Jul
9
I’m not going to write a whole post about how incredibly maddening two year olds can be because 1) most of you already know this, 2) somebody always feels compelled to remind me that three is worse which SHUT UP THAT IS NOT HELPING, and 3) two year olds are also so incredibly awesome, and I don’t even know how to describe how living with one is like taking an express elevator from heaven to hell and back all fucking day long.
I do, however, feel compelled to share this image with you. This is my beloved son, throwing a massive temper tantrum about being forced to go play in the backyard on a lovely summery evening, and subsequently furiously trying to jam a rubber ball in his mouth while screaming at me.
Oh god, this kid. He is just killing me lately, in about a million different ways.
Jul
7
I know them only vaguely, they’re family friends whose faces I see at Thanksgiving and sometimes during the summer. He is tall and lean and has deep dimples and sculpted cheekbones, she is soft and blonde with sparkling eyes. He looks like he would be at home roping cattle, she looks like someone who can bake the hell out of a cake and tear up the karaoke floor afterwards.
They are warm and funny and quick to smile. It’s hard what to say is so inviting about them, exactly. JB described them as a couple of glowy people, and I know what he means. They glow.
When I first met them they had two daughters. Both of them with their father’s height, lanky as colts. Healthy kids hurtling towards the teen years. There was a routine checkup, some school sports thing, and all of a sudden one of those healthy, happy girls had leukemia. The progression was cruel. There was a blood drive in the town searching for a bone marrow match, but this is what happened: one Thanksgiving she was there, the next she was not.
I can’t claim to understand what happened to that family in any way, but now that I have children of my own I think about loss differently. It takes my breath away to imagine what they went through, what they still endure.
I saw them at the cabin last weekend. For a while they relaxed on the lawn, talking with family and friends, and I watched them from behind my sunglasses. It’s hard not to: they are a pleasant sight to see. He was sitting in a chair while she stood leaning against him from behind, her hand on his shoulder. His hand absently stole down and caressed her leg as they talked. It was a small moment that told an entire story of love and devotion.
Down at the river, their daughter—still tall, now a bona-fide beauty—floated in a raft next to her friend. They turned lazy circles in the water, their paint-chipped toes winking in the sun.
It makes you think about what you have. What it’s possible to lose. It makes you think about this brutal, beautiful life that gives and takes, and what it means to touch the person you love.
JB shook hands with him later. “How’re you doing, man?” he asked.
“You won’t catch me complaining,” said the man who has every right to spend the rest of his days doing just that. When he smiles, his eyes crinkle at the edges.
-
My product review site:
[