The Good with the Bad

The Good with the Bad

If nothing else, I’ve totally learned that in life, you MUST be prepared to take these both… as they come. Roll with the punches… and the presents. I’ve had the dark cloud of my daddy’s impending chemotherapy starting next month looming over my head. It’s been tough, because I saw him battle it once (with radiation) and it didn’t seem so bad… but he’s older and frailer (is that a word?) so the chemo might be much more brutal than what it would be on a stronger younger specimen. I’m watching my uncle go through it now… but it’s a much different case. Unfortunately, they caught his cancer very late. The preferred method of treatment for him that would have cheated death by a little longer would have been for him to remove that part of his colon, install a coloscopy bag and voila… longer life. He said… hayle no. But I guess… felt like he should try to do SOMETHING. So he’s getting chemo… and it’s made him sick… so sick that he’s had to stop working. But I can’t say that I feel bad for him… because when he IS strong enough to come visit my mom… he does so and laments over his situation while he has a Marlboro or two… or three. But he’s younger and stronger… so what would it do to my Dad? I sit here and counsel other folks all the time… Fear and Faith can’t cohabitate in the same body. You have to let go of your doubts and let God handle this. MUCH harder when you’re looking at your father and the potential of him not making it. And I’ve been reluctant to hand this over to God… as if I could do more about it than he could. But finally the other day… I closed my eyes and said, God… you know what… Your will be done. I just have to know you’ve made me strong enough to get through what ever is coming our way.

Tonight while I sat here just … sitting… my dad passed by the door. “Good night. How was your day?” he asked. I gave my usual answer. “So… they PSA count went from 114 to 24… and they’re not going to do the chemo for me anymore.” My heart leapt. REALLY? I tried not to show my excitment overtly. My whole family doesn’t react well to blatant displays of emotion of any kind. He said this is a good time for him to go get other opinions, but for now, according to this doctor… he’s out of the woods.

AMEN.

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Feel It

Feel It

So we went to get Max into some dresses yesterday. It’s only after the fact that I realize I could have been snapping away in the dressing room at the gowns she was trying on… but it didn’t dawn on me to mutlitask that way. She was stunning, though, in the 2 gowns she loved best. But she said she didn’t have “that feeling”. Understandable. During this time more than any other, we look for “that feeling”: this tingly something that shivers down our shoulders and makes our head swim at the sight, thought or notion of the perfect article for this unforgettable day that we’re making up as we go along. It’s tough, though. I can’t remember when the last time I had “that feeling” upon looking at or visiting or meeting someone or something. I didn’t get “that feeling” about Earl when I met him… but I sure did get it further down the line. It was gradual. I know that I’ve felt it in an instant before… but I was younger. Does that not happen to older folks? Is everything so sensible and cynical that our heart no longer leaps at the sight of something? I feel desensitized sometimes. Just numb to it all. “It’s nice enough.” “Yeah… that’ll do.” When Earl and I visited our hall, it wasn’t an immediate love… but more and more as the days wear on… I find more to love about it. More things I can see myself doing with it to make it ours for that time we’ll be there. The notion of having my wedding there excites me more today than it did when we first saw it. I like that feeling.

One thing that bummed me out yesterday and was a bit on the side of coveting was how easy it was for Max’s mom to come join us and walk around the place with us and just be in the space that we were in, helping with the order of the day. Unfortunately, my mom isn’t independantly mobile anymore, and she’s too proud to get in a wheelchair (yet)… so she sees the outdoors 2 or 3 times a month these days and it’s incredibly hard on her system. I’ll tell you, there is NO ONE IN THE WHOLE WORLD I’d like to shop more with than my mommy and ESPECIALLY for this dress. I try to take pictures when I can and show her upon my return… but it’s really not the same. She bought her little white dress on a Gimbles clearance rack… took a veil off of one of her porcelain dolls from home… and voila! her wedding dress. Granny was back in Haiti and all she had was her best friend, my Godmother (and my dad, of course). History is funny that way. Maybe she’ll come out just once. We’ll see.

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And… the Nightmares begin…

And… the Nightmares begin…

The realer something becomes in my waking world, the more it wreaks havoc in my dream state. And nothing has ever been so true as last night. As soon as my mind rested enough to dream, I visualized myself in a church (mind you, I’m not getting married in a church…) But I was in the balcony of the church getting ready and for some reason, I’d just gotten the news that all of my bridesmaids had bailed out except for Li’l Vic. She was still there trying to help me get stuff together. But I had no bridesmaids and plenty of dresses and groomsmen. So Vic suggested that she go and get some of the members of the guest party to come up and fill the spaces. With that, she runs downstairs to get the volunteers and I’m steadily still trying to get dressed and ready (by myself — which is hella hard if you’ve ever dressed in a wedding dress or helped someone else). Finally Vic comes back up with about 8 of the guests who have offered to stand in, and immediately one starts a riot about the dresses I want them to wear, takes the bunch of women that Vic picked out and goes shopping with them for new dresses… *GASP* My wedding was to start at 11… and it was 11:30 now… there was another party coming in (because our time was almost exhausted and the rows were filling up with strangers who were there to hear a politician speak. He had one of those circus monkeys on his shoulder who was just running around and causing havoc. Eventually these women come back with these green and yellow dresses that had leg warmers *shudders*… so I totally Bride-Zilla’d on them and screamed at them and shoved them back into the room to change into what the fuck I told them to wear. Then the time keeper guy came up and basically told me that my time was up and my wedding was over. 11:50, he said. I pleaded with him to wait and still let us do our part, pleasssseee. He agreed and finally the girls came out with these ivory dresses (which also were NOT what I wanted them to wear, but at least it wasn’t green and yellow with leg warmers). So the procession started… the maids and groomsmen made it down the aisle but just as my music was about to play, the politician started making his speech. His secret service men wouldn’t let me through to walk down the aisle.

I was soooo frustrated that I woke up out of the dream and it took me a minute to calm down. In that minute, my baby called me. “Baby? I just had the worst dream,” he explained. “You left me at the altar…” I said, “Yeah, cause the stupid politician wouldn’t shut the fuck up!” He was confused, but I laughed. We sat there on the phone explaining each others dreams to one another and laughing and consoling. We were pretty shook up by it. But the realer something gets, the more afraid we are to lose it. But we’re spending the day talking about the cocktail of feelings we’re experiencing now that we’ve locked in the date and we’re really racing towards this goal together. Neither of us have ever done this before… so looks like we’ve taken that leap…. hope we land somewhere secure.

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At Odds

At Odds

I always read growing up that Libras are the champions of the underdog. Whatever the case is… who ever is most affected and least paid attention to, that’s who we’re rooting for. This also, in a lot of ways makes us the Devil’s Advocate in many popular situations. It seems like yesterday I was just at odds with everyone I was talking to. Not in a confrontational way, but it spawned long debates about life and the way we look at things. My coworker BB was talking to me about the Word… and how one should measure their lives by it. And I asked… “who’s interpretation of it?” And that sparked up a whole lotta somethin… then I made it worse when I said that it’s a text, albeit divinely inspired, written by MEN (meaning folk) in captivity trying to leave something behind to their prodigy (mostly). God didn’t write it down, as far as I know… and it’s been translated and torn apart and re assembled another way so many times by so many sources in the years past… can we really trust what it says? I’m skeptical. But BB was not… so we debated. He made good points. I made good points. We walked away with a better understanding of each other – but no love lost.

Then over lunch MB and I were having a philsophical discussion of the age old “if a tree falls in the forest…” And he said, “of course it makes a sound.” Which immediately put me on the, “How do you know? You weren’t there to hear it…” And we went back and forth for a little while. Haven’t changed how I feel about it, but discussing it with him made me see some other points someone might use in their defense of the existence of sound without an audience.

I don’t know if it’s that I automatically choose the opposing side because of my nature. But… I’ve become adept at seeing ALL sides of an argument, so that I can more wisley make my own choices and assessments. I enjoy debating items with people; it either strengthens or weakens my defense, which makes me examine how I came to the conclusion to begin with. I’m open to all sorts of thoughts and ways of seeing things. Being one track minded is only good for a little while. But being open minded (not necessarily only using your OWN frame of reference as your barometer for other people’s situations but rather trying to understand and see all sides and views and opinions…) is the key to this crazy place.

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Real

Real

That’s what the date is. It’s “in the book” as Glenn from the catering hall said today as we put our first downpayment on the hall we’ve chosen to have our ceremony / reception. Now that date isn’t just imaginary anymore. It’s real. I can’t wait for the actual day. It really can’t come fast enough, if you asked me. But now, we have a place and we can start planning out all the other good stuff. My baby and I felt really lovey dovey on the way back. “We’re getting married” was all we could say to one another on the way home. Like… every new step we take makes this more of a reality for us. I’m so glad he’s excited too. He’s in the throes of this planning just like I am. He wants to start a blog about his experience planning the wedding. (He even wants to write a book!) What a partner. I couldn’t have asked for more.

And now our date is real…

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