Where to go from here?

I had wanted to get on and post a recipe, to share in the swapping of yummy food.  That is the place my mind went, "I just want to care about food", but I am just not in a place yet to wrap my mind around writing anything other than what I am going through in my life right now. And I have not been in a place where I can focus on putting elements of a meal together.  Since beginning this blog it has always been a place I have shared how I felt in the moment. Right now the best recipe I can give, or hope to look for, is a recipe that gives me the ingredients on where to go from here.  I don't know what they are. I think for me it may start with admitting to myself that if I want to actually post something, this blog will have to look a little bit different than it did before.  I had hoped to keep up with these Whatever Wednesday posts because I so look forward to them.  I like to stick to things I start and in my mind every Wednesday I think "oh, I should post today" but there are going to be days where it may be like pulling teeth to stay on topic. I have loved the topics that Shay and Alissa have come up with and I don't want to throw a wrench into the plans, so if I don't make it back for a bit, I hope to pick up again soon.

 If you have been following and had chosen to stay for the quirky, random, spastic posts that often find their way on here then you may not find what you have found before, at least not for a couple of weeks.  I have written many different posts since last week. Some I have considered publishing, others I have almost completely discarded because of the mess of jumbled emotions that I do not even want to have to read back to myself.  I have used the blank slate of a computer screen to try to record my thoughts, to try to figure out what is going on in my head, and to try to process what it is that will actually let me feel something other than nothing. Then there have been things I have read through that had been written long before this blog came about, things that I wrote in many different phases of my family's (of my own) journey through addiction over the past ten+ years. Some of the words are hopeful, some sad, many angry. The angry ones only seem harsh now and I don't know what to do with them.  I think to myself, I can't share that with anyone. Though a logical part of my mind (or really a good friend who helps me think logically right now) knows anger is normal, but another part of me now can't even understand it. I'm sure it will come, I am sure I will feel angry for all of this too. Right now though I am still just trying to figure it out. I hope that you will bear with me while I explore that some.  I think for now I am going to consider posting some of what I have written on here, to share with others some of our story; the prior parts and the new ones. I had always planned on sharing more about that side of my life at some point anyways, I just never knew it would be due to what has now happened. I thought I had plenty of time to get around to it without feeling like I was bombarding the world with what addiction looks like from the outside in, when you have a front row seat to a show you wish you could walk out of. I hate the fact that it has to be told from this side of my brother's life now. I hate that he is not here to read what I shared.  I can remember asking him not long ago if he was fine with me sharing how I felt. He was always a very open person and so I knew he wouldn't mind but I wanted to know if there was anything he wanted me to leave out (his answer was no). I also remember his reaction after he had a chance to read that first post I shared on the subject. I wish now there had been more I shared with him; more of the hopeful parts anyways. I pray that when I share them here, or write them down privately for my own purposes, that they find their way to him so he knows just how much hope there was, so he knows how much I love him. 

Our Middle

What have I been spending time doing? I have been spending time trying to figure it all out, trying to understand, wanting to make myself get on here and let it all flow through my fingers. So I sit down to write; something that I have so wanted to do in these past two weeks and yet something I have been dreading. I wasn't sure if I would post this at all. Part of me even briefly considered just giving up on blogging altogether... 1.) because I wasn't sure if I wanted to or even how to go about posting this and 2.) because I knew that I also couldn't go on blogging if I didn't write about it, because to just continue on as if the world was as it always had been was an impossibility. But so often I have wanted to come on here; to lose myself in someone else's space for a while and then to share in my own.  I knew I couldn't give this space up because this blog and this community have given me so much.  I have found solace, friendship, warmth and support.

I also found it strange that of all the weeks for the post topic to be about our biggest heartbreak that would be last week, in the week when the world dropped out from under our feet. In the week that I experienced my biggest heartbreak and devastation. My brother died last Saturday. It was sudden, it was unexpected, yet it was also something we have spent much of our lives dreading in the back of our minds. If you had read this post you may understand more as to why. These are words my dad had put down, that "although solid in his recovery, the beast that is addiction caused him to relapse one final time." Final is something that I hate having to use in my vocabulary. I don't even know how to grasp the concept of that when it comes to my brother. There is a part of me that wants to cry every minute or scream at the top of my lungs, but my body won't let me. There is a part of me that wants to feel angry, but I can't. A part of me that wants to feel that at  he is at peace, and while I know he is, I am not there yet. Instead, I don't really feel anything.  Not a numbness really, just nothing. There is such a large part of me that still doesn't believe it is real. A part of me that is choosing to do and plan and prepare so that I don't have to fully face the understanding of what is happening.  I don't know if that is best but everyone says that people grieve in all kinds of different ways. That's what they keep telling me anyways.

For now, I do not know what else to say so instead I will share with you what I had already written and read at his funeral...

There is a quote I read in a book by Sarah Dessen that says, “There has to be a middle. Without it nothing can ever truly be whole."

From the second I saw this quote I thought “well, yes, that’s definitely the truth. So fitting for my brother.” 

John Wayne, you were the epitome of the middle child, maybe because you had it coming and going.  During the week I got to play the oldest while Patrick was the baby. And there you were in the middle.  Officially you and I were supposed to share that role but when Jaclynn was with us I still think I let you go ahead and take it, since you never really liked to share much anyways.  And with your wit and charm made it all your own.

Though our family will never physically be whole anymore we will always be whole.  You will always still be there in the middle. In the middle of all of us.  We just have an extra bit of crazy with us now, which is fitting given we are and always will be "those crazy Fosters.” 

 

I don’t know if you knew this but sometime in the past year I started to twirl my hair.  I thought “well I have joined the crazy hair twirling side of the sibling group now”.  When I found myself twirling the hair on the back of my head (John Wayne did this so much as a kid his hair always stood straight up on the back of his head, no matter how much you tried to control it) in the car just a few days ago I thought "oh man, I’m really in for it now." But it was nice, because now anytime I find myself pausing with my hands in my hair I will be able to stop and think of you.  I can still remember when you had that alfalfa pulled so tightly on the top of your head that when you shaved your hair off you had a huge bald spot back there because the hairs had just been magically stuck up in place from all of your incessant twirling.  It was a good look, but it will never beat the hair do that got you escorted out of chapel when we were at TCS.  

I can still remember the scene you caused walking in with your bright blond Eminem hair bobbing down the isle. Mimi had to come pick you up and take you to get it dyed back brown before you were allowed to return to school.  I can only imagine what she had to say when you walked in up there.  I can just hear her now, after she gives you a big hug, saying “Oh John Wayne!!” and then licking her fingers and trying to rub your tattoos to see if maybe they are just sharpie. Because, while I assume that God gave you a good little spit shine on some of those tattoos, mainly the ones you tried to give yourself, he also let you keep a good majority of them.  You would be one who would make it into heaven with most of his tattoos still lingering. I know you got to keep the one for May May.

John Wayne, please know that she will always know you and that you will always be a part of who she is and that we are blessed to have one of the best parts of you here with us.  It’s not as if we cant see you in her already.  She was beat boxing to me and Wally just the other night. She definitely has a good bit of her daddy in her. And while that may scare some of us, we know that she will be alright.  Because when that wild hair of a two year old becomes a wild hair of a young adult she will have the best of both sides of this world in her corner. You could not have picked a better person to be the mother of your child and she will have Kaley to look towards as an example, but she will also have you up there helping God keep watch over her wild ways in order guide her feet to a solid and steady foundation with which to walk from.  

I love you.  We all love you and you will always be with us, because you are our middle!

Daddy's Girl

"We stand together in front of the mirror, one of us old and the other no longer young. I think of the ties that bind us: our sense of family, our sense of place, our sense of fairness. The old man next to me stands tall, walks softly, and says nothing, even when his heart is full of feeling." -Michelle Morris

I can tell you right now I will probably not make it through this post without tears. Yesterday I spent the day celebrating the man that I have been blessed to call my dad. My father is the most amazing man I know aside from my husband; they share the title.  It was very hard to imagine that there could be someone that might share that spot with my dad.  He held that place in my life, alone, for many years. Everyone says that I am so much like my mother (which may be true) but I am forever my father's daughter. Just ask anyone who has so much as questioned that my daddy was anything less than the hero in my life; apparently, you do not want to know the wrath that follows.  This is something I did not know about myself until someone pointed it out to me after a discussion on if my father would come and find me like Liam Neeson did for his on-screen daughter in Taken. Sure as shoot he would and no one better try to dispute that claim!

My dad has a stillness that does not run very much through many of his children, but I would like to think that I have received many of my qualities from him. His determination at never giving up on those he loves is amazing. He has had every reason to give up on some of them and yet he stands, solid, against all that the world may throw at him. In a world where it seems like people are so quick to give in when the going gets tough, he shows me what it really means to hang on through it all - even if your heart is bleeding - and the reasons why, sometimes, it is so important. He is a shield. A barrier, barring out the world and trying to keep it from attacking, too strongly, those he loves.  He is a man of few words, surrounded by people who love to talk. Yet when he has something to say, it is as if the world stills for a second, just to lean in and listen. He is strong and noble, the very essence of what a man should aspire to be. I am so amazingly blessed by the example that he set for me and the fact the because of him, I know that my children will be able to be led be the same solid assurance in their own father. 

This man- the thoughtful one, the loving one, the funny one, the strong one- is a man who carries many titles on his back (good thing he is fit for an "old guy"). He is the provider. A lawyer who will probably never know the definition of the word retirement. It just really is not a part of who is. Yet, he is also a surfer.

A kick-your-shoes-off, sand-in-your-toes, paddles-the-lake-everyday (if he can't be on the ocean) dedicated boarder. He is a son, a husband, a friend. He is the best grandpa "Surf Daddy" that any fairy princess grand kid could ever ask for.

But the title that I love most, the one that he will be until I take my last breath, is my daddy. I love him to the end of the world and back again and am blessed beyond measure to call him mine.

*Even if he did give me my red eyes and fair skin, I still wouldn't trade it for the world!

House Elves and Engineering

Want this!! 

I find it especially fitting for this week considering the little cleaning that typically gets done has been left by the wayside as I have been in planning mode all weekend and am in teaching mode all week. 

I have been a little MIA the last couple days and probably will continue to be for most of this week. I am teaching an engineering camp this week to a group of boys going into first through third grade.  Yes, I said engineering! No, I do not know anything about engineering! But I am learning. And, the kids seem to enjoy camp so far, which is all I was hoping for. It started as a potential photography camp, which morphed into a games camp, which then morphed into Lego camp, which has now become engineering camp. Yesterday, we were civil engineers and designed newspaper forts and then today we were chemical engineers. It was a messy day, but have no fear nothing was blown up! Except for maybe my gumption... I am wiped. 

I am missing this blogging world though, so while I take the time to go and stalk some of the posts I have been missing out on (since upon making it home last night I did nothing but crash) enjoy a pic that I am hoping made my bro very happy.  Those fine little children would be my nieces and nephew. The ones at the bottom (other than me) are my sister, who takes claim to the two kids on the right and my other bro, who takes claim to the lil' one on the left. These people make me happy (and on occasion drive me stark raving bonkers; including the one in the bottom middle)! 

Somebody's Son

I wasn't sure how to go about today's post. I never planned to discuss politics. And for the most part that is not where this will go but it might be in there so if any of this offends you, well, I'm sorry!

This is my "little" brother. He is currently deployed in Afghanistan. He just received a promotion and was made the spotlight for his platoon's Facebook page. They do that occasionally to keep loved ones updated on their soldiers. I could not be more proud of him!! He has truly forged a path for himself far different than any my family would have thought for him but he is making it his own and he is becoming such an amazing man. This post is about him and men and woman like him.

I will never know what it is like to be a soldier. I will never have to know because of people like him who willingly sign up to serve our country. So when, on the day that we have dropped him off to deploy, my mom happens to see a certain bumper sticker on the back of a car in the Cracker Barrel parking lot I may get somewhat offended.  I have seen many a bumper sticker with all kinds of differing opinions. I am all for them! We are all different, we all have our opinions and mine may not be the same as yours and I believe that is ok. We are a free country, formed on differences. However, when your bumper sticker reads "If you support the war, feel free to send your children to the front lines." I may feel a little hurt.  Especially to have my mother see that, on that day, was heartbreaking. She is a little more forth coming with her opinions than me, but on that day I don't think she even knew what to say. It had already been a morning of many tears. Her youngest child just went to the front lines and someones car is practically begging for him to go.

The army was never something discussed with Patrick. My parents were sure that he was going to end up playing golf, coaching golf, doing something golfish.  He is an amazing golfer (and now he is an amazing soldier).  They had tried to send my other brother to military school (the straighten your shiz out kind) but he only lasted a day. That was the last the military was really discussed with any form of connection to my brothers.

Patrick decided on his own that he was going to enlist. He had met a former marine and that is where his story began. Politics was never something very openly discussed in our home, we were allowed to form our own opinions. My parents backgrounds differed from each others in many ways and one side was never promoted or slandered.

When any person chooses to enlist, it is for reasons the resonate with them. Just because someones family may believe in the military and all it stands for doesn't mean that their child will automatically decide to enlist and just because they may not believe in it doesn't mean their child won't. At 18 we are all adults, all legally able to decide our own path in life. My brother chose his. I ask that you not diminish that decision. He is my brother, he is my parents son, he is a young man forming a life for himself and we as people should support that. I choose to stand behind him, not only because he chooses to stand in front but because he is my brother and I love him. If I could change your bumper sticker I would like to have it read, "Whether or not you support the war, that person on the front lines is someones son or daughter."

That man up there in the green will always be this kid to me. The boy who was my bud, the "baby" of the family and the one with a huge heart. He is the man who loves his nieces and nephew like nobody's business and the one who is becoming one of the best and strongest men I know. Please do not wish him harm! He is my brother.