New Year, New Me?

Let's just get the obvious out of the way and note that I'm already a bit late to be posting this type of entry, given that it's February and all, but I found this draft of a blog from a few weeks ago, and it seemed as good enough place as any to start. To explain my extended absence from this forum, I'd like to introduce two pieces of evidence.

1. My mom still has that fucking brain tumor.

2. It's the middle of the Jan/Febs in the Northwest, the Jan/Febs unofficially being that time of year where anyone who lives in Oregon or Seattle slowly but surely, loses most of their desire to live given the lack of sunlight they are experiencing for months on end. This manifests itself in several ways, personally in the form of rarely getting out of bed before 10 am, crying inexplicably, hating things inexplicably and an irrational fear that I may never see the sun again. Now, I've got one of those lights that one is supposed to use every morning in order to help these horrible side effects of the Jan/Febs, and sometimes I use them. When I do, I feel better. I just have to feel better enough to switch the damn thing on for 1/2 an hour every morning, and sometimes that's hard. I only made one resolution this year, that being to do more of this writing thing I do, but now I have another one: use the damn light every day. Or risk not getting out of bed for weeks at a time.

At any rate, the turnover to a new year has never been all that significant for me, as nothing much seems to change from December 31st at 12:00 to to January 1st at 12:01 and all those things I wish I'd been doing the year before follow me around the whole next year too, as I try and get my shit together. I usually note the passing of time with birthdays or huge life events, but this year, January seems not only the mark of a fresh start, but also beginning of the end for my mother, so it is a very strange mile marker this time around. Plus, I am now officially 37, which is a hellava lot closer to 40 than I'd like it to be. I feel on the precipice of so many things in my life - I'm in love in a way I've never been before and will soon have an entirely new life with him in the Bay Area sometime this year; my writing is growing and changing, everything, really, is changing, but in the meantime, my life is still much the same. That is, slinging mojitos, trying to write, struggling to get out of bed before noon.

I guess you'd call it limbo, what I'm in now, this in-between of knowing and not knowing of waiting for things to change, yet not really wanting them too, as when they do, it will mean my mom won't be here anymore. The strange thing is that most of the days I spend with her I forget this fact entirely. Or mostly. That has been the biggest gift for me in all of this, the ability to lose myself in the moment with her, whether it be just chatting or making her lunch or getting her dressed. Of course I know she's sick, but she's still here, which gives me the freedom to let go of her death on most days. (Not all days. Please. My shit isn't that together.) She might be a little slower than the mom I'm used to, but she's still sharp, witty, funny as fucking hell and able to give the sagest advice for everything I'm going through in my life - including what I need to do when she's gone.

According to her, all I will have to do is light a candle and think of her and she will be here, and after all these years of knowing one another, whatever dilemma and question I have for her, I will already know what it is she's going to say. I suppose that's true, and there is some comfort in that, although there will be nothing to replace the sound of her laughter or her voice. Yet those things are permanently imprinted on me; they are what have helped me survive this life up until now.

But it is the smallest of moments I will miss with her, one of which happened yesterday. It was my day to take care of her, and her morning visitor cancelled. She looked a little lost like, "Now what in the hell are we going to do all morning?" and I came up with this: trash TV. My mom is a strange dichotomy that way - she mediates, she reads voraciously about spirituality and various intellectuals, she reads the New Yorker and The New York Times religiously and she doesn't watch a lot of TV. However, she loves a little gossip and glamour and such as much as the rest of us - in fact, when I told her the Golden Globes were on a few weeks ago (she didn't realize) she let out a whoop and shook her good fist in the air and said, "There is something to live for!" I've let her know she's got to live until at least March 7th, because that's when the Oscars are on. I'm also tempting her with the DVD release of the 3rd season of Mad Men, which might keep her here until the end of March. She had a friend tell her what happens in case she died before she watched it - but she's already forgotten what they told her. How's that for airtight planning?

At any rate, we turned on The View and caught Mario Cantone ripping the Grammys, which made her laugh harder than I'd heard in awhile. Then Regis and Kelly came on and he kept talking about Jersey Shore's second season, and his desire to see them in The Hamptons. She had no idea what he was talking about, so I tried to explain, you know, Snooki and Pauly and The Situation and just the depravity. She wasn't quite getting it, so I showed her the SNL clip of the Snooki parody and she howled. "Thank God for comedy," she said. "Do you think anyone else has every had so much fun dying?"

No, Mom, I don't. And it's amazing to watch it all unfold.

Here are the clips, so you can share in the riduculous joy. "It's not deragatony!"



And "the squeakquel"....