What I Want, and Will Not Get

Maybe I'm talking about my Christmas list here. What I want is one more chance with Alice. If I had one, I would:

*Hug Alice, really embrace her, and not feel like running away to get it overwith.

*Tell her what a fantastic aunt she is, how much I appreciate the love she has given her niece, and how lucky L is to have her as a relative.

*Soothe her -- when she told me on L's first birthday that she was sorry for not getting her a present this year and would make up for it next year -- and tell her that indeed in July she got her niece an adorable Hello Kitty tank top and the cutest camouflage Hello Kitty skirt for her birthday, and how Boubrig loves wearing this outfit and how precious she looks in it.

*Forgive her for all of the meanness she directed toward me, for all of the pinches and scars she inflicted. I would ask her to forgive me for all of the times I hit her and for all the coldness and pain I hurled her way.

*Make a pact with her, that when she died we would open a line of communication so that we could still hear and talk to each other.

*****

Maybe L gets something special this year. While she has lost an aunt, she will now and forever have her Auntig Alice as a guardian angel. OK, maybe I get this same present, too.

Dear Dear Haig

I just found another watercolor underneath the previous one! This depicts six roses, and on the back is an undated message:

"Dear Dear Haig -
I love you. I'm very sorry about this evening. Let's try to make up for it tomorrow. I'll be back later tonight -- hope you'll be up, if not, sleep well & I'll see you in the morning light!
Love you,
Alice"

What a gift, I love it. While I don't remember what prompted the inscription, Alice's love is so obvious, and I hope I responded to her in kind. I imagine she left this in my bedroom for me to find as a peace pipe, a surprise one at that.

Reading the note, it feels like we were both hurt, that we had wounded each other. We certainly were good at doing that.

Thanks for the beautiful roses, Alice.

My Very Best Work!

Alice painted this rose around 1999 and gave it to me with the words on the back "My very best work! Hope it makes you smile! [smiley face] I [heart] u!"

I love the detail in the leaves. It's one of those big puffy roses in full bloom, and the scent almost comes off the canvas. My mom roses exactly this pink-lavender color in our front yard growing up. Alice, Sophie and I sometimes ate the petals in the morning before jumping in the Dodge Colt and being carted off to Armenian Mesrobian School.

I have it in a frame in our living room, and wanted to share it with the world.

Sweet Stuff

There was a pack of Freshen-up gum (like the visual aid?) in my closet when we moved recently. Alice had mailed it to me a year before, reminding me of a special treat we shared as children. My mom always insisted we chew Carefree Sugarless gum -- never mind that saccharine caused cancer in lab rats -- so on the special occasion when we could chew whatever gum we wished, we often chose Freshen-up. The sweet gel stuff inside was a special treat!

Alice and I liked to jog each other through pleasant recollections from our past, and so for our visit this past July I brought her "Greek gum" (see above), another staple from our days at Mesrobian. When we went to Andy's deli, my mom would pick up a pack of these sugar-white tabs that tasted so good! I recently saw on the ingredients list that the special ingredient is Mastic oil. Sends me right to the 4th grade.

While I continue to mourn Alice's loss in different ways, it's nice to remember the sweet stuff. I've heard that the good memories are what linger, and this blog is certainly helping me chronicle as many of them as I can process.

Last Night's Dream

At 4:23 a.m. this morning I was startled awake from a dream. I was sad as I realized what I had dreamt, but it was a more complicated sadness than usual.

I dreamt that I was washing dishes in the kitchen of my mom's house, feeling alone because my mom, dad, Sophie and Alice were all against me for some typical reason. Then Alice came into the room to antagonize me further, saying I was wrong about something -- I hate that the details aren't so clear to me.

My feelings of loneliness, ironically even in the presence of all immediate family members, were more enlightened than usual. When Alice approached me, she was doing so only as a representative of the rest of the family, and that this tension wasn't between her and me only. I had some patience for her, and resented the rest of the group for putting her up to this.

I retaliated by yelling back and throwing grape juice on her. When the juice hit her clothing, I noticed that her outfit was already a kind of berry color, and so the spill didn't make a big difference. However, I saw that the blue in the grape juice was permeating the red-based berry color; her top was turning bluer.

She reached for the coffee pot in the sink, and was attempting to douse me with the brown water and grounds when I suddenly woke up.

On one hand it felt like typical Alice that I couldn't get to her -- her clothes were already the general color of the juice. In my conscious state so early in the morning, I was reminded about the rage I could feel towards Alice, and wished that I could have felt more compassion towards her when she was alive, because I do believe she carried alot of aggression on behalf of all of us.

The meaning of the colors isn't so clear to me right now.

In a weird way, it felt good to have this dream, to re-live one aspect of being with Alice.

Come to think of it, I'm the blue one in her absence.

Pass it to Ben

We just got back from having Thanksgiving dinner with friends, and I'm still thinking about how Alice was there with us, in an odd, unexpected way.

Dessert time arrived, and among many sweets there was this big white cloud of cake, a frosted angel food with chunky shavings of coconut. Ben, the 14 year old son of family friends, loved this particular cake, so he was the first to be served. As Fred our gracious host plated a piece, he said "Pass this one to Ben" and I heard "Pass it to Ben" in Alice's voice.

Flash back a solid twenty five years -- boy, am I getting old -- when I was playing city-sponsored soccer one summer. Ben was Filipino, a tall fairly-skilled teammate of mine. During games, his mother would run up and down the sidelines yelling to all of us "Pass it to Ben! Pass it to Ben!" encouraging him to be a ball hog. My sisters and I got a big kick out of this, and since then Alice especially has loved saying "Pass it to Ben!" invoking a cheerful moment in our childhood.

I excused myself from the dining room and shed a few tears in the kitchen. It was a pretty big dinner, so it wasn't long before I was engaged in conversation with Ben's dad, actually. I was sad to miss for the rest of my life Alice's quick quips. Pass it to Ben, indeed.