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Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Anniversaries

Diane and I’d just finished our grilled salmon with new potatoes and flash-nuked green beans and carrots. A dinner I made. I loaded the dishwasher as she packed leftovers for the next day’s lunch and pretty much out of nowhere I pipe up:

“I’ve got to get some sleep.”

“We went to bed early last night. You were out like a light.”

“Fast and dark, but I woke up twice. As usual.”

“I didn’t hear you.”

“You never do. You’ve been sleeping like the recently executed. I get up and shower or I go downstairs and IM with Matthew. He’s always up until two or three.”

“What wakes you up?”

“I have free floating anxiety. I learned about it at IU in Psych 101 and now, after all these years, I have it. Finally. I think it’s this dead mother thing. Three days before the monthly anniversary of her death my gut knots and my brain goes kaflooey. I don’t settle back down until the day after.”

“You need a year to go by. A year helps.”

“It helped you, didn’t it.”

“It helped me and it helped Susan with Jimmy.”

“You mean a year from now I’ll be picking apples?”

“No, but you will be sleeping.”

“It makes no sense.”

“It makes perfect sense.”

“Not the year thing. The anniversary thing. With me I mean. My family never celebrated anything but Christmas and the kid’s birthdays. I don’t know when my parents were born, I don’t know Brian or Joan’s birthdays. I still think Matt was born in ‘86 on the 16th of July. I only know yours because of the built-in mnemonic. Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentines…those days didn’t exist until I married into your family. “

“And you are all the better for it.”

“Maybe, but I think my mother’s haunting me.”

“Michael, it’s called grief.”

“No, she’s telling me she really did want a birthday present.”

posted by michael at 2:22 am  

10 Comments »

  1. Just once get my birthday right.
    And i know you now do it just to see if people are reading/know when my birthday is

    Comment by matt — November 15, 2006 @ 2:27 am

  2. I want to make sure you get all the gifts you deserve.

    Comment by michael — November 15, 2006 @ 2:47 am

  3. So get HO a birthday present. She’d want you sleeping well, and you’ll kill two birds with that stone.

    Comment by el Kib — November 15, 2006 @ 7:40 am

  4. Free floating anxiety. It’s not so free is it. You’re paying for it. Drugs help.

    Comment by LaRad — November 15, 2006 @ 8:45 am

  5. I’d be a dead man if I ever forgot Katie’s birthday. It’s engraved on my brain with the fires of Volcan Mordor.

    Comment by rakkity — November 15, 2006 @ 2:39 pm

  6. Wait a minute. Did you say “Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentines … those days didn’t exist…”? Michael, I take it that your family was rather unconcerned about holidays? Mrs Rakkity and I, on the contrary, have been forced, nay, driven with relentless enthusiasm, into celebrating every darned national day, nameday, saintsday, you name it, ever since (hmmm… when did Katie start kindergarten?) 1988, when Katie learned about holidays.

    Comment by rakkity — November 15, 2006 @ 2:51 pm

  7. Christmas and our birthdays and that was it. Even those holidays only existed because of my mother’s perseverance. Giving presents to my father was a horrible experience. If he opened them, he rarely used them.

    I, otoh, have the privilege of having a son who keys right into my needs. A stapler/brad driver, a cordless screw gun, a condensed set of screw drivers and ratchet bits, even a pop gun that shoots Fluorescent ping pong balls to name only the most recent.

    Comment by michael — November 15, 2006 @ 5:36 pm

  8. Cool.
    My dad used most of my gifts to him during his long life. Two months ago, when my sister and I were painstakingly going through all his tools to winnow them down to essentials before his move to an apartment, I came upon some letter punches I gave him back in the ’60s. He had placed them in the “don’t mess with these tools, they’re mine forever” cabinet. For 40-some years, he has been using those letter punches to emboss his initials, phone numbers, etc on his metal tools. A well-loved fathers-day present. I was touched.

    Comment by rakkity — November 16, 2006 @ 2:59 pm

  9. Now that warms the cockles.

    Comment by michael — November 16, 2006 @ 8:25 pm

  10. cock‧le  Pronunciation[kok-uhl] noun, verb, -led, -ling.

    –noun
    1. any bivalve mollusk of the genus Cardium, having somewhat heart-shaped, radially ribbed valves, esp. C. edule, the common edible species of Europe.
    2. any of various allied or similar mollusks.
    3. cockleshell (defs. 1, 2).
    4. a wrinkle; pucker: a cockle in fabric.
    5. a small, crisp candy of sugar and flour, bearing a motto.
    –verb (used without object)
    6. to contract into wrinkles; pucker: This paper cockles easily.
    7. to rise in short, irregular waves; ripple: The waves cockled along the shore.
    –verb (used with object)
    8. to cause to wrinkle, pucker, or ripple: The wind cockled the water.
    —Idiom
    9. cockles of one’s heart, the depths of one’s emotions or feelings: The happy family scene warmed the cockles of his heart.

    [Origin: 1350–1400; ME cokille

    Comment by adam — November 16, 2006 @ 8:56 pm

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