I was that joyful day.

It was exactly one year ago today. The elder's long journey over the water just concluded, the younger's mere two months' experience in this thing called life, they gathered in my kitchen and eyeballed one another, truly, madly, deeply for the very first time. Dad, that generation who created me and Rukai, that who I created, saying their first 'how do'.

We stood between them and marvelled.

I burned me a big memory that day. Golden and shiny and wrapped up in Dad's 79 years of waiting to say, 'well shut my mouth and call me Gordie Howe, THAT is my grandson'.

How do, little man, how do.

He waited long and long and long for that day. I have loved few days as much. And here, one year on, that day pinches me across the face like an out of town aged aunty with cellulite and blue hair and halitosis.

Hello. Remember me? I was that joyful day. Do not forget me. Never forget me. I have gone and so has he.

Pinch.

One year ago today. And here we are now, three days from the 9th of April. Three days from 'damn, my father has been dead a month.' It is all I can do to just keep breathing.

I am so thankful for my beloved boy, not only because he continues to be magnificent but also because to care properly for him means I do not have time to sit and think too much. It is the thinking that leaves me helpless, that does me in, for it is then that I am unmoving. Left congealing like cold gravy. So I move, and I mommy, and I live, because it is we who are left behind, to find the way back towards our own 80 years.

Less of this pain, though, eh God? I am weary of burning.

Yet losing Dad has also strangely provided the opposite distraction, in that the ongoing saga of incompetent boobs calling themselves medical practitioners and trying to dictate how we will live has just hopped right on over to the back burner for the first time since late 2011.

To that end, perhaps the greater gift is that now I know just how much strength I have. I hauled it up out of the deepest chasm in my very guts, and my palms bled and I screamed in agony and I wept till I was empty. I had to hurt like hell to earn it, but by God, it is within me now and it will never go.

Thank you. Daddy. Angel.

And still here we have new marvels. Fine motor skills improving at pace and now my dear boy is flipping me the bird some 27 times a day. Old Charlie and his Baby TV numbers are not only totally recognizable to him, but Rukai is trying to copy me counting on my fingers every time the song comes on, looking back at my hands, at the TV, at my hands, at my face. Laughing. 'I get it!' he's thinking. 'They go together!'

Yes, those stats did say he would suck at numbers too. Throw me another gauntlet, I may end up enjoying this.

Dad would be so proud.

Thank you Daddy Angel.

Now on my own sofa, tipping back a beer out of my fridge.  The inferno has dwindled but my heart still burns.  There is no Solarcaine for this.  No Neosporin.  Only time, and she is vicious.  I know this.  She has stung me before.

My husband is asleep next to me and the monitor tells me Rukai is his mirror image upstairs.  There are some photos I can look at and others I can not.  Most of them make me bawl.  All of them make me sad.  My Dad is gone.  My heart is broken.  His likeness goes on everywhere.  My son has his exact hair - even looks like a rooster sometimes - and in him I will always see grandpa.  Blessings, blessings all around.

Following what was positively the saddest days of my life, I have had a complete 180 - albeit brief - in a hugely triumphant Rukai-ism this afternoon.  This caused me to cry in equal buckets as last week, but happy tears.  Are they chemically different?  Who knows.  They are wet and they leave trails.  Strange that we have the same reaction to utter devastation and pure unadulterated joy.  What are these emotions?  Why do I feel them so soundly and my other half can give or take them in what seems at will? 

I cannot understand human beings - more so after last week's family drama I will not repeat here - but mystery wrapped in an enigma sandwiched between two nuclear warheads perhaps can define it clear enough.

But back to Rukai, because after all he is what this blog is all about.

I bought him a birthday present for his big day, now what seems a billion years ago.  It's this tower thing with balls you jam into the top and they whirl and twirl down a ramp til they fall into a hole.  When I left, he wasn't sitting comfortably, still.  I wondered how long it would be before he would be able to play with this toy.  I showed him a couple times and he didn't seem interested.  He wanted to lie down, or try to stand.  But sit - no way.

Then I got home.

Late afternoon, work done for the day, I sat on the floor with him in front of me.  He is now very comfortable sitting this way, doesn't seem to be falling over in any direction which is a triumph in itself.  But oh no, it gets better.

I take a ball.  I jam it in the top of the tower.  It whirls.  It twirls.  It drops.  I hand it to Rukai.

He leans forward and tries to jam it into the hole.

First try.

Open the faucet in my head and step back from the pride explosion.

"Oh Rukai, Rukai mommy is SO proud of you!!  Oh my boy!!  Oh my God!!"  I squeezed him, and passed him the ball again.  He lathered, rinsed and repeated.  Grinning ear to ear.  Enjoying it as much as I was.  I nearly keeled over.  And again, and again, and again and you get the picture.

A new angel has entered Heaven and is geared up and ready to watch over our boy.  If there is nothing else that is keeping me from crumbling into a ball and crying myself empty, it is this.

Thank you Daddy Angel.

When goodbye is Goodbye.

I flew home on the 27th of February to visit my terminally ill father and to say goodbye.  An hour before I was to leave for the airport, while I was at his apartment, he passed away.  Today we buried him.  This is his eulogy.
________________________

I began writing this while seated in the dark, after the power went out at our hotel.  I was surrounded by unfinished business.  On my left was a stack of blank CDs waiting to be burned with the appropriate music.   On the right was a bible waiting to reveal the appropriate verses.  I was juggling vast pieces of the great puzzle I have found myself working this past few days.

This puzzle is called 'The Life of Gene Sinda'.

I was wondering how on earth I can tell the story of a man's eighty years when I have only been privy to forty one of them?  And I honestly do not know.  But I will tell you what I can.

Mom was quietly snoring, having exhausted herself working this puzzle with me.  A couple nights ago I saw her dance with the memory of Dad, her arm on an invisible back, twirling around and around the floor in that awkward quirky way he used to dance.  We laughed ourselves weeping.  To Dad.

Anyone whose seen him dance knows that Dad was a terrible dancer.  Despite the fact that he used the illusory nickname of Gene Gene the Dancing Machine, Dad was just a horrendously bad dancer.  But Dad was an awesome dancer.  Because Dad always did that great thing they call 'dancing like no one is watching'. 

For a numbers guy, his ability to count time to music was abysmal.  But he always just moved how it felt right.  I got to experience this on more than one occasion - and as a child the safest way to do this meant I stood right on top of his feet and held onto his hands for dear life.  This really was the only way you could follow him on the dance floor.  Of course in later years, it occurred to me that this task was much easier if you had a beer or two in you.  Live and learn, as they say.

I think Dad's character traits that will most stick with me are that he was eternally young at heart and that most of the time, he just didn't care what anyone thought of him.  This of course brought him his share of trouble but it also meant that he was one of the most free spirited people I have ever known.  High strung like a thoroughbred and stubborn like an old mule, he plowed through the bulk of his life living each day like it was his last.  He just went for it.  And this too is how he died.

There is a passage in a booklet given to us by the amazing Rainbow Hospice that talks about how a person's approach to death mirrors their approach to life.  And this was so true of Dad - he just got straight down to business.  When he was truly ready to go he didn't dawdle.  He wanted to go to God's home from the comfort of his own home.  He wanted to go his way.  And he sure did.

 I was so blessed to have eleven days - one for every year I've been away - to enjoy his company one last time.  And an hour before I was due to head back to my own home he decided it was time to hit the big dance floor in the sky.  I was doubly blessed to be there with him as he left this life.  I like to think he did that intentionally for me, one last father's gift to his daughter.  My heart will forever be full with that gift.

My Dad was never a general in the Army.  Nor was he president of the banks he worked in.  Dad was never voted father of the year with a four page spread in People Magazine.  But he served.  And he worked.  And did the best he could to be a good father.  And for one beautiful year, a good grandfather to my son, Rukai.  He was so worried that his grandson wouldn't know him because he'd be gone before Rukai grew up.  I told him more than once during our last days together that there is absolutely no way his grandson won't know him.  I expect this teaching to be one of my life's greatest joys.

A few days before he passed, Dad said 'you never know how many people love you until you get into this position.'  And those last few days firmed up my belief that there really are angels on this earth.  Angels called Glenn, and Patty, and Wally.  Called Brian the landlord and Doctor Schwartz and Father Collins.  Called Anna and Carolyn and Kim and Regina and Kevin. There is a pot of gold at the end of this Rainbow and that gold is called Love.

Every man has his share of flaws and regrets and joys and sorrows.  Yet every man is loved.  At some point there will be love.  In that we are all here celebrating Dad today is proof of that love.  On this day of one of my life's greatest sorrows, I express to you one of my life's greatest hopes in that Dad and the love we feel for him today will live forever in all of our hearts. 

Rest in peace Pop.  I love you big time dude.

Samurai Sword.

I remember it was a Thursday. There was a gym, and a treadmill, and four TVs. I was on incline setting eight and there were burning quads.

On TV number three, there was a race ready to post. There was a horse. Horse number ten. I remember ten because it is so significant in our family. That we once were ten, then we lost our ten and became nine and then Rukai made us ten again.

Horse ten was called Samurai Sword.

Samurai Sword. Rukai's name has something to do with the Samurai. Too long to explain here but know this made my thighs burn less and my heart race and my brain decide it was dead cert our horse, the hero of this particular tale, was going to blow away the field. Our ten horse, our Samurai horse, would win because Rukai will win in life and that is that.

I remember this is what I decided, on that Thursday, on that treadmill, up that incline to nowhere watching that TV as if I had a fortune riding on Samurai Sword winning that lone race on a sandy track on the other side of the world.

In a way, I did.

I remember post time arrived, and as I powered up that lonely incline, old Samurai Sword, well he just chugged out of the blocks like he had been sat on the crapper engrossed in a copy of Readers Digest and missed the gun. Then it struck him, they're getting away from me here, and he put down his head and he ran like his ass was on fire. But the field pulled away. So far away that our intrepid hero fell clean off the TV screen.

And even though I kept leaning to the right, trying to will him back on screen, Samurai Sword stayed in the caboose end of that race to the bitter end.

But, by god, that boy kept running.

-----

We are tucked in for the night. Rukai is 6 days shy of a year old. Rukai's huge triumph today was grabbing my fingers and pulling up to stand, then bouncing - or as his paternal grandma calls it 'doing the bum shake' - before his knees gave out and he plonked down onto said bum, grinning with glee at what fun it all is. To grow. To progress. To shake bum. To keep on running. Like his ass is on fire.

To fall behind but damn it, that boy keeps on running.

Our little Samurai. Our little dragon.

You go on breathing your fire, my boy. You burn a hole clean through that box they packed you in that cold February day a year ago and you keep right on running.

I fear one day I will positively suffocate on my love.

Happy birthday my son.

It's just water, dude.

Baby flu.  I haven't cleaned this much puke up since...well...ever.  I thought earlier we may have to lay a tarp across the living room floor.  And the bouncer.  And the cot.  And the...ok, well, we will just have to coat the house in plastic and be done with it.  Coat Rukai too.

Wait, no, no, never mind that, we'll just set him up in the tub for a few days. 

Damn, that's right, the tub brings too much drama.  More later.

Why in the name of all that is good and holy did we lay carpeting in this house?  Oh yes, that's right.  We didn't have a child yet.  But since we want to move we will now be sure to move to a place with laminate floors.  Any carpeting in the new place is doomed, since we will unceremoniously rip it out and chuck it out the window.  Even if it's new carpeting.  Even if it's a balcony window.  On the twenty-sixth floor of a skyscraper.

I've done that with pizza waaaaaaay back in the day but that's an altogether different story.

So I guess I'll need to buy a megaphone.  Then again, maybe I can just precede the carpet toss with a few long shots off the five iron and shout 'fore!' really loudly to any wandering passers by.  Fair warning and all.  That surely must be set rule number four hundred and eight in the carpet toss health and safety manual, fifth edition, for insane puke cleaning parents only.

But carpeting will meet window will meet pavement.  Of this I am certain.  Because as I live and breathe, it is bloody hard to clean puke out of carpeting and I have had enough dry heaving the past 36 hours to last me till I hit the big 5-0.  Thank God I bought all that upholstery cleaner before Rukai was born.  It's the gift that keeps on giving.

Good news is at least I think he's stopped.  Dioralyte, you goddess you.  The blandness of baby rice and porridge.  The calpol/calprofen one two punch.  A cold washcloth draped over his head like a babushka followed by a hefty nap and we are back in the wonderful land of ninety-eight-point-six.

I refuse to translate fever to celsius even IF I live in England.  It's the principle of the thing.

Now.

Back to the tub.  Bub snubs the tub.  The tub has consistently scared the shit out of bub.  The tub is one of the hugest stressors in my life.  You'd think I filled it with itching powder.  Or hot lava.  The way he squirms and slipslides away on the gallons of E45 churning through it like a white oil slick.

It's just water, dude.

'Just water,' he thinks.  Then flips me the baby black panther salute and commences the squirmscream combo.  'Take that you washer woman,' he thinks.  'You just TRY and hold me.'

It's not fun.

Bathtime should be fun and it just has not been fun.  And don't even get me started on trying to get that first nappy on while he's damp.  Or wrapping him up in a towel.  When you get one arm in the leg pops out.  The leg in, the head cover falls off.   This is why they invented wine.  I'm sure of it.

They didn't say anything about this in all those baby books.  But hell, at least I know the freaking out is just cos he's just a baby who likes being supported and warm in the tub and not because he's got every sensory issue on the planet.  I know this because it's 2013 and in 2013 I am no longer afraid of what might be.  I am committed to fixing the problems and not over egging the cause because some numpty doctor studied a sheet of stats and puked them out at us.

He's a baby.  That is all.  Pukeity puke puke.  (Take your stats and shove them up your ass!  Lalala.)

So I have been working on finding the solution.  Over time this has meant we now own:

- One adult sized bathtub that scares the crap out of him.
- One newborn bathtub that he no longer fits into but actually seemed to like until about age 4 months.  Damn.
- One newborn plastic bath support that jammed up against his bum and made him cry.  Wouldn't you?  Now don't lie.  Yes, yes, I thought so.
- One bath seat / bath mat combo that he can't sit up in and has ripped, respectively.  And guess what?  It made him cry.
- One chaise lounge-style bath support that was too low in the water to fill the tub high enough to keep him warm.  So he froze every bath and lo and be-flipping-hold -

It made him cry.

So then I'm on Amazon the other day, shoe shopping in the sales. As you do. And I think, 'must find a better bath support to get him stabilized in the tub so he stops freaking out.'  Typey typey type and whaddayaknow I manage to find the very same tub as the first one he liked, in a bigger size.

Wot?!

Are you joking?!  Where were you hiding this when I bought all that other shit?!  It's even made by the same manufacturer.  It's even the same shade of blue.  It even goes well with the little fish bath mat I bought to keep him from slipping.

Hey hey!  It arrived!  I put him in it!  He wasn't freaking out!  In fact he was splashing his arms and having a whale of a time.  But damn it all to hell, he keeps slipping. So one useless hand of mine holding him up and the other doing the one hand miracle wash while eating a sandwich and doing the online grocery order combo I learned back in month one and we are rocking and rolling. 

Just hope he doesn't puke in it.

In other news, baby's first Christmas has come and gone.  We nearly needed a U-Haul to bring everything home but managed to get it all in a giganto-box shoved in the back seat of the car once we removed the seventy-two tons of cardboard and other packaging.

But alas, such a spoiled little man.  Spoiled and utterly and completely deserving.  His smile lit up the room brighter than the lights on the tree.  The videos are priceless.  The blurted laugh on seeing his mister man 'Mr Happy' sleepsuit took the biscuit.  Because when he is in a good mood, he IS Mr. Happy.  So we laughed with him.  We always do.  He is such a light.  Such a shining star.  Such a schmooshy squidge.

Baby's first Christmas followed swiftly by baby's first big honking flu.  Just over one month til baby's first birthday.  Time still rolls. 

Let it roll baby roll.  As long as it's not a roll of carpet.

Ring in the new.

2012 began in a roiling black cloud of fear and uncertainty. It ends eating the dust of a boy whose only challenge is the establishment and its blind status-quo.

2013 will greet this family without fear. We got this. Big time.

Roll on midnight.

Shovel the shit and shine up the saddle.

Looking back on the past month, the standouts are simple.  A Dad hug for me.  A frog legged, pressed-up, pre-crawl for young son.  A supported stand.  Perma-horsey setting.  He's so nearly there, I could explode.  If pride is a vice you can call me Miami, buy me a white suit and rev up the convertible.

More.  Two long haul flights uninterrupted by baby bleating for three hundred plus BA passengers.  Well at least MY baby was bleat free, I can't say the same for the ones who managed to score the cot seats.

I guess not being able to get a cot and getting stuck buying a seat for him was a gargantuan blessing in disguise.  Guess those wee bubbas slept like shit in their thin BA travel cots while Rukai chilled in his reclined car seat, his 'command center' set up, Ice Age and Madagascar and Lion King looping on the bubba sized screen in front of him.  Oops.  So sorry.

Seriously, my son was the perfect passenger.  Entirely unaffected by altitude and air pressure.  And here I was so worried about the supposed 'structural abnormalities' those thin statistics say he's likely to have in his sinuses and ear canals that I expected full meltdown and expulsions out of both ends.  I brought five changes of clothes for him on the outbound.  One on the reverse.  I need to go write the 'Take your stats and shove them up your ass' song now.  I may have just penned the chorus.

So only three hours awake the first go and he was snoring five minutes into the return flight.  He woke up when they turned the lights on for breakfast.  Oh, and he woke up HAPPY.  And then he ate.  And then he found the ceiling panel flipping hilarious.  That and the magic intercom voice.  The turbulence, not so much.  The plane dipped and shimmied and his eyes bugged out as if to say whatthehellwasthat while he threw some jazz hands.  The first time I thought 'awww'. When he did it again I nearly peed myself laughing.  I'm not sure I have cracked the visual there but I wish I had been filming.

Ok.

The reason for the visit home comes in a far less chirpy version: one life is truly beginning.  One is beginning to end.  Our year of turmoil has officially been wrapped in a big red bow labeled 'Dad has incurable lung cancer'.  So we hopped and we scotched across an ocean for a two week visit which included Rukai's first plane trip, as much grandpa time as we could muster, Dean's cottage cheese and Lou Malnatis and Buona Beef and Portillos and store bought Christmas tchotchkes and here we are back home hoping like hell goodbye wasn't really Goodbye.

It turns and it turns and it turns.  My first thought: the problem with life is it ends in death.

My second thought: thank God we went.  Dad has seen his grandson doing well.  That means everything to me.  And that hug will never wash off.  Perhaps neither will the tear stains.  But I will hold that hug in my heart for the rest of my days.  I will hold the conversations in my heart.  My Daddy.  Please let there be more hugs.

My third thought (and segue with me here):  damn, British Airways trolly dollies sure wear a lot of slap on their mugs.  Like theatrical pancake.  Even the guys.  It was like flying Air Madame Tussaud's.

I'm hanging on to thought three because once again that old mom-ism, when you most feel like crying sometimes you just have to laugh.  Leave it to our magnificent squidge to provide it.

Despite our heavy hearts we have been wearing perma-smiles because mister bubba has become mini John Wayne, and is stuck on 'horsey' setting.  Sit.  Flail.  Giggle.

I think it may have been the Chicago water.  The diesel fume free air.  The freak Thanksgiving heatwave.  The 48 oz of greek yogurt.  The vat of pretzels I bought from Kmart with my cart full of tchotchkes.  Ok, maybe not those, those were MINE.  But the last two weeks have given us some extraordinary developmental milestones and equal amounts of joy.

If you looked at my life from elsewhere you may say 'damn, you have been delivered a bit of a shit sandwich this year'.  And we thought that.  And then we look at this amazing kid who just lifts everyone around him and realize that we are staying above it because of him.  Because he IS.  And we are so blessed by whatever higher power has sent him our way.

We even had security people at the airport gurning at his chubby cheeks and (there's that horsey again) three foot long eyelashes.

Security people.  At Heathrow.  At O'hare.  I was bamboozled.  They even forgot to make me taste half his food the second time round.  I may never go anywhere without him again.

Ok, a final few standouts.

I now know that our 'ick', or that skin condition is so hereditary that anyone 'practicing medicine' who relates it to DS hereafter can kiss my son's giraffe speckled ass.  A wonderful afternoon with family cleared that one up.  Not literally but I now have officially scratched that off the is-it-a-symptom-or-not list.  Um, thatwouldbeno.

And the real kicker is anyone who's spent a length of time with Rukai over the past couple weeks has seen what we do.  And that is nothing.  That is 'virtually unaffected'.  And that remains a relief.  We can keep riding that particular horsey.  I'll even shovel the shit and shine up the saddle.