Tamper-proof.

Today brings the Headless Horseman, an assortment of Hello Kitty and Spongebob band-aids and new pants for Ruth. I went shopping because she took her turn last week to outgrow everything she owned, while Henry did the same the week before. I'm also trying to finalize the print order for our family photos. Nothing eight hundred dollars won't take care of. That's what it's going to cost to get enough pictures for everyone and for everyone they want to give them to. It's a little bit insane. The pictures turned out amazing though. I like them. I didn't expect to.

My hands are okay, superficial cuts. Gravely wounded ego, however. Ben won't discuss anything. Lochlan is done for the moment, or perhaps he's medicating himself into silence as a survival technique. I'm being completely obnoxious to both of them in an effort to force them to make peace. So in other words, I have tilted at windmills and jumped a shark or two and eventually they'll either make up on dry land or wait until the next practice when they're wearing cups and helmets. Then it's pretty much a free-for-all. For some reason the moment Ben pulls his goalie mask down over his face he gives himself permission to be ruthless. I'd almost rather he didn't play. Or maybe they should play on different teams. Maybe they should learn to get along because this is the way things are and it was their idea so all of the struggling seems so futile and a waste of love and energy for that matter.

And tension. Who needs a house full of tension?

Oh right, reap what we sow. I forgot.

Don't be delusional. I don't forget the important things, just dumb things like numbers, grocery items I need and random pop culture facts if they aren't things I'm interested in. Also, my underwear size. No idea. Ever. I always get ones that are too big. I can't explain it. I know my measurements, they never jive with the guidelines.

Certain things bother me, I guess. Mondays. People who don't like music. Tailgaters. Gatorade that is sealed with plastic and then there's still a foil barrier inside the cap that requires PJ to open it for me. Lochlan when he isn't perfect. When he drinks. Ben's absolute refusal to wade into the current argument between Lochlan and I. Is he waiting for the game tonight or has he completely missed the boat?

I'm certainly not going to bring it up to find out.

If he is choosing to actively ignore our argument, well, then that's a phenomenal turn of events in this house.

Tonight I think I'll choose to believe that, and Monday can end on a good note. Especially if someone opens this Gatorade for me. I want to bring it to the game.

Bereft Saturdays (I'm not the only one stuck in 1983)

He held the bottle out slowly until it was resting against my bottom lip, his eyebrows raising in a silent question, offering me Stoli. Stoli at one o'clock in the afternoon.

I shook my head. He frowned and took a swig from the bottle without taking his eyes off me before resuming pointing it at me like a glass finger of accusation.

You're so uptight. You need to relax.

Drinking in the middle of the day isn't going to do that for me, Lochlan.

The kids are with Caleb, you can do whatever you want. He's baiting me now and I'm not biting.

I don't need that. You don't need it either.

Maybe it helps me cope. It's this or I throttle your little neck and go crazy wanting you at the same time. So instead I drink. Your husband does too, only too bad, he can't control how much. Sucks to be big Ben, I guess.

Stop it, Lochlan.

He put his hand to my face.

You write what you feel, Bridge. And it makes me fucking sad. Sad that I can't be who you want me to be. I never did enough. Never sought retribution. Never got rid of him. I know. I did everything wrong. I didn't protect you and I have paid for that my whole life. I took you when you were still a child and made you worry about things no child should have to worry about. I was selfish and now I don't get to have what I want ever again. Just rewards, hey? Karma for the guy who could have had everything if he had waited for it to be given to him, instead of taking it. And you call Caleb the self-gratifying one. Jesus.

He took another drink. I'm watching the bubbles rise to the bottom of the bottle and thinking he's going to finish it. He looks at me and puts it down, screwing the top back on, putting it up in the cupboard.

I'm staring off into space, fighting to escape from his confessions. It makes me so uncomfortable when he isn't perfect. Like everything is lost and we're doomed. If Lochlan can't deal with something, no one's going to be able to.

Two and a half years, Bridge. You don't love him the same way. I know that. I can see that. Just stop this. The longer it goes on the more you're going to hurt him anyway.

Escape isn't handy, this is going to happen the hard way.

Go tell your brother you're trying to undermine your joint investment.

He's not my brother, he's the only thing standing in my way.

I said nothing more. I'm standing there mentally drained. Lochlan is waiting for me to dissolve this marriage because I am rightfully his.

First come, first served. Finders, keepers.

Original sin.

Ben isn't standing in your way, Lochlan, I am. It comes out in a rush and I begin to cry because God, this is so fucking stressful and I feel torn apart twenty-four hours a day and they pretend it isn't happening and hardly speak sometimes and then other times I feel like an experiment that they are watching for progress, or maybe watching for failure, united against me. This sucks. This really fucking sucks.

End it then. Choose.

Don't even go there, Lochlan. Don't become a martyr like Jake.

I'm stronger than he was. I've been looking after you since you were afraid of the dark.

The dark back then was nothing compared to the dark now, Loch.

I know, baby. I can deal with it.

Someone needs to protect her from you. I go to the cupboard and get the bottle back out, unscrew the top, fumbling, the cap drops and rolls away under the counter. I take a long drink too. It burns like hell and then it doesn't burn anymore at all.

Protect her? Who?

Twelve-year-old Bridget.

That was a lifetime ago.

I am well aware of that.

Then stop it.

You first.

He grabbed the bottle back from me and took another long swallow. He got right down in my face and pushed the bottle at my hands and waited to speak until we were eye to eye and I would look at him.

Leave him and I will.

I took the bottle and left, reeling. Not paying attention. Smashed right into Ben on the way down the hall and dropped the bottle between us on the floor. Vodka and glass smashed against our legs and the walls and all over the floor. He orders me not to move, since I am barefoot. I wait while he heads to the kitchen to get something to clean up the mess.

When he comes back I am sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor, holding all of the glass in my hands, blood dripping between my fingers as I clutch the pieces tightly, blood landing on the floor in circles, dots that mark the places on the map of my life, to show where I have been.

I pack the glass into my left hand, holding it tightly, it is piled high and pieces keep sliding off. With my right hand I connect all of the dots. Ben drops the broom and the dust pan and reaches out, squeezing my elbow which makes me drop the glass and I swear at him as he lifts me out of the circle of sparkling carnage that I have created. I put my arms around his neck and look over his shoulder at my handiwork.

I hope they leave the broken heart that I drew to connect the dots. That was something I really didn't expect.

The love/hate relationship.

Caleb's method is to take what he wants, no matter the cost or the difficulty. He is gratification personified.

Cole's method was to share the wealth, permit and deny as he saw fit based on the weather.

Jacob's method was to stand in front of me, fighting my battles for me while I remained mired in insanity, unable to help myself, hellbent on forcing him to be tested repeatedly to make sure he would hold. He didn't.

Benjamin's method is to stand behind me and watch my back while I do the work, catching me before I hit my head when I fall but forcing me to get back up without his help, fighting my own way out of everything. Even when he didn't want to. Even when he knows I'm suddenly running the wrong way. As usual he does the opposite of everyone else.

Lochlan continues to live in denial and does nothing, attempting to live in a past that isn't ours any more. Pretending that nothing ever went wrong and then got worse. So much worse. Hoping that he would wake up from a bad dream only he isn't sleeping. Denial that saw him calmly, almost cold in his usual logic, take me by the arm and march me off to the library yesterday where I was locked in until Ben could get home to deal with me. Because I slid a little. Okay, maybe a lot. Ben can deal.

Because Lochlan can't. Thirty years later I still don't understand why he can't but he has no capacity to deal with emotional outbursts past his own, or past ones that signal immediate danger to me. Otherwise?

Nothing.

He has poured his heart out. I have seen what lies within it. So why can't he manage me? Why can't he deal with my outbursts or my pain or my hyperactive, predictable slides into total ruin like yesterday? I trigger them on purpose, in order to see if I ever get anywhere. I trigger them on purpose because I'm a masochist too. If I am feeling pain then I'm feeling something. He thinks I am ridiculous. He won't dare wade into tragedy or mental health because he doesn't know what to do and yet he is affected as much as anyone. This is simply how he gets through things.

It's frustrating to me, because I'm the emotional one in this family.

I know. Surprise!

And for further surprise and admissions today, Lochlan is wearing on. Wearing thin. He's softening some as time passes. Just not enough but I'm starting to see something. And I'm getting a bit better too. Thanks to time. Thanks to relocating. Thanks to Ben, who became an unlikely but welcome buffer between Lochlan and I, keeping us where we should be. Mostly apart.

The very first thing I ever wrote about Lochlan in this journal was about how we knew right off the bat we weren't meant to be together, but that we could be friends. Nice to know there are some promises in this lifetime that are so easy we can keep them in our sleep. 

Today he continues to tell me it's because he is perfect, and I must be jealous of that.

I just nod and say nothing, because it's his attempt to maintain that perfection that drove me away in the first place.

Ben arrived home just in time to see me throwing books at walls and cursing Lochlan a thousand times over for his refusal to help me EVER. After he was finished laughing he suggested I maybe try exposing myself to my memories just a little bit less rather than barging into them head on as if I am capable of withstanding them or some other foolish idea. That I am brave, but brave accompanies crazy and it isn't Lochlan's job to police my days simply because he works from home. So what could I do tomorrow that might work out a little better? (For the record I hate it when Ben does pretend-psychotherapy.) I said I would be nice to Lochlan. He laughed again. I said I would maybe not spend six hours watching home movies and listening to Jacob's favorite songs on his ipod until I was batshit-nutbars.

Ben doesn't believe me.

Not for a second.

Everyone else does, but especially Lochlan, who was very interested to hear what my plans would be for today.


Now do you get it?

No, Of course you don't. There is always more to our history but I do have plans right now so I need to go. I was only three quarters of the way through Jacob's music when yesterday turned to shit.

Write off.

Yep. One of those nights when everything totally fucking fails and I'm left in almost-tears standing behind the hallway door while Caleb tucks the children into bed because legally I am forced to let him in my house and because emotionally it remains the closest the children can get to memories of Cole. It doesn't matter how many surrogate dads, stepfathers or hunkles I give them, Caleb remains the strongest link to their hearts, and he is the one who shares my son's blood.

I am forcing my eyes open, head pressed against the cool wood because if I close them it's October 2005 and Cole is still in control.

He did a better job of things than I am doing. So is Caleb, for that matter, speaking in soothing tones to the children, willing them off to dreamland where monsters like him don't exist. I won't be so lucky.

Taller on acetate.

(The photograph-taking was painful, almost. I'm mindful that the beautiful brown summer has faded from my skin and I revert to alabaster marble, blue-veined and translucent, sickly thin and without my security-blanket mermaid hair. PJ didn't want to wear a button-down shirt. At the last minute, Henry's dress pants failed to fit him anymore and Ruth waged a brief fit, wanting to wear stripes instead of solids. Ben's cowlick made its annual appearance and no amount of convincing could make it lie flat and New-Jake kept asking anyone who stood still why he was in the picture when he had only been here for a couple of months, to the point where even Sam told him to stop talking and hush. Lochlan's hair curled, much to his dismay and Christian was late so we were all scowling in the earliest shots since we had waited so long the whole idea was almost scrapped altogether. 

This was a sitting, purchased from the photographer as a fundraiser for the kids' recreation club. Family portraits. Only instead of four, the children asked if we could have everyone. The photographer quickly suggested he come to us when I phoned to confirm our appointment and ask how much room he had for we have seventeen in our family, on any given day.

We all trooped out to the cliff through the damp grass and were arranged in a clutch, with the shortest people in front and the tallest in back but also in order of importance so somehow Lochlan and Ben stand on either side of me and do not appear to have the usual six-inch height difference between them because Ben was standing back a bit further. The children are in the front. I was placed dead-center (har) and Schuyler was vaguely miffed that he and Daniel are on opposite sides. 

It was a first, and I think we pulled it off. Everyone was smiling. Everyone was looking at the camera.  No one moved and blurred, no one photo-bombed (this is an extreme sport in our household) and everyone was still speaking when it was over. Kind of like wedding pictures, the whole endeavor was taken very seriously. It's a family picture, and we're a family if ever there was one. I'm going to suggest we make it an annual event.

And in the picture, my hands are hidden. The children are standing in front of me so my arms aren't visible anyway. They are crossed behind my back and one hand is holding on to Ben's little finger and the other hand is holding Lochlan's hand. It doesn't mean anything to you but it means everything to me. I had to keep my balance somehow, I was standing on their toes.)

Princess under construction.

Please excuse the mess and watch your step. Oh and this is SO NOT the design it's going to be. I picked something cheery for my mom for a temporary thing. Because mom likes cheery and she likes blue.

True to form the final design will be straight out of a memento mori because Bridget likes despair and she likes black.

-------------------------------------

Update 7:00 pm: Got rid of the blue. And the yellow, thank fuck. Never said I was a web designer. You can watch my changelog and laugh while I cry.

See, believe, forget me
My playful thoughts contrive
Nights concede to reckless
Versions of myself
All my real friends gather
Stay my wanting for a shield
I can't see you real

All I hate and all I fear
I bring it back to you, do you feel it
The night is gone and all we get
A picture for a poem, and we lose her

At one point I recall reaching up into the air and pressing an imaginary button that would freeze time. He laughed.

It isn't possible, little one.

Yes it is!

He knows better. Don't say it, don't think it, just let me have my tries. Let me think I can do this. Let me do everything I can, and yet we are powerless. Time just keeps on fumbling toward the cliff. Never smooth, it catches and slips and tumbles in a roar of chaos. It will kill you and it will take you for a leisurely ride. It will be counted and spent and saved by those who have learned the secret. They can manage their time.

I can't do that. I don't know how.

People have tried to count it for me, and I fight back. Don't do that. Don't you dare. This is MY time and you can't tell me there is too much or too little. You can't count down for me. You can't count away from me.

Leave me alone.

Some things can't be taught, I guess. Today I am thinking of that moment. I'm thinking of another as well, standing in the woods yesterday as the rain poured down on my head. It was so quiet. I could see for miles into the dark, the trees placed five or six feet apart, everything covered with moss, unspoiled heaven on the side of a mountain trail. I was watching for bears, and yet I was watching to see if my brain would slide down out of one ear and go galloping off into the forest, never to be seen again.

It didn't and so I brought it home and shook it. It still has the rattle. On a good day it sounds like bells, and on a bad day it sounds like death.

City fair.

I think everyone in the house today is exhausted from a seven hour odyssey of turkey, stuffing, gravy, children, stars, wine, cake and television. They might sleep all day. I held court at the dining room table until the wine ran out and we went home. Ben assumed I was trashed but it was mildly so and I remained awake until I felt tired, ate something and took some aspirin and woke up in terrific spirits. That might also be because Ben did the early-morning dog walk and I got to lounge in our big bed, drifting on a half-awake dream until he came back with cold skin and then I was wide awake.

So now I get to have coffee and do laundry and he has gone back to sleep. I don't have a switch like that. I am like the sun. Up. Then down. There's no option to check out halfway through the day, though yesterday we crawled into the bed at three and snoozed for forty minutes. It was glorious. I don't feel tired.

For once.

I'm sure I'm running on artificial cheer today. Keep it light, keep it tight. Ben returns to work tomorrow and the thought of that makes me so tremendously sad but I do feel like I had time with him, time that atones for the winter apart, and time to reconnect as lovers that we haven't had for a while. It was amazing and I'm so grateful for it for and for him. I can't even articulate here how incredible it was to just hang out with him for the first time in ages.

Thankful would be the word.

Happy Thanksgiving if you're Canadian or love someone who is.

I don't do red wine so well. Goodnight,

B is for birdbrain.

I am lingering over coffee this morning, sitting at my desk looking at the new offerings on Coach, reading about Atlanta's goalie and marveling that our Thanksgiving week will see the rescue of miners trapped in Chile (except for that one guy with the wife AND the girlfriend who discovered each other at the site). Because sometimes I skim the headlines and sometimes I let the sand flood into my nose and ears because I can only focus my energies on being a good mother, wife and friend and really the remainder of the solution to the world's problems are something that can be solved with money. The hard part is keeping that money clean and out of the hands of the corrupt.

Good luck to you, if you are so idealistic as to think otherwise.

(No worries. I have no illusions as to how uneducated, unwordly and unsophisticated I am. You don't need to email me to tell me these things. I hear them every single day.)

What I would like today is this cup of coffee to remain bottomless, and I would also like a Ferris wheel in the middle of the woods so that I would know what it feels like to be a falling leaf. Dipping, swirling on the wind, floating gently to the floor of the forest path in pure silence. Ferris wheel music is an abomination, though over the years they have changed from circus standards to classic rock and I'm not sure if that's an improvement or just an intrusion. Mostly I think the quiet wheels are best but you need to experience it to understand what I mean.

You have to know the right people, and you have to ride the wheel in the dark after all the customers have left but before all the lights are shut down. It's worth it. Bonus points if you can see the beach as you approach the top.

Double bonus points if anyone actually appreciates my Saturday morning rambles besides Dalton. Triple bonus points if you think you're so amazing that you judge me for admitting that I don't pay attention to reality and you can actually fault me for it at this point in my life.

Saturdays are our Sundays, I believe. The whole day is a blank slate. Kind of like my brain.