This first of many Andra Heart days, please look around for all the wonderful things Andra left us.  In addition, you can look for some new things, too. 

There is a fresh, new beautiful garden, full of sun and dirt and tall sunflowers.




There are Ben's Bells, Andra Heart style.




There are postcards, and donations and pandas (and manatees). 



There is love, all around us.  Keep looking for it, and when you find it, give it away.

Andra's garden at the Children's Museum Tucson is growing and growing.



Now there is a wall, with tiles painted by friends and family.



The tiles are beautiful, and tell Andra's story - of what she loved, and who loved her.  They also remind us how lucky, how deeply and truly lucky, we all were to know her.  I often hear the song from Wicked in my head when I think of Andra, and how it says:

"Now I know I have been changed for the better.  Because I knew you, I have been changed for good." 

She changed us all.  We would all do well to remember that we can change others for the good, too.

This weeked it was hot.  The kind of hot where you spend all the energy you have thinking of things you can make without cooking until you can't eat anymore cold salads, but you don't want to go out because it is too hot.  The kind of hot where you lie around and get tired just thinking about the things on your to do list.

Everyone's first summer in Tucson is cruel.  Every time you go outside it feels like you are walking into a blast furnace, and every surface is too hot to touch - door knobs, mailboxes, even the very ground you walk on burns if you touch it without some sort of protection. Everything around you has the potential to hurt you. Things you took for granted in the spring are now almost impossible to do. 

Everyone tells you you will get used to it.  You probably will.  But while you are suffering through the first cruel summer, you are sure no one knows how you feel.  No one knows how where you come from, the cool evenings make up for any of the heat of the day.  Where the green grass is cool on your feet, and you can turn on the sprinklers to cool down if you need a break from the heat.

Your memories of those summers, by the lake, or in the mountains, only make that first, hot summer harder to bear.  You can't get them out of your mind, especially when that heat rolls over you like a wave, as you remember lying on the grass in the evenings and looking up at the stars, or how her foot fit on the inside of your elbow when she breast fed, or how her smile lit up the room. Once the memories start, they come in waves - the green of her eyes, the sound of marble games coming from her room when she couldn't sleep at night, her beautiful broad, crooked back in her burgundy ballet leotard.  How she still, even at 12, said callapitter, and blanklie and scunscreen.

This summer?  It's going to be a scorcher.

I often accused Andra of being a loser (of things).  But maybe instead of be a loser she was just a leaver. 
Recently, our neighbor Michelle found another thing Andra left behind, an essay titled "The Key to Happyness". 

I have had the distinct feeling lately that I have lived three lives.  The life of my childhood, which was rich and unfettered, full of dirt and trees and scabby knees and elbows.  Summer camp, swimming in creeks and lakes and hours spent reading and writing and running around.  I lived right there, right then.  I was insecure and indecisive, but I was happy. 

Then there was my life with Phil, which started when I was 21.  It was a life of hard work, career, and confidence.  I became sure of what I wanted, and worked hard to build that life.  After 9 years of marriage, I became a mother, and I loved being a mother so much, my friends called me the Zealot.  With time, we had Grace too, and it really seems like so much more than ten years ago that I was given the gift of these two girls.  Jump rope, and kids songs, climbing trees and swimming - having children reminded me so much of my own childhood, and I was able to overcome the serious "rules" girl I was from 20 to 30, and reconnect with the  child I once was.   Putting jammies under the pillow, and enjoying popsicles in the sun, and s'mores around a campfire. I was very happy in this life.  This life was about building, and looking forward - I often had to remind myself to live in the moment in between planning and investing in our future, but isn't hope grand?

These days when I wake up in the morning, I have a very difficult time connecting those two lives with the one I am living now.  It is a new life.  It hurts to be present, but it is agonizing to look forward at all the things that will not be.  I honestly wonder some days if I imagined those past lives because they are so hard to reconcile to this one.  And I can't imagine ever admitting I am happy in this new life, in a broad sense, in spite of the fact that we will all have happy moments - I am sure of that.  Grace and I had loads of happy moments today - from a little mother/ daughter shopping, to a nice lunch, to ice cold peach kool-aid at a road side kool-aid stand to some sweet cupcakes.  Today alone, we strung together little happynesses like beads a necklace. But I am not sure if little happynesses can make you deeply happy, especially when you are profoundly unhappy  ten times a day.

Regardless, I live in this third life.  Next week, I will turn 43.  The next twenty one years are upon me and I can scarcely envision what they will be like.  I have been thinking, that maybe, just maybe, the key to Happyness is in accepting that this is another life, built upon the first two, but separate and apart from them as well.  If it is separate, it might be easier to actually seek happyness, real happyness, and accept it if we find it.  There will be some way to be happy in this third life, this life of three, this life of Grace.  I suppose we owe it to ourselves to search like the dickens to find it.  Perhaps I need to see this new life as a new start,  beginning where Andra left off. 

Her story, the Key to Happyness, ends this way, "This must be my key to happyness.  That's how my story ends.  Actually, begins..."

We shall begin too.


PS When challenged, the only thing any of us could think of to say about Andra that was unflattering or bad, was that she was a bad speller.  Happyness indeed!

This Mothers' Day, I am thankful for the reminder to be thankful for being a mother. Mostly because lately, being a mother has been breaking my heart more than uplifting it. I am so grateful for all the mothers around me who are such good examples of how to be mothers, starting with my mother.



and then her mother.



I am also thankful for Eddie's mother.



I am lucky to be close to Levi and Kara's mother, and Anna and Garrett's mother, and all the other mothers out there who show me how its done.

 

But mostly, I am so, so glad I got to be Andra and Grace's mother.  I should be thanking them today.

As we move through this year of painful firsts, we can check off our first trip with three.  Being away is a good distraction, but also makes the missing piece to our four piece puzzle so much more obvious.  In addition, whenever you encounter a "first" there are new situations - sleeping arrangements, and seat assignments and a table for three, oh my. 

We ate a huge Cinnamon roll.  We drank big drinks.  We stayed in a big hotel, on a high floor.  We saw our friend Teryn.  We went to Sea World.  But mostly, we started figuring out how to be three.  That was the biggest thing in Texas.

On the river walk.
 


Feeding the Lorikeets.


Drinking our big drinks.

I never met Phil's grandmother Ireta.  And yet, every day I stand in my kitchen and cook for her grandson, using her cannisters, her salt and pepper shakers, and checking time on her skillet clock, that is hanging on my wall.

I use her dessert dishes to serve my girls ice cream and smoothies, and I wear her apron when we bake.

I think of her all the time, and the stories Phil tells me of her, while my fingers pull the lid from the sugar cannister that her fingers pulled, over 20 years ago.

Lately, I feel just the tiniest bit better.  And I don't want to.  I wage a war daily with myself, afraid that if I close my eyes to feel the sun on my face, or if I laugh about something stupid, but funny, that somehow, it takes me away from Andra.  I am afraid that feeling better means I am forgetting to be be miserable, and that if I forget to be miserable, then I am forgetting Andra.  It is ridiculous of course, but nonetheless, I fear it.

It gave me comfort, tonight, to realize how often I think of and truly, deeply appreciate a woman I never met.  A woman who taught Phil to embroider, and to make country style eggs on holiday mornings. 

I won't forget Andra.  And you won't forget Andra.  And somewhere, there is someone who may not have even known her, who will learn of her, and hear her story and appreciate her.  Even if I am not miserable.  I'm not ready to give up being miserable yet, but maybe there is hope that someday I will be ready.  And on that day, maybe I will stop worrying about forgetting Andra long enough to remember her.

Quite some time ago, this furry beast ran into our home.  He is a smart furry beast, because he ran right over to Phil, cocked his head so his floppy ear fell over and sat down.  Phil, the voice of reason in our household, hesitated two seconds, and then said, much to my shock and surprise, "You should be our dog.  Your name is Rex."  And while I have not been ready to love something, and I don't want to be forced to get up in the morning, and I don't want to have to clean my floors, ever, I have to admit, we have a dog.  And he is a good dog.  Of course, the dog comes with a bunch of love and help from Michelle the dog queen, who is guilty by facilitation.  But none the less, did I mention, we got a dog?

I am sorry if by now I only have you few reading here - and you already saw this at andraheart.com and on facebook.  But just. in. case.  Here are some good links today.

Try out www.AndraHeart.com for my photos of a garden.

Go to the Arizona Daily Star for more on the garden.

Thank you.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.  1 Corinthians 13:7-8