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But who is not there to greet me is my mama. Agh. I flew in in the turbulence and rain and landed in New Orleans and thought this is the first time in my life that my mother wasn’t the first one I called when I landed, wasn’t who I had on my mind returning home, and at the same time she was all I had on my mind.

We bury my mother according to Jewish custom -within 24 hours – with a slight delay built in for everyone to travel back here – tomorrow morning. So far I’ve received numerous phone calls, text messages, and emails all saying pretty much the same thing – my mother was an exceptional person who no one will forget.

Oh mom, I miss you so much even though I know that you are at peace, finally. I just saw your smile a minute ago in my mind’s eye – spunky as always. If there is an afterlife, tell Mama Mae and Grandpa Ellis I miss them and give a kiss to Carey and your old beau George the rosarian and hug Dad and give a big kiss for Norka and pet Arlene and Sam and Max and all the other accumulated animals that we have loved.

I am in this NY hotel room just pouring over photographs of my mother. I’m glad they are all about joy.

Valentines Day with Beth and Kerry – Tatjana is taking the photo:

The Turkish party at the LaLa where Mom said Laurie dressed as a Turk reminded her of Barry, her lovah!

Breakfast at Bakery Cafe with Yusuf, a real live hunky Turk

Sitting on the front porch of the LaLa with her brothers and sister

Thanksgiving three years ago dressed up like pilgrims and Indians

More costuming on Thanksgiving

Tatjana’s birthday party (Beth on the left) – T is holding the book on Turkey mom gave her.

Holding court with our friends – the “belt buckle” story!

Jo rode her motorcycle over to blow dry our hair for New Year’s Eve a few years ago

Chatting on the front porch with her dear buddy Ivette – Endymion about to start

Closing day party when I bought the LaLa – 2005.

Mother died today, or was it yesterday?

It’s a few minutes passed midnight and I was awakened out of a sleeping pill haze in a hotel room in NY and told my mother had passed.  All I could think of is how my mother told me that she thanks god every day for me, and I now find myself saying the same thing back to her. My mother was quite a character, a sort of anti heroine in a page-turning narrative, a beautiful bad girl who glided through the world with a huge, open heart and enormous fears of the reality she could not suffer.

At the end of the day, you wish you could enlarge the moments spent with those you love – you seem to only really understand this as they are slipping away from you. If your mother is alive, call her today and tell her you love her and thank her for being your mother. Give her a big kiss from me.

My mother said to look for dogs as a sign that she is with me – again I laugh – how many dogs do I know?

I will look for dogs Mom and all around me, wagging their tail, loving unconditionally, and I will sense you are there with me the whole time.

Mother died today – no it was yesterday. May she rest in peace.

I was speaking to a colleague the other day about living in New York and he said New York is a place where when things are going well they are hyper well and when things suck they super suck. I arrived in New York this afternoon on a wave of melancholy – seeing my mom on Sunday looking almost not human just sank my heart to the ground.

This evening I wandered into at an art supply store after dinner and saw a tin box of ink stamps and it made me think of what my mother gave me for Hanukkah last year – a tin of stamp pads with leaves and flowers. I burst into tears and had to just hang out in the aisle for a minute before I could join the rest of the world.

I’m in grief purgatory with mom not dead but not alive – and all of the memories I have of her compound the emotions with good memories and sad ones.

We heard back from the birthmother on Thanksgiving just like nothing had ever happened. I went into a funk but a long walk on the beach alone with T and Loca helped me get my spirits back. The good part is she is due soon, the bad part is that we have no faith in this process anymore. We’ve been wrung out of all emotional good will (not to mention cash).

New York – I sit here typing by the window that overlooks building after building after building. Out in the streets there are restaurants and shops and bars and cafés and a couple arguing on one corner and a drunk young man speaking to his friend in his OUTSIDE voice. And me, I feel like this might be one of those days when your wretchedness is matched by the weather, the loneliness of the city, and this feeling that I just want 2009 to FUCKING END.

Well fun is a stretch, but life is what you make of it right? I left New Orleans this morning just as the clouds were starting to form and arrived at JFK to cold and rain and a lousy cab driver. I’m standing there trying to open the car door in the rain and the cabbie is busy popping the trunk and not even looking. Then he tried to charge me about $20 over the airport rate and said that he had to take the long way – and I told him that’s because “you are not a good cab driver.” Then when he argued with me, I withheld his tip. The petty power of the lone traveler.

I’m sitting in my hotel room – this is a new hotel and a new area for me after ten years of staying at The Muse in midtown. I’m over in the Bowery and I’m looking out my large industrial window at grass – yes, that’s right – grass in New York City. There is a field of grass where all of these buildings meet – it’s large enough for another hotel but seems to just be sitting there, growing.

I was going to head out and explore the area but the rain and a little melancholy kept me in my room.

We stayed for the third time in Ft. Morgan because the beach is sparsely populated despite a lot of development and the dogs are allowed on the beach to romp and play. This is the second time we rented from RelaxOnTheBeach that a friend had recommended to us a while back. I was just looking over Kevin’s website and he said something that has popped up in a lot of conversations I’ve been having about work, reading about careers, and discovering for myself. Business is about relationships and Kevin decided that if he treated guests in his houses like family that they’d come back and they’d tell their friends.

Takes me back to a documentary I watched years ago where they followed a timeline of how business works – in the beginning and in the end it is about face to face, one to one, relationships.

The key ingredients to a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday:

1) People you want to hang out with:

2) Beautiful weather and sunsets that amaze you:

3) Long walks on the beach with your trusted loved ones (canines included):

4) Seeing the happy faces on the ferry ride home means that we passed us a good time:

We have been indulging in long walks on the beach, sand sifting between our toes, sunshine, pelicans, dolphins, and Loca all capturing our attention equally. I had a feeling the other day as if I should be getting back home, doing something, accomplishing something – this anxiety followed me out to the beach each time and quickly disappeared each time.

We take long walks in the mornings and sunset walks in the evening, and Loca has developed a limp from overdoing while Wolfie remains on the balcony guarding the house for us – she is not fond of sun or sand.

Beachcombing has become the antidote to the hustle and bustle of our lives – a shell here, Loca chasing a sandpiper there, we have whittled down our concerns to a few. That’s not to say they aren’t few and big, but they seem less formidable walking together hand in hand.

If I had a crystal ball capable of hind as well as foresight, one thing would be crystal clear – 2009 has been a tough year, but it has been a building block for our relationship. Throughout the ups and downs, T and I have been steadily cementing our foundation for the future. A future that will not include my mom, might yet include a baby, and a future to which I look forward.

Jeff Sharlet’s The Family is a book about scary people and scary events, but one that every American should read.

For those who do not lead a life of questioning on their own, or who take the world at face value, there is the impression of innocence from these influence peddlers who claim to be standing mano a mano with god and god’s way, the American way, but this god of power is not a god of love, and it seems to me that we need more proselytizers of love these days.

So for those who fear the unfamiliar, I advocate learning to live with an open heart and mind, because only in a space this large will you find god. God is not a roach that squeezes into narrow cracks or hides in the dark like The Family is doing, the god you seek is much larger, I can assure you.

When we were walking along the beach, a school of dolphins paralleled our path and a flock of pelicans circled – we were talking about current events. It seems life unfolded the last couple of weeks around a certain theme – trust.

Who to trust? rather was the theme.

At one point in the myriad of conversations I had at least ten people vying for my trust and I was trying to read my gut but kept returning to validity in everyone’s argument and no argument of my own. E had asked if it was a relief about the adoption grinding to a halt and I said not about the baby, but about the process which has driven me insane.

Elsewhere a similar argument ensued, major decisions seem to abound, ones I have little control over the outcome, and yet at each juncture someone is asking me to get on the bandwagon with them and I feel not necessarily paralyzed, but more like, in the words of Bartleby the Scrivener, “I would prefer not to.”

The problem when trust erodes in one place it starts to call into question all areas you have hitched your life to – trust is a big layer of faith that the person you are trusting has your best interested at heart or at least top of mind. Even when two walls of trust are crumbling on the three wall stage, the ambiguity infiltrates even the most steadiest of your concerns.

At the end of the day, walking into the sunset of the beach, it’s yourself you have to trust, that you will be fine with whatever outcome and that no matter how cataclysmic or minute the experience that awaits, you will deal, you will pick up the pieces and move on, you will not only live, but in the end thrive. That’s the faith you hold absolute.