Here’s what I’ve said about this day in recent years.

This year I didn’t do Project 2996, either . . . maybe next year. There are so many stories yet to be told. For now, though, I will engage in a wordless tribute.

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
Sydney J. Harris

In the iconic television game show The Price is Right Let’s Make a Deal, one of the popular games requires the contestant to select from among three doors. If I am remembering this correctly, the prize behind Door #1 is revealed, and the contestant then needs to decide whether they are going to keep that prize, or risk asking to see what is behind Door #2 or Door #3. What’s behind those other doors could be much better than what is in front of the contestant, or it could be much worse.

I have been thinking about doors quite a bit lately as I have been reevaluating my life, because I have seen what’s behind Door #2 and Door #3 (or at least, I have seen a glimpse of each of them), and yet I stand here, hesitating, almost paralyzed by the crushing weight of inertia.

I am not happy with my life as it is. I am sure that this is no surprise to anybody who knows me. And for years, I have vacillated, unsure which direction to take. I am annoyingly fickle; it seems like I follow a given passion for a while before discarding it for the next whim or fad that comes along. A few things have remained constant, however, at least on the macro level. I have not outgrown my love for children, or my passion for fighting racism. The desire to have someone to mother is another longing that I have not been able to shake.

Over the last few years, desperate for something to change, I have felt a pull to two different doors, each related to these underlying passions. I have taken halting steps towards each of those doors; however, I have yet to make a choice, and I am hyper-aware of the fact that time is passing me by, and that every day of non-decision is a day that brings me closer to being stuck with the crappy-living-room-furniture set that is my current “Door #1”.

Behind Door #2 is the “mommy” prize. I have glimpsed into this door, even going so far as to take a few initial foster care licensing classes. My experiences with Elijah have convinced me that I would be able to do the hard work of fostering without any promise of permanency, and I am awestruck at the thought of what a gift and a privilege it would be to be in a hurting child’s life for a season. Am I certain that I could do it? Not at all. But I know that the need is huge, and I do not want to avoid doing something merely because it is difficult.

Door #3 holds the “teacher” prize. Having pursued (repeatedly, and unsuccessfully) a particular alternative teacher certification program has been a roller coaster. Certainty that it was going to happen, followed by crushing disappointment. Trying again . . . and again. Still not succeeding, and yet, unable to shake the almost visceral sense that this is what I am meant to do. That feeling ebbs and flows . . . working a temp job grading standardized tests recently, I felt the pull again, “seeing” these students and their need through their essay answers. Who is going to speak for those who have no one to advocate for them? Again, the need is huge, so why not me?

I have begun to identify steps that would bring me closer to being able to walk through one or the other of these doors, but I have a long way to go. I am paralyzed by indecision, however, and my greatest fear is that I will continue NOT to act, that I will indeed waste my life. Tomorrow isn’t promised, and my body reminds me daily that I am getting older. If I don’t do something now, I am certain that I will wake up one day an old lady, sitting on that outdated piece of furniture that will daily serve as a reminder of the way that I chose the default option, the “safe” choice that is no choice at all.

I believe I was created to live a life that matters. That I am not moving in that direction is a travesty of the worst sort. I need to fling open one of these doors; there is work to be done. I say that I want to live the way my heroes did, but those words ring hollow in the shadow of my inaction. I need to work around the pile of excuses that have held me back for so long. I need to move forward, because life will not wait for me. And the one thing I am certain of is that what is beyond those other doors will enrich my life in ways that I cannot yet fathom.

I just pray that I don’t miss it.

So I started to write a Christmas letter . . . only it ended up being four pages long . . . so because I am guessing that most people don’t care that much about the intimate details of my life in the last twelve months (and yet, I still feel a strange compulsion to share those details!), I figured I would put the longer version up here and try to do a “Twitterized” summary for the hard copy.

Of course, it’s December 22nd and I’ve not even STARTED writing my Christmas cards, but that’s another story.

Here is my 2009–the good, the bad, and the ugly.

As I think back on this year, a fragment of a song keeps coming back to me “Time it was, and what a time it was” . . . I don’t even know if that’s taken out of context, but it just seems to fit . . . what a time it has been . . . what a year I have had! And yet, on Thanksgiving, I sat in church and realized that I am filled with gratitude, despite what this year has brought, and not the least because I still have so many reasons to count myself blessed. And if nothing else, I have had many, many experiences this year that fit nicely into the category of, “someday we’ll look back on this and laugh!” So here, for your reading pleasure, is my year in a nutshell. I am also scattering pictures of some of my favorite kids throughout . . . as one of my greatest joys this year has been being an “auntie” to so many lovable kids. Enjoy!

January . . . oh, I can barely remember January. After my beloved godbaby, Elijah, was in the hospital the week before Christmas with “failure to thrive” (oh, how we hate that term! look at the picture at the end of this post and ask yourself if that looks like a baby who has failed to thrive?!), severe reflux, and what was eventually diagnosed as “laryngomalacia” (his larynx was just too soft, and causes him to be rather rattle-y.), January consisted of waiting for his surgery to be scheduled. And probably a lot of spitting up . . . it’s hard to remember now, but those first four or five months of his life were a constant puke-fest.

Elijah, at about 3 months, looking like an angel in his hospital attire.

February – On the 11th, Elijah had a surgery called a Nissen Fundoplication, in which the top part of his stomach was wrapped around his esophagus to relieve his reflux, and had a feeding tube inserted. I honestly do not know how a parent can handle their kid being sick . . . it was heartbreaking to me to see him in pain, and I’m “only” the Auntie. I spent one or two nights in the hospital with Elijah and his momma . . . the first night, his other auntie Sara and I took turns standing over his crib, stroking his hair to try to help him feel better, while his mom got some much-needed sleep (like all of us, I think Mona was a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing).

Mona and Elijah trying to get some sleep in the hospital

I could go on and on about Elijah, but I don’t want to bore you to death . . . if you want to read the whole saga, you can see it at his Care Pages site. You will need to register for the site if you haven’t used it before.

March was quite a complicated month. An impromptu high school reunion was planned on Facebook, and I decided to attend it, since this would mean that I could also visit my father. On Saturday night, I spent time with old friends; on Sunday afternoon, I spent several hours with my father, not knowing that this was the last time I was going to see him. On March 31st, after almost a year of battling his cancer, my father passed away at the age of 69. For the second time that month, I found myself traveling home to New York.

April—en route to my father’s funeral, I got a call from my brother Kevin and learned that my beloved godfather, Steve, had passed away, one day after my father had. Uncle Steve’s death, unlike my father’s, was sudden and unexpected. However, the timing felt strangely providential, as my brothers and I were able to be with our mother’s side of the family after some difficult interactions at my father’s funeral with my stepmother’s family. April was a bit surreal, to say the least.

In May, two of my oldest and dearest friends, Max and Rosemary, traveled some 800 miles to help me with my own personal “Clean Sweep”/decluttering project. This was probably one of the most difficult things I had ever gone through, but somehow I survived this long-overdue event, and to this day I am trying to live a life with much less clutter and “stuff”. After the hard work was done, we had a blast visiting local “attractions” (think Tulip Time) and going to Chicago overnight. Despite the difficult beginning, that weekend stands out as one of the highlights of my year!

June was a difficult month emotionally. Although I didn’t expect anything from my father, and knew he would leave everything to his second wife (to whom he was married for 21 years), I was not prepared for the ugliness that ensued.

In June, my other godbaby, Donovan, turned one year old.
Handsome little guy, isn’t he?

June also brought the unexpected death of Nathan, a young man from my church, who was a week or so shy of turning 20 years old. His mom has been a good friend and ministry partner of mine, and the entire family was/is well-loved in our community, so it was a huge blow to so many of us. I still remember him at random times and tell myself, “I can’t believe he’s gone” . . . I am grateful, knowing that we will see him again, but it’s still not easy, and I know that his family is still walking around with this heavy burden, especially at the holidays. If you’re the praying type, please pray for his parents, Cheri and Greg, and their four surviving sons.

July came around, and somewhere along the way I made the decision to go ahead with ankle surgery on my left ankle. After having had a fusion done on my right ankle 19 years ago, with great results, it was almost a no-brainer. Almost six months later, I am still confident that the results will be worth it, but I admit that I am getting tired of the slow process.

In mid-July, I met my two brothers at Cedar Point, a huge, amazing amusement park in Ohio. We had a blast, but I also got confirmation that it was the right time for this surgery, as I could barely walk the next day. On July 29^th, I had the (outpatient) surgery—formally known as a “subtalor fusion”.

my lovely foot. Yes, I got screwed—twice!

August consisted of me sitting around my house and watching a LOT of TV. My dear friends Jacylyn and Tracy would occasionally come and fetch me for a brief outing, but being non-weight-bearing on my left leg took a lot out of me. Towards the end of the month, I returned to work, just in time to touch base with my boss before she left on maternity leave.

my first outing after the surgery was to Alyssa (left) and Alanis’s
third birthday party. I love these little princesses!

September . . . ummm . . . nothing really significant, I suppose. My boss had a baby boy, and I continued to work and to deal with being one-legged, so to speak. Ummm . . . I had a Tupperware party . . . Elijah had his first birthday . . . that’s about it.

In October, I had three appointments with the foot doctor. First appointment: “Okay, start trying to put weight on the foot.” Second appointment: “Okay, I know it’s not comfortable, but you definitely want to start putting weight on the foot.” Third appointment: “Wow, your foot is swollen. Have you been putting a lot of weight on it?” Um, YES–you told me to!

The verdict: the screws in my heel were causing my pain and swelling, but because the fusion wasn’t quite complete yet, they couldn’t be removed. I was given the “lovely” gift of having another month of not putting weight on the foot. Go, go Speed Racer!

“Speed Racer”, as I dubbed him—my knee walker that has been my
constant companion since the end of July.
This is actually Speed Racer III—they’re not very sturdy at all.
Or maybe I’m not supposed to let my friends’ kids play on it?!

October also brought a health scare with my brother Michael . . . he had pneumonia and spent a couple of weeks in the hospital, some of that time in the ICU on a ventilator. He is doing better now, and has even stopped smoking, so that’s a good thing. Again, I found myself grateful, as many around me in the ICU were facing a more dismal situation.

November found me scrambling at work, and very much feeling my supervisor’s absence. Preparing for a huge missions conference called Urbana, I found myself missing my boss and her attention to detail. I spent the month being non-weight-bearing on the ankle again, but the “good” news was that I got an extension on my handicapped parking permit . . . and suddenly, everybody wanted me as a Christmas shopping partner! Who knew?!

December is here . . . and once again, I am frantically trying to get a Christmas letter out . . . have started walking on the foot again, but it’s definitely painful. (and great fun in snow and ice! I was blessed in that we didn’t have really cold/snowy weather until this month.) The two screws that are in my heel will come out in early January, and I’m hoping for some semblance of normalcy beyond that . . . both in walking, and in life in general.

I hope that all of you are feeling the hope of this season, in spite of whatever adventures you yourself may have had this year . . . and I wish you all the best in the year ahead!

Elijah today. Is he happy about Christmas, or what?!

It is right that we remember those who lost their lives on this day. Their death has had a huge impact on so many of us. But when I heard about this project, I felt strongly compelled to write about the “other” victims–better labelled as “survivors” . . . because they outnumber those we’ve lost, and yet we seem to sometimes forget about the ones that still live in the shadow of that day.

A friend of mine has posted several reflections on his experiences on and after that day. You can find his story here. I should warn you that it is NOT light reading, but maybe after reading it, you will better understand my frustration with those who seek to appropriate this day, with patriotic song-fests instead of solemn vigils, and with no-clue tourists who see “Ground Zero” as just another site on their list of  ”things to do in NYC”.

(I know, I know . . . not every person who didn’t live in close proximity to NYC,  DC, or PA on that day deserves the “no-clue tourists” label–but there are some that do, and it is in large part for those people that I am writing this post.)

My friend Ken’s story is just one of thousands upon thousands. I have other friends whose lives were profoundly shaken by what they witnessed on that day,  and know others still who waited in vain for someone (or several someones, or MANY someones) they loved to come home.

If *I* (and I consider myself “lucky” to have experienced relatively few losses on that day) wince at commercials for a movie that “opens September 11th!”, and shy away from hosting a Tupperware party on this date because somehow that level of enthusiasm seemed horribly disrespectful to me (let alone the people in 2005 who chose that as their WEDDING date), then what do these reminders, myriad and subtle, do to someone who lost loved ones on this day eight years ago?

What does it feel like to those who walked down 84 or 52 or 12 or 112 flights of stairs and whose lives were spared, to those who made their way home through clouds of smoke and stench, or who watched, helpless and numb, from across the river as the towers fell?

Or what does it feel like to be the main character in one of those wonderful-yet-horrible stories of  ”fate/luck” survival . . . like the friend-of-a-friend who overslept and was late to his job (at Cantor Fitzgerald) because he had attended a Michael Jackson concert the night before?

Or what is this day like for those who are watching their family members and fellow employees who are succumbing to  illnesses that are clearly related to their rescue work at the site? How do they feel about people coming and gawking at the empty hole where their own lives started to end?

Yes, I am willing to acknowledge that we were all changed on that day, but for some, this day is only sad in the way a celebrity’s death is sad . . . when you hear it on the news, you feel that sadness for a moment, but then you move on. For others, though, it is embedded deep within them, as if the smells and sights and sounds of that day have been embedded into their psyche.

It is these survivors that I want to pay tribute to today.

Yes, life goes on, and I don’t mean to suggest that we should curl up in a ball and stop living . . . those who have survived that day certainly haven’t done that, though they would have every reason to.

I just ask that we remember those whose hearts are raw today in a way that those of us who haven’t lived it can’t understand, and that those of us who are hundreds or thousands of miles away from the eye of this storm stop to remember and to reflect upon the damage that this storm left in its wake.

To do so is to honor the memory of those who live on, as well as those who were lost on this day.

“They say your style of life’s a drag
And that you must go other places
But just don’t you feel too bad
When you get fooled by smiling faces”

–Stevie Wonder
 

Every time I go back to New York, I am hit with a profound and echoing sense of longing. I don’t know if it’s my need for variety and visual stimulation, for movement and excitement, but breathing in the very air around me (not breathing it in too closely, in some cases!) fills a need in me that I can barely express. And the sounds! And the accents! And the people! As I say very often, “I love my city!” And when I go back “home” to Michigan, I always feel like I’m leaving a part of me behind.
 
When I was in college, I came close to going “home” several times. I graduated six months early in large part because I just had to be back to New York. When I moved back to Michigan at the end of 1999, it began as a life-or-death situation, but ended up being a better decision than I knew I was making at the time. I often describe it by saying, “life is easier in Michigan.” If I’m feeling particularly sorry for myself, I will tell people that I tried to live in NYC and that the city “chewed me up and spit me out”, which is sometimes how I feel about it, even now.
 
I tried to come home just over a year ago. God said “not yet”, and then He said “no”.   And every time I’m back, I return (home?!) to my boring midwestern life and wonder if I’ll ever get “home” to NY again.
 
Last weekend , a friend asked me why I wanted to be back in NYC so badly. I was hard-pressed to find the words to express what I was feeling . . . I could only say that I didn’t want to have to say that I am “from” Michigan . . . that I didn’t want to lose my “New York-ness”. Here in the Northern Bible Belt, where it doesn’t matter if my clothes are in style, it’s just so easy to become apathetic . . . and mostly, I fear losing my identity; I fear no longer being a “real” New Yorker.
 
I think it’s a self-esteem thing, too. Can I feel good about myself if I’m constantly reminded that I couldn’t handle living in NY? Maybe it doesn’t matter to anybody else, but to me it does. I feel like I’ve lost a part of my identity, and I don’t have the confidence that I’ll ever get that back. I certainly don’t want to go back to Staten Island; I had that choice at the end of 1999, and saw Grand Rapids as the lesser of two evils. But do I need to learn to “settle” for Grand Rapids, to accept that this is my life now? I don’t know. I can accept that this is where I am *now*; I’m just not sure that I can see it as “forever”. I literally dread the time when I will have to say that I have lived in Michigan longer than I have lived in NY. I’m more than a dozen years away from that point, but as the song goes, “I’m only afraid that my dreams will betray me, and I’ll never get home again.”
 
What is not an option, to the extent that I can help it, would be for me to move elsewhere. When I first came to Grand Rapids, I immediately saw that the problem was that pieces of my heart were in two places. I can barely fathom the idea of tearing my heart into even smaller pieces, and leaving pieces of myself in yet another place. The first spring break I spent back in NY, I dreamed that Grand Rapids was located where New Jersey was. Ever since then, I have wished that I could take the map and fold it up like the back cover of Mad Magazine, and bring those pieces of my heart close enough to each other that it wouldn’t hurt so much. So although I cannot say what God might do, it is hard for me to think beyond these two options.
 
I suppose that, for now, I just have to be where I am, and try not to tie my self-esteem up with the choice of living in this “uncool” place living an unexciting life. Unexciting as it may be, it’s enough to exhaust me, and it’s where I am right now. and if this world is truly not my home, then perhaps this sense of homesickness will be my companion until the day I reach that final home. I’m told that in that place, my angst will cease. It’s hard to imagine, but intriguing nonetheless.

And I have made a decision . . . I was going to take a poll about it, but I think I’ve decided. I’m going to move all of my “Du$$ar” stuff to a different blog. I just want to see what my traffic REALLY looks like, independent of any conversation about that whole mess. So I’m getting rid of it . . . I’ve decided.

Stay tuned!

some don’t agree with me, but I can’t help it. It still makes me angry.

• I was sick to my stomach when I saw ads a few weeks ago for the “Ground Zero Museum Workshop“, whose website informs us that “You will have 15-minutes to purchase posters and books or for extra questions.”
  
• I wanted to turn around and bitch-slap the woman behind me on the double-decker tour bus (aack!!! I have to admit that I was on one of those!) who informed her husband that she simply had to stop at Ground Zero . . . “I have to pay my respects.” To WHO?! Tell me whose name you know . . . tell me which friend you lost on that day. Tell me you’re not merely appropriating someone else’s trauma for your own purposes . . . and maybe, just maybe, I’ll leave it alone.

In the meantime, I’ll promise not to come to your hometown and show up at your most holy, sacred places of mourning in shorts and sunglasses, taking pictures and pretending that your tragedy belongs to me when it REALLY DOESN’T, if you agree to show the people of New York the same respect. Thank you.

if you’re interested, here were my thoughts a year ago today . . .

I also just found out that my father and stepmother lost a friend that day . . . seven years later, and still not all of the stories have been told . . .

and then, because I don’t want to be accused of being stuck in power¹, I should also share this indictment of my whiteness . . . because I totally see myself in the woman he describes, although I’m not 100% sure I agree with the latter part of his post.

(WARNING BEFORE YOU CLICK: The title of this blog has had its own controversy; also, the blogger in question freely employs the “f bomb” . . . see, I TOLD you that the only reason I have a gutter mouth is because I’m from NYC!)