pieces

My childhood is slipping away from me. Michael Jackson died-- for a child of the 1980s, this is like losing an old friend, one that inspired and intrigued and educated. But it's distant. I never saw him in person so there's no true grief there, no grief for losing him as a real person, just for the small hole I feel in my own life, the loss of a bit of my history, completely separate from the media blitz.

My first childhood pet, Maxie, died when I was 17. She was an extremely intelligent miniature schnauzer, gray with black around her eyes, wise beyond her species. She was supposed to be my older brother's dog, but she chose me instead. I remember my father burying her in the backyard. It was a new house, still smelled of paint-- my parents were downsizing since I was off to college soon. Early spring, still frosty outside at night, and it was cold that day. The ground must have been hard. My mother was cooking spaghetti, but she was burning something because I remember watching him out the back door, near the kitchen, plugging my nose between wiping my eyes. He wouldn't let me help, and I know it's because he didn't want me to see him cry. Neither of my brothers were there. She was 14 and had had a stroke.

Our second family dog, Sam, a black lab the vet nicknamed "Racetrack" because of her love of running circles when let loose, is on her last leg. She's also 14. The gray around her muzzle still forms a smile when I visit, but she's slower and slower in making it to my side.

Of course my great-grandmother is gone, and my grandfather, and my grandmother hardly knows me anymore. There are no more family Christmases. This and this alone now makes me want children.

Family is critical. Without it, how do we know who we are? Or who we aren't?

We select our own family as we get older, but we lose the one into which we were born, slowly but surely, piece by piece, no choice in the matter.

I don't want to be sad tonight. In fact, I'm not sad. There's no point in being sad about inevitabilities.

What I do feel is hungry. I snacked all day while watching college football and never had a proper meal. I'm a proper meal kind of girl. And I'm already exhausted by this upcoming trip though I haven't packed yet. I have to work for a few hours tomorrow while my husband is at home restaining a new table for our foyer. We're making this house a home, making a life here. We're putting our mark on it, on this life, so that someone somewhere will know we were here, that someone was here that cared, even after all we remember and all we know is gone.