Emilia is in love.
“Mommy, can I make a present for Josh? Because I love him.”
— “You LOVE Josh?”
“Yes. But it’s not love like getting-married love. And it’s not kissing-love. It’s FRIEND-love.”
— “Oh, good. Wait… what do you know about kissing?”
“That it makes your cheeks go red.”
OY.
I wanted this year to start with laughter and smiles and cookies and fizzy soda. I didn’t want confetti and champagne and fireworks and streamers – I just wanted smiling. I just wanted this year to start happy.
I’m still trying to find the happy. Yes, my heart lifts when I hug my children and my lips curve when they giggle but the last week of last year and the first week of this year have been covered in a thick blanket of fever and snot and heartache and it’s been hard to find the laughter. And although Nyquil takes the edge off the fever and snot, there aren’t sufficient meds for heartache, Ativan and Xanax notwithstanding. Last week was much, much harder than I thought it would be – doing the final clean-up of my dad’s place in the week between Christmas and New Year’s was, in hindsight, less than ideal timing. Coping with the heart-punches of the holidays was difficult enough without throwing myself into the line of fire of the gut-kicks and soul-wedgies that came with seeing the last of his things carted away, his home wiped clean of his presence.
Last night, I was writing a post about having had a particularly bad day while Christmas shopping. It was a post about struggling with grief over the holidays, about the heartache that comes in those moments when you’ve gotten caught up in the holiday spirit and forgotten that something – that someone – is missing and then you suddenly remember and OOF. It was a post – again, again – about my dad. I was struggling to write it. I was wondering, as I always do, why I persist. I was feeling sad.
As I was agonizing over it, I heard a small voice from the other room, singing, in very high, measured tones, hallelujah.
I wouldn’t say that we have a problem with the chain of authority in our household, so much as we have periodic breakdowns between management personnel in the Performing Arts Division and Head Office:
Dear Emilia,
This weekend, you turned four years old. You were so excited to turn four years old. For months you asked how many weeks it would be before you turned four, and for weeks you asked that we count down the days until you turned four, and for days you insisted that we tick off the hours until you turned four, and when the day finally came you said “Guess what, Mommy? Today, I am FOUR.”
And I smiled and hugged you and said “yes, yes, I know.”
Emilia’s birthday is this weekend. She will be four years old. Four year olds, she informs me, always have birthday parties.
“So do five year olds. And sixes. I don’t what happens when you get really old, but I hope you still get cake.”
I didn’t tell her that when you’re really old, like, thirty-something, you’re lucky if someone fixes you a bowl of cereal and washes the dishes. No point in rushing the disillusionment.
When my father died a few months ago, my daughter drew this picture:
‘This,’ she announced as we huddled over it together at my mother’s kitchen table, filling in the details, “is Grandpa’s Death House. It’s where he lives now.”
“I’m sure that he’s so happy that you made him such a wonderful Death House, sweetie. So happy.”
“He IS so happy. I made it so that every part of it is happy” – she pointed to the clouds made of hearts, the pink motorcycle balancing on the Christmas tree, the friendly shark (“because he needs pets”), the flowers nestled under the window through which the tiny shadow figures of her and her grandpa can be seen standing arm in arm – “so that he will be happy there. It’s where he lives now.” She pulled her crayon back from the picture and studied the finer detailing around the friendly ridgebacked shark. “Can we go visit him?”