Dear Tiffany
Dear Tiffany,
Oh, yes. I remember your name. I remember it because you said that it didn't suit you. You said that Tiffany sounded like some "overemotional teenager."
I disagreed. While, I do admit that Tiffany is not one of my favorite names....it is a very nice name. Kind of like mine and like most other people's names. We can't all be Saoirse, Claire, or Olivia. Some of us are just...Karen. Mary Ann. Gloria. Julie. Pam. I was named for a family member, as many are.
When I first saw your comment, I wanted to jump up and down and do a little dance. I had always liked you that much.
But, as you have probably already surmised, I don't do a lot of jumping or dancing anymore. Yes. Things are different now. Let me think. I do believe that the last time I checked in with you....hmmm...you were in medical school. In Baltimore. And we both shared a deep love of gardening.
So...there I go and turn my back and now you have become a MAMA! And your kids don't sound like little assholes, so I am really pleased. Plus, you gave them good names. Names to live up to, to chew on. I expected no less from you.
As I am sure you know, I have retired. I no longer am that working gal, struggling to wear high heels and skirts anymore. No. I pretty much live in sneakers now. And sweatpants in the winter. Capris in the Spring and Fall. Sundresses in the Summer.
Tiffany, I am a much different person than you remember, I fear. I'm still pretty sassy but I don't get to practice it nearly as much. I use it on my family and they are not amused.
T and I are still together. There is that. But, you kind of knew that would be so, yes? We finally did seal the deal legally in 2013, though. I always said that I could not care less if I was married or not. It turns out that I lied. That paper is sacred to me. The day that I married was easily one of the best of my life. And now, lookee here....we have this doofus as our president and this truly scary paint-me-holier-than-thou for a vice president. Sorry, if this offends you. I suspect it doesn't. The Tiffany I remember was nobody's fool and a respectable researcher. I am pretty sure that you are just as flabbergasted as I am that Donald Trump managed to be president. So, you will understand my fear that he and his sidekick may just manage to make my marriage illegal again.
Or as T put it: "It's like we woke up one day in an alternative world where the asshats outnumber the rest of us.
I suppose I could be more of a pacifist and say that we should all work harder at getting along with each other. Sorry. I find it really hard to get along with people who cry over abortion but have no problem with putting babies in cages if their skin is the wrong color or if they have a beef with their parents.
It has always been my hope that you millennials would save us. And then, I see idiots like Candace Owens and Tomi Lahren emerging. They mostly just make me cranky. I see them speaking and have a compulsion to scream, "Stop chewing gum while you talk!" Yes, I can be that petty. They are chattering away like smug little idiots and my first problem is that they are chewing gum. I confess that watching Tomi doing that while wearing a toga also gets my goat. I have become that elderly old lady yelling at the television set that if I wanted to look at your loodies, I'd check out all those idiotic selfies that you insist on taking of yourself....
But, what bothers me the most is when I do research on them and see their past profiles. Candace's Pro-Democrat diatribes until she realized that she could get FAR more air time swinging for the Republicans. Tomi blathering on about how she can't wait for the weekend so that she can get drunk and find herself some "p". (I'm not sure what p is but I am a really good guesser....which leads me to um....pee tapes and now my head is in my hands.)
And yes, it does bother me that our first lady has old videos of herself floating around out there where she is wearing a rubber black bikini and slithering around on a bed with a whip in between her teeth while her hands are caught behind her back in golden handcuffs. It is just so....Mamie Eisenhower. So Eleanor Roosevelt.
This is the part where the Trumpers chide me about keeping the past in the past whilst chanting, Hillary's emails!.
Tiffany, I really hope that there are more of you out there than them. But, I dunno. I look around and see an alarming amount of sheep. I see a lot of people who have not done their homework. And that troubles me.
I guess I got off on a tangent, didn't I? Do you remember this tendency from my old blog? She still lives inside of me, rears up occasionally. I confess that I kind of like her. Let's get back to catching up.
So, yeah...I'm sick. Like, real sick. I have metastatic breast cancer. Stage 4. Incurable. It is treatable, or so I am told. I am currently on chemotherapy. I don't like it but I suspect that is pretty common. I have yet to meet anyone who proclaims to really enjoy their chemo treatments.
I don't know how long I have left. Some days, I feel as if death is sitting very close to me. Actually, this happens more at night. I wake up and feel it close to me. Other days, I feel....not terrible. I take Ibrance and I see all these commercials where the women taking this drug are doing things like attending their grandchild's ballet recital or going to the house at the lake for a weekend. I have never seen a commercial of them conked out on the sofa, sleeping like the dead at 7 p.m. at night. I have never seen them standing up and wincing because the pain in their bones is just that remarkable. They don't have hanks of their hair falling out or so many sores in their mouths that they can barely swallow. I want the Ibrance that they are taking...
It makes me cranky. As you can see, a LOT of things do that. But, you know what, Tiffany? A LOT of things make me happy, too.
I love watching sunsets now. I am just blown away by them. I want to grab strangers and yank them down to sit next to me and just..watch.
I love watching old movies and reading new books. I love the way that orange juice tastes like a slip of sunshine. I loved watching my heirloom tomatoes suddenly begin sprouting last Summer. The way that I could pull one off a stem and just take a bite of warm tartness.
I am almost crazy in love with T. I often look at her and wonder why I didn't notice earlier that she is always the smartest person in the room. I love the way her lip curls when she is reading. I find myself getting lost in her eyes in a way that I have not done for years. Knowing that we will say goodbye soon gives us both an urgent need for the other. We cling to each other. We laugh so much. We do cry sometimes, but it gets less and less so as time goes by.
I can't really talk too much about Lucy. I will start crying. It is still too hard. But, now that you are a mother, I think you probably understand this.
Tiffany, if you were here, we'd link arms and sit and gab. Instead, let's just stay in touch, okay? Tell me what you can. What you want to tell me. I want to hear it all. I want to hear how you got from A to Z.
It has started to snow again and my bones are aching, so I will go off and take a nap until T comes home. Yes, she is still teaching. No. She is not teaching at her beloved ghetto school. She retired, tried the corporate world, hated it, and went back to teaching. This time she is at a school that most teachers would prefer to be. But, you know T. She misses her kids. The ones who needed her the most. A sign of a true teacher. Yet, she is fine. Healthy. Still being a giver, just in other ways now.
Time for me to sleep with the other snowflakes now.
You take care, dear heart.
me
Oh, yes. I remember your name. I remember it because you said that it didn't suit you. You said that Tiffany sounded like some "overemotional teenager."
I disagreed. While, I do admit that Tiffany is not one of my favorite names....it is a very nice name. Kind of like mine and like most other people's names. We can't all be Saoirse, Claire, or Olivia. Some of us are just...Karen. Mary Ann. Gloria. Julie. Pam. I was named for a family member, as many are.
When I first saw your comment, I wanted to jump up and down and do a little dance. I had always liked you that much.
But, as you have probably already surmised, I don't do a lot of jumping or dancing anymore. Yes. Things are different now. Let me think. I do believe that the last time I checked in with you....hmmm...you were in medical school. In Baltimore. And we both shared a deep love of gardening.
So...there I go and turn my back and now you have become a MAMA! And your kids don't sound like little assholes, so I am really pleased. Plus, you gave them good names. Names to live up to, to chew on. I expected no less from you.
As I am sure you know, I have retired. I no longer am that working gal, struggling to wear high heels and skirts anymore. No. I pretty much live in sneakers now. And sweatpants in the winter. Capris in the Spring and Fall. Sundresses in the Summer.
Tiffany, I am a much different person than you remember, I fear. I'm still pretty sassy but I don't get to practice it nearly as much. I use it on my family and they are not amused.
T and I are still together. There is that. But, you kind of knew that would be so, yes? We finally did seal the deal legally in 2013, though. I always said that I could not care less if I was married or not. It turns out that I lied. That paper is sacred to me. The day that I married was easily one of the best of my life. And now, lookee here....we have this doofus as our president and this truly scary paint-me-holier-than-thou for a vice president. Sorry, if this offends you. I suspect it doesn't. The Tiffany I remember was nobody's fool and a respectable researcher. I am pretty sure that you are just as flabbergasted as I am that Donald Trump managed to be president. So, you will understand my fear that he and his sidekick may just manage to make my marriage illegal again.
Or as T put it: "It's like we woke up one day in an alternative world where the asshats outnumber the rest of us.
I suppose I could be more of a pacifist and say that we should all work harder at getting along with each other. Sorry. I find it really hard to get along with people who cry over abortion but have no problem with putting babies in cages if their skin is the wrong color or if they have a beef with their parents.
It has always been my hope that you millennials would save us. And then, I see idiots like Candace Owens and Tomi Lahren emerging. They mostly just make me cranky. I see them speaking and have a compulsion to scream, "Stop chewing gum while you talk!" Yes, I can be that petty. They are chattering away like smug little idiots and my first problem is that they are chewing gum. I confess that watching Tomi doing that while wearing a toga also gets my goat. I have become that elderly old lady yelling at the television set that if I wanted to look at your loodies, I'd check out all those idiotic selfies that you insist on taking of yourself....
But, what bothers me the most is when I do research on them and see their past profiles. Candace's Pro-Democrat diatribes until she realized that she could get FAR more air time swinging for the Republicans. Tomi blathering on about how she can't wait for the weekend so that she can get drunk and find herself some "p". (I'm not sure what p is but I am a really good guesser....which leads me to um....pee tapes and now my head is in my hands.)
And yes, it does bother me that our first lady has old videos of herself floating around out there where she is wearing a rubber black bikini and slithering around on a bed with a whip in between her teeth while her hands are caught behind her back in golden handcuffs. It is just so....Mamie Eisenhower. So Eleanor Roosevelt.
This is the part where the Trumpers chide me about keeping the past in the past whilst chanting, Hillary's emails!.
Tiffany, I really hope that there are more of you out there than them. But, I dunno. I look around and see an alarming amount of sheep. I see a lot of people who have not done their homework. And that troubles me.
I guess I got off on a tangent, didn't I? Do you remember this tendency from my old blog? She still lives inside of me, rears up occasionally. I confess that I kind of like her. Let's get back to catching up.
So, yeah...I'm sick. Like, real sick. I have metastatic breast cancer. Stage 4. Incurable. It is treatable, or so I am told. I am currently on chemotherapy. I don't like it but I suspect that is pretty common. I have yet to meet anyone who proclaims to really enjoy their chemo treatments.
I don't know how long I have left. Some days, I feel as if death is sitting very close to me. Actually, this happens more at night. I wake up and feel it close to me. Other days, I feel....not terrible. I take Ibrance and I see all these commercials where the women taking this drug are doing things like attending their grandchild's ballet recital or going to the house at the lake for a weekend. I have never seen a commercial of them conked out on the sofa, sleeping like the dead at 7 p.m. at night. I have never seen them standing up and wincing because the pain in their bones is just that remarkable. They don't have hanks of their hair falling out or so many sores in their mouths that they can barely swallow. I want the Ibrance that they are taking...
It makes me cranky. As you can see, a LOT of things do that. But, you know what, Tiffany? A LOT of things make me happy, too.
I love watching sunsets now. I am just blown away by them. I want to grab strangers and yank them down to sit next to me and just..watch.
I love watching old movies and reading new books. I love the way that orange juice tastes like a slip of sunshine. I loved watching my heirloom tomatoes suddenly begin sprouting last Summer. The way that I could pull one off a stem and just take a bite of warm tartness.
I am almost crazy in love with T. I often look at her and wonder why I didn't notice earlier that she is always the smartest person in the room. I love the way her lip curls when she is reading. I find myself getting lost in her eyes in a way that I have not done for years. Knowing that we will say goodbye soon gives us both an urgent need for the other. We cling to each other. We laugh so much. We do cry sometimes, but it gets less and less so as time goes by.
I can't really talk too much about Lucy. I will start crying. It is still too hard. But, now that you are a mother, I think you probably understand this.
Tiffany, if you were here, we'd link arms and sit and gab. Instead, let's just stay in touch, okay? Tell me what you can. What you want to tell me. I want to hear it all. I want to hear how you got from A to Z.
It has started to snow again and my bones are aching, so I will go off and take a nap until T comes home. Yes, she is still teaching. No. She is not teaching at her beloved ghetto school. She retired, tried the corporate world, hated it, and went back to teaching. This time she is at a school that most teachers would prefer to be. But, you know T. She misses her kids. The ones who needed her the most. A sign of a true teacher. Yet, she is fine. Healthy. Still being a giver, just in other ways now.
Time for me to sleep with the other snowflakes now.
You take care, dear heart.
me
Comments
Post a Comment