amy turn sharp

Amy Turn Sharp writes poetry that I relish.  Find more of her poetry here:

http://amyturnsharp.com/

last 10 days in photos

moments: mean, variance, median

Father's Day is Sunday.  Last Father's Day I forgot about schools doing crafts for those days.  When I picked up Magnus from the Cottontails classroom at Hilltop he had a card that he asked to make for me, the other children made cards for their dads.
Earlier this week I asked one of his teachers if they planned to do something similar - they are making mugs this week for their dads.  I told her he could make one for me or himself or his dad or whoever, it's his choice.  I talked to him about it and told him he could make the mug for whoever he wanted.  He said he wanted to make it for his dad and he wanted to buy legos for his daddy for Father's Day - specifically teenage mutant ninja turtle legos (those exist?).
I have a Indiana Jones lego set Magnus found in a box about 6 months ago.  I explained to him that his dad bought it for me for my first Mother's Day (I requested it), so it was very special to me but that he could play with it.
Grief is a strange thing to describe.  My grief feels less frequently acute as time goes forward.  I've learned and am still learning how to live this new life as a widow and an only parent raising Magnus.  In many ways I'm the happiest I've ever been in my life because of how I've changed the ways I think about myself and the world around me.  I'm also an adult with an adult's perspective.  Magnus is 5 - he turned 3 years old exactly 2 months before his father died.  His understanding of who he is, what the world is, and complicated things like the permanence of death are in development.
I read some material about the ages that children are able to understand the permanence of death; it's thought to happen around ages 9-11.  I decided awhile ago to not spread Chris' ashes where he requested them scattered until Magnus was old enough to really understand what we were doing.  I think Magnus' grief will be more acute in some ways as he ages and understands more about what it means that his father is dead.

last week in photos

Batman car from the Art Tougeau parade.  More info about this awesome replica here.

Fun at his best friend Logan's birthday party:

soccer started again this morning:

playing guitar on his walk to school:

what I'm reading:

i'm so lucky

I say this a lot to myself these days.  I live in an amazing town surrounded by people that I love and that love my son and I.  I get to watch my amazing son grow up.
I've never felt this lucky in my entire life; I've never felt this happy with myself and my life.  I smile all the time at the wonder of it all - I'm so fucking lucky.

"I just found out for sure, the girl I have a crush on is a lesbian and all the other women I know love ghosts"

I went and saw Bill Callahan the other month; his voice and words can break and build me.

I went alone after a Sporting KC game, it was raining on the way into the Record Bar.  I thought I might be late but he didn't go on until something like 11:30.  I was tired and my feet ached from standing and shouting at the game.  But I wanted to see Bill and I stood to the right of the stage, waiting.

He came on with two guitar players (guitar? bass?  I'm too ignorant of some things in life that I enjoy).  I was a few feet from them and sometimes it felt like eavesdropping as they gave each other looks and cues and acknowledgement.  I noticed the frayed cuffs of one of the mans pants, his broken-in boot keeping time on the wood of the stage.  Bill's fingers would twist together as he played and sang, it reminded me of how sometimes my tongue curls inward when I'm relaxed or really enjoying something I'm thinking about or doing.

Some of the songs made me choke up and I let the tears fall down my cheeks without feeling awkward or gross or self conscience.  Chris introduced me to Smog, I can't remember if it was a bit before I was pregnant with Magnus or during.
I remember listening to the album A River Ain't Too Much to Love over and over again those months in Salt Lake City as Magnus grew bigger and bigger; the strange, beautiful feeling of his tiny body hiccuping.  Chris and I took Lamaze classes together and wrote silly notes to each other during the meetings; I still have them.  The term "birthing" gave him the willies so I'd use it as often as possible: "well when I'm birthing our son."

I left before he finished and drove home in the dark rain, longing for the comfort of my bed.

Wall

I got around to putting up some posters Magnus got in the mail a few months ago from one of Chris' old friends, John.  Chris and John knew each other when they lived in Houston something like 15 or so years ago.  John sent a box of comics to Chris when he was at MD Anderson, I still have them and will give them to Magnus when he's old enough.

I found some yarn on sale the other day that's perfect for more Christmas knitting - it looks like candy-cane stripes, I think it's meant for making sock monkeys.

Magnus had his first dentist appointment this morning, he wasn't at all scared and did a really good job. His teeth are fine and it looks like his right front tooth may be the first one he looses.  He loved looking at the x-rays of his teeth.  

Sometimes the smells of a doctors office brings up memories, the blunt smell of rubbing alcohol.  Maybe it's because I was thinking about those awful days of waiting recently.  One of my good friends had an emergency appendectomy a few days ago, I and some other friends went over to help out with the boys while her husband brought her home from the hospital.  He helped her walk slowly into the house and she was drugged to the gills so she had that distant look in her eye; I saw Chris with that look a lot the last few months of his life.  

While Nick went to go get her scripts and Mo and Seth were across the street at the park with all our boys I sat in their stairwell while she rested upstairs in case she needed anything.  I sat and knitted and remembered sitting and knitting all those months in all those different hospital rooms.  I didn't knit very much at MD Anderson those last 2 months, I had to wear gloves, a gown, and a mask a lot of the time and knitting with gloves on is difficult.  

Chris died in the back of an ambulance on the way to hospice, I was with him.  I've never quite looked at ambulances the same since then.  Most of the time I take notice and move on but sometimes it's like looking at a ghost and I'm brought back to that ride from Houston to Austin, that strangeness of looking out the back at the faces of people behind me in traffic.  They couldn't see me so they were picking their nose or singing to songs on the stereo or talking to their children in the backseat.  It was surreal, them going about a banal daily task, while in front of them on a highway in Texas my husband died.

Pioneers

Before meeting my advisor in Nichols Hall I stopped and walked around Pioneer Cemetery on the west campus.  The last time I was there I was 17 or 18 and lived across the bridge in Hashinger Hall during the spring semester of my freshman year at KU.  My friend Ellen and I had some bottles of Guinness and we walked over and sat in the cemetery and drank.

This link has more information about the cemetery, and the people buried there:

Pioneer Cemetery

 

The inscription above reads: 

Remember friends as you pass by

as you are so once was I.

As I am so must you be

prepare for death and follow me.

I did a search on google and apparently it was a fairly common inscription on head stones in the 18th and 19th centuries.  Here is some more info: Remember me as you pass by

I met my advisor today with whom I'd doing research for over the summer.  She showed me the lab I'll be using, some of the equipment, and then I filled out the paperwork for my login info, a non-disclosure form about the research, and copies of keys to Nichols Hall and the lab.  I'm quite nerdy excited to have access to a lab and to get to do research.  I'm thinking about getting my Master's degree and this research in conjunction with an internship next summer will help me decide which way to go.  

On the way to Magnus' school this morning we saw a truck in front of us with an orange ribbon magnet on the back; we have one on our truck that is for leukemia awareness.  Magnus saw the ribbon and said "look they have one too!"  I couldn't see any lettering on it so I told him that maybe it was for leukemia or maybe something else.  He said "I wonder if their daddy died or their mommy died or their brother died or their dog died or their sister died or their cat died, if they have one".

USOC game

morning snail

USOC qualifier vs Des Moines Menace 

It was pouring rain for the last 15 minutes or so of the game.  I kept asking him if he wanted to go inside and watch but he said no and cheered even louder.

Tonight was Magnus' 3rd Sporting KC game.  We won 2-0, he got to see Kei score again.  When I went to pick him up from school his teacher Sarah told me he'd been talking all day about how he was going to a Sporting game that night.  

Memorial day

free scarf from SKC vs HOU

happy hour 715, best darn chocolate milk ever

Sporting KC vs Houston Dynamo May 26th

Ended in a 1-1 draw.  Magnus got to see his face on the big screen and see his favorite player, Kei Kamara, score the equalizer.  

outside

first time riding the Lawrence River trails, about a 6 mile bike ride altogether

new clothes line from Cottin's!

last 10 days

things I'm stuck to