I See Charlotte

There are two sides to my life.  The first side is filled with the love that I feel for my angel family.  The wonderful life that we have conceived together.  The values which Mark and I have instilled in our girls.  The idea that life is beautiful.  It is the side of my life which I vowed to myself as a little girl that I would create.  A peaceful, contented life.  A family in which the members all love and cherish one another.  Mark and I have succeeded in building that kind of a life.  I am not saying that it doesn't take a lot of work and dedication, but I am saying that it is worth all of the effort that I have put into it.  My angels and my husband are worth it.  I am worth it.

The other side of my life is that side which I have eluded to in some of my previous writings here.  It is the side where people bear thirty year old grudges.  It is the side where the cruel irony of an early death leaves relationships unfinished.  It is the side that is filled with hatred and pain and lies.  It is the side of right-fighters.  It is the side that I never chose to live in, yet there I was, and sometimes, here I still am.

My brother chose a different kind of life and a different kind of wife.  He created a different kind of life.  He allowed the muck of growing up in a very chaotic household to color his life with different hues.  Whereas I saw bright, he saw dull.  Whereas I saw a chance to escape the kind of life that made me ill, he saw reason to continue the ugliness of how we were raised.  He remained stuck in the web.  He was a good guy in many ways, but that didn't prevent him from leaving behind an absolute mess.  A mess that my nieces must now live in.  A mess that I am now trying to sort out.  A mess that I know he would be absolutely disgusted to discover, yet still a mess that he had some responsibility in creating.

I have spent the better part of the past week in emotional and spiritual pain.  I have been containing my own feelings about my SIL's actions towards me and my family in an attempt to reserve any small chance that I will be allowed to continue a relationship with my two nieces while they are still children.  I have been told to be patient.  I have been told to wait.  I have been told, I have been told...  And then the letter came.  A letter filled with hatred that spewed off of the paper like a soda can that had been shaken before it was opened.  And my soul cracked open as did my mouth.  I am finished waiting.  I am finished being patient.  I am finished allowing my brother's memory to be ground into the dirt like some useless piece of trash.

When I took the picture of the garden spider above, I was watching it build it's web with awe and admiration.  In so many ways, just looking at the spider repels me and makes me want to run screaming in the other direction.  But in other ways, I can see the absolute beauty of it's intricate web.  I can see how the spider moves with such purposefulness and even grace as it spins the threads which will contain it's home for the night.  Some might just see a very scary spider.  I can see Charlotte.

And so, as I sit here pondering all this and trying to make some sense out of it I realize that every life must have two sides.  And what makes the beautiful side so much more vibrant is the fact that we must also live with the other side.  The side that hurts our spirits.  The side that causes us pain.  The side which we never chose, but if we remain brave enough, we learn to live with.

May you always honor the beautiful side of life even while sometimes having to face the darkness.  May you fight for what is good because you are worth it.

Because Life is Beautiful...

Mark and I know how blessed we are.  We have always known.  We began our life together with very, very little materially.  We had just graduated from college and we had big plans to drive from New Jersey to California, a place that neither of us knew anything about, to settle.  I had been to California once when I was about nine years old with my family, but Mark had never been.  We were going to start our own business...From nothing...With nothing...But we had heart and courage and dreams.  That was enough.  We did not know that we couldn't or shouldn't, so we did.  We were modern pioneers putting everything we owned, including our five cats and our dog, into the back of a Dodge Cube van and my little Dodge Omni to set out across the country.  It took us five days.  Five long, adventurous, scary, frustrating, bleary-eyed days to reach The Golden State and to plant our roots in our first California home.  We were young, in love, a little bit scared and a lot a bit unsure about what our future would bring.  But we had enough.  Even with just a little, we had enough because life was beautiful.
And so we celebrate.  We get a kick out of every step, every crazy, unsure step that life has set before us.  Our oldest angel daughter is only a little bit younger than I was when we began our journey.  She is the oldest daughter of two people who took on the "pioneer spirit" and created a mostly wonderful life from nothing.  
Our youngest Angel knows even less about how her parents adventure began, because by the time we had her, we were settled.  Deeply rooted in our pioneer life, far from where we had traveled.

But California is the land of opportunity and so we grabbed as much of the goodness that we could and made a beautiful life for our family.
(Marley is growing, isn't he?)  Our Angels have been afforded opportunities which Mark and I could only have dreamed of.
They love life.  We love life.  
(This is what happens when our fourteen year old Angel gets a hold of my camera.)  And so, because nobody ever told Mark and I that we couldn't do what we did and create what we have, we did, and we do.  Because life is beautiful.  We know this because regardless of the pain that life sometimes throws our way, it doesn't stop us.
We push back as hard as we can.  We remind ourselves that no matter what, we have enough.  We remind ourselves that life is beautiful.
We aren't at all sure where our oldest California native Angel Daughter will head on her journey, but we know that where ever she goes, she will remember that life is beautiful.  She will know that what ever she has at any given stage of life will be enough.
So dream sweet angel(and your lovely college friend, room-mate and our daughter when she is away from her family).  Because we hope that we taught you, and that we continue to teach you, that life is beautiful...
Even when it isn't.(or when your fourteen year old sister chases you around with Mom's camera!)

And the Angels Test their Wings...

I have been living in a bit of denial for the past couple of weeks.  In some ways, I should be prepared for Angel Daughter Number Two's departure to her college nest.  I survived Angel Daughter Number One's first flight.  I have been working up to this for eighteen years.  Eighteen short years.  When she was born, it seemed like forever away, but now, it has arrived far too quickly.  And so she spreads her wings...And she leaps...I watch her take flight drifting gracefully, yet cautiously onto the singular air currents of her own life.
And as she turns back to wave, her apprehension is so apparent.  Our eyes connect.  Our hearts connect.  Our souls connect, and I know that no matter how far she flies, she will always need me, just as I will always need her.  So I drift silently underneath her current, as I do with AD1, to catch her if she flies too low.

This is a mother's job.  This is how we prepare them to fly.  This is how we soar, together.

Lady-Bugs and Finding my Way Home

I cannot help it.  I wasn't raised in a home where my brother and I were encouraged to look for something special or miraculous everyday.  I was not born to parents who particularly viewed the world with a sunshiny perspective.  There were no mentions of "rainbows and butterflies", or pretty little platitudes about how blessed we were to have a nice home to live in, with food on the table and clothes on our backs.  There was no talk of God, or a Higher Power, or guardian angels who watched over us guiding us like a loving parent.  There was no mention of prayer except for the couple of days a year when we made it to synagogue, and then it almost confused me.  As a matter of fact, it was not until my dear brother died, six months ago at the young age of forty-one, that I found out that my mother honestly, truly and without hesitation doubts the existence of God at all.
But as a child, I loved Lady-bugs.  I spent many a summer's day gingerly picking them up so that they could explore the surface of my skin, as I patiently rotated my hand in one direction to the next, counting their spots as they crawled.  If I found one in a precarious position or in the swimming pool, I would gently move it to a safer place while speaking to it in a small, quiet voice.  I discovered, at a very young age with very little assistance from anyone else, that yes indeed, Debra, there is a Guiding Force in the universe, and to me, that Force was God.  I couldn't help it.  The Lady-bugs were too perfect to have been created by accident.  Something deep within my soul just knew that.
When our angels were born, Mark and I knew that they needed to grow up in a world where God was a part of the family.  We sent them all to religious school, reinforced what they learned there at home and had them each become a Bat-Mitzvah.  I answered any questions that came up about my beliefs from a very young age, and reminded them that God is accessible.  I wanted them to understand that something as tiny as a Lady-bug or even smaller, like the microscopic aphids that the Lady-bugs feast on, were proof enough that there is a God.  

And so, they grew up knowing, even though I only grew up with the feeling that I wasn't alone.  The feeling that somehow, God was in the Lady-bug.
Watching my littlest angel carefully visit with this Lady-bug, yesterday, reminded me of how crucial it is to understand.  Her fascination and wonderment while examining this tiny creature reminded me that no matter how seemingly insignificant something might seem, it can make all of the difference between believing that it is all meant to be, or deciding that it is all a haphazard accident thrown together by chaos.  The look on AD4's face says that she loves Lady-bugs, too.  It brings me peace to know that my angels don't have to figure it out on their own.  They all know what Mark and I believe.  They can appreciate the Lady-bug as one of God's miracles.

There are so many paths which can lead to God.  May you find the one that brings you the knowledge and the peace to believe that you are not alone.  May you find your way to God in the simplest of miracles.  There are so many...