Starts and Stops

I finally dove in and bought some Christmas presents. I had planned to do some last night, but a stupid argument about holiday budgeting completely killed my holiday spirit for the moment and I decided to stay in instead. Today, though, after some discussion with Eric, I went out and got the boys their gifts from us. Each of them will get a Lego set (for Sam and for Gabe; I didn’t pay that much, though) and a play set (for Gabe and for Sam), along with some Star Wars action figures for their stockings; I’ll get some other stocking stuffers later. I got their Christmas sweaters, too; that’s a new tradition I started last year. Eric and I also decided to get a board game as a family gift, and after some deliberation, we decided on Life.

So that’s them, except that Eric’s dad is sending gift money, and Eric and I rather thought that at the boys’ ages, we should probably use some of it to make sure they had at least one “item” under the tree that they could associate with their grandpa. More shopping there, then. Then there’s Eric, though I’ve already got one thing for him. (Gee, Eric; I wonder if you can guess? )

I opted not to run today; my legs are still a little sore from yesterday, so a rest day was in order. Of course, that means that I’ve stuck myself with either a treadmill or a darkness run tomorrow, but it seemed the prudent course. It’s a shame, though; I could have used the cheering up, or at least some mental blankness. I’ve been feeling a sadness on the horizon of my mind for a bit now, one I couldn’t really identify until today, when something about the grey skies suddenly triggered the memory: Tuesday will be the third anniversary of Rita’s death.

Rita’s memory haunts me in a way that even the passings of my own blood kin frequently doesn’t, and I think it’s because there was unfinished business of a sort there. She and I had our moments of tension, usually related to her attempts to care for us and my own issues of feeling a bit smothered by it. Most of that waned, but there were residual traces left behind in our relationship. Eric told me after her death that she had once sadly confided to him that she wished her daughters-in-law liked her. I felt like scum when he told me, and I couldn’t believe that he waited until after she was gone to do so. I had no more chances to try to show her that I really loved her.

Three years have passed, and life has gone on, as life does. The family has changed in her absence; Thanksgiving was held in a different state, and I don’t think anybody will be making her sausage balls for Christmas, though she deliberately passed on that and all her other traditional recipes as she was dying, down to which pans and dishes needed to be used in the preparation. Actually, darn it, I’m making those sausage balls this year. I’m making her pumpkin roll, and her meatballs, and…anything else I can find in the little piles of recipe cards she gave to me, all signed “Mom Rita,” though I never called her that. Oh, I wish I had. That might be the best thing I can do this year to console myself and try, in some futile way, to resolve the unresolved.

Rita, I miss you. That’s such an impotent little phrase, and it doesn’t begin to cover what I’m feeling or how I wish I could express it. It’s all I can say, so I’ll leave it at that.