Time It Was, Oh, What A Time It Was...

It was a time of innocence...a time of confidences...

Thought I'd reprint one of my earliest blog posts -- from three years ago...

The recent fall-ish weather and the constant call of the very noisy crickets always bring back memories of one very special cricket -- Flower -- a forever symbol of the long-ago summers of my youth.

Kim, Tricia, Helen: This blog post -- as it was three years ago -- is for you...

(From The Home Stretch, Sept. 3, 2006)

Today has been one of those days...it's supposed to be a day of rest, but the lawn called to me, "Annie, rev up that lawnmower... NOW!"

So I did.

Then I noticed how the morning glories, though beautiful, have taken over my entire garden, and the creeping jenny, albeit great, green groundcover, is really a weed and it has highjacked most of the yard.

Do I really care? No. But I started yanking weeds anyway and that's when I saw the first one. The first cricket of "cricket season". All sorts of little crickets hopping to and fro...they do that this time of year; that summer's-almost-over-but-fall-ain't-quite-here time of year that brings out not only the crickets but the big, beautiful (and scary looking) garden spiders...

It's the time of year I always think about my friend Kim...if you are reading this, Kim, you know where I am headed.

It was, I think, 1968...Kim and her family had just moved back to our neighborhood, and sixth grade was just getting underway. We were playing outside in the field behind the elementary school where it was crickets galore. And so Kim and I got a box, caught some of the little buggers, and one of them we named Flower...

Ah. The innocence of life back in the sixth grade in Madeira, Ohio.

That following summer -- our sixth-grade summer, as we still to this day reminisce -- was THE best summer of our lives. Kim, Tricia, Helen and I were best buds, and we rode bikes, and slept outside in sleeping bags, and talked about how the four of us were going to get an apartment together some day...

We'd spend our days just hanging out, sometimes lying on the ground, staring up into the cloudless sky for what seemed like hours..."The sky is so blue," I remember one of us remarking once. It was, indeed, a scene right of Wonder Years.

As it turned out, the four of us never did share an apartment. We all went our separate ways after high school. But for the most part, we have always kept in touch.

We tried re-enacting that blue-sky moment years later -- around 1990 -- after I moved back to Cinci from Iowa. We were in our mid-30s, married...way past the age of catching crickets and naming them. But it felt so good to be back together again. So, putting our harried lives on hold for a moment, we all made our way down to the ground in Tricia's backyard one mid-summer afternoon and gazed up into the sky.

"The sky is so blue!" one us said, and we laughed and laughed.

For a brief moment, we were back in sixth grade again...lighthearted, carefree, awash in the sense that like the big, blue endless sky above, our lives stretched out before us, chock full of possibility and opportunity...

But then it was getting late, and there was supper to fix and diapers to change, and...

I don't think we will ever forget our sixth grade summer. Those rare and precious times we are blessed to be together -- usually class reunions (we LOVE class reunions), we almost always bring up the "blue sky" day, and Kim and I to this day fondly remember Flower, the cricket.

From the vantage point of my "omigod I'm almost 50" summer, life at 12 seemed so simple then. (Somebody stop me before I break into a teary rendition of "The Way We Were! Kleenex! I need a Kleenex!)

Funny... to this day, I cannot kill a cricket.

So Kim, Tricia, Helen...if you are reading this...Here's to crickets, blue skies, sixth-grade summers, old friends, and life's innocence lost.

And to the rest of you...what are your favorite memories? What brings back, with a rush and a sigh, a heart-enveloping memory? What are your special anniversaries of the heart?

Celebrate them whenever you can.

Breathing Lessons

I always have the best intentions at the beginning of each school year...

I'm going to be more organized, hence, Daniel will be more organized.

Or, I will keep an activity calendar in the kitchen and fill it out religiously so we are not running around at the last minute trying to make it to school events on time...

Or, I will always stay caught up with the laundry so Daniel is not madly searching for matching socks at 8:15 in the a.m.

Well, here we are...the dawn of Daniel's junior year before us, and, alas...

I can't remember my log in and password for the school's on-line campus, nor find the scrap of paper on which I jotted it, and I've misplaced the order form for Crusader hoodies and T-shirts...and the orders have to be in by Friday...which I would put on my calendar if I had remembered to buy one but, of course, I didn't. And here it is 11:30 p.m., and I still have three loads of laundry to do...

I really did have good intentions for starting out this school year on the right foot...

But grief is exhausting. And mind-boggling. Even when you think you may possibly be healing, grief is there. Just hanging over the days and nights like a heavy yet invisible cloud shrouding the mind, the soul...

Yet, somehow, we all go on. Life demands it.

And so the new school year begins...

Daniel does have his book bag packed, and I actually had the presence of mind to order his college-credit on-line psychology class book from Amazon.com in plenty of time before the first class...he's got pencils, pens, a calculator, a binder, several college-ruled one-subject notebooks in various colors...

He's got a new shirt and jeans...he's got a nice haircut...

And he's got a giant, gaping hole in his heart, as do all Casey's friends who are preparing for their first day of school.

Yes, the hallways will be brimming with students, and yet there is sure to be an emptiness, a silence that will resound for all those who knew and loved Casey. He had an indescribable presence in the hallways, one mom said the other day. A personality bigger than life itself. And that infectious smile...

The first day of school will not be easy. Nor the second. Nor the third...

One school day at a time, kids. One school day at a time...

First lesson:

Left...right...left...right...left...right...breathe...

Serenity Prayer

So my dear sis arrived on my doorstep last weekend, her trusty stepladder in one arm, a drop cloth and paint rollers in the other. And with the help of my dear friend and neighbor, Angie, they painted Daniel's room.

I bought the paint. Angie edged. My sister rolled.

Now, at first blush, in the bigger scheme of things (such as they are, tragically, following Daniel's accident and the death of his best friend, Casey) painting Daniel's bedroom might seem like a frivolous thing to do.

Certainly, a fresh coat of paint doesn't eliminate our grief, our loss, our mourning, our overall sense of sadness and despair. But for whatever reason, painting is what we Heise girls tend to do in the face of death and loss.

Or at least that is the conclusion I came to in the midst of this mini makeover...

Go back 40 years. Different time. Different bedroom. It's my bedroom. I am 13. My sis (Sissy, as I always called her) is 21. Our mother has just recently died. Our grandfather (our mom's dad) has just recently passed away as well. Our family is awash in grief.

One weekend, Sissy shows up with a paint brush, three colors of paint, and a crazy idea -- she wants to paint my room (then lavender) red, white and blue. One wall red. Two walls blue. And the fourth wall, red, white and blue stripes.

Who did she think I was, Betsy Ross? I dunno. She was just determined that that was what she was going to do. Something fun. A little crazy, even. Something positive and fresh in the face of adversity and sadness.

And so Sissy painted. And she painted. And she painted. And when she was finished, I had the coolest room on Buckeye Crescent. No, it didn't bring my mom or my grandfather back. But it made me smile, which was no small feat at the time.

Truly, it was an act of devoted sisterly love. I remember watching her painstakingly paint those stripes...

She had to be out of her mind...and she was. Out of her mind with love for me. She just wanted to do something, anything, to make me smile at at time when that is the last thing I felt like doing.

And that, I guess, is why we decided to paint Daniel's room. I am out of my mind with love and worry for my son. And he couldn't ask for a more loving and devoted aunt. Or a more selfless, caring neighbor.

No, painting his room doesn't bring Casey back. But it was something we could do to, hopefully, make him smile, even if ever so briefly, at a time when that is the last thing he feels like doing. And he did smile...partially, I would surmise, out of relief that I did not redo his room in a Hello Kitty motif, as I had threatened.

Nor is his room painted in red, white and blue stripes. It is done in a warm, soft, assuring blue/gray called, ironically, "Serenity Now."

And isn't that what we all are praying for?