i've been working on waking up in the morning and choosing to be happy.

i took the train up to new york early yesterday morning and had the best day. i dropped my bag off at the hotel and went to the whitney where i saw calder's circus. it just makes me so happy. they had the film of calder in paris running in the background. the circus is beautiful just as it is..but when calder makes his creations perform, you can truly see his genius. it took me a few years of hunting, but i found the video and gave it to mummy for christmas a few years ago. i'll have to see if i can figure out where she put it and ask maura to burn it to a dvd for me.

after i left the whitney, it was a short walk to the met. i ran in and peeked at the things that i wanted to see and then went off to barney's to look at the christmas windows. it isn't their best year...but they still do the best christmas windows in new york.

from barney's i walked down to grand central station where i found a spot against the wall in the grand hall and stared at the beautiful ceiling. when i first moved to new york, the ceiling was almost black. i had no idea at the time that it was dirty. jacqueline kennedy was an incredible advocate for the preservation and restoration of grand central and sometime in the mid 90's it was painstakingly restored. the ceiling was cleaned and the night sky is actually much closer to a tiffany blue than to the black that greeted me when i moved to the city in 1990. i like to just stand quietly and look at the ceiling while new yorkers rush by me.

from there, i took the subway to union square and then walked over to the west village. i had a (very) late lunch at benny's burritos and did a little shopping at mxyplyzyk down the street.

after that, i was off to kate's paperie, my favorite stationery store.

from there, i wandered around and ultimately ended up back in midtown and turned in for the night. this morning i woke up and went to my favorite camera store, b&h photo, and treated myself to a new lens and an external power pack for my battery hungry flashes.

i treated myself to a ride home on the high speed train and now i am packed, tucked into mummy's bed and ready to turn in so i can get up for an early flight tomorrow.

aside from the very difficult thanksgiving day, i have been happy this week. i have had a very restful vacation and i have been surrounded by people i love or alone with things that mummy and i loved to share. it was a really good visit.

i thought, before i turned in, that i would upload some pictures from my very happy saturday with magee, buzzy, maura, liam, seamus and missy at the zoo.





how could you not be happy when you get to wake up to those faces?

i am thankful. but i must admit that i am most thankful that thanksgiving is over. it was much harder than i thought it would be.

i've had a good week. i didn't get to see as much as i had hoped in new york...but for good reason. we were having such a good time that we didn't bend over backwards to keep any kind of schedule. but we didn't manage to get to all of the things that i really wanted to do, so i'll go back up on sunday morning.

i had a great d.c. day on wednesday. i set off to see the annie leibovitz show at the corcoran and to wander around downtown. on the way down, i was missing mummy so much. before her hip started giving her trouble, she and i used to run downtown often. our last museum trip was to see the calder/miro exhibit at the phillips collection. we have a particular fondness for calder, an artist/engineer and master of whimsy. we used to go see his circus at the whitney whenever we were in new york at the same time. (i'll see it again this sunday)

i was remembering so much about those times while i was driving to the corcoran. so i decided to pretend that she was with me. (strange, yes. but that's what i decided.) and with the exception of the faster pace i was able to keep, i tried to look at everything as if she were there. she and i liked the same things, but had very different perspectives. i tried to look at things both ways.

i was doing pretty well, until i came to the part where annie leibovitz was documenting susan sontag's battle with cancer. and that is where i came undone. wandering from picture to picture with tears streaming down my face.

i am a photographer. that is how i see myself. after daughter, sister, aunt, niece, cousin and friend, that is my next descriptor.

and, when mom was dying, i remember watching everything and not taking pictures. if it were me dying, i'd have had a camera in my hand the whole time. but she is very private. so i only took a few photos. and most did not show her face. they were just visual clues. the bicycle bell from her wheelchair (i loved that when she was pushed into an elevator, looking gaunt, on her way up to chemo, the sad worried look of strangers would change when she rang her bell. that bell helped them see that there was a whimsical woman in that chair.) there's the x-ray sign that takes me back to the day we had her x-rayed to make sure she didn't have a bowel obstruction. (i like that one because it reminds me that, while i was sitting in the hallway waiting, magee was in there holding her up. that picture is very sweet to me.) the hand on her dog was taken with my phone when i though that mom was just about to die. i just wanted something. some kind of picture. and watching mummy on the monitor is how i spent my nights after we brought her home. the pictures are not spectacular in and of themselves...but they bring me right back to those moments.


there are pictures that i will take this week. pictures of "evidence." evidence that she was here. there's legal pad that says "evidence" at the top. on it, there is her handwriting. something cryptic. she was always doing puzzles. and we haven't moved it. we have left so much of the evidence alone. eventually we will have to move on...but not yet.

but i digress. i wandered around d.c. pretending that she was with me. after the leibovitz show, i ended up at the edward hopper retrospective at the east wing. afterwards, i went down to the subterranean museum café where we used to grab a snack and then i went through the gift shop in search of stocking stuffers. when i saw a scarf with a william morris pattern that she loved, i cried. when i came across an umbrella that i thought she would love for christmas, i bought it for myself.

i am so tired of being so sad. and i am getting a little bit sick of listening to myself when i talk about it or reading my words when i write about it. i fugure getting through christmas is going to be even harder than yesterday. but i am not going to put off fighting to be happy until that has passed.

this morning i was watching this week's episode of "pushing daisies." it's a lovely show with beautiful cinematography, delightful characters and wonderful storylines. among the characters are two sisters, vivian and lily, who are mourning the death of their niece, charlotte. they have stopped doing the thing that they love: synchronized swimming. in this episode, vivian is trying to convince lily that they need to work on being happy again. she says "i think it's brave to try to be happy. you've gotten so comfortable being unhappy. wouldn't it be wonderful to wake up in the morning and choose to be happy?" later in the show, the housebound vivian and lily are sitting in the parlor on a rainy afternoon and vivian begins to sing. she sings "morning has broken." (when we were little, magee and i used to lie in our beds at the beach house and listen to the teenage girl in the house next door play her acoustic guitar and sing "morning has broken" on warm summer nights.)

vivian sings the song, and as we listen, we watch the sisters choose to be happy again.



today, i am going to eat chocolate and stay in my pajamas. tomorrow, i am going downtown again with my sisters, my niece and all of my favorite boys.

it is hard to be here without her.

that makes me think of the phrase "there is no i in team."

because there is no "here" without "her." for that matter...there is no "there" without "her."

and "nothing" is the same without "her."

i think i have been playing too much scrabble with my siblings because these kinds of things keep running through my head.

i am so happy to be here with my brother and sisters. it's just so wrong that she is not with us, enjoying this. she was taken from us way too soon. i am trying to stay happy. i don't want to waste this time being unhappy. i need to really pay attention to the good things since she is not here to enjoy them. i cannot let these sweet minutes go to waste.

i'm in her bed right now. in her room. surrounded by her things. comforting and devastating at the same time.

here it comes.

more "firsts." our first thanksgiving without mummy. our first thanksgiving with missy.

followed by our first christmas without mummy. and our first christmas with missy.

thank god for missy. and seamus. and liam. they help us to balance looking forward with looking back.

last thanksgiving was at aunt jane's. it was supposed to be at our house...but mummy was dying. at that point she was still getting out of the house, but she decided to pass on thanksgiving since she didn't want to be wheeled around and cause anyone any trouble. she was no trouble...but we couldn't convince her of that.

i honestly can't remember what i did on thanksgiving. i can't remember if i went to aunt jane's for a little while or if i just stayed home. i think i went to aunt jane's...but whatever i did, i was so preoccupied that i wasn't in the moment...and as a result i have no memory of the day.

i just have memories of mummy. in the sunroom. with one of her many tea-carts by her side. in a hospital bed with flannel cowboy sheets. getting up in the mornings and making an effort to get to the kitchen sink. brushing her teeth and giving herself a little spongebath before she got back in bed and asked for a hairbrush.

i remember trying to get her to eat.

and with the memories of medication and radiation and the scheduling of her chemotherapy are the memories of her laughing and the times she sat and smiled while she spent time with her friends and with aunt jane & uncle john. i also have clear memories of the times that aunt mary-anne came to sit with her and we all deliberately disappeared, closing the french doors so she could have alone time with her sister/best friend so she could feel free to express all of her hopes and fears without children within earshot.

i have never had a christmas without mummy. i have never woken up on christmas morning without being under the same roof as mummy. i tried once. one year i decided to skip christmas in d.c. and have a christmas holiday to myself in san francisco. i told her of my plan that thanksgiving. so instead of magee flying to d.c. without me, mummy and maura flew out here.

we had the best time.

this is going to be weird. we all know we want to be together. we're not really sure we want to be home - at mummy's house in the place where she died. we do know that we need to be in d.c. because seamus and liam won't be able to travel. so we'll be there. motherless on christmas for the very first time.

with the exception of last year, mummy did the santa thing. a few years ago, we were finally able to convince her to tone it down a little bit. instead of a pile of gifts for each of us, for the past few years just stuffed a stocking and (if we told her there was something we wanted) added an extra gift or two. the stockings always had a clementine in the toe, some candy (like mini reese's peanut butter cups), some little gifts and a sterling silver christmas tree ornament. (every year, gogo had given each of her grandchildren a sterling silver ornament and mummy continued the tradition with us after gogo died.)

last year, she was dying. i don't even remember if i said "merry christmas" to anyone that day. that night, when i lay down on the floor with magee next to the hospital bed, i remember praying for her to die. and before the sun came up, she did.

sometime, later that day, i remember telling magee or maura that i didn't think i had even said "merry christmas" and that we had not even celebrated it in any way. and i don't remember if it was magee or maura, but i remember someone handed me a little red box with a sterling silver christmas ornament.

our sweet sick mummy had wireless and a credit card.