I still can’t sing it. I opened up a nursery rhyme book tonight with E and found myself on the page with this song. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to sing it again. I remember the days where we would be riding in the car and I would sing one verse and Cari the next. We’d continue on until we ran out of verses to sing. Just one of those small things that we shared with each other. It was just us and the kids. No one else was there. It was one of our ways to get through the tougher car rides. It usually worked too.
August 21st, 2009:
If it’s a girl
We have a lot of good friends and for that we are fortunate. Two babies were born in the past few weeks and another couple announced their pregnancy tonight. It’s terrific news for them. It’s tough news for me but I remain happy for them. If it’s a girl, they asked that they be able to honor my wife when naming their child. Whether or not they have a girl, that simple gesture meant the world to me.
It’s things like that. How they were able to sit with me tonight, amidst our active children, and listen to me. That is why I find comfort in our friends. Having the ability to be open, without judgement. We chose are friends. We chose to be around like people. Those who did not fit, and there were always those people, would eventually weed themselves out. Not because they were bad people, but because they weren’t exactly the types of people we chose to share the intimate details of our life with. We were fortunate to have met each other, but we were equally as fortunate to build the relationships with our friends that we have today and intend to keep forever.
Friendships are not always easy, but we made them work. Everyone has their own responsibilities, their own needs. It takes effort to make sure they last and we made sure we were always involved in each others lives.
If I have one request, and I’ve always felt this way, it’s for all our friends to buy houses on the same block. Wherever it might be. To have your close friends on the same block…it would be our own little world and we would relish in it.
Cruel intentions
Those words describe a particular family member who last night decided, rather than talking to me, to text me some words that will forever effect our relationship.
They think, think being the operative word, that there’s more to a female friends relationship of mine than meets the eye. There is not. They have been told there’s not. Yet they continue to pry. I understand to an extent where they are coming from but this is ridiculous.
They are not doing anything to assist themselves with their grief and now they are throwing it on me. The only shoulders I lean on are my friends, those who are impacted by the…ones who will in no way judge me, but rather just listen. Certain family members apparently want to judge, want to offer their opinion, want to place their own other personal grief on the table. That is not for me. That’s not how I deal with it.
And to put words in writing, words that cannot be taken away, words that are extremely cruel … you truly have to be a mean person to do that. Granted this person is grieving, but these are not the words of a grieving person. Why is this person not doing something to help themselves, why is the family not doing something? I can barely take care of my own issues. I certainly cannot take care of others, other than my children, and I certainly cannot open myself up to the grief of someone else.
Do they expect me to act as if nothing happened? They all live in the same house. And this person in particular doesn’t even have a job. This is where my kids go during the day while I work. I have zero desire to go there now. I have dealt with her immaturity in the past, but she has far surpassed my level of tolerance.
As if I needed this.