Memory.

june 2004.

note to friend.


I GOT CALLED BACK TO WORK!!!!
THE DROUGHT IS OVER!!!


I CAN PURCHASE TOILET PAPER,

AND CLEANING PRODUCTS,

AND BREAD,

AND MILK,

AND PULL-UPS,

AND A BIG BOX OF WHITE-MEAT CHICKEN NUGGETS SHAPED LIKE DINOSAURS FOR THE KIDS INSTEAD OF THE CHEAPIE DARK MEAT ONES IN THE SMALL BOX,

AND POPSICLES,

AND THOSE REALLY GOOD ICE CREAM BARS WITH THE LITTLE NUTS ON THEM AND THE CARAMEL INSIDE,

AND THE GOOD KIND OF CAT FOOD,

AND LAUNDRY DETERGENT,

AND MORE THAN ONE KIND OF FRUIT AT A TIME,

AND 38743827 CANS OF CHUNK **NOT FLAKE** TUNA BECAUSE I'VE BEEN TOO CHEAP TO BUY CHUNK BECAUSE FLAKE IS MUCH CHEAPER EVEN THOUGH IT ISN'T AS GOOD,

AND EVERYTHING ELSE I'VE TRIED TO SCRIMP ON A LITTLE SINCE I GOT LAID OFF LAST APRIL...


I CAN PURCHASE THESE ITEMS WITH
*~*~*~WILD ABANDON~*~*~*


WATCH ME BUY TUNA WITH WIIIILLLLDDD ABAAAAANDOOOONNNNNNN..........


I CAN PAY MY CABLE/PHONE/INTERNET BILL!!
I CAN PAY MY RENT!!!!!!!
I CAN PAY MY BABYSITTER!!!
I CAN PAY MY GRANDMOTHER BACK!!!

Memory.

march 2005.

Me: You know I'm working my ass off right now, right, and that I'll continue to do so, right?

Him: Yes, of course.

Me: And do you agree in general that life is what happens while you're busy making other plans?

Him: Yesssss (looking at me suspiciously)

Me: I'm (specifics of how late), uh, really late. And despite all the kidding around I have done on the subject, this is not intentional on my part. I was going to start bugging you to think about it in about 18 months. We've had a BC failure apparently. But I'm 35 and maybe it's better if we do this sooner rather than later if we're going to try again. So I'm not upset.

Him: (closes eyes for a second, opens them, bursts out laughing) I'm resigned to my fate. Okay, accept it, move on. (He says this as though it is a "deep thing to say". Immediately realises how silly he sounds. Bursts out laughing again.)

Me: I've DESTROYED YOUR WILL. My work here is done. HAPPY EASTER. (MUCH GIGGLING)

(laughter all around)

He then made sure *I* was feeling okay (which I am) and was actually VERBALLY REASSURING to me. Hmmm. That's kind of nice.

Etc etc. At this point the boys burst in and turned on the TV and started watching Bugs Bunny while lying in between us, so the conversation was over for the time being.

Memory.

june 2005.

There is a bad storm raging here. I was waiting to go get 7ds from school because I figured he was safer there than at home! Then just now, suddenly, he WALKED IN THE DOOR!!! His babysitter, "A", walked in the door too. I did not send her to get him. The school did not call me.

A wall at the school COLLAPSED. It COLLAPSED. RIGHT NEXT TO MY BABY.

I don't know how "A" knew about it. The phones are out at the school. They couldn't call anyone. So "A" grabbed ALL the kids she could who she knew she had legal, signed permission to take, and she took them.

She has a van that seats 13 people! So she took my child and brought him home. His beloved light-up star wars shoes are under a foot of water, as is everything else there. So he will need new shoes. He said he is happy to be home and not dead even though his shoes are ruined. He was TERRIFIED he tells me. "A" said of all the kids, he stayed the calmest.

They have a substitute teacher today!!!!! "A" found her in complete hysterics. "A" told her to get a grip (I LOVE "A") and then just TOLD her she was taking the following kids and taking them now, and coming back for more kids, so just stay there and help.

"A" said she was dropping off more kids and then going back to the school to see if there are more kids she is allowed to take home. See, everyone walks to this school, it's not safe to walk home today and THE SCHOOL HAS COLLAPSED.

She has her teenager calling other parents and letting them know what happened and that "A" has their kids and is dropping them off.

Oh my freaking god, my kid's school collapsed. A good portion of it anyway.

Guess he has the day off tomorrow. He is outside in the backyard, wearing a green tank top, tan shorts, and a black cape, feeling the "heaviness" of the air and trying to determine for himself when it will rain again. My little meteorologist is usually right too.

Memory.

july 2005

I have the word "sucker" tattooed on my forehead, and only small kids, cats, and square-headed dogs can see it.

Here, dogs are allowed on the bus. Yesterday a young woman got on with her gigantic pit bull. He must have known I was admiring him because he sat the whole time at the very end of his outstretched (tractor-width) leash, leaning on my leg and looking up at me lovingly.

His owner kept trying to pull him back toward her and he kept creeping over and leaning on my leg and sitting on my foot. Was he ever a big old goofball.

Big toothsome things seem to love me. I got such a kick out of that.

Letter.

The actual text of a note I sent to Boy #2's teacher after an incident at school.

May 3, 2006


Dear Mrs B,

Thank you for informing me of yesterday's slingshot incident. Thank you, also, for treating this with the exact level of seriousness warranted.

(Boy) was attempting to build what he considered to be an interesting machine, more of a catapult than a slingshot in its intent. His idea was not to build something to be used as a weapon, but to build a machine that worked. I am glad that seems to be understood by all.

He now understands that, regardless of intent, his creation could be used to harm others. (Theoretically, anyway, since I don't think it worked.) Therefore the slingshot/catapult could not be allowed at school.

I agree that staying in at recess is a proper consequence for building unauthorized machinery at school.

I have promised (boy) *supervised* opportunities for design and engineering at home.

I would like to ask that he be given similar opportunities whenever available at school. This is a bright child with a strong creative drive and mechanical aptitude and these things are not to be discouraged, only put into a proper context.

Thank you very much for your understanding.

Sincerely,

My name.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The offending object was made of an empty TicTac box, a rubber band, and some very tiny pebbles, all of which he found in the school yard. He got it taken away from him at recess and it was sent home in a paper envelope for me to look at. It *was* a rather clever little item. I let him have it back. He spent the evening trying to fling teeny rocks at anthills in the driveway.

This is the kid that, when he heard they want to build a bridge from Siberia to Alaska, said he really hopes they can wait until he grows up so he can help. So I just can't get mad at him for making catapults out of found objects.

Memory.

1985(?)

My electric blue shirt had giant shoulder pads and an asymmetric snap-closure front. You could do it all the way up for a quasi-military look or undo some of the snaps to get big lapels. How I loved that shirt!

It was a lot like the pink and black one on the Flock of Seagulls guy second from the left.

Memories.

june 2004.


Six year old this morning on the way to school:

"Wouldn't it be lovely to have a beaver for a pet? It could chop down wood for you and you could put the wood in the fireplace. That would be efficient."


(Context: 6 year old hurt himself in some minor way that I don't remember just a couple of hours later.)

Me: Poor wee lamb!
Six: Why'd you call me a lamb?

Me: Because sometimes people call someone small, someone they love, their 'lamb' or their 'ducky', to be cute.

Six: That's very silly. (Thinks for a moment.)

Six: You're my giant. And Daddy's my giant too. And, (looks at three year old brother) ....he's my flea.


january 2005


Today was the 100th day of school this year for my 6 year old and his class. They had a 100th Day party, which included a cute question-and-answer book that the kids filled out and brought home. The questions were lighthearted and fanciful: what would you rather live with: 100 butterflies or 100 ants?. That sort of thing.

Leave it to my ever-practical boy, though. His answer to the question What would you choose if you could have 100 of anything? looks like this, in his neat but shaky printing:

I would hΦve 100 dollers.

Memory.

May 2004.

My five year old today: "Mom, how many stomachs do cows have?"

Me: "Four."

Five year old: "And four penises too."

Me: "Whaaaa?"

My husband: (Light goes on over his head) "Noooo, honey, those aren't penises. Those are udders. Long nipples for the baby cows to drink from. Like breasts."

Five: "OH! So girl cows have four stomachs and four udders."

Us: "Yes."

Five: "Aaaaaaaand, (pause) ...boy cows have one penis, (pause) and (more thoughtful pausing) one stomach?"

Us: "No, boy cows, bulls, have four stomachs and one penis."

Five: (looking exasperated) "This is confusing."

Memory.

february 2004.

About a month ago, Five decided he didn't want to be (His Name) anymore. He wanted to be referred to as Tyrannosaurus Rex. He was politely serious about it. (Quite a while back, he wanted to be called ChipZilla, but that didn't last long.)

We bargained him down to Thursdays. Now, for the past few Thursdays, we have kept to our agreement and called him Tyrannosaurus Rex. I do wonder if he has casually mentioned this to his teacher (he doesn't go to school on Thursdays).

He's quite tickled that we've gone along with it.

Memories.

september 2003.

This morning Two was pointing things out and naming them for me. He was looking out the window and from his perspective could only see what was in the tree-tops and higher.

"A cwoud."

"A twee."

"Two twee."

"Da 'ky." (The sky)

And then, very seriously, but with a sly grin, to see if I notice:

"A 'nake."

"A snake?", I said, smiling. "Where's the snake?" And he broke up laughing. I love this stage, where they start to make jokes.

Maybe not a funny thing per se, but today my 2 1/2 year old came up to with a very serious expression and said, for the first time:

"I wub oo."

I'm a little teary. He is not a verbal child, and this is among his first sentences. "I love you". >sob<

The thing he says a lot is "of course!".

"Two, come see Mommy a minute."

"Of course!"

This morning I returned home from work just in time to wake the children and send Five off to school. Normally if I work midnights, I wake up my husband as soon as I get home and then I go right to sleep, as I'll have to get back up before he leaves for work.

This morning I wasn't really tired yet so I let my husband sleep in a little and got Five ready for school. Two woke up and came downstairs as well. So I got him a drink and proceeded to change his diaper.

I noticed that he wasn't wearing his pyjama bottoms. Now, he's been taking off his bottoms and his diaper at night, with frequently disastrous, smelly results. All his sleepers were in the wash yesterday, so he had to wear a two-piece pj to bed, and I was afraid that might happen.

Two lied down for his diaper change and gave me a very disgusted look. Pouty-face and all. He was unnaturally quiet and seemed angry or frustrated.

So, in my slightly groggy state, I tried to remove his diaper, but somehow couldn't find the tabs. I looked a bit more closely and found that Two's diaper was secured with a hockey tape "belt". I couldn't just pull the diaper off, as the hockey tape was holding the diaper on quite well. I got the scissors to cut the diaper off.

I looked at Two's little pouty face. He gave me another disgusted look, looked down at the immovable diaper, looked back up at me, and with resentment dripping from his lowered voice, he stated simply:

"Daddy."

I busted a gut for a while.

Memories.

August 2003.

My just-turned-two year old seems to know which button is "play" on the tv/vcr remote. Five-year-old and I just walked downstairs and found Two watching an Elmo tape. The VCR itself is wall-mounted, up very high, and he didn't touch it. That leaves the remote, which is still in its place beside the TV, on the table. If there was already an Elmo tape in the VCR, then he could easily have just pressed "play" to get his Elmo. He's absolutely tickled.

I'm rather proud.

I'm happy that mine have things they love so much, that make them happy. Two's blankee doesn't travel with him. It stays in the house so it doesn't get lost or forgotten. It's not a pain in the ass at all that he likes it so much. Five's blankee is something he only wants once in a while, but he was just as attached to it as a baby. Hell, Fifteen still slept with his until the dog chewed it up (but in his case it was a white twin sized blanket and didn't look or feel childish). Why do people want children to give up comfort objects? Don't they usually give them up eventually on their own?

Recent conversation with Five:

-Me (reading book to Five): "...and a starfish star"

-Five: "Dey said 'star' twice. Dey didn't need to do dat. That's we-dundat."

That's redundant? Hee!

Five is indeed a riot. He's the kind of kid that my husband's friends call over to have a little conversation with, just to see what he will say next. And he is so small and slight that it only adds to the Cute when he uses such a huge vocabulary. His teacher summed him up very well. "He's so small. Then he speaks."

While looking at a picture book of skeletons, including many of prehistoric humans: "Dis one's wost his mandible." Indeed the poor skeleton had lost his mandible.

Five says "mooshmash" for "moustache" and although I normally am happier when they pronounce words more correctly, that one is so charming that it's fallen into our household vocabulary.

Memory.

November 2005, re new baby girl.

She's really something. What a good sleeper as well. I have to keep waking her to feed her. She's a bit jaundiced (but within normal range according to her bilirubin test) and was losing weight, but that should change shortly. I just drank about a litre of fenugreek tea to get things going, and then the milk truck arrived in a big way about five minutes ago. She nurses like a champ, anyhow.

I am doing spectacularly well physically. I feel better, in fact, than I have for months. The labour was quick, smooth and relatively painless. My epidural was the stuff I had always dreamed of. The worst pains are the afterbirth pains but they are really not that bad either, the least painful I've ever had, in fact.

They have actual "bathe me" notifications that they stick to the baby's bed, but they had apparently run out, so the nurse wrote a cheerful post-it note to remind the next nurse to bathe her.

Almost 5 years ago when I had my last baby, one of the student nurses who was taking care of me actually bawled her eyes out in my presence, overwhelmed by how much sympathy she had for the severe pain I was in.

Although I really did appreciate on some level that she cared so much and was so affected, it did annoy me, because then I felt like I was supposed to try to assuage her feelings, when she was actually there to take care of *me*. I didn't think she'd last long as a nurse unless she grew a tougher hide.

Well there she was, taking care of me this morning! and she has grown into a competent, confident, even bossy, young nurse! You know how you don't usually get to see how things turn out in situations like that? It was nice to see that she's a great nurse now, because she certainly had enough caring to be one. For some reason, that little detail just makes this whole thing that much sweeter to me.

Memory.

Repost from pregnancy with girl.

October 2005.

I am completely overcome at the moment. A friend who lives quite far away from me asked me if it was okay if she sent me a few things for the baby. Sure! I said.

This morning a HUGE box arrived on my doorstep, through the mail. An end-table sized box, maybe. It weighs about 40lbs. It is FULL of beautiful, gently used things. Really really nice things. It will take me all day to go through it. Wow.

November 2005.


See, once you get up to four kids, people just shake their heads at you. They don't even bother asking if the kids are planned anymore (grin). Or they say "you KNOW it'll just be another BOY, right?" because until this pregnancy we've had a straight run of boys. Uh, that'd be okay, dudes.

I think the nesting urge has set in.

What did I feel like doing today? I was too tempted by the stain remover at the store not to buy it. I came home, applied it to pretty much everything remotely stained, steam-cleaned the couch for an hour (again), washed the couch coverlet, did the dishes, washed the baby's coming-home snowsuit, and am now off to scrub the car seat down because I think it smells funny.

This is not normal, folks. On a good day, I load the dishwasher and am pleased with myself. On a really good day, everyone in the house can find matching socks without trying too hard.

I remember during my last pregnancy barfing right before a very long shift at work, and having to excuse myself to go buy new clothes, because I'd ruined mine.

I just went out to the shed to fetch the stroller and wash it down, only to trip in a tiger trap, er, hole that the dog cleverly made, and now my arm is sore where I landed on it. I can't wait for this clumsiness to be over with.

Also, the kitten got out somehow while this was going on and I didn't notice until I saw her gallumping about in the yard. Thank goodness she came when called, but I'm unreasonably upset that she got out at all. The tiniest little things are upsetting me right now (literally, figuratively, everything in between).

My husband's friend was completely scandalised when he discovered I still drink coffee. I've never, ever enjoyed Coke until this pregnancy. Now I see what others see in it. It's so damned good.

Memories.

reposts from message board during pregnancy with the girl:

september 2005

I celebrated, not with a donut, but with the very best cinnamon bun available, from the coffee shop two floors down from my OB/GYN. The baby isn't growing at quite the astronomical rate that she previously was, which is a comfort to me! Fundal height 32cm, at 31 weeks. That's pretty good.

I'm becoming increasingly pissy toward my IRL fellow human beings, though. No one can do anything right, ever, myself included. I'm also getting very tired of waiting for my maternity benefits to kick in, although they are not actually behind in schedule, it is just taking too long, period. I am telling myself that this is just another lesson in financial planning, something to consider for the future. I don't plan for unforeseen events as well as I should, financially.
Still haven't found my glasses. Am perturbed.

This little emotionally-melty stage had better be brief.


september 2005


There was an absolutely lovely, mental-health-restoring labouring tub at the hospital when I gave birth to my last son (almost 5 years ago). In the event that you need to transfer to a hospital, you may still be able to spend some time in the water. I would never credit anything with such transformative powers if it didn't indeed work so well, but this thing honestly took me from near-panic-attack pain (and fright) levels to this-too-shall-pass.

september 2005


Last night we went to Wal-Mart to get some Battle B-Damans for the littler boys, and I could literally only take a few steps without then hanging over the cart and breathing through them. They are definitely BH contractions though, not premature labour. Nothing to actually worry about but SO ANNOYING, so interfering. I get them just sitting around the house, too. Ack. And she feels as though she is already taking up my entire torso, the way the others felt at maybe 37 or 38 weeks. I'm just a big ball of gestation at the moment.


september 2005


Well, yesterday I tripped and fell on the sidewalk just outside a store downtown. NATURALLY there was some sort of film crew filming with its fucking camera aimed right where I fell, just to add insult to injury. Somehow I managed to fall entirely on my shins. I didn't even manage to bruise my bottom and there was no real jarring of my abdomen: my shins, knee, and ankle took the entire weight of me. Ouch.

One of my ankles is now a rather unnatural size and colour and is wrapped up with a tensor bandage.

I absolutely hate this stage of pregnancy where I am a big giant klutz. It's awfully discouraging.
Baby is fine, no worries there. I, however, am limping rather badly and wishing I lived in a bungalow and not a two story house with a finished basement!


september 2005


I have been chuckling all morning without being entirely willing to explain why to those around me.

The entire birth process is fascinating, whether to watch it happen to someone else or to be the woman giving birth. It's not romantic, necessarily, to think that way. Even through my most difficult labour, there were moments in which I was fascinated by the process, in a near-objective sense. Certainly it is interesting to look at photos of women giving birth, to visually round out what I have personally felt. And I also liked such photos before I ever gave birth.

Memory.

memory

1972-1982 (?)

Things I wished I had:

• Meccano set



• Sit and Spin



• Rocking horse



• Chemistry set



• Model cars

Things I had, and their fates:

• Lite Brite (disappeared during a move)



• Barbies, some interesting (Mod Ken, some Barbie sister that grew taller and more, um, mature-looking when you pumped her arm). Given to little cousins who immediately tore off their heads.



• Lego. Not as interesting to me as the longed-after Meccano set. Probably given to twin Little Cousins of Doom.



• Both an Easy Bake oven and a Holly Hobby oven. Fates unknown. Holly Hobby oven worked better.

Dream. Memory.

Dreams, and memory associated with the dreams.

1975(?)-1995(?)

I have very vivid dreams. I look forward to being entertained most nights by them, and I don't spend a great deal of time analysing them or looking for meaning. I like to share them with people when I think they will be entertaining.

Well, when I was a teenager, I had a series of dreams about conversations with a man in a black suit. He was middle aged, good looking in the Leonard Cohen sort of way, serious but not unfriendly. He was a fully realised personality in a dream world of what were usually sketchy images. I instantly felt he was some sort of distant relative or family friend. Someone I could trust. A nice character to dream about, anyway.

These dreams were interesting to me because he always asked after my mother, my grandmother, my grandfather, my brother, but especially my mother. (My mother is a nervous and somewhat wounded creature who is not always as strong as she could be.)

I would tell him honestly how she was doing, and talk about things that had happened in my family since our last conversation.

I probably "met" the man in the black suit 20 times or more over several years, at irregular intervals, each time having a different conversation with him. If my mother had not been doing well, he would come more frequently, until he heard she had felt better.

The subject of dreams came up in conversation with my mother IRL infrequently. She was always on the lookout for sacreligious behaviour, and she thought, I suppose, that talking about dreams could turn that way. It was too much like psychology (which was Evil) for her.

She had never, ever shared a dream with me and didn't usually like it when I shared mine with her, but sometimes in my enthusiasm for telling my dreams, I forgot she might not like to hear them.

I mentioned the man in the black suit. She blanched.

"How is he?"

She, you see, used to dream about a man in a black suit, Mediterranean in apprearance, that would ask about her mother, her brother, her sisters. Mostly though he seemed to be there for her own companionship. She dreamed about him often until she was in her later teens or early 20's. Then she abruptly stopped dreaming about him.

"He's good. He likes to hear me say that you are well. He keeps coming back until he hears that."

No, we don't know "who" he is. Neither of us ever caught a name. I haven't seen him in a long time but I should ask my eldest son if he has seen him, maybe.

Dream.

March 2007.

I dreamed that Karl Lagerfeld was my guardian angel.

Dream.

Dream.


January 2005.



I dreamed a sturgeon came to live in our bathtub. It was a friendly fish, and made little sturgeon-y coos when you petted it. It was slightly iridescent in appearance.



My three year old would take a bath with it. He put bubbles in the bath water, which made the sturgeon sneeze and sniffle.



I decided the fish was getting too big for the bathtub, and wanted to release it. My husband was concerned about the environmental impact of releasing a tame sturgeon, but I insisted that it was like all other sturgeons, other than its gentle nature, its slight iridescence, and its dislike for bubble bath. It would be okay to let it go in the lake.



So I marched up to the bathtub to explain the situation to the sturgeon, and picked it up. With it under my arm like a wiggly, scaled football, I went out my back door and marched down the sandy beach to the lake*. It made little whimpering sturgeon sounds. I shushed it, as I didn't want the neighbours to see me letting it go, as they were busybodies and would surely report me to the fisheries ministry. The fish obliged and was quiet.



I reached the edge of the water, and let my sturgeon go. It didn't even look back.


*In my dream we lived in one of a row of townhouses located on a beach, with fencing separating our "yards" (really plots of sandy beach) all the way down to the beautiful lake below. This is, um, not based in reality.

Dream.

Dream.
January 2004.

I was introduced to a charming man, and we instantly became friends. He was tall, dark, handsome, witty, the usual Ideal. He was in his mid-forties (about ten years older than I am). In the dream, we talked and talked on a long bus ride (this is how we became acquainted).

After a time, he began to explain to me that it was a shame that we'd met so late in his life, and I was puzzled. After further explanation, he told me he'd decided to be "recycled".

This was a new social movement (for lack of a better term). People who had decided that they'd experienced all that they wanted to (even if they were not ill or heartbroken or otherwise dissatisfied with life in general), could go to a secret place, where they would be humanely slaughtered. Their bodily components would be used for things like fertiliser and paper: industrial uses from the separated, purified chemicals of their bodies. This was an option that was soon to become legal, but was hush-hush for now.

He had simply decided that he'd seen everything he wanted to see and did everything that he wanted to do, and it was time to be recycled.

I was angry with him for bothering to make friends with anyone, to make anyone care about him, when he was soon going to be a non-entity. Why make friends with people who will then miss you when you've already made this decision to stop your life? And I was further upset by my own reaction: after all, it seemed a rational choice (in the dream) and it was his business, not mine. But I was pissed that I had made such a wonderful friend, who wasn't going to stay.

Memories, "D."

Memories. "D."

1981-1996.

We met in grade 7. She was in the other grade 7 class along with my other new friend, J. J. and D. were my only friends at this otherwise disastrous school. They were both lifesavers.

She had some t-shirts to sell at school, and I bought a purple one that read "disco sucks" in glitter font across the front.

She dragged me off to a Brownies-type meeting. I felt too awkward to continue going. But here was D., who really was rather awkward, and *she* had fun. I should have listened to her. It would have made grade 7 a bit more bearable.

D.'s father truly scared me. I think he scared her too. Her mother was kind to me, and kind to her.

D. had a lisp. She would kill me for saying that. "It is NOT a lisp. It is a French accent", she would insist, though none of the rest of her family had it.

Her sisters were older, slimmer, prettier. D. was short, wide, lispy. It nagged at her. I wish I would have told her she was pretty. She might have believed me. Probably not. She was smart. So I wish I would have told her she was smart more often than I did.

J. married very early, moved into a 2-room shack behind the laundromat, and had a stillborn baby at age 18. D. insisted that I go to the hospital to see J. with her. D. provided J. with such comfort. I stood there like a dork.

D. was always sick. She didn't take very good care of herself. She ate a lot of crap. I never saw her eat anything you couldn't buy at Mac's Mart. It worried me. She didn't want to talk about it.

She volunteered to do my taxes for me. She was amazing with money, at least when it came to the business aspect. I always wanted her to do my taxes again, but didn't.

She loved television. LOVED it. She had a collection of TV guides. She made notes in them. Her favourite show was Cagney and Lacey.

As the years went on, we kept in touch off and on. She called me mostly when she needed me:

...she was moving,

...she was alone and pregnant,

...her ex was being a bastard,

...she didn't love the man who loved her and she didn't understand why, because he was a wonderful man,

...her living room needed painting,

...her lovely gray cat needed a home, could I take him? (sadly, I couldn't)

...I'd left my address book at her house years ago, she found it, do I need it back?

...she was lonely.

The last time I spoke to her, she told me that the man who loved her had died suddenly of diabetic complications. The regret in her voice was tangible. She felt so terrible, I didn't know what to say to help her deal with that regret.

I was tired of her calling me only when she needed me. I don't think I told her that (though I was enough of an asshole that I might have). I wanted to be friends for the hell of it, not because she needed something from me. How stupid I was. It's all more obvious now.

She changed phone numbers often. I think she liked the intrigue. She moved often, too. I never knew how to get ahold of her or where she was living.

Her life became much, much more difficult after she had her baby. He had chromosomal issues. Fragile X, maybe. Severe autism, maybe. She was still saving for him to go to college.

I hadn't heard from her in ages. I feared the worst, then learned that she died of cancer in 2002.

She had few friends. We had no mutual friends (except for J., gone into the ether long ago, no way for me to know how to find her, either).

I wanted to write something of how I felt about her. But I fear that my feelings, like our friendship, will be left suspended indefinitely by our drifting apart and her early death. I'm so sorry that it seems I never know what to do when it comes to this sort of thing. So I wanted, then, to list these things about her. That is at least something.

Dream.

March 2008.

I was dead, and trying to get (husband) to notice me around him, because he had been wishing for a sign. I could feel his feelings and think his thoughts (I can't do this in real life with him).

I tried kissing (child2), thinking maybe he would feel me because he is a child, but he felt it and then shrugged it off as wishful thinking.

Then, someone in the other world gave me an amber necklace and said if I threw it at (husband), it would become material and he would feel it.

So I threw it at him, it materialised, and he knew I was there. He stood up and put his arms into a circle as though to hug me. I slipped between his chest and arms, and faded away into nothingness.

I ceased to exist.