September 3, 2008

Greetings, My Darlings!

It has definitely been a long time since I wrote to catch up and I am remiss for being so absent on a personal level. The Magical Mystery Tour that is Sage's life continues with its blessings and curses, its ups and downs and its roads both smooth and treacherous.

A lot of the last year is a blur from the raising of a toddler. The days run together like melted crayons, one into the next with a little bit of sleep in between. In my last entry,  in fact, in several of my last entries, I've done a lot of whining and bitching about how much of myself I've lost and how hard it is to parent a toddler full time with very few breaks.

I got a lot of encouraging emails, which I deeply appreciate.  I did get some that cause me to want to clarify a few things.  Some people felt I should "let Zoe raise her own child."   I am not sure if everyone has read the entire story of how things progressed (it's in the menu to the left), but Cait actually IS my own child as well.  I may not have been involved in the conception process, but she is legally adopted and legally my daughter.  I am as responsible for her as any other parent in the country.  I do appreciate a bunch of you staunch Sage defenders getting up on your hind legs and calling "foul" on my behalf, but in this particular case, what I am experiencing is no different (I feel) than what thousands, probably millions, of moms go through every day raising toddlers while Dad goes off to work.  I am confident that most full time moms feel some of the same things I've felt about not having "quiet time" to myself to process the day's events, not feeling in touch with my authentic self and feeling as though there is no time in the day that truly belongs to me.  One difference I do have from a lot of them is that the minute Zoe comes through the door, she takes over.  Sure, I usually start dinner right away and prepare for the wind down of the night, but I do have support for the time that Zoe is here.  In fact, when she IS here, it's rare that I am the dominant parent.  I have actually talked with her about this a couple of times because I cannot imagine having the stressed out day her job demands and then coming home and jumping right into parenthood without some kind of wind down in between.  She swears she loves it and looks forward to it all day.  Zoe has never been anything less than a loving, supportive, understanding presence since we got married.  I did find that I have to be careful about what I say to her in regard to my occasional frustrations.  She begins to feel guilty as though she has put too much onto me and I don't want her feeling that way.  Sure, it's hard to be 50 years old and doing things.  It's the last thing I expected.  It is, however, I path I willfully and joyfully chose and I am happy overall to be walking it.

I still can't believe how involved this whole parenting process is.  I thought that taking care of Mom when she was infirm and had dementia before we figured out her heart problems and got her on medication and oxygen would have aptly prepared me for it, but Mom wasn't a quarter the work this little girl is.  She just turned 2 in August and is omnipresent and completely pervasive.  I used to HATE it when a friend would get married and have children and then talk about NOTHING else.  I now understand that because when they are little, there IS nothing else.

I am, however, going to use this journal entry to focus in on some other things going on in life since you've heard me babble quite enough about Precious Kitty Cait.  So what all else is going on in the world?

What?  There's an election?  Really?  Already?

Olympics?  Isn't that the thing where people exercise on TV?

Soaps?  Well, that's coming under separate cover, I promise.

Harvest?  Back to the kid for a minute.  Cute story.  I showed her how we could pull up carrots and eat them from the garden.  She was mesmerized.  She mesmerized every carrot out of the garden, big, little, super tiny and under developed.  She loved yanking those carrots out of the ground.  To her, it was like a magic trick.  I also have some grape vines (shitty little things that don't produce the best wine-making grapes in the world, I can tell you that) and some blackberry bushes and she's fairly impressed with those as well, although she learned about the blackberry bushes the hard way. 

She also loves hats and has to wear a hat, pretty much any hat, pretty  much every waking hour of every day.

Back from the world of kid, sort of.

Colin died a few months ago from pneumonia complicated by AIDS.  Both Zoe and I still test negative.  We were told by mutual acquaintances after the funeral had already happened, but I doubt we would have gone anyway.  He lived life as a "balls to the wall," take no prisoners, self-pleasing-at-all-costs hedonist, which is ultimately what cost him his life and endangered the lives of many others.  I'm very sorry that his life took that dark turn because he wasn't like that quite so much when I met him.  When I left, he had just started running with a group of people who I feel led him to that lifestyle.  Don't get me wrong.  He always had that interest and potential, but meeting up with people who were dedicated to exploiting that mindset and practice in each other took away any balance or filters he may have had.  My complete resistance to the ways they liked to party and conduct their lives was what led to our break up.  I had a moment of wondering if maybe I'd stayed, perhaps he could be saved but I shook that off pretty fast.  You can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved.  Zoe caught up in that group a bit after I was gone and I am grateful that she was able to extricate herself once she had Cait and get into a more stable, reality-based lifestyle.  I can't take credit for that.  She did it all on her own before I ever even got to her.

So whatever demon was driving Colin to do the things he did, especially in the part of his life, has hopefully been put to sleep and Colin himself is maybe finding some peace... or maybe he's at the big party in the sky.  Regardess, that chapter is closed in a sad way.

The trip to the resort for my birthday in July was very nice and restful; at least the resort part was.  The drive out and back was brutal and as I think I mentioned in a blurb somewhere, I will never again take a road trip with a 2-year-old.  Nuff Said.

I refilled the hot tub after a lot time of it being dry and made sure the cover was impossible to be moved by little hands.  At some point most nights after Zoe gets home, I make a point to go out there for some quiet time.  

Zoe was offered a promotion that involved moving to Phoenix.  This was about a month ago, I guess.  It was really dicey because I could tell she wanted the job, but I really did not want to move to Phoenix and I sure didn't want her and Cait going out on their own.  I truly hate the desert.  I also don't want my family taking over the house again because it was such a disaster the last time they did.  I felt really emotionally torn, but in the end, she was offered the same benefits package and position with her same company, but at another local office, so she ended up moving to a different building rather than a whole other state.  It was tense for a while, I won't lie to you, and there was a lot of "Truly, what do YOU want to do" talk going on with neither of us wanting to completely inflict our will onto the other one without consideration for their needs and wants.  I'm just grateful that it worked out without us having to make a choice.  Dodged that bullet.

A truly wonderful thing happened around the same time.  It was a great oasis of joy in the middle of an otherwise emotionally tumultuous mess.   Cait had a nightmare, and I do mean it was a DOOZIE!!  She woke up SCREAMING her head off and it took a little while and a lot of talking from both of us to get her reseated in reality and awake and aware and focused, almost an hour, actually.  It is the first time either of us remember her having a nightmare, but she was just a mess.  Why is that a wonderful thing, O Sadistic Dad?  Heh heh heh.  Because she dreamed The Head was biting her.  Just to be sure, I checked out everywhere she said it bit her and she had no red marks or anything.  With The Head, you just never can tell.  As she was settling down, she kept saying that she wanted The Head to go away, so I told her how much Uncle Kurt luvvvvvvs The Head and how it really did used to be HIS "The Head" and did she want to give it back to him to live with him?  She said she did!

The next day, after she'd slept for a few more hours and woke up all happy and giddy and refreshed, I asked her if she wanted to play with The Head.  Her face darkened and she said, "NO!  Head BAD!" and so I asked her if she wanted to take it to Uncle Kurt and she did, so we put on her prettiest dress and I put on my cheesiest grin and we bagged that sucker up in a gift bag with tissue paper and off we went to Unsuspecting Uncle Kurt's house where Unsuspecting Uncle Kurt was drinking his 4th - 5th cup of Gevalia coffee and thinking his day was just going to go tits. 

When we knocked on the door, Cait smiled and handed him the bag.  He got all smiley and gooey and said, "Is this for ME?"  I told him that Cait had brought Uncle Kurt a present and wanted him to keep it forever and ever.  She beamed up at him like an angel.  Hook, line and sinker - score!  He moved aside the tissue paper and then closed his eyes and breathed in and out for a bit.  Then he smiled and told her thank you so much for sharing her Head with him.  She said, "NO, YOUR Head.  Head Bad!" and pushed the bag further into his hands.  I confirmed, smiling broadly, "Yes, Kurt.  The Head is bad and Cait wants you to have it."  He said through his teeth, "What have you done, you monster?"  I said, "Not a thing.  She had a nightmare that The Head was biting her and wants you to have it now.  Honestly, Kurt, I think God wants you to have it too.  Possibly even the Baby Jesus in the Manger.  Yes, the Baby Jesus in the manger wants you to have The Head because the Christ Child had a dream about The Head and wants it to be at your house.  Both Cait and Jesus are fairly insistent on this point."  Cait backed me up by pushing on the bag again and saying, "YOUR Head."  I nodded briefly and primly.  "Your Head, Kurt." 

Maxine was practically on the floor dying laughing behind him. 

He said, "Awww, thank you, Kitty Cait," and leaned over and gave her a big hug.  Then he said, "And thank YOU, Sage" and gave me a man hug and said, "It's on, buddy.  It's on."

I think he was secretly pleased.

A few days later, I asked Kate if she wanted to go get The Head from Uncle Kurt and have it to play with again - just to be fair, I mean, she's lugged the thing around for a year now - but she was having nothing of it. 

So yeah, the game has resumed.

That's all I've got for now.  Hope you're all doing well.