I started writing this at the beginning of the year - January of 2016. Now 2016 is over halfway through and I'm saddened and surprised by how quickly it's passed. 2015 was a hard year, just like 2014. It was a joyful year, just like 2014. It was full of love and family, like always. In January, I substitute taught and worked with beautiful, charming Sarah on the weekends. February I started a full-time caregiver position with her. I'd say her voice is not one anybody could easily forget, sing-songy and pure, innocent like a child's, "I'm wearing LIFE IS GOOD today!" "You wear Life is Good every day, Sarah." "Purple socks! P-U, a skunk! Nasty! What a nasty, nasty skunk!" Her eyes, though, have this light to them. There's knowledge in them. I can't help but shake the feeling that, even as I helped her to complete every day-to-day task, the joke was somehow on me. She has entire books memorized, Cinderella and 101 Dalmatians and Droofus the Dragon, which I bought her in November for her 27th birthday. I had never read it with her, never seen it in the house, but when I opened it up and started to read the first page, she began reciting it word for word with me, looking at my face, not the page, with this toothy, mischievous grin. I wonder how many years it had been since someone read Droofus to her? Her mom thinks maybe 10. She confuses her pronouns, I think, or she is just so used to speaking with them misused that it's too unnatural to change. I know she knows the correct ones, though. "You did SUCH a good job at basketball today!" she'll chime. "Who did a good job, Sarah?" I'll ask. "I did, I did a good job," she'll quickly mutter back, as if annoyed that I wanted to hear it that way. She has her language and people who know her understand, so why change? "You LOVE tacos!" ..."It's true, Sarah, I do love tacos, do you?" Oh, why bother.
I love working with Sarah. There is something more inspiring to me than any other work-place scenario I've had so far in seeing the un-contained joy in a person with a developmental disability. I think there is really something we all can learn from a person who simply shoots a basket, makes it, and has this be make-my-day-worthy.
In February, Adam and I moved into "Dog Poop-ville," as my mom and I so affectionately call it. It's one of the cheaper apartment complexes in Longmont, and apparently this class of people is incapable of picking up their pet waste. After snow has fallen snow on snow, the poop becomes perpetually frozen-thawed-frozen-thawed and smeared permanently on the sidewalk, along with the smell. It wasn't the best place I've every lived, but it's the only place I've lived solely with my now husband, no other roommates, so that's something, I guess.
March was the only month we skied last year. I always enjoy skiing, once I can physically cram my foot into the God-awful boot and successfully mount the chairlift and make it up the mountain without falling off and dismount without an unskilled snowboarder wiping out on the ramp before me and find a run without any children or yellow ice or moguls and really, once it's all over and I'm drinking a beer feeling grateful that nothing is broken. We went to Ski Cooper - me and Adam, Erik and my dad and Aunt Dana, and Grandpop, stayed in a really quite adorable old house in Leadville, where the tourists don't flock, so that's good - and participated in the Ski to Defeat ALS at Eldora. Every year from now on we will Ski to Defeat ALS. It was just me and Erik and Adam who skied, the conditions were terrible, but we all did Corona, the first black diamond I ever attempted and the only black diamond I go down now. Erik says it's really a blue/black, which makes sense. I asked Adam how he would describe my skiing skills and he said, "beginner at best."
April in Tucson was hard. My mom got the stomach flu on her birthday, and Kim and Phil were there with this delicious birthday meal planned for her, pork roast I think and all of these vegetables all chopped and prepared. Instead I went out for Mexican food with them and Mimi. Ryder of course had a big birthday, #1! Poor guy had to have his party re-scheudled because people kept getting sick.
May is ALS Awareness month. To say we all were inspired by Aunt Kay's video for her ALS representatives doesn't come close to how powerful she is with her words, her spirit. Fund promising research. Support accelerated access to promising new drugs. Support ALS patients and their families. They went to Boston, my mom and her amazing sister, my dad and Uncle Rob, donated blood and skin cells for ALS TDI's Precision Medicine Program. Then Mother's Day, and Aunt Kay wrote the most beautiful letter for Karen and Karl.
It started to feel like the hard things would never let up. Adam had had this lump in his arm since I'd known him, in college the CSU clinic told him it was likely a calcium deposit from working out, but the thing got bigger, and it started to make certain extremities go numb when pressed on, his fingers. Doctor's appointments. Tears. Fear and despair - that's me. A nerve sheath tumor, that's what he said. It came right out and "did not seem aggressive in appearance." Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Benign. Pause - breath - calm - relief - joy. Adam and I missed the family reunion in San Diego while all of this was going on, which was heartbreaking. But thankfully, it's never too far between that we all get together again.
Adam and I attempted a portion of the Colorado Trail at the end of June. I read Wild and everything, gave some thought to my previous (horrible) experiences trying to fall asleep in tents, and actually tricked myself into thinking this time I could do it. What was I thinking?! I didn't even bring sleeping pills. Poor Adam. I knew, too, or at least had a strong hunch that he was planning to propose on our daunting week-long venture (Look, I'm no Cheryl Strayed. Any shower-free venture longer than one day is daunting to me.). I wonder what he pictured? Two young thru-hikers, happily tuckered out from the daily average 14-mile hike toting 40-pound packs, relaxing by the fire with steaming bags of freeze-dried chicken and rice... Don't get me wrong - I actually pictured that at one point when we were planning the trip! How naïve. The trench foot really took me by surprise, and progressively ruined any chance I had of being a pleasant backpacking companion for my wonderful Adam. My fancy new hiking boots were very comfortable, lightweight and extremely waterproof...extremely waterproof also meaning "not at all breathable." Paired with my wool hiking socks and unseasonably
warm temperatures, my feet broke out in flaming red heat rashes and excruciating itchiness. Combine that with a down sleeping bag at night in a tent that most comfortably sleeps one, but this time there are two and one is a disastrously inconsolable insomniac with very itchy feet (that's me). Poor, poor Adam. I think after the second night - this was the one where I don't think either of us slept more than a few minutes - Adam had one of those moments where his Mellow is outmatched by my Crazy: "I CAN'T SPEND ANOTHER NIGHT WITH YOU IN THIS TENT." At this point, I'm sure the proposal wasn't on either of our minds. Survival mode kicked in. I just thank my lucky stars he didn't throw the lovely ring off the mountain! Miraculously, he DID spend another night with me in that tent, just one more, and my tears were more limited than the first two. My dad picked us up on some dirt road near South Park the next morning and they got a beer and a burger in me by lunchtime. Pleasant Beth resurfaced with that medicine. Adam proposed that next Friday, the 4th of July, just like he was planning to, but at Devil's Backbone in Loveland instead of Kenosha Pass on the Colorado Trail.
Below: Emo thru-hiker
Right: Hungover proposal
The second half of 2015, or at least up to November 7th, for me, blew by in a blur of frenetic wedding topics, including but not limited to: a $37 Audrey Hepburn-style Swing Rockablity Evening Gown in white; discussions on whether or not not hiring a florist would make for a "horror story," as emphasized in my wedding planning text book from "The Knot"; intensely detailed catering conversations between Tucson's own Casa Molina and my dad (who did end up with their margarita recipe in the end); and the imperative question of, "What are your colors?"(I'm still not entirely clear on that last one.)
With everything else that was going on, that has been going on, it was a beautiful time to plan a wedding. To actually attach much emotion to flowers not being perfect or bridesmaids looking mismatched or even wedding guests getting diarrhea after eating (delicious) Mexican food catered from a restaurant not known for passing health inspections was... trivial. Trivial to the point of comedy. We had the most beautiful wedding I could have ever dreamed of. Don't ask me if my color scheme looked nice, because look what we had on November 7th, 2015:
Karl read that verse from Corinthians that is often read at weddings, we chose it - Adam and Aunt Kay and I. Love is patient, love is kind...there is nothing to celebrate at a wedding if it's not love. Love for each other. Love for our families. Love for the beautiful desert so many of my favorite people call home, where Aunt Kay can look out at her backyard and be in awe of the world, where a brilliant red cardinal can be Papa, can fly by to check in.
Papa died November 8th. It was the night after the wedding. I remember being worried the wedding night, that something had happened to Papa and no one was going to tell me. He waited for all of his grandkids to say goodbye the next day. To see our cantankerous Papa, one of the most stubborn and strong and willful men on the planet, like he was... There are sometimes no words - only tears.
I like some verses later in Corinthians, chapter 13 still, but a few after the ones we chose for the wedding: "And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love." Corinthians 13:13.
Mimi and Papa looked beautiful at their wedding.
Adam and I were just in Wisconsin for his grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary. Mimi and Papa would have had their 60th on May 20th. They were married almost exactly a year before Aunt Kay was born. Their smiles right here look just like the smiles I know. Mimi says she can't smile for a camera, but there it is, and I've seen it just so in person.
I saw a cardinal in Wisconsin and I hope it was Papa, checking in. Pana was within driving distance. I was on a bike through the trees, reminiscent of the woods surrounding Beyers Lake. I kept making comparisons to Pana and I think it bothered Adam a little, that I couldn't just be in Wisconsin and see it through his lens. We are a little confined to our own eyes, our own memories, is the thing; to be in the midwest is, to me, to be in Pana. To be with Mimi and Papa. People golfing every day. Telling stories and showing off grandkids. To my mom and Aunt Kay and Uncle Rob and Mimi and Papa and so many interesting small-town characters: Home. Seeing that cardinal, cruising on a bike like Bob and Marie's through the trees and the thick air - I had to make it feel like home in my head. I have a sense of pride about Pana, and Papa was the proudest man I've ever known.
Erik just sent an email for the 4th of July about Pana, and I think I'll just close this out with the quote from the Wonder Years. That's how he closed the email and it's the quote just yesterday I wrote in different colored markers for my dad's birthday card. It's the quote of the summer: of time passing too quickly, of the comfort we find in our memories - - - of home:
Growing up happens in a heartbeat. One day you’re in diapers, the next day you’re gone. But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul. I remember a place, a town, a house, like a lot of houses; a yard, like a lot of other yards; on a street, like a lot of other streets. And the thing is, after all these years, I still look back, with wonder.
