Goodnight, Corky. We'll miss you so.

The dog has died. Not our dog, my parents' dog, the family dog, Corky. Yes, our dog.

She drowned at the lake house this evening, where she is free to roam and swim and bark terrritorily at anyone who drives down her road. Where it gets very dark and where my parents could not see her when she had a seizure too close to the shoreline or slipped off the dock and into the water.

She swam really well. She loved to swim and she would often follow us out to play in the water, paws frantically paddling. As she got older, we put a child-sized life-vest on her so she could swim easier with us. She would emerge from the lake, fur dripping, tongue hanging, tail wagging, a happy, happy dog.

She was fourteen years old and epileptic and arthritic. We knew she wouldn't live much longer. We just didn't suspect my parents would be burying her on the hill overlooking the lake and the house and her road so soon.

Before Lil E, she was our living room entertainment. Like many pets and people, in her age she was sometimes nippy and crabby. But there was still that sense of mutual love when she was around us, when she barked and paced protectively when Lil E cried from his crib and when she waited patiently at my dad's feet at just about 9 o'clock every night for my dad to give her permission to go to bed.

My dad, the one rather irritated that my mom gave him a puppy as a present, said he never wanted a little dog to carry around in the crook of his arm. After he saw her, named her Corky as a reference to her Welsh Terrier breed's liveliness and also for Corky Sherwood-Forrest on Murphy Brown, he made her his dog. A few days later, I spied him walking through the house with Corky nestled in the crook of his arm.

My dad had a special whistle for her. When he whistled it and called her tonight and she didn't come, he says he just knew.

She was a jumping jumping jumping dog, the one we called Corky Phyllis, Corky Arlene, Corky Anne, Corky Lu.

We are sad. Crying and very sad. And we somehow have to tell our boy who had a love-fear relationship with the being in our family closest to his size. I am going to miss that little crazy dog, miss her waggy tail and her love of microwave popcorn turned snack time into a gane of fetch. I am going to miss her at our feet and in the yard and most of all, swimming with all her heart along with us at the lake.

Click to read more ...

The Best Man. That's me.

We are home. Gloriously, happily home.

We spent five days in Richmond, Virginia celebrating my brother's wedding and all of the chaos and fun that leads up to the altar. It was lovely. It was sweet. It was an adventure.

There were many happy moments for which I am so grateful. But there were also the looky-loo pre-nuptial moments that are far more fun to discuss. Here are a few of the highlights:

Getting there. Lil E and I consolidated as much of our stuff as we could and headed to Richmond on a plane with my parents, 36 long hours before Bruce joined us there. When Bruce arrived, he was a bit flustered since he was charged with transporting my dress (ahhh yes, the dress), which, of course, could not be too wrinkled because it could not be steamed.

Only smallish planes fly from Chicago into Richmond International (probably named for that one worldwide flight to Mexico), and Bruce's plane did not have that special closet flight attendants reserve for first-class flyer's suitcoats and the rest of the herd's wedding attire. He had to jam it behind the seat of one of those first-class flyers who was not happy about pulling his seat out of the recline position for one measly little minute in the name of a wrinkle-free satin-rayon blend formal. Since he was faced with rolling his eyes at that sucker or holding the dress upright for two hours, Bruce did the right thing and gave him the facial equivalent of a big old Whatevs.

Then Bruce settled in with a ginger ale, a quart-size baggy of snacks and watched a movie. God love him, he actually watched a movie. Alone. Without fear of plane puking or not getting a few minutes to actually read the articles in a treasured People magazine. Yet and still, my dear, sweet love of my life was a bit rattled when I met him outside of security. Seriously.

Click to read more ...

Mama Reads: Eat Pray Love

There are books you just read because you need the distraction from parenting guides and gossip magazines and bills and feeling fat and Elmo. There are books you read and love. And then there are books you read that change you.

Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is one of those books. One of those books you read and laugh out loud. One of those books you read and cry. One of those books you with characters you get so invested in that you hate to say good-bye. One of those books that stick with you weeks and weeks and weeks later. One of those books that you want desperately to talk about with someone else who has read it and when you find that person, all you can say is, "Ohhhh."

After a long respite from reading anything other than magazine articles and chapters on sleep training, my friend Danielle recommended Eat Pray Love to me. It was only out in hardback and so put it on my Christmas list. From the moment I pulled it out of my nightstand drawer to read, I felt the cells deep in my body begin to transform.

It sounds hokey, I know. But if you read it, you will understand.

Eat Pray Love is the memoir of woman who leaves her husband and travels to Italy, India and Indonesia to find a connection to God and to change how she is living. She practices yoga and meditation, she meets many characters along the way, she longs for loves that do not fit who she is finding herself to be. She is funny and she is flawed. I felt like she was a friend I'd known a long time ago or someone I wanted very much to know or sometimes, I felt like she was a little bit of me.

I was reading Eat Pray Love when I went into the hospital for an emergency appendectomy. On the brink of panic as I was wheeled in for a CAT scan, one of the author's most challenging meditations came to me. I said it over and over and over to myself. As I did, I felt my blood pressure drop, my worry move to the back of my mind and behind the Sanskrit words of prayer. I was reading the book at that moment for that reason. I felt that deeply.

I recommended the book to my yoga teacher who happened to be leaving for a yoga retreat and, although I wasn't aware of this, wanted a book to take along. Again, it was divine timing.

And today, one of our beloved babysitters, a student teacher and yoga devotee, eyed the book on my desk. We talked about it, about how moving it was, about how we related and clung to it. She told me that just yesterday, she met up with her best friend who has just left her life as a Dominican novice and is seeking, not in the same way as Elizabeth Gilbert but similar enough. Our babysitter pulled the book from her backpack and gave it to her friend, who read the first chapter right then. It was clearly a quiet moment that had a lot of power stirring underneath.

Our babysitter left and I put Lil E down for a nap. I sat with him sleeping in my lap for just a few minutes, then sat down at my desk to work and read email. There, in my inbox, was a message from my friend,the one who also felt the book was life-changing, about Elizabeth Gilbert, her book, her life now.

It's like this with this book. Read it, read it, read it. Then you will understand. It is not a momentous a-ha but rather, a thought or feeling or image or meditation that grabs you and hangs on for dear life.

I must find Elizabeth Gilbert. I want to see her in person and hear her voice (why does she not travel to Chicago? why why why?!). I'm not sure about Julia Roberts playing her, but maybe that's because, in my mind the author is my companion on a very personal journey of my own or a friend across the table. Not a celebrity or person who is out of reach, but rather a person I get in this small way who is trying very hard to let go, to find a way, to get in touch.

Click to read more ...