Scene: the bathroom. Nate is ready to wash his hands, but he is not quite strong enough to turn on the faucet. Opa, Nate’s paternal grandfather, is supervising.
Nate: You have five seconds to turn the water on for me.
Dad (offstage): Nate, you may not speak to Opa that way. Please apologize, and ask him nicely.
Nate: Opa, will you please have five seconds to turn the water on for me?
Lawyerish always inspires me. This week, it’s house centipedes.
This post is not for the faint of heart. Continue reading at your own risk.
So today is the 232nd birthday of the United States Marine Corps. It is also the 32nd anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. And yes, it would have been my sixth wedding anniversary.
Let me tell you what’s happening in this picture.
Sarah’s godmother, Anne Louise, performed the second reading, from 1 Corinthians: “The greatest of these is love.” While she was reading, Father Murphy sat down in a chair in an alcove next to the altar. He bowed his head and closed his eyes. Was he praying?
Anne Louise finished the reading. She stepped down from the dais and took her seat.
There was silence. Father Murphy didn’t move.
In the picture, Sarah is looking at me and whispering through her smile, “Honey? Ut the hell do we do now?”
I was trying hard not to laugh. Without moving my lips, I murmured, “I think it’s the best man’s responsibility to wake up the priest.”
Luckily, the organist was on the ball. He played a little filler music, maybe goosed the volume just a little on the coda, and Father Murphy woke up and continued with the ceremony.
I’ll never know if he was really asleep, or just deep in meditation. But this picture always makes me smile.
Thanks to everyone who expressed their sympathy over the loss of Sarah’s jewelry. I think I am basically over it. It’s not as if I had intended to wear it, after all, and I still have the memories. I cancelled the maid service and changed the locks, and I (tearfully) gave the charm bracelets to Sarah’s nieces. I still have the first piece of jewelry I gave Sarah, a silver Tiffany bracelet with our initials engraved on opposite sides of a silver heart. That will have to do.
In the comments of the last post, Peg raised the question of how my blog got its name. It’s not quite as simple as she guessed.
Sarah’s totem animal was the manatee. She loved homely animals, and the manatee topped the list. She had manatee jewelry, manatee socks, manatee mugs, just all kinds of manatee paraphernalia. This made it easy for me to pick out gifts for her. A manatee trinket was shorthand for “I love you.”
When we met, I didn’t have a similar obsession. This made it a bit more of a challenge for Sarah to pick out gifts for me.
One day, when we were packing for our first overnight trip together, Sarah presented me with what she called a “travel animal.” She explained that one of her ex-boyfriends had been in the military, and he introduced her to the concept. Apparently it’s traditional for an infantryman to carry a small plush animal in his backpack, to be his “eyes behind” and help look out for danger. He shared the tradition with her, and now she was continuing it with me.
My new travel animal was a Beanie Baby: Happy the Hippo. I was completely delighted. Happy has accompanied me on every trip I’ve ever taken since then. He’s been all over the world. As time passed, however, we realized that this gift was much more than it seemed. It had revealed my totem animal to me. Any time I saw a picture of a hippopotamus, it reminded me of Sarah and how much she loved me. Soon the hippo-themed gifts began in earnest. We even made a pilgrimage to Busch Gardens in Tampa Bay, where we took the Animal Adventure Tour specifically so we could go backstage and feed the hippos. (Of course, we also visited the Lowry Park Zoo and hung out with the manatees for several hours.)
The suffix -potamus entered our vocabulary fairly quickly, but it really took off when Nate was born. When he was hungry, he was a hungrypotamus. When he was sleepy, he was a sleepypotamus. When he was spitting up, he was a messypotamus (from Messypotamia, of course). And when he was cranky? Obviously, he was a crankopotamus. And when he woke us up in the middle of the night, we were all crankopotamuses together.
Nate inherited the (dozens of) plush manatees, but they’re not his thing. I await with interest the revelation of his totem animal. At the moment he loves penguins and turtles, but it’s still too early to say.
As for me, I still love hippos, but my collection has slowed way down since Sarah died. We saw a great wooden hippo puzzle while on vacation this summer, but in the end I just couldn’t bear to buy it.
I miss my wife.
Sarah and I are packing for a long Fourth-of-July weekend in Ogunquit, Maine. We’ve been talking all month about buying an engagement ring. My stance is that it just wouldn’t be financially responsible to spend that kind of money right now. We seem to spend a lot on travel, and we don’t have a ton of money in the bank. Sarah is glum.
Unbeknownst to her, I have already purchased a beautiful three-diamond engagement ring. It is the single most expensive thing I have ever bought, with my car coming in a close second. It is tucked away in the soap dish in my toiletries kit (which my parents always called a “ditty bag” and her parents called a “Dopp kit,” so go figure).
Saturday morning, as we are loading the car, she gives me a big hug, and grabs my butt as she kisses me. I know she is looking for a ring box in one of my pockets. She does not believe that I would leave the ring in the car. I can feel the disappointment in her kiss when she fails to find anything resembling a ring box in my pants.
When we get to our hotel, I pull some sleight-of-hand and produce a bar of soap, ostensibly from the soap dish, and place it in the shower stall. We lock her camera in the room safe and go to dinner. I leave the ring in my ditty bag.
Sunday morning, we are scheduled to go sea kayaking. We explore the Ogunquit River for a couple of hours, and head back to our room to change into our street clothes. While Sarah is in the bathroom, I put the ring in the pocket of my cargo shorts. A huge surge of adrenaline sets my heart racing. Oh God, this is it.
We wander through town, and buy ice cream cones at the store. We buy a wooden hippo puzzle. We browse the bookstore. We decide to walk the Marginal Way down to Perkins Cove for lunch. I am playing it cool, but my heart is still going a mile a minute.
About halfway along the Marginal Way, I suggest that we stop and sit on the rocks for a while. It’s early for lunch yet and the surf is booming. As we sit down, Sarah is thinking, “This would be the perfect place for him to propose. Too bad the dope doesn’t have a ring.”
We talk about this and that: how beautiful it is here, how much we love it, and how much we love each other. I say, “Speaking of love… will you marry me?”
Sarah laughs. “Of course I will, silly.” She doesn’t yet realize that this is It.
I laugh too. “Well then. I suppose I’d better give you this.” I pull out the ring box and offer it to her with shaking hands. She is speechless; we both start to cry and laugh.
I ask her several times if she was really surprised. She was always difficult to surprise, but just this once, I got her good.
At lunch, she shows it off to the waitress, and anyone else who will hold still. She plays with the sunbeams, breaking them into a constellation of rainbows that shine on the ceiling, on her face, on me.
I am with Sarah in the Emergency Department. She refuses to believe that she is dying. As they are getting ready to intubate her, I ask her if there is anything special she would want anyone to have, just in case. “No,” she says. I give her a stern look: just in case. “Give my charm bracelets to the girls, then.” She means her nieces, Catherine and Eliza. And the charm bracelets are her most iconic pieces of jewelry. They are choked with memories. There is one charm for every trip she’s ever taken. I start to cry. She squeezes my hand and says, “Hey. I’m not going anywhere.”
Nate and I are at the bagel place with Sarah’s family. Her sister, Sue, brings up Egypt, and Eliza’s face lights up. She says, “I remember when you guys went to Egypt, Sarah had those gold pendants made for us, with our names in hieroglyphics!”
I leave Nate with Sue; I have to run back to the house for something. While I am there, I decide it is time. I go upstairs to get the charm bracelets, and to double-check that I know where Sarah’s hieroglyphics pendant and bracelet are located. When I open the jewelry box, however, I discover that it is basically empty. All of Sarah’s gold jewelry has been stolen.
The engagement ring is gone. Our wedding rings. The Egyptian bracelet and pendant. Her manatee earrings and charm. The opal she bought in Australia. The three-strand braided pearl necklace I gave her the night Nathaniel was born. The list is a long one; she loved pretty things. Bracelets, necklaces, earrings. She had a lot of jewelry.
But they left me the charm bracelets. Silver, you know. Not worth taking.
I am feeling much better, thank you. Last week’s fever really messed up my head, though. As I mentioned in my last post, when I tried to read, or write, the words would rearrange themselves on the page as I was looking at them. It occurs to me to wonder if this is what it was like for Sarah.
You see, Sarah was dyslexic. I read pretty fast, when I’m not febrile, and she used to take it as a personal offense that I could finish a book in the time it would take her to finish a chapter.
Sarah had an extensive collection of floaty pens, so the word Eskesen was pretty common in her vocabulary. When we were first dating, every time she would say Eskesen, I would correct her: no, it’s Eseksen. And when she would say Eseksen, I would correct her: no, it’s Eskesen. It got to the point where even I didn’t know which was right any more. I managed to keep a straight face for almost two months before I couldn’t keep it going any more, and confessed. We laughed, but then she said, “That’s a really mean thing to do to a dyslexic.”
One day she called me from work, giggling. “Hi honey,” she said. “I saw the strangest headline on CNN.com today. It said, CLAM BELLIES UNREST IN THE MIDDLE EAST. And I thought, what could that possibly be about? Is it because shellfish aren’t kosher? Or, what’s-it, halal? Maybe something to do with the oil spill?”
I didn’t know.
“So then I went to a meeting, and when I got back to my desk, it said, CALM BELIES UNREST IN THE MIDDLE EAST. That makes a lot more sense, don’t you think?”
We shared a good chuckle over that. Her sign-off was the same, whenever she looked silly: “Aren’t you lucky? You get to keep me.”
Hi there! I’m sick. How are you?
The fever makes the words move when I’m not looking. They run off the page and go screebling up the walls like Martians. So, until I get my marbles back, here are a few pictures from our Vineyard vacation.
If you click a thumbnail image, it will take you to a larger view of the photo. You can leave general comments here, but I think you can also leave comments on the individual photo pages if you so desire.
Enjoy!
It must have been around 1999 when we took Annie and Ben and Lisa over to Martha’s Vineyard for the day. We bopped around Vineyard Haven for a little while, then took a cab to Oak Bluffs to ride the carousel.
The Flying Horses Carousel has been in operation since the late 1800s. It claims to be the oldest operating platform carousel in the nation, but I’ve noticed that they all claim that. I wasn’t around then, so I can’t say. The important thing is that Sarah had been riding the Flying Horses since she was a little girl.
This is the first carousel that I had ever ridden that included a ring grab. The ring machine arm is in easy reach. You can grab ring after ring, but they’re all steel. Towards the end of the ride, the operator puts the one and only brass ring into the chute, and one lucky rider grabs it and gets a free ride.
Native Islanders have perfected the multiple grab technique. I once saw Jeremy get six rings on one pass. Sarah was no slouch, either, but she had never caught the brass ring… until that day. She whooped with laughter and held it up. I think Ben took a picture. We all filed off the carousel, but she stayed on to collect her free ride with the next group of riders.
Under the cover of the crowd, I went to the concession stand and bought a souvenir brass ring, with a purple ribbon (her favorite color, of course). By the time she was off the ride, I had hidden it safely away in my pocket.
On the ferry ride home, we rode right up front in the bow of the boat. She noticed the tears in my eyes and asked me what was wrong.
“Nothing; I’m just so happy.” She started to tear up too, and gave me a big hug. I said, “I feel as if I’m the one who caught the brass ring. I’m so lucky to have found you.” Then I pulled the crumpled paper bag out of my pocket. “I bought you a present…”
The summer that Nate turned one, the weather was brutally hot. We took him to the mall fairly often, to escape the heat in their air conditioning. The food court had a big, fancy carousel, and after one of our lunches, I suggested that we take Nate on it. “No,” said Sarah. “I want his first carousel ride to be the Flying Horses.” Sure enough, it was; later that summer, we sailed over, and she took him on his first ride. He wasn’t sure what to make of it all, being so young, but he didn’t seem to mind.
Last month, my mother and I rented a house on the Vineyard for a week. It was her first time there, and I was overjoyed to be playing tour guide once more. Early in the week, we spent the day in Oak Bluffs, and of course, we had to ride the Flying Horses.
“Nate, do you remember the Flying Horses?”
“No…”
“This is the first carousel you ever rode. Your mama took you when you were just one.”
At first, he wanted an outside horse, but the inside horses are lower and much less scary, so we switched to an inside horse. I belted him in, and pointed out the ring machine. I wasn’t sure he would be able to manage it, but I held him tight, and by durn if he didn’t get a ring every time around. I was so proud as he stacked them up, six, seven, and ah, God, Sarah should have been here for this. I hid my tears from him as best I could, but he felt me sobbing. “Why are you laughing, daddy?”
“Because I’m so happy! You’re doing a great job.”
Usually I let him see me cry, but I didn’t want to spoil his moment. I managed to wipe my eyes with my shirt and put on a smile, just before he turned to show me what he had in his hand.
The brass ring.
It was almost midnight on Christmas Eve, 2002. Sarah and I were at her parents’ house. The party was over, and I had eaten far too many cookies, as usual. I was lying on the floor like a beached whale, watching the end of Holiday Inn, also as usual.
When the movie ended, we made up the pull-out couch in the office and crawled in. I snuggled close and wrapped my arm around her. I whispered in her ear, “Merry Christmas, honey.”
Then my eyes snapped open. “Oh, my God. You’re pregnant!”
“Now, honey,” she said. “Even if I am, it’s too early to tell. And it might take us a while. I don’t want you to get your hopes up.” But I just knew.
A few days later, we went to CVS to buy a pregnancy test. I picked up a single pack. Sarah said, “They’re cheaper if you buy three.”
I smiled. “We don’t need three. We don’t even need one. I already know you’re pregnant.” She laughed, and we bought the single pack.
Seven months later, and she was as big as a house. We were going sailing with Sarah’s parents. We were in the dinghy, on our way out to the boat, when I was struck by the same cosmic lightning that had hit me on Christmas Eve. “We’re having a girl,” I said.
Sarah turned and looked at me. She peered into my eyes.
“Baloney,” she said.
Happy birthday, Nathaniel.
Sailing is many different things to many different people, but I think we can all agree that it is primarily an outdoor sport. Outdoor activities do not come naturally to me, but I’m learning. This weekend, we sailed to Martha’s Vineyard with Sarah’s parents. We spent two whole days on the water, from dawn to dusk. I learned a few things about the sun. I would like to share some of these lessons with you, as sort of a public service announcement.
I don’t use a lot of sunscreen. I would rather wear protective clothing, or burrow deep into the cool, moist earth in order to avoid the sun entirely. When I buy an eight-ounce tube of sunscreen, it takes me years to use it all. Conclusion: I need to buy sunscreen in smaller quantities, and use it in larger quantities.
I took my bright red legs to the Consumer Reports website, where I read this article. The bottom line: I am going to discard the remainder of my six-year-old tube of now-completely-worthless Coppertone Sport SPF 48 (goodbye, old friend) and purchase some No-Ad SPF 50.
You might be wondering if Nate got burned as well. Have no fear. Sarah, as always, is looking out for him. That Consumer Reports article was just published this month, but somehow she knew what it would say. She bought him a 16-ounce bottle of No-Ad SPF 45 Babies when he was six months old. Yes, it’s a little bit past its shelf life, but it still works. He survived the weekend without getting burned, and now that I know to look for the sell-by date, I’ll pitch it and get a new batch.
The only issue he has is this: when he is wearing his Thomas the Tank Engine hat and sunglasses, strangers tend to call him Thomas. Luckily, the sunglasses hide his disgust at their idiocy.