A Sign

This morning began abruptly.

What’s that?

I bumped my nightstand with my wrist so my Apple Watch would show me the time.

5 something.

There it is again.

The dog was pacing by the bedroom door retching loudly.

I moved quickly.

I unset the alarm and headed down the stairs.

The dog didn’t follow.

That’s not a good sign. She continued to retch.

Uggh, I hope nothing is coming up.

She finally trotted down the stairs past me and headed to the back door.

She paused to retch some more.

She hasn’t done this in a long time.

I opened the door and she ran out.

I grabbed a bag and paper towels and cleanser and headed back up stairs.

I turned on the bedroom light and looked where she’d been.

Nothing.

I followed her path from the bed, to the door, down the stairs, to the back door.

Nothing.

I smiled and said, “thanks honey.”

Just a birthday greeting from Kim.

The Fridge

Monday morning just after 6 and Annabelle is pacing by the bedroom door waiting for me to put on a t-shirt and shorts and let her out.

I let her back in, feed her, and start making my morning coffee.

It’s garbage day so I carry the recycling out and look around the kitchen for more things that need to go out.

And then I make a mistake.

I open the fridge.

Ohh. This doesn’t look so good any more.

That’s past it’s expiration.

This bag of herbs – I think it’s parsley – is way past its usefulness.

When I reach in to grab the bag of herbs my hand brushes past something soft and gross.

I bend over.

Actually, we need to stop there.

I can’t tell you how many conversations with Kim over the last twenty-some years were me standing wth the refrigerator open, standing there, saying to her, “I don’t see it.”

She would always say the same thing. “You have to bend over.”

So, since Kim is now wherever I am, I bend over to see what was soft and gross.

I still don’t know what it was. It’s a bag that used to contain something leafy that is now a liquid.

This is now turning into a project.

I’ve been Kim-less for over a year and now Maggie has gone back to school. I buy fewer fruits and vegetables at a time but I still haven’t hit the sweet spot so they go bad more quickly than they used to because they sit in the fridge longer than they used to.

I find two old containers of cherry tomatoes, marinara sauce that has something growing on top, celery that’s wilted beyond being useful even in chicken stock.

I should stop there but I go on to open the fruit and vegetable bins.

One of them has a pepper that has gone really bad and has passed it on to its neighbors.

Now I not only need to throw things out but I need to scrub out the refrigerator when I’m done.

I had to stop when I noticed that the floor probably needs a good cleaning too.

I’m going to pace myself.

New Year

I’m still not religious and yet the Jewish New Year is always a time where I pause and consider what sort of person I am and want to be and how I’ll do that.

I look at how I treat other people and how I want to change.

For me it’s a time for resolutions – not small ones like “go to the gym” or “go on a diet”.

It’s a time for big resolutions like “make sure you put your friends first”.

The religious traditions for this time of year include those things but they also include that book of life that I think of each year.

The tradition is that your name either is or isn’t in the book of life for the next year if you’re going to make it through this year. The book is written in on the New Year and sealed on Yom Kippur.

I don’t think much of that tradition.

For the last eleven years I haven’t been able to understand who would leave a six year old out of that book.

For the last year – two holiday seasons – I need to ask how anyone could leave Kimmy out of that book.

How?

Also it’s been tough for this second sweep through all of the holidays, anniversaries, and important dates.

The first time through Maggie’s birthday without Kim is a first. We were still reeling from the loss. So much was different that this different stood out but didn’t make the proper impression.

The second time is different.

Somehow it’s more permanent.

The second time is when you realize, “oh, Kim is never going to be here on Maggie’s birthday ever again.”

Ever.

The second time around is when I notice my footprints on the path and realize I’m just going to go around and around this yearly track and there are no footprints next to mine.

Those sandals taking short strides – as long as her little legs would allow.

It’s a New Year.

I need to decide who I’m going to be this year and how.

I think I did pretty well this past year.

But it was my first time around the track.

I met a ton of people for a cup of coffee. I hung out a lot. I didn’t get as much work done but that’s ok.

This is my second time around.

I guess I could do worse than just placing my feet in the footprints that got me through this last year.

Let’s get together this year – have a cup of coffee – sit and talk a bit.

Happy New Year.

Gotcha

Twenty years ago today, a woman I had never met, placed Maggie in my arms and I became a dad.

Such a gift.

Twenty years of being Maggie’s dad.

Here’s to many more.

Happy Gotcha Day, baby.

Happy Birthday

A wonderful thing happened for Kim’s birthday today.

I was at the Sharpe’s for their pre-Labor Day picnic and their daughter Jennifer told me she was looking forward to coming over for dinner Friday for Kim’s birthday for pizza.

I looked puzzled.

She told me her dad had told her and besides, she said, “it’s in my planner.”

So there you go.

“OK,” I said, “I’ll see you Friday.”

I invited Kim’s mom and sister to come over after the mass for Kim and they said they’d be there.

And then I remembered the last thing Kim texted me.

“Burgers”

I’d wanted to know would we be going out for our anniversary or did she want burgers. She figured we could go out after we took Maggie back to college. Tonight we could grill in the back yard. So she her last text to me was,

“Burgers”

Then again, I had two pizza dough recipes I wanted to try.

I could make burgers and pizza.

And potato salad to use up the potatoes from our farm share.

And greek salad to use up some of the other ingredients.

And I could heat up a can of baked beans – these turned out to be one of the biggest hits.

I made four sheet pizzas. One was cheese and basil, another was mushrooms and peppers, another was pepperoni, and the last was sausage and onion. I put olives on one of them but I don’t remember which.

The rule in my house is you have to take leftovers home with you.

People did.

We ate as much as we could and then split up the leftovers.

People left and cleanup went quickly.

Happy Birthday, Kimmy.

Empty Nest

This is the year that Elena would have gone away to college.

This is the year that Kim and I would have been empty-nesters.

It happened early for us. It happened a few years ago when Maggie went off to college and it was just Kim and me.

And Annabelle, of course.

Kim started traveling with me more and more. We went everywhere together and we had a blast.

It was the best of the old and the new.

She’d apologize for how much it cost for her to come too – but, man, the value from those trips was incredible.

We had twenty years of marriage behind us. We knew what each other liked. We loved making sure the other got to do the things they liked.

Traveling with Kim was great.

These last few years were like the trailer for the rest of our lives.

We were going to have a better second twenty years of our marriage than our first twenty – and the first twenty was pretty darned good.

It’s not that we were only planning on being together another twenty years, but after another twenty we’d be too old to do the things we do, to go the places we go, to move through life with ease and without pain.

So twenty more amazing years and then a comfortable fade to black.

You’re not guaranteed anything – but actuarially we can reasonably expect certain things.

I didn’t expect to be living in a house with no one there but me.

And Annabelle, of course.

I’d forgotten that this is the year that Kim and I were going to be empty nesters until I came back from dropping Maggie at college.

The house was so quiet.

Annabelle was at the kennel.

Maggie was away at school.

Elena was dead.

Kim was dead.

This – this is an empty nest.

Recently I had to give a deposition about what the loss of Kim meant to me.

The questions had to do with income and insurance.

The questions didn’t get at the next twenty years of our marriage – the part that was even better than the last twenty – the part that I’ll never know.

The questions were about money and stuff.

A marriage isn’t just money and stuff. Money and stuff is what divorcing couples argue about when they’re splitting up because the important parts of a marriage are gone or were never there.

I’m glad for my money and stuff but it’s not the important part.

The house is so quiet.

When people joke with me about their empty nest or complain about their empty nest I want to show them what empty looks like.

It’s a house with just me.

And Annabelle, of course.

21

Every year since 2008 my calendar shows that the month of September begins with a three day event:

Sweetheart’s (maggie) birthday

Sometime before she turned twelve, Maggie set up a three day recurring event to celebrate her birthday.

I don’t know when she accessed my calendar, what made her decide to add the event, or what made her create the event that begins a day before her birthday and ends a day after.

There may be a hint in the note:

Get a BIG ROCKING gift!!!!

The wording, all-caps, and four exclamation points were all hers. That’s what she was thinking when she was eleven.

Now she is 21.

I can’t believe it.

She is an amazing child who I need to stop thinking of as a child.

Her drivers license is now oriented in landscape not portrait to indicate that she is of legal drinking age.

But that’s not what makes her an adult.

Talk to her for a moment and you know she’s grown. She’s still a young adult with the sureness when she might be cautious and the caution when she might be more certain – but she’s an adult.

She doesn’t need my permission for many things but she still accepts restrictions that I suggest.

She is the most important person in my world and I try not to let that be oppressive or make her uncomfortable.

I love her more than I can ever express and so I don’t express it – it would be awkward and she’d hate it.

She’s 21.

She wrote to her school to ask if she could check into her room a day early on her birthday so she could be with some of her college friends on her twenty-first birthday.

They said yes.

So on Friday, September 1 we drove to Washington, D.C. for a birthday eve celebration with Kevin, Lisa, Ben, and Eric. Ben and Eric are essentially her cousins so it felt perfect to spend her birthday with them.

Birthday eve – also known as the end of day one of Sweetheart’s (maggie) birthday.

The day began with filling the car up with the stuff Maggie would need for her junior year and strapping her bike on the back using a borrowed rack.

We stopped for coffee in Ohio and lunch in Pennsylvania and pulled into our destination in time for an amazing, multi-course, leisurely dinner. Each course was distinct and paired with a perfect beverage.

After we finished with dessert, we sat in the living room for a bit. I was exhausted. I thanked everyone and said I was going to bed.

It turns out I wasn’t – we waited the twenty minutes until midnight for Maggie to officially be 21 and then went to bed. So much like New Year’s Eve celebrations at our house.

The next morning we stopped at my cousin Ben’s house to have brunch with him, Rachel, and their one year old baby. It was hard to leave them (especially the baby), but in early afternoon we headed up towards Philadelphia.

We got all of Maggie’s things moved in from the car and down from the dorm storage. We set up her bed after she wiped down all of the surfaces with a disinfectant.

I never would have thought of that and I’ve been an  adult for a while.

I looked at my 21 year old daughter and just asked what I could do to help.

We met a couple of her friends and one of their mother’s for a birthday dinner and Maggie had her first legally purchased cocktail.

I dropped her back at the dorm and said good night to her and left her on her twenty-first birthday.

I drove two hours towards home in the pouring rain and stayed in a hotel that Kim and I had often stayed at.

I got up, did some work, and then headed back home – stopping at Rick and Laurie’s for their pre-Labor Day picnic.

Day three, the last day of Sweetheart’s (maggie) birthday, and I came home to a very quiet house.

Annabelle was at the kennel.

Maggie was at college.

Elena and Kim, well, you know.

Maggie is grown and I’m adjusting.

I’m so proud of her.

I’m so happy for her.

But man the house is quiet.