Years of Smiles

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STOP! Every moment is meaningful (PS pause music player at bottom right to watch video)

Olympic Rings

I wasn’t born with the ‘watching sports’ gene. I have never had a favorite team. I was raised in a house where the Miss America contest was what brought the family together for a night of personal selections and discriminating tastes. I have never felt a particular affinity to my college team. I was on the cheer team in elementary, middle school, high school, and college, which had NOTHING to do with the love of the game and everything to do with the outfits we got to wear! But come to my house and you will see a room devoted to sports. Which sport you ask? All of them. Cause naturally what a NON-sports loving girl does is marry a SPORTS FANATIC! When I married him on the beach in Mexico we had to “hurry it along” because the Suns were in some playoff. Yup, I still said “Yes”. It could have been my last clean break. So here I sit surrounded by sports memorabilia about to admit a very strange fact about myself. You see, I absolutely am bored to death (yes, to death) watching sports whether on TV or at the event. I would rather take a hockey puck to the eye than go to a game. I do however love the crowd watching. I once sat through an entire playoff game and DID NOT once watch the game. I believe I was searching for the cotton candy guy. My strange fact: I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE the Summer Olympics! Perhaps because I only have to watch it once every four years. I watch the trials. I follow the athletes on every social medium available. I ‘LIKE’ their photos on Facebook. I’m opinionated about their apparel and where it was made. I follow the torch (and have been known to use my ice cream cone as a replica). I bought the Life magazine that chronicles each American athlete’s road to success. I study their family lives and I look for the traits that make them posses that drive and that spirit. Over the years I have studied my fascination with the games and have concluded that I like the Olympic games because of its representation of what is possible with hard work, a loving family, and personal drive. Are we all born with these genes or do they develop over time? Did Michael Phelps mother give birth to a mega-athlete or did her kind words and loving support let her child know that he could do it? One Olympian on the equestrian team said,” You know you are truly dedicated to something when you lie about being hurt so no one will make you stop” after he fell off of his horse. That’s drive! A coach of an athlete who was injured said, “as she fell down on her ankle I knew right away she was out for the rest of the game but when I got to the bench she was ready to go back on the court. When I asked her about it she said the ankle is a long way from the heart”. Olympic athletes are everyday people that found their passion. Sure, some of them are born into families where mommy and daddy were fierce competitors. And some were regular kids whose mom and dad put them in the water, or in a gym, or on a horse, or on a field with a ball, and said, “I like watching you have fun”. A favorite quote of mine is “Mothers don’t just drive their kids to practice, they drive them to greatness”. This I find is part of the ‘magic ingredient’ to making a child successful. A lot of what a child can do in their life begins with what is between their ears. GET YOUR HEAD IN THE GAME. We hear this all the time when watching sports. What are you filling your child’s head with? This might be what separates the average from the elite. This year 205 nations will participate in 300 events. There are 10,490 athletes competing in the Olympic Games this summer, and 4,200 athletes competing in the Paralympic Games. That’s a lot of mommies and daddies doing their jobs! I am blessed with athletes in my family. I didn’t feed them any special meals; read them any special books to give them the drive that they have (good genes, maybe, but that’s a given). I put them in the car or on the plane and sat on a hard bleacher or a grass mound and WATCHED. That’s it folks. There’s the magic ingredient. You don’t need a mother and a father; you don’t necessarily even need two parents. You just need someone who’s got your back. But it’s more than watching them. I have seen their tears. I have felt their defeat. I have seen their eyes light up with nervous energy and excitement. I have listened. I have let them have space. I cheered. I videotaped. I sweated. I’ve clenched my hands in prayer. I’ve hugged. I’ve been their soft place to fall when their landing might have been a little rough. So, as the Olympics are about to begin and new seasons are starting in our own worlds, let’s remember what it takes to make a champions, whether on the field or in the classroom. It’s hot; we’re tired from work; there are To Do Lists; dinners to be made; life going on. The best athletes are made from INSIDE the home. So I’ll watch the Olympics from open to close and remember that there is a little one in the stands or on the couch that wants to be just like them. I can take care of the support and they will have to believe that they can do the rest! Dreams aren’t things that don’t come true, those are just fairy tales.

I might get bogged down on the thought of blowing out one extra candle on the birthday cake, but when I stop and look at my life I cannot believe that I could fit ALL the love into such a short amount of time.

How I Quilt

I don’t pretend to know what love is for everyone, or HOW a ‘relationship’ should go. Everyone’s different. I know what it is for me. I know I didn’t marry him because he was perfect. It is more likely that I’m attracted to the imperfect…the one with the ‘broken wing’…rough around the edges. I have a superpower of seeing the ‘heart’ of a person…what really makes them tick; their REAL side that they don’t show to the outside world. I often stand in amazement and watch him genuinely care about another person. I watch him hurt when people are struggling. And I wait, because I KNOW he will be anxious to share these feelings with me. He knows I will understand these things like no one else does, or would even understand. This side of him makes those rough edges not so apparent to me. That’s what a relationship is. The person someone wants to run to when they have news, heartache, or a jarred memory. It is your soft spot to land where you know you will be understood and welcomed. It’s the place that only the two of you can understand. One statement about marriage I read was: Why is it important for people to get married? Because we need a witness to our lives. There are a billion people on the planet. In a marriage you promise to care about this person’s everything. You’re saying “Your life will not go unnoticed, because I will notice it”. It is that patchwork of memories that you can pull up in a minute…that recollection of memories past. It can be as mundane as the day-to-day events, or as spectacular as the planned trips and holidays. These are all weaving who you are as a couple. It is understanding their weaknesses and strengths. It is giving that ‘last bite’ (which we know as the BEST bite) to the other person because you KNOW how much they will like it. It is not always the ‘take your breath away moments’ that young love relates to in its fairy tale. This is when you know that marriage is about the history and familiarity, and the people that are effected because of those memories. You see, anyone can have a lover, but true love is the stitching together of days, years, events, tragedies, raising of children, letting go, and hanging on. Anything else is fantasy. I have read article after article of couples that have been together for years, decades, and they NEVER say what keeps them together as being passion and fiery lust. It isn’t those sexy nights that are often too infrequent because there’s a kid in your bed with a tummy ache or a phone ringing in the middle of the night from a teenager ‘checking-in’. It is ALWAYS because they genuinely cared about the other person’s needs before their own. They ‘like’ the person for who they really are. LIKED!!! You see, that is important when the first person you see at night is the same person you see each morning. ‘I like you’ means ‘I relate to you so much and I like who you are’. It means “I have been watching you year after year and I still want you in my life’. It means you know their faults and weaknesses and you would still be their friend, even if you weren’t married. There is no better feeling in the world than when we can tell what the other person is thinking with just a ‘look’. That something that only the two of us ‘gets’. As Rocky said, “ I got gaps. You got gaps. We fill each other’s gaps”. I know that if my husband ever wanted to leave, then I would have to go with him. It might not be perfect, but it is who we are and quite frankly, I think we are doing a pretty darn good job of being ‘US’. We are here because we know there isn’t any other place quite like OUR place. Happy anniversary…

March 28

We pulled in and saw a man grieving by the freshly cut mound of flowers marking his loved one's spot. A wife possibly. Hopefully not a child. I remember those first couple days. Every minute, every breath, every daily visit for those first months. The pain mixed with loss, mixed with confusion. But the years go by and the visits become less frequent. But within the blink off an eye an event brings you right back to that heaviness of loss. I laid the flowers on my great grandma's grave, my gramma's, my papa's, and lastly hers. I laid each flower with an audible 'thank you' for being responsible for bringing her into this life. For this was her birthday and as she never forgot mine, I would never forget hers. Neither will my children. It's one of our frequent trips. Sometimes to mark a holiday and sometimes we just need to feel connected. As I place the last flower on her grave I glance at the date: March 28, 1942. Without realizing this, it is my Mother's 70th birthday. And it hits me like a ton of bricks. A wave of grief. And then they start to fall. And fall. And fall. And all I can tell my daughter is what I know someday she will feel about me. That this is the crappy part about life. The losing. The remembering. As we walk away I look down and find a rock in the perfect shape of a heart. I think, 'my rock, my heart'. I listen to the signs and find comfort.

Wishing You Good Luck

A photo says, 'You were happy and I wanted to catch that.'
A photo says, 'You were so important to me that I put down everything else to come watch.*

A Sprite is a Sprite is a Sprite

I wrote this a couple of months ago and thought you would like to read it AGAIN:Ground Zero
This is the little church at ground zero...or is it Ground Zero (caps), not sure...and I don't need to explain to any one of you what that means or where it is. I love this church. It's old and it appears that you can lift open the vaults (God I would LOVE that). I have taken the kids here twice. BOTH times they bitched. 90 degrees with 90 degree humidity in NYC is HAWWRIBBLE. I explained to them that this is where the families posted pics along the fence to find their loved ones. This served as a refuge to the firefighters and officers who needed to get in from the 'conditions' of that day/week/month. The trees are still there. A little piece of heaven in the middle of chaos. Do they get it? I'm not sure you can really EXPLAIN that feeling we all had that day. Whether you were in the middle of it, lost a family/friend, or half way across the US watching it on TV...you HAD that feeling. My kids were 3, 4, and 6. They barely remember to brush their teeth. They don't remember this the way other people do; the way we do. So, I walk around Ground Zero with the spawn in tow searching for a Sprite. Workers are everywhere building the NEW and improved Ground Zero site. I feel like Mother of the Year...GODDAMNIT you will learn something from this adventure...if I have to be miserable in this heat so will you, people, this is HISTORY!!!! They GET IT in their own way. They understand the relevance. As we walk down the street I follow my children...I watch them walk with their Sprites in hand...I feel small, and blessed...and safe!

My 16 Year Old Self

You can’t spell friendship without emotions; if you’re a friend of mine then I truly care about you…and it appears to work the other way around, too!

My close friends know that I am obsessive to the Nth degree about certain things. When I ‘like’ something it becomes topic of conversation rather effortlessly. Some OCD topics of mine: death, crime, murder, quotes (#1). Most of these revolve around insight and life choices…wisdom provoking…the unknown…deeper meanings of life. Hell, I didn’t earn the title of ‘Repeat’ without boring these dear friends (and some NOT so friends) with my words and insights on these matters. My dad used to call me Chatty Cathy when I was little, so you see I didn’t become this person as of recent old age…I was born this way (thanks Lady Gaga). Hell, sometimes they even had to knock me off of my ivory tower just to get me to shut up…problem is, I like the view from up there. I like talking about and thinking about the things that interest me. And if you are my close friend you have earned the title of ‘listener’. Imagine the JOY when I started a blog. Now everyone can choose to listen, or not to listen, to me rant and rave about what inspires me.

Get to the point, Amy. My BFF is Sammyk8 (that’s her internet name) found something she knew I would love in Sky Mall magazine. Several ‘celebrities’ were asked to write a letter to their 16 year-old self. Sammyk8 knew I would love one in particular because she has heard me write and talk endlessly about her, Jodi Picoult. This got me inspired to write a letter to myself, at 16 years old:

Dear Me: A Letter to my 16 year-old self,

Learn to slow down. Worry less. Happiness does not come from being skinny, having the best feathered hair, or knowing all the words to a Sting song. It does not come from the people that surround you at a particular time, but more from the people who can be with through the journey. Those countless hours spent with a handicapped mom that make you so mad that you can’t be with your friends will only make you into an incredibly caring and sympathetic person when you’re older…a trait you will pass on to your children, and hopefully their children some day. The people who think you were crazy and eccentric will be the same people who ‘like your style’ , value your opinions, and make you the envy of teenagers. If one person thinks you’re different now, realize a thousand will accept you for who you are one day. Your love of horses might make people laugh at you now, but you will have a daughter who is ‘raised in a barn’ and have dreams of her own on top of her horse. Your ability to do the ‘yucky’ medical care for your mother will develop a love of medicine and the less fortunate in your oldest daughter. Your outspoken and sassy nature will eventually be witnessed in your children as they stand up for what they believe in and NEVER allow them to be anyone’s doormat. Your hoarding of all the cards, letters, quotes, love song lyrics will bring comfort to you when you lose your mom, grandparents, and will help to recapture the love that people feel for you someday…they will show you that people are happy that you are in their world. Fight with your brother all you want, but you will develop a bond that is beyond words. Those countless groundings, family car rides, and family traditions will one day make you yearn to have those moments back again, if only for ONE MINUTE, to have all those people in one room again. Don’t spend your whole life looking for that ONE person. There will be several ‘loves’ in your lifetime. Your first kisses don’t matter as much as who your last kiss is. You will learn from ALL your mistakes and grow. You will make the same amount of mistakes when you are older, but you will understand the reasons why they were necessary some day. You eventually become the person that others needed you to be and you will understand and be grateful. It’s ok to eat when you’re upset, or not exercise; someday you will learn that the outside isn’t as important as the inside. Continue lending out your clothes, sparing a dollar for a friend in need, going that ‘extra mile’, this will become one of your greatest qualities that others see in you, especially your children one day.

Clean your plate when gramma cooks, you will miss it one day.
Clean your room.
Hug your mom. Tightly and often.

I love you, Amy xo

P.S. Don’t throw away those 80’s fashions, that shit’s going to be expensive some day!!!!

December 1

People tend to use traumatic events to pinpoint change in their lives. 9/11 is one that we can all remember life before and life after… events that change us from who we were to whom we are following it.

December 1. Eighteen years ago today I sat next to my mom and did homework on a little couch that was next to her bed. My grandmother needed some alone time so I was ‘on watch’. I knew she was in Hospice care, but my mind protected me from that fact and I figured it was just ANOTHER ‘episode’ and this too would be overcome. My mother began to make interesting comments in those days that I would learn to be her ‘last’ days. She talked about angels that look like everyday people that walk among us. We never know who they are; we need to just know that they are there. It would be two days before she died. I didn’t go visit her the next day……………

My life has become divided into before December 3, 1993 and after. As if my life experiences are remembered based on whether it was when she was still here or after the fact. The date becomes a moment in time that STOPPED…. Whenever someone talks about the beginning of December I immediately think, “I wonder if they are talking about before or after THE DATE”. That is when I became a motherless daughter. I read the book, Motherless Daughters, following THE DATE. I particularly remember a letter from one woman that lost her mother ten years earlier and still grieved as if it was the day before. I thought to myself in my very newly found grief that surely that woman was crazy to be distraught and saddened TEN YEARS LATER! I come to find out that it isn’t about the years. It isn’t about another year without my mom. It’s about the love that was and always will be there. That hole in your heart that can’t be replaced.

My mom continues to teach me so many things even though I can’t see her. I definitely can feel her. When her song comes on the radio I know it was there for a reason. When I see her smile in my daughter’s own face. That’s the thing; it never goes away, even if a person does. My mother is the background music in my life. I may be busy living and struggling, or laughing and loving, but when the crazy world stops………you can hear it……you can feel it……….she’s there.

I had a dream that I don’t think was a dream. It was my house. It was unchanged. She was there. In her wheelchair. I went to hug her, expecting to be unable to embrace her because, come on, everyone knows ghosts are see-through. Duh. I hugged and I felt her. I felt her warmth, touched her hands, and felt love in return. Allison Dubois said, “Lately when I do readings the deceased say, ‘Even though you don't see making memories with me anymore, I'm still making them with you. When you die you'll flash back to all you did after I died and see me there laughing with you as I really was. On birthdays, at dinner tables, in the delivery room for family, I WAS there." This is what I felt that night and the dream that I hold onto in belief.

I know my mother is near me. She sends me signals to let me know she’s there. Recently it has been the alarm clock playing the most beautiful music, softly, in the wee hours of the morning. I’ve come to realize that an angel is walking among us; it’s just that we don’t realize that this particular one is my mother. Thanks for watching over me and continue to make these memories with me, Mom. Love you!