Hojotoho! Heiaha! Heiaha!

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Ah, the battle cry of Brünhilde at the beginning of Act 2 of Wganer's Die Walküre - what a way to begin!

That was me today. I'm not kidding. That was the song playing in my head when I went into battle...in the basement. Except I wasn't armed with a sharp spear. Feast your eyes on my weapon:

Yes, that is soap. Irish Spring, to be exact. And it cut like buttah.

What in the world are you doing, Nicole???!!!

Why, I'm slaying spiders, of course.

Well, not really slaying, but ridding my world of those horrible, evil, denizens of Satan. That's my little nickname for them. I even made up a song. But I won't sing it for you, for now that I have laid the trap to slay them, I will not acknowledge their presence in the universe.

Last night I went down into the basement to do some laundry. As I reached the bottom of the stairs I saw an ENORMOUS black spider on the opposite wall. Of course, I yelled, "OH, GROSS!" But there was no one there to hear me. Then I looked to my left and saw ANOTHER one close to the ceiling on another wall. ENORMOUS. I could feel my blood pressure instantly rise. I was out of breath. "Oh my God oh my God oh my God," I kept saying. Then I said to myself, "Get a grip, Nicole. They are nowhere near you. They are just big bugs." Yeah. Big bugs. My mother always told me that those spiders weren't even thinking about me. Probably true, but that didn't change the fact that I felt like I was the next victim in a horror movie.

Would you believe that I actually started to shake? Then I thought to myself, "Nicole, you are being completely ridiculous." I looked at them for another moment and made myself say, "they're just big bugs, they're just big bugs" over and over again, then went to the laundry room to QUICKLY throw some clothes in. And oh God they were still there when I came out. I ran upstairs and slammed the door. Out of sight, out of mind. But I refused to use the downstairs bathroom directly across from the basement door. I did check a little later to see if there was an army of them crawling up the walls towards the basement door. I was totally prepared for it. There weren't any, of course, and I managed to actually survive the night.

Nicole, you are insane. Why, yes, I am. Well, not really - I just have an irrational fear of spiders. I don't even like seeing the word. It makes me feel like I'm going to puke. Although, I have improved much over the years. I used to scream and run from the room when I saw one. Now I just yell, "Oh, GROSS!" and my husband knows exactly what that means. In grad school some nice mama spider decided that my new car was the place to lay her nasty little nest, and for years I had to deal with those horrible gray little beasts in my car. I was terrified to drive at night. I even recklessly pulled over on the side of East Avenue in Rochester late one night after hanging with friends because they started walking up the inside of my windshield. Ugh. I feel sick just thinking about it.

But today I was ready for battle! Armed with a sure-fire way to drive them out of the house, I made my preparations. The materials had been purchased, and I sharpened my sword as I divided my arachno-kryptonite for dispersion. Ok, it wasn't really a sword, it was a butter knife but that just doesn't have the same ring to it. When all was ready, I began my journey. WOTAN - TO THE BASEMENT!

I approached to door quietly, as not to tip the evil creatures to my presence. I slowly eased the door open, then stepped back quickly, just in case they were waiting right inside the door. You think I'm kidding? Keep reading. Once I checked the walls for the enemy, I slowly tread down the stairs, the aroma from the arachno-kryptonite giving me courage as I descended into the bowels of hell. That stuff is strong, man. I approached the bottom of the stairs and slowly looked around, checking the walls. Nothing yet - but wait! There's a small black one on the wall - that makes 3 for crying out loud!!! Of course we all know if there's 1, there are 2, and if there are 2, well, there are lots. But let's not think about that. I crept forward, the arachno-kryptonite working it's magic. The air was pungent with it's strength. I carefully placed the magical lumps in strategic places. Hell, I put it everywhere. In ever window sill. On every ledge I could reach without putting my finger into a dark crevice. And I was exultant, crying, "Hojotoho! Heiaha! Heiaha!" On the inside, of course.

Did I go overboard? You betcha. Will the hubby be happy when he comes home and finds little pieces of Irish Spring all over the house? Doubtful. And do you think he'll comply when I ask him to put one in the far window sill in the basement because I was too chicken to go over there in broad daylight? You bet your boots. Because I'll give him that look that says I-know-it's-neurotic-and-probably-won't-work-but-your-crazy-wife-will-feel-better-if-you-do-it and he'll give in. He learned what that look meant early in our marriage and realized that life was easier if, on this occasion, you just went with the Nicole Logic, as he calls it. 


But now I feel free, baby. Even the bee that was buzzing behind the curtain in the living room seemed to drop dead when I put the arachno-kryptonite in the corner of the window sill. Mission accomplished. Onto the next battle...

Wait, why is there a bee in my house???!!!!  WOTAN -  TO ARMS!

Life on the Blue Ridge Parkway

This week we are visiting friends in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  Go ahead, all you Carolinians, get your oohs and ahhs out while you have the chance.  It would seem that anyone that has lived or spent a great deal of time in North Carolina (which includes a bulk of our friends) are attached to it in a similar way Texans are attached to Texas.  Except the Carolinians are a little less neurotic about it.  But only a little. 

I love the east coast.  I know we're not on the coast right now, but it's closer than Cleveland.  I grew up in suburban Philadelphia - the "Main Line" as they call it, in a town called Berwyn.  Strong Welsh name, and there are many around there.  We lived about 20 minutes from Valley Forge National Park and you could just smell the history in the air.  Not to mention the vestiges of the beginning of our country at Independence Mall downtown, Betsy Ross' house, and the Schuylkill River, which was probably a lot less dirty and smelly than it is now.  And the pièce de résistance - the Rocky Statue at the Art Museum.  True history in art at its best.  That's Philly, for ya.  So, coming to North Carolina brings me a little closer to my roots - east and south.  Both sides of may family are from the south.  The DEEP south.  More about that later, though... 

It's been a week of fun, relaxation, and a little bit of work.  Fun and relaxation from all the card playing, drinking responsibly but not necessarily in moderation (which means we didn't leave the house) and playing with boisterous youngsters.  Not in that order.  And I must say, there is something to be said for being woken up every morning by the quiet stare and heavy breathing of a 2 year-old with a stuffed up nose and a cute smile...good stuff.  The work is fun in its own way - we are staying with my organ duo partner, and the timing is perfect to take a gander through a few scores before our recital at the end of April in Columbus, Ohio.  Four-hand organ work is fun but all that clef changing, octave jumping, and stop pulling leaves you cross-eyed in no time.

Yesterday we took a ride on the Blue Ridge Parkway on our way to see Blowing Rock.  Cute town. Very Thomas Kinkade-y.  Take that for whatever you want.  I had a picture in my mind for what I was expecting on the Parkway and it did not disappoint, including some spectacular mountain views.  It's still winter here in North Carolina - ha! 60 degrees today - so our journey was a fairly solitary one.  I wondered what it would be like to live up here in the mountains, seemingly far away from the rest of the universe with no promise of a cell phone signal for miles.  I know a few people who would just kill for such an existence.  I think I would last about 2 or 3 days...then there would be issues.  I am a stimulus junkie.  Don't get me wrong - nature here is incredibly stimulating.   Beautiful and astonishing and breathtaking.  You could almost feel the quiet all around you.  And I can only imagine the beauty of the stars at night - nothing like our dimmed view from the city lights.  But I can only stand listening to the sound of my own heart beat coupled with the crazy thoughts in my own head for so long.  Just imagine what would be coming out on this blog then...

My "perfect" Blue Ridge Parkway would like just like the real one.  Except the little turn-off streets you occasionally come upon would lead to a thriving metropolis that is magically hidden behind one of the many mountain peaks instead of winding pathways leading to unknown places...that's stimulation for the imagination right there.  The perfect Stephen King novel in the making.  But living in the mountains with the city at your fingertips...oh yeah, and throw in a beach or two around the next mountain and life would be perfection.  All the material one needs for stimulus without the expense of plane fare.  Surely, places like this exist...
  

Can't you just smell that salty sea air from the sea???

“I see dead people…” The Sixth Sense

You remember that scene in the movie, The Sixth Sense.  Malcolm Crowe (played by Bruce Willis) and Cole Sear (scary kid actor) were sitting in the bedroom, the air so cold you could almost see their breath. 

“I see dead people,” the kid said. 

I remember the chill that went up my spine when I first saw that scene.  My husband claimed to predict the twist in the movie but I sure didn’t (if you haven’t seen it, I won’t ruin it for you).  Of course, any child or adult, for that matter, who claims to see dead people walking around every day must surely have some mental affliction.  But I would disagree.  We see dead people all the time.  We see them on television, we see them on YouTube, and we see them alive and well in our memories.  You can’t escape them.

Death has played such a prominent role in our culture in the past several weeks with the death of pop star Whitney Houston (used to love her when I was kid, before she went to the Dark Side and married Bobby Brown) and the horrendous shootings at the school in Chardon, Ohio – 15 minutes from my house.   The faces of those unfortunate children are displayed on our television screens almost every hour of the day, it seems. 

We see dead people.

There are both positives and negatives to the 24 hour news cycle we “enjoy”.  Historic events around the world are delivered to our homes within a moment’s notice of their occurrence.  Ridiculous little factoids about ridiculous people are blasted into our living rooms with seemingly equal importance.  But in situations like the tragedy in Chardon, we come to know the poor victims of these shootings and other horrific events as if they were our next door neighbors. 

I can’t imagine how the families of those students cope with the constant coverage.  I remember thinking of this when Whitney Houston died – I immediately thought of her daughter, Bobbi Kristina.  I remember some news reporters saying she looked “wasted” at the funeral.  Well, duh, her mother was dead!  Idiots. 

My mother also died suddenly at the age of 48.  I’ll never forget the details around it.  It was Monday, January 30, 1995.  I was a sophomore in college and had just returned to my dorm room after a choir rehearsal and saw that I had a message on my phone.  It was one of those phones where you had to stare at the red light until your eyeballs dried out to tell if it was blinking at all because it was so fast.  Just one message that day, and I was excited because I rarely had one.  I listened, and I was surprised to hear my paternal grandmother’s voice in her slow, Southern drawl.

“Nicole, this is Nana, your mother’s very sick, call home right away.”  Click.

Red flags went off everywhere because 1) my mother and paternal grandmother weren't exactly the best of friends so I couldn’t figure out why she was making the call and 2) my mother never got “very sick”.  My stomach immediately started to jump, and my body went into heightened-awareness mode.  I called my dad and he told me my mother was in the hospital, unconscious, and that he had arranged a flight for me because I needed to come home right away.  Ok, now this is serious.  Last minute flights cost serious money, and we didn’t have any.  This was doubly bizarre because the people of my family live FOREVER, with a few fluky exceptions.  Both my maternal great grandparents lived well into their 90’s, and my paternal grandfather lived well into his 70’s at least, I believe.  Both grandmothers were still alive and kicking in their 70’s at the time and my maternal grandfather died of a heart attack in his 50’s – a rare occurrence in my family.  My mother’s brother died tragically in a fire when I was in 5^th grade – I believe he was only 43.  But in general, we just hang on forever, getting more ornery and stubborn as the years go by, eventually succumbing to some stroke-like malady or pneumonia from the complications of some stroke-like malady.  Little did I know, another fluky exception was on its way. 

After a few phone calls to the siblings, I learned that my mother had collapsed while my father was out, and he returned to the house to find her.  She’d suffered from a brain aneurism, and never regained consciousness.  I travelled home that same evening to Philadelphia, and by the time Wednesday rolled around we made the decisions to take her off life support – there was no hope. 

These memories always come flooding back after hearing of the sudden, tragic death of people far too young to die.  I can only imagine that poor teenager, Bobbi Kristina, constantly having to see pictures, videos and the sound of her mother’s voice all around her.  I wondered if that made it easier or more difficult – I did not dream of my mother for many months after her death and I craved it like you wouldn’t believe.  When I finally did dream of her, it was more of a nightmare-like scenario – she was slowly walking down the main highway by our house at night and I kept calling to her but she wouldn’t respond.  Just my brain’s “creative” way of replaying those final scenes in the hospital.  Nice.

I can imagine the families in Chardon are also bombarded by having to relive the events – not that they could ever forget them.  I wonder how helpful it is to constantly be surrounded by activity, whether it be nosy reporters or supportive family and friends.  The company sometimes makes it easier.  In my experience, one of the worse times is after everyone leaves, and life “goes back to normal”.  But of course, there is no more normal for those poor families.  Life is forever changed, and they are stuck with having to figure out a way forward with the crushing weight of grief pressing down upon them. 

At my mother’s funeral my Godmother told me, “It doesn’t get better.  It gets easier.”  THAT is the gospel truth.  It doesn’t get better, because that person will always be gone.  But with time, the love and support from family and friends, and perhaps a little therapy and some helpful drugs on the side (legal ones!) it does get a little easier, little by little, until you finally learn how to cope with the jagged hole that is left in your life.  It never gets filled, but eventually your life begins to move again and the hole gets surrounded.  We step around it for a while, and sometimes we fall in it and have dig ourselves out.  But it’s always there, and you know what?  I wonder if that’s not a good thing. 

That paralyzing, stupefying pain that makes it seem impossible to will yourself to take the next breath is the polar opposite of that paralyzing, stupefying joy that causes you to catch your breath in surprise and wonder before you let it out in yelps of joy and laughter.  I think those two realities are different sides of the same coin.  The awesome magnitude of one deepens your appreciation of the other.  Not that one ever wants to appreciate pain, but pain is unavoidable, and often it is devastating.  Surely Lord, there is another way to learn appreciation!  I do think, though, that part of our job as human beings is to help people through the devastation.  Sometimes we do it by just being present, other times by doing something practical.  Sometimes people just need to be left alone.  In those times, we can help in absentia by offering all the prayers and good thoughts we can manage. 

As for those families in Chardon, and that whole community – they will need our prayers and support for a long time to come.  There are many vigils being held in various places in addition to opportunities to donate to funds to help defray the cost of the psychological support that will be needed for the community.  I hope we will all do whatever our parts are in the cause to support them and to support each other.  It’s far too easy to return to our “normal lives” after such tragedies because it’s just too painful to bear or too hard to understand why such things happen or because, hey, we’ve got our own lives to live.  But perhaps the most important thing we are supposed to learn from such an event is to be selfless in our love and support for each other, whether it be a time of paralyzing, stupefying pain or paralyzing, stupefying joy.  One of the best directions given by the Chardon law enforcement throughout this tragedy was “go home and hug your family.”  After these events, let’s do it every night, if we aren’t already.

Be good to one another.