our week is winding down.

the sun has already set. i can still see the ocean...but just the white foam when the waves crash. i'll be going downstairs in a minute to cook fresh veggies from elmer's farm stand. we'll have a feast of perishables tonight since we head to new jersey tomorrow and we won't have a kitchen.



we had a lovely day today. we started the day with a walk to the coffee shop with margie.
in between expense reports and e-mails to prospective hires, we sat on the floor and played, went for a walk, held missy's fingers while she pretended to walk. we laughed at her when she decided she was already ready to let go...she is fearless.

she came to the beach with no teeth and she will leave with at least one. she has been so good natured, her teething was so low key that her tooth was a big surprise.

i haven't been this relaxed since my week in florida last year with cat and max.

i am starting to get the end-of-vacation-blues...but then i remind myself that i have three full days before the day i have to get back on a plane...and i remind myself to just enjoy the moment.

and so i am.

tonight the mooneys go to eddy and mia's house for a barbecue with the schreiers, doughertys and one o'donnell.

missy loves the water. she squeals with delight when it reaches her toes.





missy has been féted all week. monday night we had a lovely dinner in lewes with margie and steve. tuesday night, aunt tommie came over and i pretended to cook.

tonight...a walk down the boardwalk and a soft serve chocolate cone.

life is good.

today is mummy's birthday. we had a quiet day. i miss her so much. i can see her here so clearly, though. it is so good to be here.

magee, maura, missy and i wake up early and head to the beach for a mummy's birthday weekend. lisa and kara join us.

kara cooks us a delicious saturday night feast. missy eats orange food. a good time is had by all.

my vacation finally begins. missy picks me up from dulles.
she's a nut. she pulls out a bottle in broad daylight and starts chugging.
we head for aunt jane and uncle johns for a delicious dinner and lovely company.
and so my vacation begins.

i feel queasy today. flu-like intestinal unrest. it could be the chinese food i ate last night...it is unlikely that it actually is a bug, because i haven't heard of any going around right now.

it could be stress...my birthday and her birthday are days away and i dread the idea of living through them without her. that could be the reason for the terrible knots i am feeling in my gut. (i'm long overdue for a vacation...so i'm not as resilient as i should be.)

on top of feeling icky, i feel sadness. all my life, whenever i felt bad, i called her. and the reminder that she is not there hits a little harder when you are feeling the "galloping gollywobbles" — as she would have described them.

i'm trying to turn it around and concentrate on the blessing that i had in my life...to have a mummy who, up until her last breath, made it her first priority to make her children feel good. physically and emotionally. without fail.

she was delightfully lovely. and so funny. and she made all of us feel like we were "the best thing that ever happened."

i am just starting to reconnect. and, it is a little awkward.

outside of the colossal bitch i have been at work...i have been hunkered down. depressed. hermit like.

i have been exceedingly sad.

so i threw myself into work. and, as i have whined before, taking on more for the greater good only makes you a greater target for criticism. oh well. if i had to do it all over again..i'd do almost exactly the same thing. i am not wired to look the other way.

it hasn't been easy and there are still things, every day, that i would gladly replace with blackboard scratching and water torture. again...oh well. i can leave if i don't like it.

and i don't like it. but i still have hope. and, in between the moments when i am struggling with the annoyingly mundane broken infrastructure crap...or the exceedingly patronizing bureaucratic crap...or the mounting number of times that i "take one for the team"...i sometimes manage to actually make things better.

productivity and efficiency are still so much less than they were when i left the building in 2002. when i returned last year, the only thing that was better than i left it was the studio. (it is exponentially better than the one i left.) the rest was decimated. but, things are getting better. much better. and at an encouraging pace.

and the people here are just amazing. i am working with the best creatives i have ever worked with. and, in spite of the broken IT or the unpaid bills, i still truly enjoy walking in here every day. i am building a production team that brings a smile to my face when i think of any of them...radically different, incredibly talented, lovely human beings.

and that brings me back to the creatives...aside from their incredible talent...they are all quite lovely....each and every one. the thing that makes me most proud, after all of these months of mind-numbing insanity, is when they come to me, spontaneously, in-turn, and tell me how much they love working here and how excited they are to have the opportunity to work with each other. (so, i haven't completely sucked since mummy died...because i built this.)

but i digress.

i was going to talk about emerging from all of this.

i was thrown into the deep end and i floundered and panicked and thrashed around and all i saw was blackness. and, most recently, i became still. and i realized that the blackness was actually blue..and there was a light above me.

and when i reached it, i found air and sky and all of the things that were left behind when i was thrown in.

and i saw very concerned friends and family...on solid ground...reaching their hands out to me to pull me to safety.

and i remembered a lovely dinner i had with john zissimos in late february or early march. (mummy loved him...she was still asking when she was going to be able to see "Philadelphia Flash" when she was hospitalized.) i hadn't spoken to him since that most uplifting evening. i never thanked him. i hadn't returned cat's calls or darcy's calls. i hadn't said anything about the most beautiful card that analisa sent..or called sally back...or found the strength to reply to the e-mail that patty sent months ago...because mummy loved her so. i was on the brink of emotional agoraphobia.

but i started reconnecting today.

i hope this is not just a "moment" of clarity...i hope this is the new "normal."

i deserve a new normal.

in january, i took a road trip to lehigh, pennsylvania with lisa baldwin and her son, eric. we were going to the university for a basketball game and a ceremony in honor of her brothers, rick and chris. we spent the weekend at her mother, jan's house. jan is a licensed therapist. when we pulled into the driveway and she came out to greet us, she just opened her arms to me and hugged me tightly while i cried on her shoulder.

we stayed up and talked until 4am for two nights in a row.

and she didn't speak to me as a therapist, she spoke to me as a woman who had lost her own mother too soon.

one of the things she told me about was the year of "firsts." "this is the first valentine's day without my mother," "this is the first time i did something great without my mother," etc.

and i while i certainly had felt that to a degree already, i was truly lucky. because my first day without mummy in my life was my first day with missy in my life. and my first mother's day without mummy was missy's first mother's day.

our family, mummy's family, had a love for her that was so huge that there are parts of me that think we could have all spontaneously combusted when she died. and when i feel like i am losing my faith, i am reminded by the very fact of missy that there is truly a loving and benevolent god.

the things that are catching me off guard now are not the times that we shared that i now face alone...but the things that did not exist when she was here.

i heard a song on the radio today that she never heard. and i know she would have loved it.

on saturday, magee and i video conferenced maura, buzzy, liam, seamus and missy. magee and i were at my house and maura and crew were at mummy's and we talked to each other and saw each other from computer to computer. (beastley and fang peacefully co-existed for the first time.)

mummy would have loved that.

i was prepared for the "we used to share this" moments but not for the "we'll never share this" moments.

and still...there is so much to share with missy...

aunt tommie

i took the red-eye to d.c. last thursday night so i could visit aunt tommie.

her initial operation took place a while ago. and then it went terribly wrong.

and, since i took a great deal of time off when mummy was sick, and because i was "needed" at work, i wasn't there at the beginning of her struggle. since she was in a medically induced coma, i figured she wouldn't miss me. i did work it out so i could be there for her while she was still struggling. mummy is gone, tommie has no kids and we are family.

i scheduled a red-eye, landed at dulles, hopped in a car with maura, missy and beastley and headed for the atlantic.

our beach house was rented out, so we stayed at tommie's house and drove up to the re-hab center to see her each day.

mummy and aunt tommie are incredibly different. but they are both GoGo's daughters.

there are times i looked into her eyes and i had to look away, because she and mummy and aunt mary anne have been morphing into identical triplets over the past few years. and tommy and maryanne have mummy's beautiful eyes.

it is a blessing to be able to look into them.