Dear Cason, Thank you

Dear Cason---

I’m not sure my words can do justice in expressing all that I feel for you, and all that I have to thank you for. However, since I was never one to back down from a challenge, I’ll give it my best shot.

The year you were born, 2016, was not my favorite year. The day that I learned you were with us, that you were growing inside of your mom, was a good day—one of my very favorite days of 2016, all because of you. Also, the day you were born was one of my top days ever. It was the in-between, buddy—those in-between days were pretty sketchy. 

I spent a lot of 2016 feeling sad. It was the type of sadness that I had a hard time understanding, because it didn’t make sense to me. I could look at my life and see that I had everything I’d ever wanted, and still, I cried every single day. I felt lost. Nothing felt right. But, because the sadness defied logic, I went on for a long time pretending that it wasn’t there. Turns out, pretending that something isn’t there doesn’t make it actually not there. Looking away from something doesn’t help it to go away.

Naming things, facing things—now there's a place to start. Once I finally admitted to myself that I was depressed—and not just a little bit, we're talking really, really depressed— I could do something about it. Depression blows, kiddo. I hope you never get it. If you ever do, it’s okay—about one out of every two Americans has a mental health problem at some point in their lifespan, and the most common bugger is depression. I know, what a raw deal. Anyway, at least you know who to talk to if it happens to you. (Note: That’s me. I’ll help you figure it out.)

I got some help for the depression, and I started to feel better. I made some decisions about what I wanted for myself, and that helped me to feel better too. By December fifth, the day you joined us in this world, I was well on the road to recovery. I wasn’t quite where I wanted to be, but I was feeling a lot more like me again. 

You were born on a Monday, which is my writing day. At 8:30 AM, the first exciting thing happened: I hit my 2016 fiction-writing goal of 80,000 words, a goal that I didn't know if I'd be able to reach. It felt like a victory over depression to have done this. At 9 AM, the second awesome thing happened: I picked up my phone and saw that I had a message from your dad, alerting me that you were on your way! I don’t know when I’ve last had such a moving, gratifying morning. I’ll never forget it: the smell of coffee, the joyous pounding of my heart as I typed the sentence that brought me to my goal, the way that my feet danced a silly jig under the table at the Mill when I got your dad's text, the dirty look the dude at the next table shot me because I was making too much noise.

And yet, even starting the day off with that kind of excitement didn’t prepare me for meeting you later that day. Something happened at the moment that I first saw your chubby cheeks and soft blonde hair. Something moved and shifted inside of me, like when marbles in a jar that have come to rest in a precarious position get bumped and suddenly all fall into a more secure place. My feet felt firmly anchored to the ground for the first time in at least a year, maybe longer.

I don’t know what you did to me, Cason, but I sure am grateful that you did it.

Maybe it was your innocence, your newness, the idea that you have a whole big life in front of you to live. This feels hopeful to me, the idea of you experiencing things for the first time, learning about our world, making it your own. Maybe I was able to see the world through your eyes, and I liked what I saw.

Maybe it was the dreams that came true when you came into the world. You were (and are) so very wanted. You made parents out of two of my favorite people in the world. You made thrice grandparents out of two of my other favorites. As for me, I had wanted to be an aunt so badly I could taste it. It was one of my not-so-secret secret wishes for 2016. (I even wrote it in my YearCompass year planning guide in January 2016—and choosing goals and wishes that I can’t control is NOT something I usually do.) I might be shortsighted, but I don’t think I wanted it for me. I wanted it for my brother, and for my sister-in-law, who I knew were going to be loving, doting parents. (And true to form, they are. As you know.)

Maybe it was the idea that your presence has given me an added purpose in life: to support your parents, to love and care for you. To let you do things at my house that your parents won’t let you do at theirs. (How long until you can eat ice cream? Like, maybe one more month? Haha. Don’t tell your mom I said that.) Maybe I’ll take you to your first R-rated movie. Maybe I’ll drive you home the first time you do something stupid in your teenage years. I guess we’ve got a few years to figure these things out. Let's start with the ice cream thing, though. (Shh. Seriously, your mom will kill me if she finds out.)

Every week since you’ve been here on Earth, I’ve gotten better and better. Your remind me that even though life is hard and painful, in some ways it’s simple and good. Your facial expressions and noises make me laugh. This weekend you smiled a great big smile at me and melted my heart. One time you peed all over me, and weirdly even that brought me a twisted kind of joy— hold on, let me explain, because I know that sounds weird. It happened while you were sleeping on my chest, and I was sleeping too, and we were both so soundly out that not even pee woke us up. It was nice to have slept that soundly, and to have been trusted that completely, pee and all.

I mean, no pressure here, buddy. I don’t expect you to be the lifelong key to my happiness or anything like that. Other stuff in my life makes a big difference. Your cousins Evie and Jonah bring me joy every day, and so does your uncle Jeb.  Your grandma and grandpa dole out healthy doses of unconditional love and unwavering support. (You’ll see.) And your parents are dear to me. They’re my best friends and they always have my back.

Importantly, I’ve learned even with the support of all of my family and friends, I’ve ultimately got to take care of myself, too. I’ve got to set limits. I’ve got to say “no” sometimes and “yes” at other times (a lot of times I mess up when I should be saying what. Perennial issue. Probably won’t be resolved by the time you read this, but I’m working on it). I need time to be alone, to think and to write and to exercise and to find my center. I also need time to be goofy with my friends. I’m doing all of that now, too, and it all helps.

Yet, I know that someday, when I look back on 2016 and all that came with it, I will credit you, Cason, with helping me to get unlost, with helping me to plant my feet firmly on the ground again. And all you had to do is show up. I imagine there’s no way I can ever repay you for this, but I’ll be damned if I don’t spend the rest of my life trying.

With so much love,

Aunt Allison

The night I became a Real Person (according to my grandma)

Probably most people don’t look back on their grandparents’ 50^th wedding anniversary party as “this time I got really hammered and made questionable decisions.”

But I’m not most people.

Ten years ago this month, we celebrated Nick and Doris Nicholas’s half-century of wedded bliss. I was twenty-four, newly married, and far worse at moderation than I am now. (Which, if you’ve ever been to a bar with me, should be concerning.) We’d rented a hall for this—and not just any hall, the Exeter Legion Hall.

The Exeter Legion Hall is an old, quaint party venue, and the only game in town. It’s pretty standard for a reception hall: partitioned bar area at the front, a big open space with a wood floor in the middle, a kitchen and bathrooms in the back. It perpetually smells of burnt coffee and old men’s cologne. But oh, how I wish its blue carpeted walls could talk. That hall has no doubt been a keen observer of Exeter’s unfolding history—family arguments, the beginnings and endings of social movements, the first meetings of lovers and the dissolution of marriages—it’s all taken place under the eyes of those walls.

So much of my own personal history has happened at that hall. Multiple wedding receptions, including my own. The annual Exeter Alumni dance. Proms. Pancake feeds. Estate auctions. Lots of other stuff. That place is a nocturnal creature: sleepy by day (bake sales, funeral lunches), and WILD by night (the fun stuff).  When I roll up to the "The Legion" after sundown, my body is conditioned to expect multiple strong drinks. Preferably drinks that feature bright green vodka, and preferably served by Stub Moore, a legendary drink mixologist of Exeter.

Yet, even though this was a nighttime event held at our town’s Monument to Public Drunkenness, it was my grandparents’ anniversary party. A family event, and also a community event. The thing you have to understand about my hometown, Exeter (population ~600), is that when there’s an event at the Legion Hall, all are welcome. It isn’t really an invite-only kind of venue. If you live in Exeter and you know the people being celebrated, and you don’t have anything else to do, you go up to Legion and say the obligatory “congrats” to whoever, then you drink Stub Moore drinks with your friends.

So I could expect, on that evening, to be in the company of all of my family and a big chunk of Exeter’s AARP crowd. All of whom knew me as a Good Girl. I’d been the valedictorian. I’d gotten a full ride to college. I’d never been in legal trouble. I’d married my high school sweetheart. I was working on a PhD in therapy. I helped people. Good. Girl.

I was left with two basic options on how to spend the evening of my grandparents’ soiree: Uphold my Good Girl image, or do the Legion Hall as it is meant to be done.

Here’s a clue as to the choice I made:

The real win here is my mom's face.

Those little bottles of liquor get me every time. It’s like I get thrown off by their cuteness and tininess  (“Oh look at you, you’re just a little guy!”) and forget how much of a punch they pack. I drank three or four of them, whatever I had in my purse, because gosh darnit, they’re so petite and tasty.

And then someone brought me a couple of Stub drinks. I was thirsty, and they were wet.

And then I became the world’s best dancer. So did my brother. It’s hard to describe what happened that night, to the tune of Sinatra’s New York, New York. I can say that there were many Ginger Rogers inspired jumps, and lots of frolicking and pirouetting (it was pirouetting in my mind, at least) on my part. I’m pretty sure there was some high kicking at the end—you know—“These little town bluuuues…are melting awayyyyy…” Both my brother and I fell at some point during the song.  We made Nicholas family history that night. Sadly, someone got this on video, so we could not preserve the graceful images that our mind would have saved for us. We’ve got the real, raw, ridiculous truth of it, now stowed somewhere in our parents’ entertainment center.

And here's a few pics of the raw, ridiculous truth

I think New York New York happened at like 9 PM, while most of the party guests were still milling around. This means that a big chunk of the Exeter geriatric population got to see me act as stupid as I ever have. My reputation was officially sullied. I don’t know if it’s ever recovered.

The night progressed. I sidled up to Exeter’s part-time police officer, a man I’d never actually met and wouldn’t have recognized, save his uniform. Leaning against the wall near the men’s room, I informed him, in a slurred voice, that he “couldn’t do anything to me, because I was the mayor’s daughter.” All of which was technically true, but incredibly unnecessary. I was of-age and not doing anything illegal (because being stupid isn’t illegal, and neither is bad dancing). I think the uniform and the liquor made me regress a few years, and I’d forgotten after all the years of illicit drinking in that Legion Hall, that I was, in fact, old enough.  Also, I think I seriously overestimated my dad’s power to get me out of stuff (if I had been doing anything illegal). I mean, being the mayor of Exeter is something, but it’s not like he’s Johnnie Cochran or anything.  “If the liquor’s legit, you must acquit!”

Still later in the night, my grandmother caught me scrounging for potato chips in the hall kitchen. Because I’m a maudlin drunk when I’ve had too much, I started crying. I told her that I never wanted anything to change and I didn’t want her to ever die. Drunk as I was, I remember saying this, because I remember feeling it and at that moment it was the rawest, most vulnerable wish inside of me. I was happy and I wanted things to stay the same. Grandma was a good sport. She laughed, hugged me, and wiped away my tears and the remnant potato chip crumbs that dotted my dress. She told me that everything changes, and it has to because “that’s life.”  Then she escorted me into the bathroom and made me put cold water on my face, because “you’re a mess, Alli.”

Eventually, the party died down and the hall cleared out. The drinking-aged cousins and I retired to my aunt’s for the after-party. (You know you have won at life when there is an after-party to your grandparent’s 50^th wedding anniversary. Seriously.)  I mostly dozed on the couch, exhausted from all of my socially inappropriate interactions and sweet dance moves. My brother and cousin drank wine and milk, per their report, because it’s all they could find. They sat together at the table, loudly quoting movies, one of them saying “Go back to your home on whore island!” I, because I hadn't (AND STILL HAVEN'T) seen Anchorman, didn't understand that this was a movie quote and took it as a statement directed at me. I sat up and told them that “I wasn’t a whore and had never been a whore!” And then I laid back down and went back to sleep, though it wasn’t great sleep, because someone kept yelling “Porkasaurus Rex!”

At about ten AM the next day, I awoke with a headache, cottonmouth, and a vague sense that I should be embarrassed but not completely sure of why. Images of the previous evening came back in fits and starts, with family merrily filling in the blanks of moments I’d forgotten. Someone got the New York, New York video out and made me and my brother watch it. Oh, the horror.

I’d hoped for a quiet, dim, salty lunch at home at my Mom’s, a meal that would help me recover my electrolytes and my pride. Mom announced we were going to the Community Spaghetti Feed. And where, pray tell, did that event take place? The Exeter Fucking Legion Hall. So, I got to walk immediately back into the scene of my public shame, and lucky for me, many of the same townspeople who had witnessed my antics the night before were there again. I wore a baseball cap and a big sweatshirt, incognito-like, and tried to keep my head down. My aunt and uncle applauded when I walked in, effectively blowing my cover. I’ll never forget the looks of frank disapproval, those pursed lips, those narrowed eyes, on the faces of Exeter’s Holier Than Thou delegation, and also the subdued laughter, the twinkling eyes, of Exeter’s “I have a good sense of humor” crowd.

I didn’t say much to anyone. Mouth too dry, brain too foggy, embarrassment too stifling.

But my grandma was there, and I talked to her. I told her I was sorry about the way I’d acted. She said to me, and I’ll never, in my whole life, forget this: “Alli, last night made me realize that you’re a real person.”

A real person.

Like when the Velveteen Rabbit had been held and played with for so long that he wore out, but then, because the boy had truly loved him, he became real.

I’d lived a life wound so tightly, guarded my “good girl” image so closely, that I’d at times forgotten to just be a person, a person with vulnerabilities and heartache and desperate, secret fears and wishes. Yet when my grandma saw all of that wear, all of that crazy, she loved me just the same. Unfortunately, it took a lot of liquor to bring the realness out of the twenty-four-year-old me. Over the years I’ve been working on accessing my authenticity while sober, because I've realized I’d rather be real than perfect.

There’s nothing I would go back and change about that night, even if I could save myself from embarrassment and one spectacular hangover. Ten years later, I’m so grateful for the honest conversations with my grandmother and for that unforgettable (literally—the family won’t let us forget it) dance with my brother. I’m not as glad that the town cop du jour only knew me as a lush, but whatever, I’m pretty sure my dad fired him anyway. (I’m totally making that up. But Dad could have fired him. Because he did have the power to do that.)

We’re coming up on Grandma and Grandpa’s 60^th wedding anniversary, and guess what? We’re having another party. This time it’s on a Sunday afternoon, there's no dance, and it's not at the Legion Hall. I think grandma might appreciate it if I didn’t get quite so “real” this time around—but I’ll ask her.

And to be safe: Someone lock down the Captain Morgan.

Does it get any real-er than this?

***

A few more pics from the night, for posterity's sake: