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I'm making köttbullar for some friends today--or meatballs as we'd say in English. The funny thing about these is that they are meat-less because the target audience lives a mostly meat-free life. How does one make meatless meatballs? With potatoes (from our family garden), ground almonds, and love.
I've used food as an "I love you" for a long time. I suppose I learned this from my mother--what with her always available chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter brownies, and various pies. During college, I never came home to an empty pan or cookie jar.
My first gift to Aimee, was a peach pie. We'd only been dating for about a month, so I didn't want to get weird or anything. She'd mentioned liking peach pie once. I made one and "sealed the deal." (her words, not mine) I baked scores of pies over the years--peach, strawberry rhubarb, chocolate peanut butter... Aimee's birthday became an occasion for pizza, a different kind of pie. When she turned thirty, I kneaded dough and baked for hours. By her fortieth, I'd learned a few tricks, but every pizza was still a work of my two hands.
When prepping food for friends, I always like to make it from scratch, just like my potato meat(less)balls. Food is special that way--something with effort and care put in that you can actually taste and feel.
Aimee helped plant this year's potato crop, and I'm happy to share this little miracle tubers with friends.
I feel another "significant" post brewing, but it will wait for another day. Today, I bring pictures from our recent trip to Rocky Mountain National Park and one of my favorite stories about Aimee.
National Parks were/are an obsession of ours--I still have our map of all National Parks hanging in the basement (with color-coded pins indicated which family member has been where). In 2000, Aimee and I took a road trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton. We camped for five nights--four of them in Yellowstone--and enjoyed all the sights. The view of the Tetons from Jackson Lake... spectacular. We rented a boat, a small craft with an outboard motor, and headed onto the lake. The boat's owner gave us a bit of advice which caused contention:
Stay within a mile of shore.
Of course, Aimee (being the adventurous type she was), aimed the boat for the mountains and gave it the gun. My knuckles whitened as I clutched the gunnels.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Staying a mile away from shore like he said," she said.
"No. No. No." I glanced over my shoulder at the swelling waves. The tiny boat would easily capsize in the middle of Jackson Lake. "He said within a mile of shore."
She didn't agree, of course, but the look of sheer-animal-panic on my face convinced her to turn our ship around. Aimee and I weren't able to share enough National Park adventures before her death (could there ever be enough National Park adventures?), but the boys and I will keep going...
I hiked to Fern Lake early on Saturday morning, the date which would have been our 11th wedding anniversary. Aimee and I made the same hike on our 6th wedding anniversary (June 16, 2007), just over a year after Max was born. I was early enough to miss the crowd (it's a tough hike, but a popular one) and have some alone time with the lake, the trees, the mountains, and my thoughts.
Elliot was not impressed by the lack of oxygen above tree line.
Max, Owen, and I on top of the world. Okay, at least on top of a granite formation on Trail Ridge Road.
Max and Owen showed me how to scramble on the rocks near a waterfall. Going down was easier than up.
A van from Nebraska Furniture Mart delivered what has come to be known as "the big brown couch" yesterday. Back in early March, Aimee, the boys, our good friend John and I spent a day at NFM shopping for just the right furniture for our remodeled basement.
Aimee said, "I want a couch we can all sit on together." The picture can't do this leviathan justice:
The forced perspective (I had to stand on the stairs to capture the whole monster) makes the ottoman look tiny--it isn't. The couch measures 11' x 8'. Yes, it's huge. A true mammoth. In Max's words, "Thank goodness it comes in pieces." Yes, Max. Thank goodness.
I had a moment of pause when I first sat on the couch. Aimee's words came to me--"I want a couch we can all sit on together."
Yesterday, I cleaned my classroom and found some CDs which I'd stashed in my desk years ago. One of them was
Under the Table and Dreaming by Dave Matthews Band. Aimee and I went to a DMB concert back in '99. I still remember what she wore. I listened on the way home while Max munched a fruit by the foot and napped.
These little moments give me pause, a little lump in my throat. Despite the sadness, I've learned to be thankful for good memories. I'm so thankful for all the wonderful memories I shared with Aimee.
*yes, the walls do look bare. I've ordered several vintage movie posters to frame and hang about the room...
Clockwork Orange,
Vertigo,
Star Wars (that one's for me
and the boys),
The Haunting (1963),
The Black Cat (1934)... It'll be good.
I'm not a huge Emily Dickinson fan, but I do like image from "Hope is the Thing with Feathers"--hope brought to life as a bird. Hope is also an action, something we, as humans, can do. Something we should do.
In graduate school, I was fortunate enough to enroll in a course titled "Positive Psychology". The first lesson: most of the historical study of psychology has been focused on finding what's wrong with a person rather than what is right. Positive psychology turns the focus to what is right with a person--protective factors and strengths one might possess, just as a physically healthy person might be able to run several miles or compete at a high level in a given sport. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses--positive psychology attempts to recognize strengths. Hope is one of those strengths.
Research studies have shown hope can help you lead a healthy, fulfilled life. Hopeful college students are more likely to obtain degrees. Hopeful public school students are more likely to score high marks and graduate at the top of their classes. I didn't need a class to explain what I knew at the core of my being--hope can pull you through some hard times.
Hope consists of agency and pathways, the willpower and the waypower to make something happen. Hopeful people have the energy--agency--and can find ways--pathways--to make their dreams real.
Aimee's death has knocked me down, hard. Once, I hoped for a family and a long, happy life with the vibrant young woman I met in front of the post office. When Aimee was sick, that same hope pulled me through, helped me do what I could to take care of her. She lived life with hope--hope for me, for the boys, for her friends and family. I'd like to think she never gave up hope. I proud of the way we fought together, and no illness can tarnish my cherished memories.
I'm slowly building hope again--hope for my boys, our future, our family, my future... Things I never imagined putting together without Aimee. I also have hope for her legacy and memory. She spread so much hope and love, it can't help but continue.
Hope is a special kind of inoculation; it can't take away Aimee's death or her illness, but it can help with the way forward. I know Aimee would want us all to continue with as much hope as we can muster.
Aimee and I enjoyed hiking--especially in National Parks. Our National Park map still hangs in our basement, framed and laminated with colorful push pins for each member of the family. The pins indicate where we've been.
In 2000, Aimee and I took a trek to Yellowstone National Park, otherwise known as "Disneyland of National Parks," meaning it's rather crowded and overflowing with RVs. Yes, we drove to Yellowstone in my tiny Honda Civic (and that, my friends, was quite a road trip). We brought most of our food in a big cooler. We camped for a week and found plenty of less-traveled paths (with the help of a few nice park rangers).
Aimee had a nose for water. She climbed onto countless rocks in the middle of mountain streams while I stood on the shore, exhorting her to be safe. Here she is in a common moment of contemplation. In the scrapbook, I wrote a simple note on a Post-it: the road less-traveled.
And that was Aimee's life as I knew her. She never took the easy path--helping start a grant-funded mental health program for kids in local schools, coaching high school sports (and later her sons in soccer and basketball), spending a week each summer at Anytown (a diversity/leadership camp for teens). She even listened to all of my crazy dreams and laughed when she found scraps of paper scribbled with story ideas.
I like this picture more than any other from Yellowstone. I like to imagine what she was thinking, or maybe that she wasn't thinking at all--just letting the water pass beneath her. It's a peaceful thought.
A couple of pictures from the vault today: the first Aimee and I took with sunflowers nearly thirteen years ago.
Aimee surrounded by the yellow blooms wearing her Sunflower Bike Shop t-shirt. How appropriate.
Yes, that's me, baby face and all, sniffing a sunflower. Look how non-grey my hair was back then. And no, sunflowers don't really have a lovely flower fragrance. To take the picture, Aimee asked me to climb a little mound and stand in the middle of the flowers. I paid for my compliance with tiny cuts and hives on my arms and legs. She framed my picture (the one above) and kept it on her nightstand until the day she died.
After that first adventure, we took family photos with sunflowers each year. Usually, we'd pose with random "dirt mound" flowers--the small ones from the pictures above which litter Kansas in late summer. A few times we found commercial fields of sunflowers, the big, fat-headed blooms harvested for seeds or floral arrangements. Sunflowers are stubborn plants, and the wild ones crop up anywhere they can find open soil.
Sunflowers held special meaning for us. I painted an arrangement of sunflowers for Aimee's wedding gift. When we honeymooned in Ireland and I started feeling a little homesick, Aimee found a flower shop in Cork and bought me a sunflower. The boys and I made her a triptych of flowers one year for Mothers' Day.
We'll take a family photo this fall, the boys and I in a cluster of yellow, and share memories of sunflowers past.
How do you talk about death with your kids, especially if their mother--mommy--died?
I've wrestled with this quite a bit lately. The boys are doing okay, but I don't want to completely shelter them from their feelings. I don't want to hide my grieving, either, because they need to know it's okay to cry and be angry and sad and...
Aunt Heather loaned me a few books about death/children the other day, one of them being a parable about water bugs and dragonflies. You can find a copy on Amazon or simply read the parable for free online. It's a nice story, and one which I hope reflects how the universe really works. Of course, I have no idea how the universe really works. I wish I did.
Those of you who know me well know how much "existential questioning" I do. Now that Aimee is gone, those questions are heavier. They really pull at me, especially at night when I'm trying to go to sleep or wake up at four AM expecting to hear Elliot (and don't--that kid is a world-champ sleeper).
Last night, I thought of a story I'd written several years ago, "The World in Rubber, Soft and Malleable". It's still one of my favorite stories, originally published at A Fly in Amber and reprinted (in slightly different form) in Triangulation: End of the Rainbow--
I like the way it reads at A Fly in Amber... No explanation of what is beyond the doors. That's where I am right now: on one side of the door. Aimee has stepped through and I can't follow. Not yet. I've got more murals to paint before I join her... Too many to count.
And yes, that is a metaphor from the story.
I frame my world with metaphors.
When I wrote the "The World in Rubber..." I wasn't thinking about death. But it works. It fits perfectly how I feel right now.
I miss you, Ziggs.
Yesterday, I was doing okay until I staggered into a whole field of "grief landmines". More like I'd been dropped into the middle of the field with a ill-made map.
It all started with the rocking chair in Elliot's room. Made of solid wood by gnomes in upstate Vermont (or handcrafted in a factory... I forget which), it's a beautiful piece of furniture, one which Aimee and I agonized over for hours and several stops at furniture stores before Owen was born. We talked about sitting in it on the porch when we were old and grey... and eventually passing it on to our kids.
That's the part that stuck in my chest: "old and grey." Aimee and I had a lot of plans for being old and grey together--she made me promise to stroke her hair when she was an old lady.
I've been robbed of the chance to fulfill my promise.
And that sucks. Hard.
Friends and family keep asking me how I'm doing. Okay. Awful. Okay again. It comes and goes.
I'm scared.
Confused.
Lonely in a crowd.
And scared some more.
But I'm not ashamed of sharing. Aimee never was--I valued her honesty as much as any other piece of her, and I'm not about to dishonor her memory by clamming up.
Write hard?
Yes. And live hard, too.
Aimee's laughter, as many friends and family have shared, didn't just tumble from her mouth. It exploded. I've seen her drop to the floor laughing, like when she received in the mail a certain bridesmaid dress with a rather large "ass bow" on the rear. Her laughter infected everyone in the room.
We shared many private laughs, too, many laughs late at night or early in the morning, laughs to heal hurts and lift each other when life sucked.
While discussing The Things They Carried the other day, a student shared a memory which in turn sparked an Aimee memory--these little grief land mines are everywhere these days. I remembered Thanksgiving eve 1999. Coaching duties at Free State High School prevented Aimee from going home to St. Louis for the holiday, so we visited my aunt and uncle in Kansas City. On the eve, we dined at Panda Garden (still my favorite Chinese-American in Larryville), and crashed in her bed later, telling stupid stories and laughing for hours.
She had a way with the kids, too, especially when they were little. Aimee made all our babies spew fiery little baby giggles. She taught us all to lay on the floor, heads resting on each-others' laps, and laugh. (One you should try, folks. Sounds nutty, but it works.)
I still laugh, and I will keep laughing. But it stings a little. It feels hollow and cheap like the ringing of an ill-made bell. I don't know if it's exactly guilt I feel, or something else. I miss Aimee's falling-down and rolling around laughter, but I'm thankful for such rich memories.
On our first "real" date, Aimee and I shared a pizza at Rudy's Pizzeria. On the night before she died, we had another Rudy's pizza with our boys. Our alpha and omega.
Aimee loved Rudy's--she loved pizza in just about any form. On many trips to St. Louis, we would stop at Shakespeare's Pizza in Columbia, one of her favorite undergrad hangouts. No trip home was complete without ordering Imo's--ultra-thin crust "St. Louis Style" pizza. We still have three bottles of Imo's Italian dressing in our pantry.
But Rudy's was our alpha and omega. Our first and last.
I remember so many firsts with Aimee. The first movie we saw in the theater was The Waterboy. (Yes, I'm a little embarrassed to admit it.) Our first bar hop was to the non-defunct Cabaret in Kansas City. The first trip we took together was a midnight escape to Booneville, Missouri. Yes, Booneville. (We drew it out of a hat). We scared some poor Best Western clerk when asking for a room at 2:00 AM and hiked Missouri's Katy Trail the next day.
I remember the first time I said "I love you" in the kitchen of the 1220 House, a rental on Rhode Island Street in Lawrence she shared with Steve and Erika. I remember the first time we kissed, rather old-fashioned like, on the porch of that same house after a date.
The firsts are easy to remember. The lasts, not as much. I never planned on any of them being the "last."
It's a call to appreciate as many moments as we can. Have a good Thursday. Live big.
This is how I met my wife, a story I've told many times but never committed to paper (or pixels).
During the fall and winter of 1998/99, I worked at an entertainment store as the book department manager. I'll stop short of calling it an actual bookstore, but with the closing of Borders, Hastings is now the biggest store which sells books in Lawrence. Spend one holiday shopping season in retail and you'll want to run away--far away. Sometime in mid-November, we hired seasonal employees to help with the crush of customers.
No, Aimee wasn't a seasonal hire, but her roommate Steve was. He thought I was cute. And nice. And gay...
After sorting out a few personal details (like the fact I wasn't playing for Steve's team, a matter I tried to explain with the best tact I could muster at twenty-three), he decided (reluctantly--still holding out hope, I guess) he should introduce me to Aimee. Several friends of Steve & Aimee's concurred, including a college buddy who was visiting from Chicago one fateful Tuesday in December.
I'd moved to Lawrence that summer to be with another woman... one who promptly kicked me to the curb for a short guy with a beard who looked a little like her father. That, I suppose, could make another interesting tale. Since the messy breakup, I'd kept odd hours. Let's blame it on a wonky retail work schedule, okay? Wonky enough I found myself at the Vermont Street post office at eleven P.M. on Tuesday, December 8th, 1998. What kind of a weirdo goes to the post at night?
Me. I still do it from time to time.
After slipping my package in the appropriate slot, I stepped out of the building for my car, and who should be passing on the street but Steve. And who was in his passenger seat? Aimee.They'd just returned to Lawrence after dropping that mutual friend from Chicago at Kansas City International Airport, the only "international" airport I've ever known with no direct international flights.
My first impression of my future wife? She was short. Very short despite standing nearly 5'10". See, Steve drove a red Honda Civic hatchback, the kind they haven't made for years. Aimee coached basketball for Free State High School in those days, and, wearing sweats and a hat, didn't want to be seen so she scrunched down in the seat. Steve pulled over--much to Aimee's horror--and invited me to a holiday party at their place that weekend.
Ever since that day, Aimee and I celebrated the second Tuesday in December as National Post Office Day, they day she tried not to be seen and I imagined she was about 5'2".
Ever since that day, Tuesdays have been a special day. Have a good one.
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Those look delicious! Food is an amazing thing for sure! Once again, thank you for sharing one of your stories.
I already knew you were awesome but good lord, now I discover you bake pies too...