Since temperatures are actually a digit or two above zero, we pulled on our snow boots and walked down to the neighbourhood grocery store to pick up some supplies. Bennett freaked the whole way. Both ways. Because, you know, a car might come and plow us over and kill us and roads aren't safe and oh my god we are going to die! Can you guess what we will now be doing daily? Until he can calmly walk down a suburban road, beside his mother, holding the dog's leash (or scarf), without screaming like a little girl? Yeah, the dog will be getting her exercise this week...
Do you like our ghetto leash? I could not locate the real deal as we were leaving...it was not where it belonged...so I grabbed a scarf and ran. As I was walking down the street, looking at this piece of cloth, useless memories came flooding back into my head. How is this thing still around?
Turns out that this is the scarf off of the coat my bio dad bought me in 1989. It once had tassels on the ends, but those were pulled off when my little sisters and baby cousin used it for a game of tug-of-war in my aunt's basement in '90. I cried over the destruction of this scarf for a very long time...and carefully sewed up the ends to keep it from unravelling completely....as it was from the only "new" coat that I ever had as a child and my dad had taken me on a special shopping trip to pick it out. We had a similar shopping trip the previous summer to pick out my first (and only) "new" bike of my childhood. These were priceless trips for a small girl who was thirsting for attention from her father. My parents were separated at the time, and these "excursions" equalled more positive interaction with my father than I had ever known when he lived under the same roof as me. He was building memories and building trust and I loved it. And then it was gone. My bio dad died in August, 1990. Today would have been his 52nd birthday. My aunt was murdered in her Seattle suburb, by a serial rapist who had recently been let out of prison, in 2004. She fought back too much for his liking. My bio dad took his own life, my aunt's was taken from her.
I regurgitate these facts with little emotion on this day. I have done my mourning. Today is heavily shadowed by the beautiful funeral I went to yesterday; for an individual who had a profound effect and me and my son's lives and so many countless other people's lives; a person who went out with her boots still on, who lived life exactly how it is supposed to be lived...making a difference every single day...being a "doer" and not a talker. Actions are so much louder than any words that you can say.
A year ago today, I felt this way and two years ago, this way. Today, I feel that a dog leash is a befitting end to an old scarf. I am thankful for the sunshine and look forward to watching my son learn to enjoy walking the dog. Life: it is truly for the living and today I am finding great solace in the memory of those who really knew how to live...
