Not Quite a Year

Soon it will be June 11th, a year since I lost you, Betty, to old age, and what has often since then felt like a selfish rush to get the unbearable over with. It could have been June 12th, or July 6th maybe. I could have delayed this anniversary if I’d been able to quiet my head, and kept my heart from leaping off the cliff to avoid falling.

I have a lot of trouble with years – I just don’t get it, how they can be so long and so short, bring so much change, and yet leave me pretty much the same. It seems unfair, really, but as my mother used to say, “Who the hell told you things were supposed to be fair?” You could always count on her for advice.

The boys keep leaving, coming back but then leaving again. Had I known that adopting two babies at once would mean dealing with two twenty-year-olds at once I might have thought twice, or at least spaced out parenthood a little differently. Learning is supposed to be useful, but it isn’t with two kids the same age. You might really know how to deal with 4-year-olds for a while, for six months if you’re lucky after taking the first six to figure it out, but then you never have to do it again. Ditto tweens and teens and early adults: a steep learning curve only to find the information obsolete the minute you crest the hill.

We got over 8 feet of snow this year Betty. You would have loved it as you always loved snow so much. While your Dogzilla sister “eeked!” and avoided, you’d have plowed through it, smiling up at the falling snow and taking big bites out of drifts as you played with your boys. Then you’d have come in and laid by the fire. I kept it going all winter, just like always, books and computers but only one dog piled on the couch, or lying on the hearth practically cooking til I made her move, just like I always asked you to. How did that feel good, cooking in front of the fire? I’ve got to tell you, that was a little creepy.

Thing 2 worked for the fall and then traveled the world for the winter, volunteering in children’s hospitals and special needs schools in far-away, exotic places. I sent you with him to keep him safe as he flew every terrifying route and airline imaginable, and so he wouldn’t be lonely. He’s leaving again soon, following his heart to continue school far from home. He swears he’ll end up back in Boston, but he doesn’t know, doesn’t understand how life is never a straight line, never goes as planned, never gives us what we ask for, but always more and less at the same time.

Thing 1 is here but far away anyway. He needs to go find what he wants, but it’s hard to leave from without going to, and I think it’s going to take him a while to find running ground. He got hurt badly working where he shouldn’t have been working, and now his dreams are even harder to find as he stays at home recovering, watching zombie shows and the rest of the world seemingly pass him by.

Remember when I did a favor for a friend, and her husband started planting our yard with a garden in thanks? Well, all the bulbs are starting to come in now. The bed in the front where you used to lie is now covered in daffodils – you’d have laid down on them, just like you did on the irises that were there when I first brought you home. I wouldn’t have minded, and you’d have helped me dig for spots to put new bulbs if we’d gotten crazy and decided to plant more.

Addie had surgery, and though she can’t use her legs the way she’d like to, and has good days and bad days, she’s still here, still a bounding brat, spoiled rotten now as the least mature 11-year-old dog on the planet. She depended on you for so much, much to your dismay. God she can be annoying, though you always tolerated her intrusive neediness, glancing at me occasionally to say, “really?” She missed you terribly when you left, but has settled in to the role of Only Dog just fine. I won’t bring anyone else home ’til some time after she’s gone as I need to travel, B, and I can’t do that freely if someone’s home waiting for me. So there’ll be no one home waiting for me, which is worse but easier, somehow. More responsible to be less responsible, I guess.

For now the house is far from empty; I’ve kept it filled with students from all over the world just like I did last summer. Addie still runs to greet them, though it’s funny to watch her decide who’s worth it to get up for and who not so much. You were always the greeter anyway, she more the announcer, so I don’t see the tenants pausing on the bottom step to sit and pet and talk in quiet voices like they did with you. I don’t even think she notices when they bring food home to take upstairs. You’d be appalled at how lax things have gotten around here in terms of taking inventory.

My father went on a quest to find a forger to reproduce the portrait of his grandfather, and found a like-minded madman to fulfill his dream. The adventure was as good as the getting, I think, but now that he’s gotten it he’s searching for a new project – always a little concerning. God knows what he’ll think up next, but I guarantee it’ll require several hours of me explaining things to innocent bystanders.

We’ve gone to the Cape house a few times, walked the beach you loved, and I still see your ears blowing back in the wind as you’d open your mouth in a wide smile facing the sea. I count three ahead now instead of four, or more often than not these days it’s just me and Addie walking along the shore, but you’re always there just the same, Betty. Always there.

And I’m here, same as always, mostly in front of this computer, peering in while I look outward. I traveled a little, worked a lot, banged myself up and found out that the older a person is, the slower they heal, but I guess any progress is some progress, so I shouldn’t complain. I’ve had my victories and more than a few failures. I’m a little broker this year ’cause everything decided to break at once. And I still don’t understand time, and how everything can have stayed the same but changed so much.

Not quite a year – I’m rushing over this cliff, too, as the date looms as the day I lost you on purpose. I’ve counseled people on the inevitability of regret, and how when faced with the inescapable, a few hours in a lifetime aren’t what really matters. And that’s true. But there isn’t one of us who’s loved so profoundly who wouldn’t ask for those few hours or days back just every now and then, just a few seconds at a time, just to lay a hand down for a quick hello and a kiss before the next year speeds by without you.