Asked and answered

He once introduced me as his “best half”, this beautiful boy of mine – long before we even decided to go all in, but also long after he ate all my nachos within the first five minutes of meeting him our junior year of high school.  It must have been somewhere along the halfway point of our twenty-year timeline.  It’s gone so fast.

I certainly can’t remember every day of the last two decades that we’ve spent together, but I can remember most things – the big things. The biggest thing - how he was there to hold our baby girl from the moment she fought to take her first breath until the moment her spirit took flight. How he held me up during the darkest days of my life – how he continues to hold me up - since then. How he wanted to ask my dad for my hand, and his insistence that it was the right thing to do, even though I’m slightly north of marriageable age…only slightly. Ok fine. Try doubling the age of consent in America....+1. 

Everyone knows we've been together a long time, but every dog has its day. I mean, every girl gets her day (IF she chooses. Not everyone wants the big party and the pretty dress and the cake and the live animals and French imported mimes, but I do. ALL OF IT. Thank you Pinterest.)

Anyway, he still has the ability to surprise me...even after all this time. 

You know what? Sometimes when we’re walking somewhere and he’s outpaced me by 100 yards because he claims it’s physically uncomfortable to walk at the speed I’m accustomed to, I’ll eventually spot the blonde and for a split second wonder who the hell the cute guy is that’s smiling at me. Early onset Alzheimer’s?  Sure, it’s a possibility. But the thousands of butterflies beating their wings against my heart in that moment? That’s not indigestion or even irritable bowel syndrome.

It’s love.

I love him. He, who still makes every day feel like a new adventure with millions and millions of possibilities for pure greatness (and exhaustion…he really does walk very fast). He, who my soul knows, and has always known. I like to remind him of the time we would have met in 6^th grade rather than 6 years later. He went to a mutual friend's birthday party, and had I just asked for a piece of paper and pen instead of overestimating my ability to remember important facts and figures/addresses and phone numbers, I would have been at that same party. Yes, probably reading a Babysitter’s Club book somewhere in an unoccupied room, but that was a really good book series.

It's all come together for us in the end, though. Something similar actually happened to my parents. A missed opportunity years and years earlier, but their souls eventually made the connection, and in a totally different country even. No wonder they’re my inspiration when it comes to marriage. They’re solid.

So here we are. Has it always been a smooth ride? Of course not. He drives me crazy (especially when it comes to our difference of opinions regarding what constitutes true exercise). But all in all, I wouldn’t have wanted to do this with anyone else. I can’t imagine my life without him. 

He and I made our Little Bird. I just wish we could have taken her along for the ride, too.

Twenty years.  It’s been a long while, yet not been enough, all at the same time. I hope we’re blessed with more.

Love, Light, and Ligaya - CS

The last 6 months of my universe

It’s been six months since I’ve written anything. I kept telling myself that I’d get back to it when things slowed down, but things didn’t slow down. Things sped up and things got complicated and there were always more important things to do. Isn’t that how it always goes? And in the blink of an eye, six months went by. The hell?

We’ve been watching the new Cosmos series with Neil Tyson deGrasse, so I know that six months barely registers as a silent fart in the universe’s timeline and that my place on said timeline is of little to no consequence in the grand scheme of universe-type things. So thank you, Universe, for making me feel really, really small! AND inconsequential!  

But seriously, much has been on my mind lately. Like, WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO MY LIFE??? I raise my right hand to Cheesus and swear that I do not regret leaving my old job – I don’t. I would have eventually destroyed the place in a fit of uncensored and unbridled rage.  In fact, my last day on the job I contemplated riding my bike to work, but was afraid that I might storm off after a heated exchange with one of my coworkers (AKA low hanging rotten fruit of the devil’s loins) and forget my bike in the office after slamming the door and proceeding to swallow the key. I didn’t want to take the chance of having to ask security to open the door just to get my stupid 10-speed out of there, so I decided to stay safe and drive instead. Note that the threat of being forcibly restrained or incarcerated wasn’t even a thought in my mind. Not even a little bit.

No, I do not miss that life. Do I miss having a steady paycheck? Fuck yes, I do!  Anyone who tells you that you don’t need money to be even a little bit happy in life is from Crazypantstown, USA – Population “I have money, so I can say such ridiculous things”.  I found a $5 bill in an old purse this morning and it actually brought a tear to my eye. Now that I’ve spent that windfall here at Starbucks, you can find me sobbing silently into their new form of sugar crack hell, a grande iced vanilla macchiato with extra vanilla, over at the corner table by the window. Obviously, I still make bad financial decisions – like turning down money for a singing gig coming up later this week or giving away 2 dozen cookies for free last week. What can I say other than I lack a fundamental understanding of how an exchange of services works.  It usually goes something like this…

Me: I do this for you and you pay me? I give you these things and you give me money? No way. Really? No way. Really? No way. Pssh……..pssh. Pssh. PSSH.

Customer:  (confused look on their face leading to a slow nod at my enthusiasm telling them to forget about it, and finally a quiet acceptance that they are dealing with someone with limited mental capacity and a most unfortunate lack of business acumen).

Anyway, life is hard and crazy and busy right now with working a part-time job and managing a baking business while trying to pick up more singing gigs on the side. Survival mode is fierce (when I’m not busy giving it all away for free). I’d like to try LIVING, but things like “mortgage” and “bills” always seem to resurface on a monthly basis.  But, as my dad always says, life is what you make it, so I’ve promised myself that I’ll try harder at enjoying my time here on this big spinning ball of good times by doing something fun and scary at least once a day. After all, not everybody gets the chance, right? No one knows that better than me and every other parent who’s lost a child. So on today’s agenda:

·         Fun thing: Cook a trout (I admit that this is not particularly fun for the trout).

·         Scary thing (and this is only because I don’t always trust myself to stay calm in situations like this): Talk to the priest sitting next to me about the small matter of my shattered faith and growing fury with God (update: this did not go well. He was too busy talking about Facebook with some other dude who may or may not have been a fellow priest in a track suit. He did bless me and tell me to make an appointment though, so at least there’s that).

It’s hard. I still struggle with what happened to Ligaya.  Of course I do. Those feelings come and go in long waves. I can be “ok” for awhile then start to notice a growing crescendo of discomfort – the way my heart will suddenly seize up being around other people’s babies, the unexpected catch in my throat when telling someone that their little one is sooo cute, the white, hot, searing pain of a thousand suns burning in my chest when thinking about what life would be like – SHOULD be like – had Ligaya been allowed to stay. She would have been a year and a half tomorrow.

The pain and the longing never really do go away no matter how much time passes...and in MY world, on MY timeline of MY universe, that’s neither small nor inconsequential.  

Man, it hurts.

And still, I move forward - trying to survive, trying to live.

Tomorrow, I sing in front of tens of thousands of people at the Angels game. It never gets old. That’s my fun and scary thing for the day.  As always, I hope I make her proud.