I am well aware that you don’t get a choice in how you die. While I certainly don’t dwell on the idea of my own demise often, I certainly have given it enough pause to know I’d prefer not to drown, for example. To be stabbed and left to bleed to death doesn’t exactly appeal to me, either. I’m sure that most would agree with “make it quick, make it painless.”

This morning, while meandering through the news of the world, I stumbled across this article. In addition to drowning, bleeding to death or even being on fire, I think I’ll have to add this to my list of “Ways I Do Not Want to Die”:

GRANGEVILLE, Calif. – A dairy worker and his 8-year-old son died in a manure pit on the farm where they lived, authorities said Tuesday.

Luis Gutierrez, 27, and Luis Armando Gutierrez went to feed calves Saturday night and apparently stumbled upon the manure pit in the dark, investigators said.
Footsteps near the edge of the 10-foot deep pit seem to suggest one of them fell in, said Kings County Sheriff Allan McClain.

“We could see the dad seemed to be doing what he could to reach his son,” McClain said. “But this stuff … if you step in, it sucks you in.”

When Gutierrez and his son didn’t return, family members called the dairy’s owners and the sheriff’s department for help.

Investigators found Luis Gutierrez’s stalled pickup with its hood up. They said the Gutierrezes probably got out of the truck and tried to take a shortcut home.
The dairy’s owners dredged the cement-lined holding pond that collects rainwater and manure running from the farm, and the bodies were pulled from it early Sunday, McClain said.

The 9-year-old was the oldest of four children Luis Gutierrez had with his 22-year-old wife, Maria.

The county coroner is still working on the autopsy, but investigators don’t suspect foul play. McClain said the pair may have drowned in the thick, foul-smelling sludge. It’s also possible they were overwhelmed with noxious gases emanating from the mixture.

I couldn’t fall asleep last night. Pair that with being on a diet and you might understand why I laid in bed dreaming about food. What seemed so strange was for the first time in my entire life, I dreamt of my mom’s fried chicken. It was an experience not at all unlike when I was pregnant (which I can assure you, I am not) when I craved thousand island dressing. On anything. Just get.me.the.dressing.NOW.

It took me well into my adult years to realize that my mother wasn’t a particularly good cook. Not in the sense that she cooked anything gourmet or complicated, anyway. She was a farmer’s daughter and she married a farmer’s son and in that regard, she cooked meat and potatoes just fine. A complete list of spices in her cabinet would probably not exceed ten items and that’s including salt and pepper. I never had a complaint about her cooking growing up, but I learned shortly after I was married that dicing up an onion or a green pepper or even using an actual real clove of garlic wasn’t something reserved for Julia Child.

While I tend to cook with a few more spices and occasionally producing something not served in a small-town diner, I am still a far cry from a “good cook”. LM would strongly disagree, but his only comparison is his father, who never cooks. (As a side note: I am firmly convinced that to impress ANY male with your cooking ability, simply make deviled eggs. Men cannot get deviled eggs from a diner, a chain restaurant or the local convenience store. But they LOVE them! If you can master this simple side dish, you’ll have him in the palm of your hand!) I can cook well enough that LM and I eat a variety of dishes, but when I think about having guests over for dinner I honestly have nothing in my own repertoire worth cooking for company.

All of this is to say that to be lying awake in bed dreaming of my mother’s fried chicken is like Lance Armstrong saying he’s thinking of taking a bike ride down to his local library or an opera enthusiast saying he was moved by his three year old’s school play performance.

There was nothing remarkable about her fried chicken. I don’t think a single spice was used, it was simply chicken coated with flour, fried in vegetable oil in her electric skillet. But then she made mashed potatoes. Again, nothing added, no sour cream, no cream cheese, no cream even, just potatoes and milk with maybe a dab of butter. Most of all, I could nearly taste the white gravy. Chunks of chicken from the bottom of the skillet still floating around in the gravy. She would always ask me to taste and I never refused! A dash of salt and a sprinkle of pepper and it was perfect. Last night I could envision a cob of Midwest yellow sweet corn, smothered in butter, salt and pepper. If I had to top the meal off, I would have the cheesecake she used to make for my birthday. Or maybe the spice cake she made on a regular basis, 2/3 covered with icing, the last third left plain or sprinkled with powered sugar, just the way she liked it. Or perhaps the French cookies that she made. Mmmm….

Thinking about her chicken, I could nearly taste it. I could picture the table full of my family. I could see the plates, see the glass of milk at the top of my setting. I could even hear the phone ring in the middle of the meal like it always seemed to do.

And then I fell asleep. With a little piece of home stuck in my head.

I believe…..

Blue Collar Comedy Tour Rides Again is as funny as the first.

I don’t care who you are….that there’s funny.

Here’s your sign….

Tater…

(Forgive me, God, I’m real sorry for that, bless the pygmies… Amen.)

The way he walked into my office took my breath away. The swagger of a boy laden with all the padding of Pampers between his legs, he came in drinking juice from a sippy cup. The whole time he sat with his dad, he kept drinking, pausing only when a two-year old smile crept across his entire face.

He had huge blue eyes and waves in his hair. Just the sound of him sucking on the cup took me back. He reached up behind him, over his head to try to touch his dad’s hair – a familial habit. Security within reach.

He could name all the animals on his cup, his father translating for those who were unfamiliar, but I knew. He said, “elephant”, “monkey”, “cat” and “bug”. I knew.

I thought I was past the heartache of wanting more. Lord knows I’m so blessed with the one child that I have and yet today it all swept over me and now, on a cold, windy, Friday night, I sit in tears longing for the smell of Johnson’s shampoo in his hair. They way dried milk caked on his cheeks. How he said “maykin” for napkin and “plano” for piano. It was years before “mazagine” came out right.

In an unexpected moment today I was overwhelmed with the emotion of longing. I love my son so incredibly much. I love being a mother and an aunt. I love being a family. I never intended for LM to be an only. Never a day in my life.

He’d make a great brother.

I don’t know God’s plan for me. He’ll reveal it in His time, I know. Tonight, through my tears though, I pray that he’ll give me the chance one more time. It’s the most selfish prayer I’ve prayed in years. I’m not ready to be done. I’m not ready to give up the hope. I’m not ready to be done.

Even as I write this, I want to take it all back. How can I ask God for another when so many don’t have one? How can I hurt so badly when I had LM by sheer luck, without incident, without complication? In a relationship that never should have produced a child, God handed us LM and gave him to us without question. I wasn’t worthy then, and my prayer isn’t worthy now. And yet, I still pray. I don’t deserve to have more. So many people would be so happy just to have one child to call their own. I don’t have a right to such greed, to such a selfish request. I don’t have a right to feel this way when I am already so blessed.

But I do. Selfishly, I do.

I want more children.

For the entire time that I knew him, I believed my great uncle’s name was Uncle Owl. I can’t explain how that made any sense other than to say that I was very young and it was an easy thing to hear “Al” as “Owl” and not think twice. Besides, there was a very famous Owl in my world, he appeared on Mr. Rogers everyday, so certainly it couldn’t be that strange to have an uncle with the name.

I remember only snippets about him. They had a huge organ and grand piano in their mob-style home. The living room and dining room were enormous; the home obviously built with entertaining in mind. They had a dog, I imagine him as a Rottweiler, although I don’t know that he really was. I also think his name was Charlie, but I’ve shown my ability for getting names wrong already. The dog was always shut in the kitchen and had basically destroyed that room.

My great aunt and uncle played music like I had never heard before. I didn’t hear them play often, but it was memorable. I can remember visiting when my uncle “Owl” was very sick. We went into his bedroom to say our hellos, small girls with no idea of old age and death. He had a stuffed animal – a leopard- on top of his dresser and he would get it down for me so I could pet it. I was a softie for stuffed animals and having never been played with, this one was still so soft and new. It was one of those that looked as life-like as a stuffed animal can. When he died, the leopard was given to me. I treasured it all my life and still have it in the back of my closet. It’s worse for the wear of all my affection and love (and my cat’s affinity for chewing on tails) but it holds great memories for me.

My great aunt moved to another, much smaller home. I remember that one more distinctly as I was older the years we visited her there. It was never a fun trip to go see her. She could barely hear you and so conversation was stilted and difficult. Her house smelled funny to me as a child and there was little to do there. She was an incredible quilter and had made my sister and I some of the most beautiful dresses we ever wore as children. She had traded in her full grand piano for a much more practical studio version and I remember it sitting in that second house. When she died, I inherited her piano.

My dad’s sister is truly without question, the best musician our family has to offer. I remember when my grandfather visited us once and made us sit in his brand new “coffin car” as I called it- a luxury car that was so silent and padded and huge that only the very old seemed to own one, or so I thought – and while I was sitting in his precious car, he played me a tape of classical piano music and asked me who it was. I thought he meant the composer, so I was naming off Bach and Beethoven and the names I was familiar with as a young piano student. He laughed and got that proud twinkle in his eye and said, “No, that’s your Aunt Marg!” He was so proud of her.

The piano from my Great Aunt has traveled with me from Illinois to Pennsylvania, from the apartment to the house we rented. It followed me after the divorce to the apartment and now our condo. It sits proudly in the living room. Proud but silent.

I haven’t played it in years. Not played to mention, anyways. I did pluck at the keys a couple years ago when the boy I was dating wanted proof that I could play. I have tried in vain to get my son signed up for piano lessons. I can find a traditional teacher, sure, but I learned the traditional method and unless I have music in front of me, I’m useless at the keys. I wanted my whole life to be better at playing by ear; just to sit down at a party and play something. We always want what we don’t have. LM is on a waiting list, but it’s been that way for over a year, so it may not be in his cards to learn.

I don’t often think about playing. I am grateful beyond words that my parents insisted that I learn and even more grateful for their patience as I fought against that education all those years.

Tonight, in the quiet of the living room, with just a small lamp lit in the corner of the room, I long to play. I long to hear the music. I long for the ability to sit down and produce something with passion. I long for the pleasure and sense of accomplishment that comes from learning a difficult piece. I long for the outlet that it gives to my soul.

I don’t play because I have neighbors. I hate listening to their rap music and don’t want to subject them to my tedious practicing. There will be a day, though, when we have our own, single family home and I will play. I will let my fingers remember how it feels. I will let my ears and eyes guide me along the music. I will brush off the rust and learn something I played more than 20 years ago. I will remember what it feels like to create music.

And all the while, I will remember my mom. She was my most attentive audience and my biggest fan. She endured the practicing, the recitals, the talent shows, the battles over practicing. She would sit and listen. Sometimes she would even ask me to play for her.

One of these days, I will play again. For the both of us.

I realize that life seems so unfair as a child, but I can say with confidence and first-hand knowledge that the scales of justice balanced themselves out this morning. For all the times I’ve justified why I get to stay up late and he doesn’t, or why the last brownie is always Mom’s, today I got the other end of the stick. And it was cold. And hard. And cruel.

I had been hitting snooze for a hundred times trying to convince myself that getting out of bed this morning surely would be the worst part of my day. There was a cold wet nose urging me to get up and go outside (where it was sleeting) when I heard a little man’s voice ask if I had checked the news. I knew the information he was after and told him to go turn on the computer as I let my radio start talking again. He read the words as I heard them on the radio, “School is Closed.”

He jumped with glee and screamed a little scream of joy! As I stumbled through an abbreviated morning routine (trying to get to work as early as I could to avoid the roads that would be fine, but no other driver would recognize this fact) he was full of smiles, asking me what he could watch on the DVR. His day is filled with movies, peanut butter sandwiches (that he’ll share with the dog) and never getting out of his pajamas. It’ll be topped off by one of his favorite dinners of late and certainly his favorite night of TV, “Survivor”. (A double-dose, even, since we taped last week’s episode.)

My day? Not so swell. Rationed serving of low-sodium peanuts and a Caesar salad. A pounding headache and the need to go to the store for just ONE item (which drives me crazy!) No work to be done so I finished off another book but that only bothers my eyes even more. A stack of bills in my pocketbook to be mailed on the way home ensuring that we are broke again for the next 30 days. The need to go home and get on the rower but lacking any desire to do so. The knowledge that I will have to take the dog out at least four times in the rain/sleet/freezing rain this evening.

It is no fun to be Mom today.

So I was going to write something incredibly profound tonight, I really was, but:

1. my new glasses aren’t working right and I can no longer see the computer screen.
2. my sister called and sucked all my intelligence out by asking me to do math.
3. It’s Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras) and for the last four years at my former job, I’ve had to attend a business networking event, so tonight I’ve celebrated my freedom by indulging in a margarita, greatly impairing my ability to type.
4. We’ve been shutting Gabe out of the living room each day (by blocking the hallway with his dog bowl stand) and he’s now giving me his sad brown eyes begging for attention
5. AMAZING RACE 9 PREMIERES TONIGHT!!! (Geeesh, you didn’t think I was going to miss that, did you? Poka Bean, wherever you are, I hope you’re catching tonight’s show, too!)

LM is well aware that his mother is a kidder. Every single time he has ever had a minor injury I have always proclaimed the answer to be “Amputation!” I’ve turned his minor tears into laughs when I head to the kitchen and start pulling out the “appropriate tools” necessary to cut off a toe, or decapitate a child. He used to scream “NOOO!!” until he finally got the humor and started to play along. Now, when he hits his head on his loft or stubs his toe he’ll say, “I’m okay, Mom, no need to amputate!”

Whenever he has done something wrong and we’ve had our discussion about it, I try to end the situation with laughter, hugs and lots of “I love yous”. It’s not uncommon, after all is resolved, for me to mutter under my breath. but loud enough for him to hear, “I guess I should take down the “For Sale: Child” sign in the yard before the gypsies come by.” I have even called my sister on occasion and asked her if she wanted to sell her kids to the gypsies as maybe we could get more money for three than just for my one. LM’s sense of humor has developed well over the years and he is now confident enough to know that I’m always kidding about this and will even chime in with his suggestions, “It’s too bad they won’t let you sell kids on Ebay, huh, Mom?”

We keep our grocery list on the refrigerator. We both add to it as necessary and do a weekly shop on Saturday. When I was adding “pickles” to the list yesterday I took a look at what LM has been adding to the list. “Napkins”, “Milk” and “Gypsy repelent”.

I guess it’s evident to both of us that he’s been in more trouble than usual this week, huh?

Last night, LM was giving me the tour of the “fortress” he had made on and around the couch. He showed me the boxes he had used to block out the dog, the step stool that served as the door, even the chirping bird that served as a doorbell. When he finished he said, “I don’t know, Mom, I think it’s missing that, je ne sais quoi.”

“Je ne sais quoi?!”

I’m sending in his Harvard application.

We’ve rearranged and cleaned carpets. We’ve moved plants to new locations to catch the light as it comes around the corner of the house now. I got rid of the baker’s rack that I’ve had for far too long to be fashionable and we have found a new place to start putting the books I’ve read since the shelves are overflowing.

I made a huge pot of chili some of which I’ll freeze. In a short bit, we’ll make pizza and while LM has lost the privilege to have Movie Night, we’ll still enjoy a night cuddled up on the couch while the last of the living room carpet dries. I’ve washed all of our bedding, including the comforters giving us fresh warm beds to sleep in.

This morning, before even getting out of bed, LM declared, “I love our house.” So do I. I love it not for the things that we own, but for how it reflects the people that we are. I love it for the light that shines in the windows. I love it for the bird feeders that hang on the deck. I love it for the plants, books and pictures that abound. But I love it for the peace and comfort that it brings. I love it for being mine. I love that I pay the mortgage and I do it alone. I love that I provide this for my son. I love the pets we own and the love and laughter that we all enjoy together. I love my life. It feels complete. Just.The.Way.It.Is.

And yet…

Yesterday I started the book “The Time Traveler’s Wife” and I finished it in bed early this morning. I loved it. I savored it. I treasured the experience of reading it. It was the first time I finished the last page and nearly turned back to the front to start again. Love that transcends time and place. Love that endures all. Love through the good and the bad. Love that is enough and more.

I don’t know how it is that I can be so entranced by a story of such deep love and yet be so satisfied in my life without it. Perhaps that’s the way it is supposed to be. Peace without someone brings peace with someone. I don’t know. Maybe the story is a dream, a Hollywood version of love, but not to me. It wasn’t a description of easy love. It wasn’t a story of perfect, untested love. It was a story of true love. I have never wanted to settle for less.

Perhaps the peace that I feel is from the knowledge that I love my life plenty as it is and have no need to settle for a love that is less than true. I am content enough with all that I have and all that I feel without substituting something less than perfect. Perhaps finding contentment in the life that we have alone allows us the patience to wait for the love of our life to come along. Perhaps at the right place and the right time, the love that is perfect for me will enter our lives and bring our sense of contentment to a whole new level.

Perhaps it’s just a reminder that loving someone doesn’t “complete” us; that we are complete on our own, and coming together we form a union of life with two individuals. Perhaps having what feels like a full life does not exclude the idea that there are pieces yet to come. There are not voids to be filled; when love comes, we make room, we open our hearts wider, we make the circle bigger.