Ups and Downs

[ciroccoj]

Yesterday:

• Justin's ballet class: good.
  
  
• Chris coming home from call: not so good at first. He hadn't slept, didn't know how long he needed to sleep, my temper started to rise as I faced yet another god damn post-call 'hanging around while Chris sleeps' day. I was finally able to cool down long enough to explain to him that I didn't really care how long he was going to sleep; I just needed to get a time, so that we wouldn't be hanging around all day waiting for him to wake up and seeing that he wasn't really up to being awake and dealing with his inevitable headache and irritability and him going back to sleep for "a while" and blah blah blah.
  
  He said, "Till 4pm?"
  
  Great!!
  
  
• Boys and I spent a pretty good day puttering about. I got some housework done and they set up an elaborate game of Magic that took up the entire living room floor. Everywhere you looked, Magic cards. It was actually kind of pretty, in a horrified What have you kids DONE? kind of way.
  
  
• 4pm, Chris got up and was relatively OK.
  
  
• Dinner at a Japanese restaurant. Mostly a wonderful experience. Yummy teriyaki, cooked right in front of us, which thrilled the boys to no end. I think the cook was pretty amused by them; they kept saying thinkgs like, "He's SO GOOD!! How can he not get burned?!" and "Bravo!! Bravo!!!" and clapping a lot.
  
  The one sad spot was at the beginning, when Justin wanted to sit next to Chris, Daniel got to sit next to him instead, and Justin burst into tears. I figured he was just missing Chris, and we decided to seat him between the two of us and cuddle him a bit instead of telling him to get a grip. At one point I asked, "What do you need to feel better?"
  
  "For Luli to not be dead," he sobbed, and I nearly cried myself. We both held him for a while, until he finally settled down and was able to take an interest in the food.
  
  I don't know why he was thinking of her at the time, but it might have had something to do with being at a restaurant. My mom used to tell them, when they misbehaved at the table at her house, that if they couldn't behave at home, she couldn't take them to a fancy restaurant. She had planned on taking them some place really elegant this year. It never happened.
  
  It's odd. The more time passes, the more normal it feels that she's gone. And yet, paradoxically, the reality keeps hitting us, in many ways more sharply now than at the time of her death. I keep thinking there's so many things going on right now that would have thrilled her: Justin loving school, learning his letters, and back in ballet; Daniel in choir, reading on his own, and speaking passable French; me interested in my classes, in the Law Review, taking Daniel out of school on Fridays, and making his Halloween costume; the leaves turning colours... so much that I wish I could tell her.
  
  Well. Before this gets any worse, let's stop right there.

On the agenda for today: Chris is on call again, and it's raining, so the boys and I will probably stay home and putter. We may need to go out for groceries and stop by Fabricland, because I broke my second last sewing machine needle and I think I'm running out of the shiny black fabric for Daniel's costume. I think I might also stop by Guy's to talk about an inscription for my mom's niche and pick up some photos of her to scan in and send to our relatives in Chile.

And we're going to read together and do some crafts and have some quiet family bonding time. I think we need it. I know I do.