He Was the Best Boy-o

We lost our pup last week. He was almost 13, in a breed that usually lives 12-14 years, and I am so grateful he spent all his years with us. Still I wish we'd had yet more time. It's unfair that dogs live their lives so much faster than us and that the puppy I cradled in my lap became older than me, in a sense. It's one of the hardest things about giving your heart to them.

We don't know anything about his birth. He was found wandering in some local woods when he was six months old and came to us through an animal rescue agency. He was Australian shepherd, and "shrug"--as in "we don't know what else he was." 

I used to say his breed was O'Neill because he was one of a kind. He had the sweetest, most expressive butterscotch eyebrows, and when he trotted ahead of me on the leash, his ears bounced like the wings of a bird struggling to take flight, and I half-expected his them to lift off his head and take off into the sky like some sort of Terry Gilliam animation. 

When he was young, he was an amazing Frisbee dog, with a startling vertical leap. If he'd been human, people would have paid to watch him high jump, or slam dunk. It was like gravity had no hold over him. 

Even as he got older, he was still such a stellar athlete--when I took up running (when I was 46 and he was 10 or 70, depending on how you count), he went with me, making me feel safe about running isolated trails "alone" because no one would dare approach me without permission and keeping me going even though I hate running, because I didn't want to deprive him of the joy. A perfect running coach--his joy was infectious and almost made me understand why others love running. 

He took his job as protector of the family extremely seriously, even though we didn't always make it easy on him. We just wouldn't all stay in one place--which made it much harder to herd us. 

 
Right before the pandemic hit, O'Neill did the dog-equivalent of tearing his ACL when he leapt at a squirrel, and we opted not to put him through surgery, but just to try and limit his movement so he didn't re-injure himself.  Accepting physical limitations was hard on him--he's stubborn like me. 

We mostly succeeded in keeping him from hurting himself, since three of his Bryants were home with him for most of 2020 and the start of 2021. We could see that his doggy dreams had come true--all he'd ever wanted for us not to leave for work and school, but stay with him all day, where he could watch over and protect us. The best thing to come out of the pandemic has to be that my loving boy-o got to spend his last year with his family around him all the time.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, when he had another round of digestive distress (something that had been coming and going in a cycle for some months), and was clearly feeling miserable, we had an ultrasound done and found out that he had multiple tumors throughout his system, including his pancreas.

It didn't make sense to put our elderly boy-o through chemotherapy and make the end of his time with us a misery, so we took him home, knowing we were basically moving into hospice. Over those last couple of weeks, he had a lot of good days. Extra attention, including visits from big sis off to college, and his Auntie and Uncle, all the blankets and treats. My husband even found a way to play "tugger" with him and slow speed chase whenever he felt good enough to want to play. 

Feeding him chicken and rice rather than dog food was something we did because he seemed to do better with it digestively, but he regarded each meal of "people food" as a massive treat. I hope he felt spoiled with love and small pleasures. 

On his last day, we took him for a longer walk in the woods--something he has always loved, but hadn't been able to enjoy since his leg injury--it left him shaky and sore and ruining the rest of his day didn't seem worth it for a few minutes of joy. 

But, on his last day, it didn't matter if he got tired and his legs were shaky afterwards. He was going to get a good long rest. His smile that day was a joy to behold. And he about wagged his own tail off.

We bought him his very own cheeseburger as his final treat. The vet said we could give him anything he might love, since it would not affect the ease of his passing, and we knew he'd been coveting all the hamburgers he's watched us eat all these years. His family surrounding him, and petting him, and telling him what a good boy he was, he was allowed to go to sleep and just not wake up. Time for him to rest.

I think it was the right thing to do, even if it was the hardest thing. I'll miss him forever, but I'm lucky to have had him in my life. Goodbye, Bud-bud, O-Neill-zebub, Sweetie Pup, Trouble-dog-Bryant. You really were the best boy-o.  

A to Z: Letters to Dead Writers: Edith Wharton

This month I'm writing one post for each letter of the alphabet, all on the theme of "Letters to Dead Writers." You can see my theme reveal post here and learn more about the blogging challenge here.

Today's writer is Edith Wharton
_____________________________

Dear Ms. Wharton,

You broke my heart, one winter when I was about twenty.

With no idea what I letting myself in for, I picked up your novel Ethan Frome. My goodness, but Thomas Hardy has nothing on you when it comes to dark ironies of life and the cruelty of fate.

In literature at least, I have taste for having my heart broken. I like a good, sad story, one that hits me right in the feels. You were a master of it.

Much more recently, I read your Age of Innocence, another tragic love story where two hearts that seem destined to be together are kept apart.

You wrote longing and guilt and feeling trapped so beautifully, capturing the romantic ache of yearning for something you can't have like few artists can.

Some readers make a mistake in overlooking your work, assuming from the covers that it's another stodgy period piece more about corsets and hairstyles than about anything of worth, but about the depths of a person's heart.

It's true that a person could learn a lot about the circles you moved in by reading your novels. You're the main voice the world remembers when it comes to capturing "Old New York." But all that was just the setting in the end. The jewels were in the characters.

Thanks for breaking my heart so breathtakingly,
-Samantha

Ages and Stages

Well, that went fast.

Eighteen years sounds like a long time, but when you spend it raising a daughter, it goes by in a blink.

I delivered my girl to college on Saturday.

I know she's embarking on another adventure, but I don't get the ringside seat I've had for her other adventures and that's leaving me a little sad.

But I know how fortunate I am.

She's healthy, smart, and capable. She's found a college that seems like a great fit that will prepare her for a future doing what she wants. Bursting with pride and feeling melancholy is a weird combination of feelings. A hard one to describe, which is an odd feeling in and of itself for a wordsmith.

So, here's a verse I wrote for her when she was still very small, and I was struggling with my feelings after divorcing her father. She still saves me all the time.

For my daughter 

You save me from bitterness, sweet girl.
Without you,
how I might rail against heaven
and rue the days I spent
in your father's company
as wasted days, lost time. 

But if it took all those sad, difficult days
to make you,
it was little enough to pay.
If I had to cry
to bring the joy that is you into the world,
it seems a fair price,
a bargain.
I would have given so much more
had it been asked. 

When my heart wants to brood
on might-have-beens,
my breath stops
to think
that you
might never have been.

The Burden of Creativity: a #HoldOntoTheLight post

Sylvia Plath was the beginning of awareness for me about the tangled relationship between creativity and mental health wellness. Her suicide happened in 1963, before my own birth. I learned of it in the 1980s, when we read one of her poems in a high school English class. I'm pretty sure it was "Daddy," a poem which confused the heck out of me even while it broke my heart.

I'd been a pretty sheltered kid. I mean, sure, one of my best friends was bulimic and another was sometimes afraid to go home, and there were weird relationship dynamics all around, but I still believed that everyone around me was basically all right. My rose colored glasses were firmly in place. The idea of someone mourning that her father died before she could kill him herself was quite a shocker. The biographical fact that the poet later killed herself even more-so.

Sylvia's suicide was glossed over in the biography in my textbook. It probably said something euphemistic about death by her own hand, rather than giving the shocking details I later learned, wringing them out of English teachers, since this was before you could just google things like that.

I couldn't understand.

I couldn't grasp why she couldn't persevere, couldn't believe in the possibility that things would get better.

Some of my friends could, though.

We talked about it with a morbid kind of fascination. We read The Bell Jar and Flowers in the Attic. We talked about Romeo and Juliet for months after our English class was done with it. My friends told me about the times they had almost taken the walk off the crumbling bridge above the railroad tracks at the edge of our hometown or showed me the scars from aborted attempts to end their suffering. They talked about feeling like others would be better off without them or that it might be easier just to stop fighting.

I listened with wide eyes, weeping sometimes and begging them not to give up. I wanted to think that it was just overly dramatic talk, a way to stand out, like an outlandish hairdo or coming to school with visible hickies on your neck. (I probably knew even then that it was something else entirely, but I denied it as long as I could.)

It was like that for me--I was interested in the dark side, but it didn't drag me in. I could still walk in the sunlight. I wanted it to be that way for them, too. I didn't want to believe that people I knew and loved could have come so close to taking themselves out of the picture entirely. That was too awful to contemplate.

In college, I was an English major. I read The Awakening, Antigone, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, all books where strong and vibrant women came to tragic ends. I learned about Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Parker, Anne Sexton, John Berryman, Ernest Hemingway, Vincent Van Gogh, Jean Michel Basquiat, Alan Turing--so many authors, artists, and geniuses who took their own lives.

As a creative writing minor and habitué of coffeehouses and open mic readings, I heard and saw a lot of creative work about the struggle against inner darkness, against demons of doubt and despair. It began to seem that despair and creativity were two sides of a single coin, or just different interpretations of the same view. Like stubbornness and determination, which are really just the same thing, viewed differently. Creativity seemed to come so often intertwined with a darkness. The same agile minds that can create wonders can create demons--and sometimes the demons consume us.

Imagination is a blessing…and a curse. A double edged sword that sometimes cuts us back.

I was a grown woman, a teacher in a classroom of my own, the first time depression truly beat someone I loved and took them from my life. I know now that I was fortunate to have made it that long. Like everyone else around me at the time, I asked myself what we missed, what we should have seen, what we could have done. I still want to know.

And there have been too many lights extinguished in this way. Co-workers, students, friends, uncles, cousins. Stars in my personal sky that no longer share their light.

So, please. I beg you. When it feels like the darkness is winning, reach out to someone. The world needs all the light within all its denizens.

(There are a list of places to reach out for help or to donate to support in the message below)

#HoldOntoTheLight is a blog campaign encompassing blog posts by fantasy and science fiction authors around the world in an effort to raise awareness around treatment for depression, suicide prevention, domestic violence intervention, PTSD initiatives, bullying prevention and other mental health-related issues. We believe fandom should be supportive, welcoming and inclusive, in the long tradition of fandom taking care of its own. We encourage readers and fans to seek the help they or their loved ones need without shame or embarrassment.

Please consider donating to or volunteering for organizations dedicated to treatment and prevention such as: American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Hope for the Warriors (PTSD), National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Canadian Mental Health Association, MIND (UK), SANE (UK), BeyondBlue (Australia), To Write Love On Her Arms and the National Suicide Prevention Hotline.

To find out more about #HoldOntoTheLight, find a list of participating authors, or reach a media contact, go to https://holdontothelight.wordpress.com/

Drink the Lemonade!

http://racereadycoaching.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/disappointment-sign.jpg

I had a big disappointment a week or so ago. I found a great job that I applied for an internal transfer for. I really thought I'd get it. From my perspective, it was a perfect fit--capitalizing on my experience and skills and giving me an opportunity to grow and rediscover my enthusiasm. Just imagining myself in the new role carried me through the tortuous weeks of standardized testing that we finish the school-year with, like the light at the end of a tunnel.

And I didn't get it. The light? It was an oncoming train.

And I cried. In fact, I still feel like crying, telling you about it here. I'm burnt out and ready for a change, and it burns my biscuits that what felt like the perfect opportunity was denied me.

But I have to go back and keep the job I was trying to leave, unless life surprises me with an amazing offer in the next few weeks. I have responsibilities, so I can't just go away and sulk. So, that means I have to figure out a way to swallow these lemons quickly, or face a year of bitterness next school year. That's easy with sugar, but sometimes you have to make the sugar yourself.

Now, I say that like it's easy, but it's totally not. That's why people who've had a lot of disappointment end up making this face:

https://zbeads.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/grumpy-cat-no-3.jpg

I've know more than one teacher whose face got stuck like that, just like Mom always told us it would. I don't want to be that teacher.

So, where do I find my sugar to turn these lemons into lemonade so I can swallow it and move on?

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a1/
4a/23/a14a239b4442c9be21dd317ee064c254.jpg

1. Count your successes: In my classroom, I have one bulletin board that is covered in student memorabilia. Photographs, cards, art, certificates. Just little things to remind me that in 20 years in the classroom, I've been on the receiving end of a lot of love. That it's not all vitriol.

On an especially bad day, I even make a list. It can be hard to let go of the really awful thing that happened, especially if it happened at the end of the work day and you're going home with that sour taste in your mouth (lemons without sugar).

But if I sit down and think about it, I can always find something that went well. Maybe I was able to make a sad child smile with some of my silliness. Maybe a student who doesn't usually engage participated today. Maybe one of my colleagues said "thank you" for something I do all the time, reminding me that I make a difference.


2. Know what heals you:  It may sound like a scene from Sound of Music, but think about your favorite things. Even better, do them. Distraction can be healing. You'll eventually have to face the consequences of whatever happened, but, for a little while, it's okay not to think about it. Channel your inner Scarlet O'Hara and think about that tomorrow.

http://cdn1.bigcommerce.com/server3000/86d67/products/
1023/images/1220/4288_1__29789.1312921893.600.600.jpg?c=2

So, tomorrow you'll figure this out. But today, you can run away a little. 

Shoot some things in a videogame, take an extra long walk with your dog, eat something unhealthy and delicious, read a great book, watch a favorite comedy, call your sister and listen to her talk for an hour, build a pillow fort and hide in there, go to a club and shake your money-maker. Whatever works for you. 

The key to this is only letting yourself run away for a short time. We're not looking for new recruits for the Lost Boys here. Eventually, you have to come back home.

3. Pick a new goal: There are other things you want. Pick one of those and take a step towards it. Send out another application. Call that someone you've been trying to get brave enough to call. Pick something to redecorate or reorganize. Audition for a play. Create something if you're a maker kind of person. Learn something new. Haven't you always wanted to know how to play an ocarina?

http://img01.deviantart.net/2c71/i/2013/043/7/f/shoot_for_the_moon_by_zickart-d5uoa23.jpg

For me, I'm working on hard on that writing career this summer--I've got a novel to finish and two novellas to write by the end of August. I won't have time to sit around thinking about what might have been in the real world. I'll be too busy working on my new goal by running away to play with my imaginary friends. So there!

2015: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

Goodbye, 2015. You were a great year, and a terrible year for me and mine. In some ways, I will remember you fondly; in others, I'll be happy to see you go.

2015 was painful in that I lost people I loved. I know it's the way of the world, but it doesn't make it any less terrible when the moment comes. All in all, in the second half of 2015, I lost six people in my family. I felt the last one the most. My Uncle George was one of the giants of my childhood and cancer came for him with quick and angry claws, snatching him away before I could get north to say goodbye in person. I still feel hollow from the loss.

2015 was difficult in terms of personal health. I seemed to spend way more of the year fighting "something" than in other years. No one big illness, thank goodness. No hospital stays or broken or sprained things, but lots of weakened days, and more missed school than in recent memory.

2015 was overwhelming. Adding book promotion to an already full schedule of teaching, mom-ing, wife-ing, and writing was well, whew!  It was a change akin to adding a child to my life in terms of all the adjustment required. It will definitely be important for me to keep working on balance of all these different things in the new year. In fact, the whole year flew by in a blur.

But, 2015 was also the year that my first book made it into print. Going Through the Change: A Menopausal Superhero Novel has done pretty well for a book by some woman no one has ever heard of. It's been in and out of the top 100 superhero novels several times in its first eight months out there in the world, and sold enough copies to let me spoil my family a little during winter holidays. That felt good because I've really had to lean on them to make all this work!

It's leading to new opportunities, too. I've already been to one con (Atomacon!) as a guest author and will attend my second in January (Illogicon). I've been invited to contribute to blogs, podcasts, radio shows, and anthologies. 2016 is a horizon full of promise. Here's hoping for smooth sailing into those seas! Happy New Year!

#SaturdayScenes No. 10: Independence Day

Independence Day always makes me think of my grandfather who was a WWII vet. This week for #SaturdayScenes, I bring you a poem I wrote about him and his ambivalence about his service.

Loss of Faith

He said loss

was certain in war—

we must all sacrifice for the Greater Good.

Friends, family, even faith—

surrendered like offerings,

head bowed, eyes averted.

Still, he wondered . . . wished

he had not recovered

from the scarcity of his youth.

If he had stayed home

with flat feet—

with polio—

would he still trust

in G-d and Country? 

But he had witnessed the children,

served them bread and thin soups,

their wide eyes solemn over spoons

clasped in hands grown so thin

bones float in slack skin.

If these had remained words in the paper,

pictures in Life magazine,

he could have still believed

in something, held on to his faith—

that G-d cared, that good would prevail. 

The army taught him eighty ways to kill,

but never

to forget that his enemies were his brothers.

He learned to apologize in seven languages,

but never

to look the other way.

________________________________

If you would like to check out more scenes by some really great writers, you should search under the hashtag #Saturdayscenes. The movement is the brainchild of +John Ward , who suggested that writers should share their work each Saturday.

_________________________________

My other #SaturdayScenes contributions:

Week One: Elopement Day from WIP, Cold Spring

Week Two: Linda Makes a First Impression from WIP, Her Father's Daughter, sequel to Going Through the Change

Week Three: Claiming Alex, from unpublished novel His Other Mother

Week Four: Things Get Hairy for Linda, from unpublished novel Going Through the Change

Week Five: a poem: A Clear Day in Kodiak, Alaska

Week Six: a snippet from an idea barely begun, Lacrosse Zombies

Week Seven: Mathilde's Visit, from WIP, Cold Spring
Week Eight: Sherry bakes, from His Other Mother
Week Nine: I Said So, Didn't I? (a scene in dialogue)

Shooting my Uncle: a Memorial

My Uncle Don died recently. Actually, it's probably the third or fourth time that he died, but this time he meant it. Another of my uncles used to call him Lazarus, in honor of his propensity for coming back to life when all hope was supposedly lost. He was tenacious that way.

When Don was still a young man, before I was born, he was in a horrible car accident with two of his brothers. He went into a coma and the doctors told my grandparents that he would never wake from that coma. But wake, he did. And walk. And speak. And live, fully and happily. All things the experts said he would never do.

When I was a child, he was very active for a man who was never supposed to wake from a coma. He would sit, smoking cigars and drinking coffee at family parties and telling dumb jokes that even us children rolled our eyes at.  It never ceased to amuse him to remark that us "kids" were a bunch of goats.  I thought it was the brain damage talking, but my mom says he always had kind of a dumb sense of humor.

He liked us kids. He'd ask us to show him our schoolwork and the various things we were learning to do. He loved it when we did cousin talent shows at holiday parties. He'd invite us to watch Lassie and The Lone Ranger with him on the little TV in his room. Sometimes we would.

He was generous, too. Though he had only a limited income from his VA benefits, he bought me, his first niece, two of my most treasured childhood toys: the very creatively named Big Ted and Little Ted, which, as you might guess, are two teddy bears of disparate sizes. I've had them as long as I can remember.Those poor bears are bare in patches and lack much stuffing, but they are still mine.

He liked to paint and write letters. The mail arriving was one of the highlights of his day, when he could still work his way to the mailbox and gather it himself. He had an obsession with the mailman and made all kinds of jokes about him, too.

When I went to college, then away to Alaska, he was my correspondent. I sent him pictures of the places I was living and letters about what I was doing. His handwriting got harder and harder to read, but we kept it up for a long time.

I'm not sure when exactly we stopped writing to each other. Declines are like that. Gradual, hardly noticed at the time. The past twenty-five years have seen that kind of decline in my uncle, bit by bit, little by little. First, there was his hand-eye coordination. He was no longer able to do the paint-by-number kits we used to buy him for every holiday or write letters. His hearing and eyesight diminished. Later, his mobility was affected.

There were medical problems of various sorts and trips in and out of the hospital. More than once, doctors thought he wasn't going to make it. But he always did.

He still lived at home, among the hustle and bustle of all of us. He still went to every family party, though now it took two brothers to maneuver him in and out of vehicles and into his wheelchair. His brothers still took him out target shooting.

After my grandfather died, some of the wind went out of his sails. I think it did for all of us, for a while. Money was tighter, so that probably didn't help. What money he had went to my grandmother to help support the house and the two of them. More years went by and he lost his ability to balance well enough to walk. He began to crawl around the house like some six foot something baby, still determined to get around, and out to the porch where he could watch the goings on of the neighborhood.

Even this time, this last time, when he was in the hospital, I didn't think this would be the end.  As I received messages from various members of my family, I could see that all of us thought he would rally, that he would thumb his nose at death yet again.

But not this time.

We've got a great memorial planned for you, Uncle Don. You'd love it. There will be food and drinks, of course, and a bonfire. One of your brothers has worked out a way to mix your ashes with gun powder and let us shoot you. I think you would love this idea.

I hope you're having fun, Uncle Don, wherever you went from here. I hope there are cigars and cheesy fifties TV shows and letters for you in the mail every day. I hope this one makes it to you, too. I miss you.

Friday Flash Fiction: Pink Socks

Having just finished a big rewrite, I'm having a little trouble making myself focus on my new WIP, so here's a bit of Flash Fiction based on a picture. The prompt comes from +Flash Fiction Project, a community I enjoy run by +Becket Morgan.

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/114262873@N04/11975747186/

 

 

Pink? Really? He'd been in charge of the laundry for exactly one load of laundry and somehow he had managed to turn his socks pink. Raymond stared down at his feet in disbelief. Maybe they were more sort of orange. Somehow orange didn't seem as bad as pink.

He was pissed at pink right now. All the little pink ribbons he had worn in all the events his wife had wanted to go to hadn't really made any difference in the end had they? She was still gone. A name on a new scholarship fund for medical students and no more than that to most people.

It had been almost a week now. He had finally convinced his daughter to go back home and let him work through his grief alone. He had yet to return to work, but he knew he would. Soon. Really. Just not quite yet.

Right now, it was still hard to get out of bed, knowing that he wouldn't find Ellen in the kitchen when he got downstairs, waiting for him to make them both some eggs. He found himself unable to go to sleep at night, unconsciously waiting for her to come to bed.

He understood, of course. He wasn't an idiot. He knew that she wasn't coming to bed ever again. But what the brain knows is different than what the heart understands. Sitting down on the end of the bed, he pulled off the socks and tossed them into the trash can.

In the process, he knocked a book off the nightstand, on her side of the bed. Hesitantly, he bent to pick it up. He hadn't ventured into her side yet and had not allowed his daughter to disturb her things. The objects on the nightstand were still the same ones she used each night: her hand lotion, her chapstick, her cell phone charger, her stack of books to read.

The fallen book was a collection of poetry. She'd been fond of poetry at the end. She said it was short enough to hold in her mind even when it was fuzzy, and meaty enough to feed her in the silence. He would read them to her, when she asked, and often she would murmur along, having committed the words to memory long ago. He opened the book to one he remembered: "To My Loving Husband." She had read it to him often.

I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,

Or all the riches that the East doth hold.

Change is Good

I'm participating in another flash fiction project this month. +Becket Morgan put it together for the +Flash Fiction Project. This time, we have three images to incorporate into our pieces.  If you've never tried these sorts of prompts, I highly recommend it.  It helps push your mind in new directions, which can be wonderful for your life as well as your writing. Here are the images we're using this time (see below the pictures for the piece by me):

Charlie's mother always said, "Children will change your life."  He understood that, he supposed, in the general sort of way you understand anything you haven't experienced for yourself. It made sense. Adding new people to your life changes things. Even just a new friend, or a new boss. And a child, that was someone who couldn't take care of him or herself without you.

So Charlie told her that he liked his life, so he guessed he just wouldn't have any.  She'd shaken her head at him wordlessly and handed him his hockey bag and he'd run into the Sportsplex to get his gear on. That was the last time he ever saw her. Her minivan was hit by a wide turning truck and suddenly, Charlie was an orphan, just two months after high school graduation.

His mother had planned well, and Charlie still went to college as they had planned, still played for the team, as they had planned. He looked for her in the stands every game, and it broke his heart over again every time that she wasn't there. But he went on, as people do. He graduated. He got a job.

He wasn't good enough to make a career of hockey.  He was a good, solid player, but just didn't have that extra something.  He knew that, had planned for it.  But, still he loved it.  He played in the adult league at the Sportsplex he grown up playing at.

From time to time, he'd think about that last conversation with his mother and wonder.  But he had not married. He hadn't met anyone that felt right. Children didn't seem likely. Even though he'd always said he didn't want them, that made him sad somehow.

Maybe that was why he decided to take the job when he was asked to coach the Rink Rats, preschoolers.  He was looking for that change his mother had promised him.

Change came in the form of Ryan Whitaker.  He was the littlest guy on a team of little guys.  He had a wide face that became even wider when he smiled.  He worked hard for his age.  When Charlie came in to skate or practice, Ryan was always there, a look of fierce concentration on his face that Charlie recognized because he'd worn it himself. 

One day, Ryan brought his mother to one of Charlie's games so she could meet his hero.  The game had been a good one, and Charlie was drenched in sweat when he pulled off his helmet and stumped over to the stands dripping wet slush from his skates and uniform to let Ryan introduce them.  "Charlie! Charlie! This is my mom, Annie."  Charlie took her hand, apologizing for his post-game stink. She smiled. She smiled and his heart fluttered in a strange way.  He asked if they would wait. He wanted to take them out for ice cream.

She said yes.  Some months later, she said yes again, in front of their family and friends.  Charlie swore he saw his mother in the pews, just for a second, clasping her hands under her chin like she used to in the stands. She was proud of him.