Monday, November 22

Just a few minutes ago I was walking through my in-laws' laundry room and I thought to myself How odd is it that you are here, of all places?

Now I didn't mean the laundry room, per se. You see ten years ago I didn't imagine a life that included things like in-laws (or their laundry rooms). I certainly didn't allow room for dreams about daughters. I had myself well trained, actually. A constant habit of reminding myself about what I would never have had taken root. I was steeled for a life alone.

And then I'll be damned if I didn't meet Rob, my opposite in just about every way. I know that his presence in my life bewildered my parents and if you want to know the truth there are some days that it's still bewildering to me. But here we are, the two of us and a crazy little miracle we call Sara, kicking around this world like we were meant to be. And I think we were.

Ten years ago I had a mother and a father. I was more or less defined by this and arranged much of my life around the script of daughter. I didn't mind, really; I didn't know anything else. Eventually Rob came along and my character changed to daughter and wife, but my relationships with Mom and Dad were always more or less the same. But then life reared it's ugly head and, without any input from me, the roles changed. I became daughter and wife and caregiver and when Mom died I also became mediator, then advocate and nurse and lady-of-the-house. I did the shopping and cooking and forged my mother's signature. I carried a warm bottle to Sara and a handful of pills to Dad every night before I went to sleep. I took away his keys and at the same time, I suspect, his dignity. God help me, I learned to take care of an ostomy and then how to change his bedsheets when Dad couldn't get out of bed. I put reason aside and begged a hospice nurse to keep her real identity from my father -- and she did. I watched as another nurse came out to turn off my father's pacemaker, only a few hours before he died. And just like Mom almost two years earlier, I watched as Dad took his last breath. I can still feel the raw cold air of that late February day as it rattled the ice-covered windows, and see my father's mother standing in his room expressionless, seemingly numb by the death of her first born child.

Those five years of sickness and death were game-changers. I am now no longer daughter and even though I forfeited that title almost four years ago I am still struggling to understand what my new role really is. Certainly I am wife and mother, despite all those promises I made to myself before. But there is more to it than that, isn't there? Friend. Colleague. Neighbor. Sister. I am all of those things to be sure, but in looking at this abbreviated list it seems that each role is defined by someone else; none of them allows for the fullness of only me. So this is where I find myself, as I run head-long into my forth decade: Pulling on the uniform of each of these roles while simultaneously peeling off the layers to find out who is really in there.

Good Lord, talk like this is making my fifteen-year-old self gag me with a spoon, and twenty-year-old me thinks I need to just get over myself already. Thirty-year-old me is slightly more sympathetic as she has finally realized that she's not twenty anymore, and thiry-five-year-old me is too tired to care because she's trying to work, manage a newborn, and take care of her dying father.

Something tells me that thirty-five-year-old me would understand, though.

What's all of this have to do with the laundry room? Not a damn thing, I guess. Except that as I walked through there tonight it occurred to me that being right here, right now, is just about as far removed from all of my roles as I have ever been. I feel almost invisible. There was a strange freedom in that moment, and I never would have imagined that I would have such and experience in the laundry room of a Philadelphia suburb.

Twenty-year-old me is bored already and has asked me to wrap this up because, come on -- how complicated can life be?

Oh, sister. You have no idea.

Tuesday November 16

I'm not exactly a "lemons into lemonade" kinda gal. Generally speaking I prefer to stomp the hell out of those bad boys then bitch about the mess I've got left to clean up.

So that's why it's surprising that I was kinda thankful for the bad traffic on the way home from work tonight. I left the hospital a little later than usual, surfacing from my cell in the basement to find a much chillier, much rainier day than I left eight hours earlier. And I was OK with that, actually. I sort of enjoy a seasonally appropriate, dreary fall day every now and then. That's a good thing, too, because the weather coupled with a mass exodus from campus left me sitting through several traffic lights on my way to pick up the interstate.

It was while I was sitting at one of those lights that my eye caught a flock of birds. There's something about these flitting and fluttering clouds that's so... magical, for lack of a more original term. I honestly think I could watch them for hours. It's a struggle to compare them to much of anything, except maybe a school of fish that took a remarkably wrong turn, darting from tree to tree to tree looking for that coral reef that it could have sworn was here just a minute ago. I love how that wild pack wings around the sky, charging at who knows what in a wonky swoop that levitates and careens and turns on a dime, a crazy game of follow the leader where every bird, apparently, gets a turn to be The Leader. Then, in some kind of avian turn at musical chairs, they all find a seat on the telephone wires. Hundreds of tiny birds all lined up like little feathered soldiers.

I have no idea why all of this is so appealing to me but I found myself completely content through two traffic lights, and a little bit bummed when I had to drive on by.

So this evening, after an extra long day and during the rush hour crawl, I made lemonade and I have to say it was pretty sweet. And a lot less messy.

Monday November 1

Chiaroscuro.

That's a great word, don't you think? Because even if you don't know what it means I think it's so much fun, the way it sort of unfolds in your mouth when you say it -- the first half gone just as your voice rises in your throat, racing to land on the long, pure "ooo" and then finishing with a flip of the tongue and a barely-there "roh."

Oh, Italian! You're so much lovelier than French, if only because your phonetic rules actually make sense.

So it was love at first sight for chiaroscuro & me. Or maybe love at first say? Either way, this is a word absorbed equally into my lexicon and into my life. After learning it's meaning - the variation of light and shade in a picture - I fell even deeper because, as anyone who takes even a passing interest in photography can tell you, a great picture is all about light and contrast. And I have more than a passing interest, to be sure. I'm no Annie Leibovitz or Ann Geddes (two ladies who, I am quite sure, have nothing more in common than this very paragraph) but I do love to see life through a lens. There's a thrill in capturing the perfect scene at the perfect time with the perfect light, and when it can be transformed into an image that transcends the time and place to speak something meaningful and true to the viewer, well... that's pretty fantastic.

I tend to view most things as pictures in one way or another. I make lists and diagrams to process what I need to do. I scanned my visual memory during those grad school exams in neuroanatomy to recall the afferent and efferent functions of the cranial nerves (and just now again to recall the terms "afferent" and "efferent."). Most recently I've created mental snapshots of the walls in my house, now blank except for a coat of fresh paint. But in my mind they are filled with beloved photos telling the story of our family, stretching across time and place but always capturing the light and shadow of each season and face. Beautiful, transcending chiaroscuro.

My only living grandmother is 96. Every year for as long as I can remember she has made, from scratch, noodles for our family's holiday meals. Until recently she would make these noodles entirely on her own, mixing flour and egg and water and salt until the dough was just right, then rolling them out and cutting them into long, thin strips with a paring knife. Batch after batch was kneaded and rolled and cut, then dried in her kitchen over the weeks the led up to Thanksgiving and Christmas until finally! The blessed day came and the stock pots came out, and all the women took turns at the stove, stirring the noodles so they wouldn't stick and sampling now and then, just to be sure they were OK. And they were always, always, OK. As I got older I'm not so sure it was the recipe as it was the time and care and effort that went into making them that made those noodles so delicious. They are precious to us, at least as much as a humble noodle can be.

Last year she found herself unable to undertake the Great Noodle Project and so my aunts, cousins and I joined my grandmother in the making of the noodles. Her 95 years of experience was parceled out to us as each required: Molly needed more egg. Beth needed a thinner round. I needed more flour on the board. Throughout the day my grandmother sat there, bewildered by our love for the process and amused with our delight in success. She pitched in, too, her gnarled hands working in the flour so we could know the right feel of the dough. And as I watched her work my mind saw the shot: 95 years of kneading, rolling, and cutting captured in her flour-dusted, arthritic hands.

This is not a prize-winning photograph. I can, but won't, point out a half-dozen flaws that an objective viewer would recognize in an instant. But to me this image summarizes so much about my grandmother and the family she raised up. There is history reflected in the light and shadows here, and I know every time I see it I will remember all the things about her that I love and honor.

That's why I took it, to always remember. I didn't need these 819 words to recall her story because to me this image says it all.

Pictures and words. They are so fun to play with, each one saturated with meaning and life. There is such joy in remembering, sharing and connecting through them. Honestly, there are few things I would rather do. It's just the shezizzle.

And I'll bet you know exactly what I mean.