqualified success, by even this former bridal-magazine-editor’s standards. No detail was left to chance. The prized baby-blue Chevrolet pick up truck was washed and waxed and beribboned with tulle and silk roses. Backed into the front yard and surrounded by the white fence it was an ideal “ceremonial bed” for two hound dogs. The autumn air was crisp and the colors in the trees echoed the bride’s orange rose collar with its ecru tulle train. She was stunning, as you can see.

My son had every gun he inherited from his dad out and on display, from the BB gun to his Sweet 16 rifle to the 30.06, thanks to the goading of a male guest (yes Virginia, some doctors are gun nuts). The compound hunting bow slung across the back window of the truck lent a certain hunter/gatherer energy to the affair. A dear storyteller friend and founder of the ‘DoTell Storyfest” from Hendersonville (Karen-eve Bayne), arrived in costume with her boyfriend from Charlotte who (as it turns out) is also a gun nut (see photo below). Who knew?

The cake table was stuffed with homemade sweetness. The Bride’s Cake was vanilla-chocolate chip draped in a chocolate ganache. The Groom’s Cake was a caramel cake filled with dates & nuts and laced with a real caramel icing. The tiny wedding cake was, of course, mashed potatoes with creamed chicken flowers. The Bride’s Noodle Bar held a chicken and fettucine bake, linguine (with the amazing crock pot of red meat sauce the groom’s mother slaved over for hours that could have fed an army – See photo of Groom’s Mom Angela and daughter Lucy) and a cold pasta salad with a pickled garlic dressing and crisp vegetables. The potluck table was filled with goodies from the guests and decorated with a dozen cream soda bottles (consumed and carefully washed and saved by my son over the summer) tied with raffia ribbon and filled with yellow roses and field flowers from the dogs’ walks in the woods. Each lady went home with one.

The guests arranged their lawn chairs in front of the aforementioned ceremonial bed only to have the groom refuse to jump in. That was fine with Dot, because it gave her more room to pose. She pranced down the aisle and leapt into the bed and turned her gaze artfully this way and that, adjusting her stance to catch the slightest hint of breeze so her tulle would lift. Her knack for working a dress and finding a camera should land her on America’s next top model. Seriously, she’s that good. Plus, before she ate all her wedding gifts, she was skinny, too.

The vows were said, the ring bearer and maid of honor ran back down the aisle like the running buddies they are to where they knew the mashed potato cake was waiting. Dot and Ford took their time, sniffing the guests for gifts. After a few photos, they cut and swallowed their tiny cake and took their party to the back yard where they slurped bowls of noodles and chicken while the guests devoured the potluck and put the red meat sauce on EVERYTHING they could find, it was that good. After the feast, the wedding gifts were opened and divided between the two households. Ford gave Dot a flying squirrel and a squeaky duck as outward and visible signs of his love.

Like all weddings, it was over in a few short hours but we still have the pictures to prove it happened. That and the article in the local “happenings” magazine, Bold Life. It pays to know writers in high places…

Photos by Laura Gaines, Orchard St. Creative  828-545-0521

We got a frantic email from the animal rescue group in our area. Their adoption center was full and a young dog (perfectly healthy, cute, sweet) needed a foster home that afternoon or he’d be surrendered to the kill shelter. So my son washed out the crate we used when our amazing Jack Russell, Mr. Sniffy, was sick and dying. (Yes, the same Mr. Sniffy who married the beautiful Miss Isabella Threlkeld in a garden wedding at our home). That crate brought back a slew of memories. None of them good. Our rescue hound pinned her ears back and slunk to her bed, she remembered it, too.

We abandoned our planned excursion to the area swimming hole to conduct our mission, but forgot to change out of our swimsuits so we arrived looking like we belonged somewhere else. Our ride to the rescue center was filled, somewhat appropriately, with our snarling and snapping. But one look at what we were rescuing and all of that was behind us. Part Pomeranian, part Jack Russell Terrier (with the unfortunate name of “Dude”) this little dog was the stuff of a Disney movie: Smart, wily, sweet, scared and scarred. You could tell in a glance that he: 1. Totally understood the gravity of his situation and 2. Desperately wanted a second chance at life.

In less than 20 minutes “Dude” had a new name: Mr. Pip. Over the course of a weekend he had both of us wrapped around his finger. His sweet eyes were made for comedy, a little askew, like Marty Feldman’s. We even laughed when he peed the house because he did it in such an honest, “Oops, did I just do that?!!” kind of way. We laughed until one of us had to mop it up. By Monday we’d decided to adopt him. He’d won a new lease on life.

Which set me to thinking. Why don’t we do that? Why don’t we look at our “kill shelter moments” as opportunities instead of disasters? Why don’t we believe in our own possibility? I guarantee you God’s got stuff in place. (Of course, we’d have to stop sabotaging  all the good stuff that comes our way to see it.) Pip knows how God works better than we do! Thrust into a frightening situation without much warning or understanding, in the most desperate of moments that little dog trusted that the right thing was happening. He believed we would want him until we did.  Wow! How simple is that?!

Now let’s compare that to what I usually do: beg God to do what I want and then miss what I’m given. I wonder how much opportunity I miss out on because I’m looking in the other direction? Why can’t I be more like Pip and believe that help is coming and trust that my God is the God of second (and third and fourth) chances?As we snuggle in bed tonight, I believe I’ll take Pip’s advice: “If you’re not dead yet, keep trusting  and believing that good things will come your way.

Dot’s Dough – “Cake don’t change the bad things, honey, just makes them taste better.”

My Godmother, Dot Lefler, was a simple woman. Sturdy, honest—homespun as the day is long. She’d owned one store-bought dress her whole life, and that was a gift from her daughter who got educated and moved to the big city and married a pickle magnate. (Who knew there was such a thing? Rich people amaze me. Not because they’re rich but why.) She offered to buy her mother more but, “I reckon one of these would be enough.”

Dot lived in what we all called a “company house.” 900 square feet of two-story simplicity owned by the lumber and furniture company my Godfather, Russ, worked for. Linoleum floors, a covered front “stoop,” a living room with a 10-gallon aquarium and two hyper-active little neon fish, a wood stove for heat and a tiny kitchen with a two-burner stove and just enough counter space to hold her bright red Kitchen-Aid mixer.  The mixer was a very coveted item, all the women in Rainelle West Virginia knew she had it (Actually, all the real cooks in the state knew she owned it…). She’d won it, fair and square, at the state fair the year the flour company sponsored the cake-baking contest. She made the best pound cake in the state and while everyone already knew that, the cake contest made it official. Now, in case you don’t know what a REAL pound cake is (not the ones you buy at the grocery filled with trans- fat and artificial flavors and coloring and stuff you can’t pronounce) here’s her secret recipe:

1 pound of butter

1 dozen eggs

vanilla

a tad of lemon zest

2 cups, or thereabouts, of sugar

1 t leavening on hand

twice-sifted flour

Now, you’ll notice that the amounts of a few ingredients aren’t specified. That’s because it’s a secret recipe. Actually, that’s not exactly true. The “secret” behind any great cook is their ability to know, to sense, what’s enough. And Dot had made enough cakes to “know” when enough was enough.

She was a daughter of the Great Depression. Waste not—want not. And since the company Russ worked for wasn’t known for its generosity, there wasn’t much in her life that could be wasted. But Dot was a resourceful woman. She kept chickens, so she always had eggs. She saved them up for Saturday, so she’d have a dozen to bake a cake for Sunday lunch. She saved for the butter, too, because Russ sure loved a good pound cake and she sure loved that man. The pound cake was her way of saying it. That and the way she stroked the hump on his back at night, the one that had come up from all his years of leaning over a lathe in the factory, making spindles for cherry-wood beds (like the one I got for my 16^th birthday and still sleep in). By the time I knew them, it was like the hump was there for her to hold onto, it fit her hand so perfectly.

Dot was a kind, generous woman. Out of her nothing, she gave a lot and I learned a lot from that. I asked my mother once why she had asked Dot to be my Godmother, instead of the more elegant women who formed most of her social circle. “Because you’ll learn things from her you can’t learn anywhere else,” she answered.

Whenever there was a tragedy in that tiny town (someone was “laid down” from an accident in the mill, there was a death or a stillborn or a woman got beat up on Friday from the liquor of payday) a pound cake appeared. It was Dot’s way of loving people. She was a woman of few words, and since words rarely fix things anyway, she gave people cakes instead of advice. Folks loved her for that.

Sometimes when I was visiting, such a tragedy had happened. She’d let me feed the two little fish in the 10-gallon aquarium and then I’d perch on the stool in the kitchen and watch her make the pound cake. While I licked the spoon, she’d pop the cake in the oven and say, “Cake don’t change the bad things, honey, just makes them taste better.” And looking back on that now, mother was right. I learned some things from Dot I wouldn’t have learned anywhere else.

It’s been almost a full-time job just to thaw out this week. As record cold temperatures were blown about by a vicious wind, I hunkered down in old sweatshirts and the leg warmers I wore in rehearsals for “The King and I.” (I was Tuptim if you were wondering and even if you weren’t, now you know.)

As the mercury dropped and dropped and dropped some more, I kept the birdfeeders full and slogged through my writing contracts as best I could. I say, “as best I could,” because there is something about big weather events that changes my perspective on everything. And I do mean everything.

I went from thinking, “Wow, my water bill is high this month,” to, “Wow, 7 degrees? Seriously? How do I keep my pipes from freezing? I should Google that. Wait! What’s the wind blowing around out there? Is that my cable line? Holy cow! Do I have internet!!? Where‘s that draft coming from? Did I remember to get batteries for the flashlight? Oh, you mean the flashlight you left at the fire pit at WildAcres? You idiot! How are you going to see when the power goes off?” You go from tossing some birdseed around to worrying about the survival of the species.

Perspective is everything. Big weather changes my perspective and it’s frightening to contemplate how frozen I am. Mentally and emotionally, I stay pretty frozen all the time. I don’t like to admit that, but it’s true. Big weather keeps me honest about that. It holds my frightened face in the mirror and makes me look at how fragile and helpless I really am.

I don’t know about you, but I was brought up to give myself extra pride points for independence. Whatever it is, I can handle it. Whatever it is, I can do it. Except when I can’t. Big weather systems spin my perspectives on personal security like a kaleidoscope. Old: Larder empty? Hop in the car and go to the store. New: Black ice. I can’t.  Old: I am perfectly safe and warm in my little house, I am perfectly safe and warm… New: It’s 7 degrees and the heater is puffing like it’s having a seizure. Note to self:  Ice has formed on the windowpanes and the dog is refusing to go out to pee. Oh my God! Is that a puddle? Did I pay my gas bill this month?

As the wind whipped everything that moved, I ate soup and watched the PBS News Hour. But try as I might to feel warm and fuzzy, the fury of the wind lashed away at my personal safety margins and suddenly I could feel the cold in the bones of the starving refugees in Syria and see the fear in their eyes. How did I miss it the previous 30 nights? I’d heard the story before but my perspective on what cold was had changed. We suddenly had common ground.  I understood their story and it was not a bedtime story (well, unless your parents read you the Brothers Grimm like my grandmother did). It was the real kind of story where you’re not in charge and really bad stuff happens and people die and all you can do is cry.

The purple flag flying in front of the Baptist church meant the shelter was open. But I wondered if the homeless who wander the interstate between Asheville and Black Mountain were huddled inside, like the birds that could no longer bear the branches and were pressed together under the eaves of the attic, clinging to each other’s warmth for life, sparrow next to starling. When I dared to risk the cold for a walk (ONLY because the dog refused to do the other thing without one), I passed a leaf held prisoner in a puddle and found it a chilling reminder of how quickly life can change.

So, here’s the punch line: Unless big stuff shifts my perspective, I quickly return to this convenient little delusion that I’m in control of my life and I get all safe and snuggled up in there… But I’m not. I’m not in charge of the big stuff (like death, war and the weather). I’m not even on the committee.

It’s so easy to numb out and dumb down. I am SO good at ignoring what’s happening right in front of me. And no, I don’t like the “big weather” events of life but I AM begrudgingly grateful for them.  They alone seem to have what it takes to shake me loose from my frozen beliefs, to force me to walk the dog in the cold and be grateful that I have heat.  Which reminds me. I need to add this to my list of “Things to Ask God”: Are the “big things” in life there to keep us from pretending or to make us rely more on our faith in you?

New Year’s Eve was SO much fun. It was enlightening, too.

I spent it with my son at the New Year’s Eve Old Farmer’s Ball. Twinkle lights and contra dance, live music and food. No drunks (we knock those off the dance floor). It was a cold evening, perfect for a winter’s celebration, but not so cold that you had trouble getting your “groove on.”

Contra dancing is a new love of ours. We go every week. It’s how my son spells himself from the rigors of his studies at the university and it’s something we can still do together (things we can do together are getting harder to find…). So we did not hesitate when we saw the flyer for the New Year’s Eve Ball, I forked our money over on the spot. All that fun for $20 a head? A no-brainer.

The theme was “An Evening in Paris.” Lovely idea. They had the exposed beams of the historic college gym swathed in enough tulle to outfit a hundred brides and rows of twinkle lights formed the Eiffel Tower behind the band. The caller was a spry young man who occasionally picked up a trombone, an odd but delightful addition to the fiddles and guitars. We twirled, we waved, we joined hands-4. By the end of the night, most of the two hundred plus of us had danced with the other two hundred. Part of the magic that is contra.

But it was in the embraces of the night that I found an epiphany for the New Year.  My son and I dread New Years. It’s a dark anniversary for us. My husband (his dad) had his first massive stroke on New Years. Out of the blue – sort of. There’s a mystical awareness that comes up in the space that surrounds that time. And it can get ugly when we wander into each other’s emotional “space.” The contra took that pain and swirled it in the air, filled our dark place with twinkle lights and music, thank you God… and yet… as man after man embraced me in the dance, my body felt strangely weepy. In between the spins and the turns an odd awareness dawned: no one had held me.

No one held me the night he stroked or all those days when he was in the ICU. Not the first time or the second time. God knows he couldn’t hold me anymore, it was like he didn’t remember how, and he couldn’t kiss me either, but that’s another story. No one held me when they said he would need to come home for rehab after the first one and I cried and said I didn’t know how–didn’t know if I could–do it. (I made damn sure our son didn’t have to. No 15-year old boy should have to do that.)  I held our son, as much as he would let me.

No one held me when it happened again, the night of my birthday, 10 months later. No one held me when we disconnected him from life support. No one held me when he died or when we lowered his urn into the ground, no one embraced me at the funeral. No one had touched my pain with the strength of their own body.

But they held me at the New Year’s Ball! In the arms of the contra–two hundred strong–they held me away from my darkness and released me into the dance. As one man after the other (and a few women, too, this is Asheville after all) embraced me and held me tight and spun me to another, I found a healing I did not even know I needed. When I realized what the dance had given me, I wept.

I wept for the longing of my own body for that which only another human being can give. The hug. The simple gesture of “I get it and I’m sorry” that we sometimes hesitate to share.  I wept for the loneliness of my journey and the aching of the weight that was thrown onto my shoulders. So many  decisions, so many details, so many traumatic moments, so many unending duties and the seeing of our son through. I wept remembering that I drove myself to the hospital both times and drove myself home the day he died. (While an idiot nephew texted my son that his dad was dead. A crime I’ve been condemned for and probably always will be, “Why didn’t you follow the band bus into the middle of God-only-knows-where and tell me yourself, Mom?!!! I found out my dad was dead from a text!” I had begged the family to wait to tell their kids until I had told ours. A small courtesy. If murder were legal…)

I can’t give those times back to myself, it was what it was and it did what it did to all three of us. But I will be held in the loving arms of the dance itself as often as I can and find in it my healing.

May you find that which you need, too. Let me know if I can help! Happy New Year!
Old Farmer’s Ball New Year’s Contra Dance

It’s been two years since the unthinkable happened and my husband died. Part of we wants to forget that the unthinkable ever happened and get on with being a single person and the other part of me can’t forget and sometimes almost drowns.

I barely remember the first anniversary. I was consumed with caring for our son (who fasted for the 9 days his Dad was in a coma to honor his death) and supporting him through his senior year with the biggest band competition of the year, his Eagle project, and 3 AP tests — all falling on the weekend of his Dad’s death anniversary. No wonder I barely remember it.

So, with my son away in college and the house empty, this anniversary was a double whammy: no son, no husband. Thank God I painted the living room red. I desperately needed the energy. I feel like a helium balloon on its last legs. The breath is sucked out of me. I’ve run the race, I’ve passed the test, I’ve done for others, still pledged to the church, gotten healthier, exercised daily, lost 25 pounds (most of it in my tits), and tried to keep winning against death.

But death steals from you in ways that are hard to explain until it’s happened to you. On the outside, you look the same. You may even look better. (People tell me I look great, i.e., wow, you’re not dead!) But on the inside, your valves are having a hard time staying open. Your shoulder-blades ache because they hold the cave of your heart and it’s dark in that cave. Your heart is sore. Your heart is like a busted up knee from childhood, it has to shed layer after layer of scabs until finally, you can barely see the scar. Memories come in waves and crash against your mind, like a storm-surge dragging sand from the shore. You never know when they’re coming and there’s less of you left when they leave.

Memories form us, identify us, and ground us in life.  They are us. And when the people in your memories are gone there is an unspeakable loneliness that sits down at the table with you. It becomes a strange companion. A companion you never invited in. You try to chase it away with dinners out with friends or a drink at the local brewpub or a movie or a red living room. You ask it to leave and it snuggles with you under the covers. You run away from it, it shows up on the next corner. You scream at it…it echoes back but says nothing.

I made a big fire when I came home alone. Bought nine candles for the nine days and lit them all and sat with them in the darkness. I talked with him there about things we’d shared. About the day we walked hand-in-hand in the park at the end of autumn and my belly was big with our baby and I made fun of a bumblebee that couldn’t get off the ground and he said, “Baby, you’re a bumble-bee, too!” We doubled over in laughter about that. It was true. I reminded him how people thought we were illicit lovers because we were in our thirties spooning at a restaurant. We used to laugh when people would shoot us dirty looks and then flash our wedding rings at them. I talked about knowing our magazine had made it when the South’s Grand Hotel owed us money and we ate the lavish Sunday buffets every week and had a personal trainer at their health club and gave Peabody Hotel gift certificates to all our employees for Christmas that year. And then I extinguished the candles and sat in the darkness with the loneliness because that’s what is real.

“They” say that eventually time erodes the loneliness. I know being proactive has helped.  Of course “helped” is not the same as “fixed.” Having been plunged to the bottom of the pool and held under water now three times (Mom, Dad, Husband) I’ve gotten pretty good at taking a deep breath before I get pulled back under. I’m better at struggling to the surface to breathe, too. And, I must say, it’s getting harder to hold me down there. I am slippery against the grip of the dark water now so maybe it is getting better.

And, I was there to help our son break his nine-day fast again this year. On the anniversary of his Dad’s release from the body that no longer served him, he ate a dozen different donuts and a steak at the Texas Road House, my pleas for soup were brushed aside. This college man knows what’s best for him. His Dad lives on – he was stubborn about stuff, too. We’re grown-ups together now. Well, almost. When we got back to the dorm he leaned in for a hug against my breast and as his body sank into his place of comfort he dropped a tear. I caught it from his cheek as he pulled himself away. As he walked off, back into his new life, I laid it against my heart and held its tenderness there. The salty water speaks to that which is hard to say.

We are fragile creatures, we human “beings.” Sometimes true courage lies in acknowledging that. Then and only then can we gather what strength we have and struggle back up to the surface to breathe. Some days breathing is all we can do. And I’ve decided that on those days, it’s enough.

The painter said “That’s red alright! Did you know it was going to be this red?!!”

Well I did it. I painted my living room a burnt pumpkin red this week.

But I have to tell you, when I pried open the lid and looked at that Navaho Red I thought I’d lost my mind. It looked like a cross between catsup splashed on the side of a Happy Meal and a Red Cross blood-sorting center. The color was so saturated with pigment it screamed “freedom!” and “sexy!” and “crazy!” It was that last word that caught in my throat.

I looked at the staid cream wall. It was so traditional and non-committal in its not really white, not really brown kind of way. My sister, my mother and my mother-in-law all thought my cream living room was a sign that I had matured. What in the @#$& was I thinking? Cream is safe. Red is not safe.

My critical self went into hyper-drive. “You’re a widow! You’re alone now! Your son’s not even here to protect you anymore, remember? And you’re going to paint your living room red? Really?!” My mother rose from the grave and joined in. “What kind of widow paints her living room red? What will people think? Did I raise you like this? You might as well put a sign in the front yard.”

Then the painter arrived to help. “Wow!” he said, his jaw dropping as he peered into the first gallon. “That’s red, that’s really red. Did you know it was going to be that red?! I’ll have to cover this whole room in tarps because I mean, well, you can see it for yourself there, that’s red!” As he unfolded tarp after tarp he kept whistling softly and whispering, “That’s red, that’s red, oh yeah, that’s really red.”

I was ready to cry. (Oh, that’s not really what was happening!) What was really happening was I was getting ready to scream! And THAT scared me.

This guttural, throaty, primordial scream was making its way up my esophagus from deep inside my bowels. I had met it once before in the parking garage at the hospital after I’d followed the ambulance there when he had his second stroke and I knew he probably wouldn’t survive it. But, I didn’t scream because of that. I screamed because somehow I’d lost my cell phone and couldn’t call the high school to reach our son. I’d looked everywhere and couldn’t find it. I was panic-stricken. I didn’t want to make the second-hardest call of my life in public. I needed to make that call in my own car, in private, and I couldn’t find my *#&@ phone. I didn’t mean to scream. It just happened. But, the thing was, it kept happening, until I almost passed out. And, it didn’t sound like me. I might as well have been naked and swinging on a vine in the parking garage. The security guard came over, asked for my number (I think he’d met screaming women in the garage before, probably naked ones, too, actually) and my phone started ringing in the trunk.

The memory of that day was coming as quickly as the scream itself so I ran to the kitchen and clamped a towel over my mouth. But this time was different. I was in control this time and I stopped my primordial scream in its tracks. “Get a grip girlfriend! No one is dying! Dang! DANG! You’re painting the living room RED because you LOVE RED, remember?” And then I collapsed in laughter. (Well, sort of. I did that thing you do when you save yourself from screaming or crying that sort of resembles laughter.)

After throwing back a stiff swig of cappuccino, I walked back in that living room, picked up the roller, swirled its virgin white fluff into that deep red pigment and spelled out my initials, floor to ceiling, on the wall. The minute that gorgeous red “DM” starred back at me, I felt an energy surge I hadn’t felt in years. (And no, it wasn’t a hot flash. I don’t have that many hormones left.)

My Navaho Red wall walked all over that tired, mousy cream. My eyes danced–my heart danced—my body danced! I slid my old Anita Baker “Look of Love” CD into the stereo and cranked her up. Now that woman can sing… and this woman is going to sit by the fire tonight, enveloped by her own beauty and energy, thanks to a couple of Navaho Red paint cans.

I’m now officially a Trophy Mother. A few months ago, after HS graduation, I was a cruise goddess when I took him to the Caribbean (I liked being a goddess, that worked for me.). But, at the university’s “Parents’ Weekend,” one of those weird pluralities that is no longer a plural in my life, I was put in my place: I am a Trophy Mother.

Now I know how Trophy Wives must feel!

As a Trophy Mother, you do not have a name of your own and it is not necessary to introduce you to anyone. It is enough for you to stand by your kid and smile at everyone you haven’t met. A Trophy Mother is not unlike the discarded childhood items on the top shelf: the stained T-ball trophy, the picture books and the cheap plastic award topped by a music note with an imitation brass plate and a misspelled name.

There was no cheerful, “Hi, Mom!” because the college rules say Trophy Mothers do not require greetings from their offspring, just an official university name tag that says “Parent of…” So the conversation was more like, “When did you get here? Can you take me to the mall later? Hey Mike, this is my Mom.” And then he went back to conversations with friends or posting on Facebook or sharing videos with kids I didn’t know (because I hadn’t been introduced to them). It was just like when he finger-painted in kindergarten with other kids, all bent over and absorbed in the pretty colors, only now they were on their iPads.  We didn’t even eat a meal alone, there were always other kids invited to join us. I didn’t get introduced to them, either. They were there to chaperone me. (Okay, that was a little awkward for me, being chaperoned with my own son.) I was simply an accessory. A badge-wearing accessory to a college-man’s life.

Understandably, I am still processing the lessons of the weekend, but I think my main reason for being there was to prove that he wasn’t spawn of some sort–that he had human DNA and that said DNA unit would pay $35 to be ignored and then take him to the mall.

Much as I tried not to be annoyed, to assure myself that this, too, was just a phase, a learning experience, a necessary part of separating the rocket ship from the parental booster unit, I still got all up in my stuff and bought two gallons of Navaho Red paint on the way home.

Now, I’ve been considering painting my living room a jazzy color for almost a year, but hesitated because I wasn’t sure how he would feel about a burnt-pumpkin red living room. Now, thanks to the “parents’ weekend,” my hesitation has vanished. Grief always has an upside.

I can’t wait to pour that juicy red paint into a roller tray and slap some new color on my life. My motherly self is now thoroughly reassured that my son is just fine and dandy and well taken care of and being fed (in all senses of that word) at college. My not-really-sure-who-I-am-now-that-I’m-not-a-mom-or-wife-or-daughter self is looking forward to lounging in her red living room by a blazing fire and pondering her future with a nice glass of red wine and a good magazine.

I’m starting to get pretty darned determined about finding my own post-motherhood and post-widowhood life and, after this weekend, I think I’ll paint it bright red!

I am alone.

I am alone in the kitchen, alone in the living room, alone in the bathroom (this is actually a good thing). For the first time in 25 years I am living alone and I am absolutely, completely overwhelmed by it. I looked at myself in the mirror today and wondered where those twenty-five years went. I scared myself so badly I almost couldn’t leave the bathroom to get dressed. I can see what the 25 years did to me, just not what I did to the 25 years, you know?

Now as if this were not enough, I have become accident-prone. On the way out of the university dorm parking lot, driving through tears, I almost hit a police car, which jerked me back into consciousness! But I’d no sooner turned onto the next street, and regained what I thought was my composure, than I almost sideswiped a city bus! I cursed myself out. “Geese Donna Marie, how do you not notice a moving object the size of a bus?” I began to hear an imaginary conversation with the insurance adjustor. “So, tell me Ms. Todd, were there extenuating circumstances on the day of your accident? Was it raining, snowing or foggy?” (I forgot to tell you I gave the adjuster the voice of my middle-school gym teacher, Mr. Norman.) “No sir, but I was crying because my son just left for college. Does that count?” Like my gym teacher, he did not have a sense of humor of which he was aware. “No, Ms. Todd, it does not count. I’m afraid this is going to raise your rates substantially unless you want to take advantage of our new, $25,000 deductible.”

But, in my defense, I haven’t been sleeping well. My first night alone, I did not sleep a wink. (Actually, I was so afraid of being alone that I didn’t sleep for about a week before he left, either.) I can’t tell you how much I appreciated our 60-pound rescue boxer jumping onto the bed at around midnight that first night. She was suffering from separation anxiety, too. So much so that she was still hovering around my legs the next morning…

Which is how I managed to 1)break my little toe and 2)tear a ligament in my foot (see attached photo) while simply trying to sit down in my armchair to drink coffee and read the $#@& newspaper. (I really shouldn’t say that about our local paper, because for a small-town newspaper, it’s quite fine. It has the weekly police report, school honor rolls and bridge scores, not necessarily in that order.) Anyway, I was embarrassed when I had to call my neighbor for help because I couldn’t put enough weight on my foot to get a second cup of coffee. (Hey, first things first.) It was kind of like the imaginary insurance adjustor conversation…except that this time it was real.

“How did you do that?!!” (Insert plausible explanation here.) “Does it hurt?” (Do not hit her, she’s a nice woman.) “Do you want to go to the doctor?” (No, I just wanted you to come and see what a dumb ass I am so you would tell all the neighbors and the newspaper would do a write-up.)

I’ll let you know how things are in a bit. For the next few days, I think it’s simply safer if I hide under the covers.