After I drop my daughter Miriam off at school, there’s a shortcut I like to take back home. Not only do I avoid the traffic light, but this ordinary residential street always seems to have “gifts” just waiting at the curb. Amateur paintings of elephants and flowers, ceramic vases, full bottles of kid’s bubbles. I found a nice wooden chair, window box planters, a spice rack, and a suitcase with 22 assorted books inside. Yes, I counted them. I’m always looking for deeper meaning or a message in everything. I’ve always been like that. But after my son Noah died, it became more out of desperation than a philosophical viewpoint.

I found this doll crib two days ago. I had to swing back around at the end of the street. A beautiful shade of pink stood out amongst the autumn colors of the street. The crib was almost cartoonish in color. It was in near perfect condition except for one part of the base. A quick fix with my hammer and glue gun. The paint was still perfect. It was very clean. And the painted phrase of  “Once Upon A Time” spoke directly to my heart.

I picked up the crib and put it into the backseat. Miriam has started showing interest in baby dolls recently. She sings them to sleep on the living room floor and covers them with potholders, blankets, and wash cloths. I was so excited to surprise her with this! The Giving Street, as I call it, gave yet again!

I wondered about the little girl this crib belonged to first.

Did she play with it a lot? Which dollies slept in it? Maybe it was filled with dinosaurs or Barbie’s instead?

If only all these curbside finds came with a storybook of their inanimate life…

We gave most of Noah’s belongings to a place called The Center for Great Expectations.

“A safe place, a safe presence and a safe path” for
homeless, pregnant or parenting, adult women and adolescents,
and their children to overcome, and break, the destructive generational cycle of  trauma, abuse, homelessness and addiction.

Hal handled everything that pertained to Noah’s stuff. It was all in a storage unit for at least two years. We just couldn’t part with it. We could barely stand to think about it. I couldn’t handle seeing it and Hal sheltered me from ever having to. He would go and pay the monthly rent. It was so odd. Paying to keep the stuff of a life that had ended.  His stuff was. He wasn’t. Stuff alive. Noah dead. Crazy making thoughts.

Hal made a few trips to the Center with carloads of Noah’s stuff. Clothes, toys, furniture, even unused diapers. I had just bought two big boxes the week of the accident. He spaced out the deliveries by a few weeks. He needed that time to recover from the blow to the chest that it inevitably was every time he set foot in that storage unit. He was always visibly shaken anytime he came home from working in that cubicle of memories. But it was more important to him that I would never have to.

One day, Hal came home from a trip to the Center with a conflicted smile. For the first time, he saw a child playing with some of Noah’s toys. This little retro looking rocket car that I had bought at a garage sale. We were so happy the toys were being played with. And so sad. So extremely sad. Stuff here. Noah not.

Sister Madeline was our contact at the Center. She was, no pun intended, a saint. So gentle with us in this unbearable circumstance. She recognized the fine line of us saying goodbye to Noah’s things and the joy they would bring the mothers and kids at the Center.

I was pregnant with Miriam at the time of our donations. I remember always calling to let Sister Madeline know when Hal was on the way so she could get some help with all the stuff. She always had beautiful nun-like blessings and wisdom to say to me on the telephone. We never met. I promised her a picture of Miriam when she was born.

There is much deeper meaning to the slogan of Reduce-Reuse-Recycle. Not just materials. Not just cardboard and metal and wood and plastic and cotton. Not just hand me downs. Not just outgrown toys and jackets.

Dreams and goals and disappointments and achievements cycle through our lives. From our little broken family to the ladies working hard to build a life for themselves at the Center. The common denominator being Noah’s rocketship  ride-on toy or this pink doll crib left at the curb for me to find. Our stuff, as unimportant as it all is in the end, is actually very important.

We kept Noah’s JELLO Museum t-shirt for Miriam. She likes to wear it. Seeing it instantly brings me back to the trip home from from visiting my best friend, Stacy, in Buffalo. We stopped at this little museum in Leroy NY. It was the birthplace of JELLO. He had made a stinky poop in the play kitchen area with all the faux JELLO boxes stacked up and I changed his diaper outside in the grass. This shirt was my link to that moment in time. Something tangible. And that memory was now passed on through Noah’s little sister we never in a million years dreamed we would have.

Tomorrow, I’ll drive down The Giving Street again. I don’t think I’ll stop even if I see something incredible. I think The Giving Street has given me enough right now.

 

We have a Halloween costume contest at work every year. Thousands of monochromatic, uniformed employees suddenly come to life for a few days. We also get a $25 bonus for every day we dress up. We toss around extremely clever, mostly implausible, and very inappropriate ideas all year round. The brainstorming is brilliant. I enjoy that part the most.

My first Halloween was four months after Noah died. The difficulty of Halloween after losing Noah snuck up on me. Skeletons, gravestones, and those horrible Victorian looking zombie babies. In the early days it was a sucker punch. My mind would go places I didn’t want it to go. I’d wonder what Noah looked like now.

I shoved all of those thoughts to the side and went all out for my first costume at work. I dressed as a drunken 1950’s housewife. I brought in my retro styled Cuisinart blender, my mother’s vintage Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks, and my grandmother’s crocheted poodle bottle cover. I made cardboard curtains and a window backdrop for the tasting bar where I would be most of the day. I wore a pretty A-line floral dress with a green frilly apron. My cat eye glasses, my giant drop pearl earrings. It really wasn’t too much of a departure of what I dressed like normally. I just put it all together into a theme. The theme of appearing all cheery and perfect on the outside but with a secret on the inside. My character’s secret was alcoholism. My secret was a broken heart.

So every year we repeated this cycle. The second year, I had a theme too. I was Mrs. Lovett from Sweeney Todd. I turned my tasting bar into a Meat Pie Shoppe  with powdered donuts oozing raspberry jelly blood. I really just wanted to wear a bustier and do my hair and makeup like Helena Bonham Carter. It was fun but not many got the joke.

Then my costumes got less creative. I just wasn’t feeling it. I guess the desire to be involved in a typically children’s holiday lessened as some emotional numbness started to wear off. It’s amazing really. The numbness lasts for so long. Years. The brain protects while the body just plays along.

Plus there was this girl at work who won three years in a row with stupid store bought costumes. The voter fraud was disheartening. The fun started revolving around what she would be and how she was going to win anyway for barely even trying. We even thought about just dressing up like her.

This year I went back to the theme costume. Mainly for my own amusement. This year I dressed as someone I spend a lot of time with lately. Her name is “My Inner Child” and she’s pretty cool.

Hal got Sister Puppet when Noah was little. We weren’t planning on having another child so we introduced Noah to his “Sister”, a foam doll dressed in a yellow child’s dress with real kid’s sneakers. Her eyelashes have fallen off and her hair ribbons have been replaced over the last six years. But we have a lot of fun with her. Miriam calls her “Sister” and we talk about all sorts of silly things through her. She was one of the few toys that we kept of Noah’s.

So at the very last minute, my work costume came together. I dug through outgrown clothes of Miriam’s and still-fitting clothes of mine until I found a match. Purple sweat jackets and jeans. Sister wore eyeglasses from 3 prescriptions ago and we wore matching barrettes. I pinned an extra ERICA nametag on her and off we went to work.

My Inner Child never thought she would work full-time in a liquor store. She never dreamed she would lose a child. I don’t think she spent much time thinking about the future. She lived in the present like all kids. She played Barbie’s and GI Joe’s in the dirt between houses with her brother and next door neighbor, Jeffrey. She told her mother she thought being a taxi driver sounded like a fun job because you’d get to meet so many different types of people.

“Like never ending stories that just kept coming from the backseat,” Little Me said.

And my Inner Child remembers the way her mother looked at her in that moment. It made her feel like she could do anything. Like she was special and would not lead an ordinary life. And then she went back to reading the Encyclopedia Britannica volumes on the shelf in the 1970’s rec room and learning about each country her Madame Alexander Dolls of the World came from. She would interview them about their traditions and compliment their outfits and hairstyles. She loved to play alone.

So my Inner Child and I trick-or-treated in town today with Hal and Miriam. I held onto Sister Puppet like a security blanket, not even realizing that other little kids were looking at her and waiting for her to speak. To put on a show. So I stuck my hand inside her limp foam body and started to have some fun. She stuck her face in a little boy’s bag of candy as he giggled. She shook her head to make her pigtails flap back and forth. She yelled “Happy Halloween!” with her big pink felt tongue.

Tomorrow the Sister Puppet will come to work again with me. We will be dressed alike. I’ll sit her on the bar or by the cash register, putting a 1.75 liter bottle of Grey Goose up her butt to keep her upright. My “Inner Child” has most certainly kept her sense of humor.

Happy Halloween. It’s fun to be my Inner Child. She has no idea how good she has it.

 

 

 

Imposter. That word along with phony, fake, and fraudulent keeps popping into my head. While I talk, while I walk. Bullshitter. Joke. I’m so aware of myself lately. Like watching myself happen.

Y’know those days of insecurity and doing it all wrong while everyone thinks you’re doing it right? And not just doing it right, but doing it great! Some days I believe them too! Shit, I am doing it great! Because I am still doing it. I’m still getting up everyday even though I’m always so tired. I’m still going to work at the job I’ve fallen out of love with.

But when do we lose that excitement and determination  of making our lives what we want them to be? Too many obstacles on the course? Too many times we fell down when we seemed to be strolling along just fine?

When I think about the weeks right before and right after Noah died, I hear a record needle scratch loudly in my head. Old school 78rpm vinyl. Like suddenly stopping that ride on the playground while it’s spinning and then forcing it to spin in the other direction. Redirect. It’s hard as hell.

What version of me is this? This version is feeling panic. I want it all to fall into place and stay in place. But it doesn’t work like that, does it? Nope. So reinvent. Spin it in the other direction, even though the resistance is strong. TRYING is where the excitement comes from.

As my friend, also named Erica, would say …”Fake it ’til you make it!” and then she’d add in some filthy curse words and we’d LOL via text and go about our days.

 

 

Chicken nuggets. No vegetable side. Just chicken nuggets. I have tried throughout my daughter Miriam’s 3 years of life to give her vegetables and in the early days, it was going okay. Not great. But okay. Occasionally there would be some smiles about peas or cauliflower. We even had about a week of joy involving broccoli. But gradually it all started going downhill. We were once again reduced to chicken nuggets.

Preschool lunches are chicken nuggets or macaroni and cheese in her blue thermos. She likes her food cold or room temperature. Warm is sometimes negotiable. I have tried sending the side of carrots or peas or broccoli only for it to come back home in her Peppa Pig lunchbox. No, she doesn’t want cheese sauce on any vegetables. Thanks for asking, though. 😉

So last night we sat on the couch together watching her new obsession “A Nightmare Before Christmas” and discussed Jack and Sally and Oogie Boogie and what she wants to be for Halloween in her ever changing list. She had a bowl of cut up chicken nuggets and I had a giant bowl of carrots. Just carrots. a little salt and a little butter. But a lot of carrots.

“Hey, look what Mommy is eating!”

“OOh carrots!” she said.

“Want one?” I asked as nonchalantly as possible. I held it out on my fork with a sweet innocent “mommy is about to outsmart you” smile.

“Nope.” Just a simple self-satisfied nope. Ok, Miriam. I see how it is.

I ate that whole damn bowl of carrots. I totally enjoyed them too. I will try again. But I will not lose sleep over it. She will eat vegetables eventually. She will most likely love them one day. She loves to talk about them and identify them. She will take that relationship one step further soon.

*LATE BREAKING NEWS! In our late night trip to supermarket last night (she insisted on coming with me for a cat food emergency) Miriam picked out a new pet of sorts. She fell in love with an orange pepper. We bought it. She held it in the car. She refused my offers of slicing it up for her. Instead she held it on the couch like a teddy bear and licked it. Hal and I just smiled.

I get a day like this once a week.  I get one day that Miriam is in school, Hal is at work, and I am off from my job. I always have big plans for this day. I think about it all week long. Here’s a portion of how this To-Do List looks in my head.

• Put all laundry away. Remove all clothes from closets that don’t fit. Mine and Miriam’s. Rehang in closet by color and season.
• Clean guinea pig cage. Create crafty toy for pig out of empty paper towel rolls and twine.  *Check Pinterest for inspiration.
• Organize upstairs unused playroom. Turn into magical fairyland with Christmas lights and faux flowers from A.C. Moore. *Check for coupon online. Subdivide fairyland into art area  *Train Miriam to use paint only in that area.
• Create shabby chic office for myself on sun porch.
• Buy cat litter and cat food.
• Get a manicure. Ten dollars is ok. Do not let them talk you into a gel manicure for $35. *Have valid excuses ready. It will be stressful. Be prepared.
• Come up with a crock pot repertoire. Or any kind of repertoire really. Just one thing that doesn’t involve creamed soup or chicken.

Here’s what is actually happening:

• Got Miriam to school 45 minutes later than I should have. She was really enjoying Nightmare Before Christmas on the DVR and so was I.
• Went to the bank. Sat in parking lot for 20 minutes looking at Facebook and answering work emails.
• Started the car back up and tried to decide if I should go for a manicure as a treat but decided I didn’t have the willpower to resist the gel manicure hard sell.
• Sat in the car in the driveway because I suddenly got really tired and then realized I was having an anxiety attack instead. Watched a squirrel play outside the car for awhile and contemplated sleeping right where I was behind the steering wheel.
• On Hal’s advice, drank a teeny bit of whiskey to calm me down and help take the edge off my teeth grinding pain.
• Realized I’d just wasted 40 minutes watching Dr. Phil. That really pissed me off. Changed channel to documentary about the Titanic.
• Accept the fact that the upstairs fairlyland/art area is not happening today.
• Think about creating shabby chic office for myself on sun porch, roughly the size of a chalk outline of my body. *Treat myself to a new pillow to sit on. Face facts that the melted butter stain is not coming out of my old one.
• Set alarm on cell phone and attempt to meditate/sleep while listening to truck repeatedly back up outside. Beep. beep. beep. beep. Become one with the beeping.

While I took your money in exchange for that bottle of pinot grigio, you chattered into your cell phone about how “this was the last time” and that “you’d had enough of her nonsense” all without even looking at me. I was looking at you though. You had pretty skin. Even and smooth with a few little beautymarks. I liked your earrings. They were dangly. I haven’t worn earrings in a long time. Not really for any reason. Actually, that’s not true. I remember feeling like I had too many things going on on my head. My glasses, my big hair, this flower barrette I was obsessed with. I should start wearing earrings again. Yours looked pretty on you.

Thank you for ignoring me today. I didn’t feel like talking about kids and halloween costumes or how the mums you just got 2 weeks ago from Home Depot died already and your husband is pissed.

Thank you for ignoring me when I asked if you needed help finding anything. I watched you walk away and thought you seemed sad. Those shoes you had on looked really uncomfortable and I knew you’d be kicking them off as soon as you got home. And you’d probobly never wear them again. You just didn’t feel like talking. I totally get it. It’s ok.

Thank you for ignoring me today. It felt like looking into other people’s houses when I’d walk my dog, Loretta, at night. The lighting in their living rooms always seemed warmer. Their houses, more cozy. Their families, more normal.

Thank you for ignoring me today and leaving my protective bubble intact. I like it. I like the distorted view from inside.

What may appear to be to simple kid’s arts ‘n crafts to others is something totally different to me. This apple tree and felt leaves on our seasonally changing faux wreath represents a second chance. Second chance at family. Second chance at motherhood. Second chance at happiness. Second chance at pretty much everything. And also knowing that while there aren’t always second chances in life, we have to keep trying. Making the most of what we have and striving for what we want.

Glue sticks, crayons, construction paper, tape, felt, thumb tacks…it’s the stuff of life I tell ya’.

The irony that I started working in a liquor store just a few weeks after Noah died is not lost on me. Where else would I come in contact with such an endless parade of lost souls while still collecting a paycheck and using my knowledge of grape varietals and appellations? Where else would the lost soul I was when I first started, feel so at home?

Technically it is a wine and spirits store. But that really is just a nice name for a liquor store, isn’t it?

Let me introduce you to a random smattering of my top seven souls, lost and otherwise, I’ve encountered…

1. He’s a walking heart attack. Once a day, two 1.5 liters of Woodbridge Chardonnay. He’s sweaty and paunchy but professionally dressed. I think this giant bottle of wine may be his first thought when he wakes up every morning. As we exchange hellos and $22.42,  I calculate in my head how much chardonnay I could drink on any given day.
2. He’s an odd character. Really odd. Mid 50’s. He has a an electronic cigarette hanging out of his mouth. His hands are always moving. Two cold bottles of Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio every damn day. $43.16 thrown on the counter like it all can’t happen fast enough. He sprints out the door to his muscle car with a racing fin on the back. We have theories on where he may be going with those two cold overpriced bottles. I saw him in the pizzeria the other night. He was by himself.
3. She’s in daily. In the mornings. She flat out says she can’t keep liquor or wine in the house because she will drink it until it’s gone.
4.  She’s in almost daily. She’s a sweet little grandma. She tries to keep her hands steady as she hands over the money for the cheap pint of vodka. It’s ok. You don’t have to tell me about the penne vodka you’re pretending to make. We talk about Miriam and her granddaughter who’s about the same age. She’s smiling with her tired eyes and rosy cheeks. Her hair is just a little too askew for comfort.
5. He’s convinced I change the price of his vodka every time. He could’ve sworn it was cheaper yesterday. “Let me see the receipt!” He’s really angry. I just feel sad after interacting with him. He’s so angry  it makes me want to ask so badly what happened. And I really do want to hear about it.
6. He graduated Julliard. He can play any instrument. He toured with Louis Prima and Keely Smith. He wears a heavy coat and gloves unless the temperature is in the 80’s. He’s as sharp as anyone I’ve ever met. His whole family were accountants and his mother didn’t want him to go into music. His voice is Humphrey Bogart-ish and we talk about Broadway shows sometimes. About twice a year he buys a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label for $179.99. It’s always because “he got some good news” he tells me. I adore him.
7. It was the week of New Year’s Eve. The worst year of my life was coming to an end. My mother and my son died in 2010. Ring it out. Ring in 2011. The lost year. Two pretty ladies in their 50’s came up to the tasting bar where I was working. Lucille was tall and doe – eyed pretty. Sheila was short and blonde with pretty delicate features. They were best friends. It oozed out of them. True sisters by different misters. We started to talk as they tasted the wines. They both had a shitty year. They were happy to see it go. Lucille’s fiancée died. Pretty suddenly if I remember correctly. Sheila had gotten divorced. I listened to their best friends shorthand language they obviously shared. They were so sweet together. I thought of my best friend Stacy and how amazing so many other friends were at my worst time. I agreed that 2010 was a terrible year. Sheila then asked “So what happened to you this year?”  We have been friends ever since.

My husband Hal was only eight years old when his father, Norman, died. Norman died of a stroke at thirty-eight years old, leaving a wife and four kids ranging from sixteen years old down to little Hal. My mother in law Natalie was left to figure it out on her own. Widowed in her thirties with four kids. She’s still kicking and awesome at eighty three.

When we found out Noah was a boy at the amnio appointment, all I could think was how happy I was to give Hal the father/son experience he missed out on. He would now be able to do all those things with Noah as he grew. Neither one of us cared if our first child was a boy or a girl. We really didn’t. But having a boy may have filled a void that Hal might not have known existed.

It was Hanukkah and I was around nine years old. My mother was trying to gather all the kids to light the menorah. We got presents every night. We grew up not wanting for anything. My father must’ve been too tired from his long days working at my grandfather’s gas station. He was upstairs sleeping.

My mother said “Ok, let’s light the candles. Daddy’s too tired to come down.”

And then I blurted out, “We can pretend he’s dead!”

It was one of the only times I can remember seeing my mother angry. Really angry. I don’t know where that statement came from. I don’t think it was a fear I had. I don’t remember having any friends that had lost parents. I don’t know why I said that.

“Erica!! That’s terrible! Don’t ever say something like that again!” She seemed really shaken by that moment and I felt really ashamed.

After Noah died, the void was huge. Gaping. This empty space that had been filled by this little boy was blaring. Spotlighted. Flashing neon. Like one lifeless giant sunflower drooping in a field of six feet tall ones. That’s where your eye zooms. The void. What’s not there.

The void of Noah’s car seat in my rear view mirror, the void of his cry in the nights after he was gone. The void of his call for Mama or Dada in the mornings and the void of the sounds of his jumping up and down in his crib until he would hit his chin on the rail.

We found out Miriam was a girl right before the healthiest embryo was put into my eager uterus. Or as our doctor used to say, “The uterus is an optimistic place. It believes it’s going to get pregnant every month. It just needs some help sometimes.”

We were so busy trying to have another child, we didn’t really talk too much about gender. Of course, we wondered if that baby would look or act like Noah. We really didn’t care. We just had to fill this void he left. A child is all about love. Gaping, I tell you. Cavernous.

“It’s a little female,” the doctor said as he glanced back at his paperwork. Hal and I let out a guttural yet joyous laugh. Fueled by relief most likely. That void could never be filled. I just couldn’t look at a boy that wasn’t Noah.

I had trouble seeing my nephew, Spencer, who was only two months older than Noah. I would be seeing him go through the stages Noah would be /should be going through. It was hard. It’s easier now for me. But the first thought I have when Miriam and Spencer play together is “so this is what it would look like if Noah was still here.”

Just the other night, I had Miriam and Spencer each on one knee. We were at the pizzeria. Miriam wanted to eat the fries and plain noodles Spencer was eating. Miriam wanted to skip on the black and white tiled floor like Spencer was doing. I was daydreaming about what it would be like to have a son and a daughter  in the conventional, alive sense. Would Miriam ever feel the need to fill her void of a big brother?

Hal was away this week. In Chicago for four days. My mind goes right to the void. To the empty space of Hal’s father, Norman. I see a black and white picture of him in my mind. He had strawberry blonde hair and a big smile. He was tall like Hal. I get barely a taste of the void Natalie must’ve felt. I understand why my mother got so angry at the innocent child’s misguided suggestion of pretending my father was dead.

We spend lots of time trying to fill voids we may not even be aware exist. The initial emptiness of these pages fill a void for me. The letters get typed. The sentences come together. I re-read to make sure they all make sense. Another hole in my head or heart slowly gets filled in.

 

 

You know those annoying subscription cards that fall out of magazines? The ones that are all over the floor at Barnes & Noble and on the magazine table at the doctor’s office? When I was little, I used to love filling them in. I would always check the ‘Mrs.’ box and then I’d fill in the name of my favorite celebrity at the time.  “Mrs. Roger Moore”…”Mrs. Alan Alda”…”Mrs. Johnny Carson.” Yes, my choices in future husbands were a little odd for a nine year old in the 1970’s. Man, young Roger Moore though. Hubba.

And then I grew up. Up and out and through and over boyfriends until I landed on my final name on the subscription card. I used a pen to fill in Mrs. Hal Landis. Our address wasn’t a farm in Montana like where I used to dream Alan Alda and I would set up housekeeping. It’s been five different apartments, so far. All still in New Jersey.

Mr. Hal Landis  wasn’t a movie star or a suit ‘n tie guy. I didn’t wear an apron while making everything from scratch and tending to the children who would bring me dandelion bouquets that I would put in shabby chic vases by the kitchen sink. We haven’t had weekly Saturday Date Nights out to dinner with fabulous friends while our 2.5 children tormented a babysitter and we came home slightly tipsy and in love all over again.

We both work retail schedules. We both feel beaten by the universe sometimes. We enjoy totally different things on TV. We interrupt each other when we’re telling a story and get annoyed. We both say the wrong thing sometimes and say the right thing too late. We eat too much. We’re short on time and temper sometimes. We have no idea how we’re going to make ends meet financially oftentimes. We don’t know how we will ever make it to Disneyworld one day with Miriam. But we will. We know that for sure.

Once a year, Mr. Hal Landis has to go out of state for his corporate convention. We break it down to each other in how many days and nights it is away from home.

“Well it’s really only two full days,” I console myself and Hal. “It’ll go fast. You’ll have fun. We’ll text and talk all the time.”

Mr. Hal Landis made a big pot of soup for me last night. And he’s outside right now checking the oil on my car. I used my four weeks of experience working at The Gap in the early 90’s expertly folding his shirts for wrinkle free travel.

And most importantly, we hide notes and cards for each other to find while we’re apart. I hid two simple notes in his luggage. One from me. One from Miriam. There’s not too much to say that hasn’t been said already. But I say it anyway. In case he ever doubts that I’m his ‘Mrs.’ and he’s my ‘Mr.’ on the subscription card. It’s a lifetime subscription of my favorite magazine.