Emotionally spent, I took a call from my father the next morning after what would have been Mom's 50^th. I was weary with crying, weary with longing, and weary with doing it all behind closed doors because this is now her second birthday that I've celebrated without her, and I wouldn't want to be accused of being overly dramatic. I am okay with her death most of the time (well, as "okay" as a person can be with choices that weren't theirs to make), but Mother's day and her birthday just hit me...the two days a year that I dedicated always to her.

"Hi, Dad."

"Hello, doing better today?" He had called the day before and knew I was having a tough time. He had told me that, just like last year, he was going to buy a birthday balloon and tie it to the iron planter at her grave.

"I think so," I replied. "Did you ever make it out to Mom's grave yesterday? I don't think you had been there yet when I stopped by." I had left work early to to buy flowers and place them there.

"I was there first thing in the morning! The balloon wasn't there!? I did stop, Laura, I did!" He had started to cry. I felt like crap for saying anything.

"Well...who knows...maybe Charlie stopped by and wanted it..." I tried to give a soothing explanation.

"No, Charlie didn't think he could go. Said it was too hard."

And then I stopped feeling like a loser for my 20 minute cry at her final resting place, which was really more of a whispered mantra of, "I miss you—oh, God, do I miss you..." because with my father crying in my ear and my brother momentarily dropping off of the face of the planet, it was obvious that I wasn't the only one that finds August the 14^th incredibly painful.

Dad later went back to the cemetery and found the balloon ribbon still tied, but the balloon gone. He called again to say, "Maybe your Mom just liked the balloon and snatched it up." I do rather like that idea.

You would have been fifty years old today. I would have loved to share this day with you. I become so angry when I hear women at work gripe about their age...don't they realize what an accomplishment it is to make it as far as they have? No, they don't. They didn't know you. They didn't lose you.

Gosh, Charlie and I look so young in that picture from your 48^th. I think he and I did years of aging during that last week of your life. We were so torn between wanting to hold you to us forever, yet knowing we had to tell you to let go. You'd be so proud of him, Mom. He's everything you always knew he was capable of becoming and nothing that everyone else thought he was. From his patient eyes to his gentle hands, he is you. I love him to pieces. I wish you could see. Perhaps you do.

I am sad that you're not here.

The Queen Anne's Lace is embroidering the edges of modernity, and I can't help but remember the daintiness you spread around me and the imagination you inspired. You named me after Laura Ingalls Wilder and Louisa May Alcott's Beth, two of your favorite heroins of all time because they were quiet in their strength and deafening in their love—I always hoped that I would live up to such a tall name. I always hoped that I would make you proud.

I still do. You were a woman worthy of being impressed.

I love you.

This week, Miss Sophie met her "grandparents"—Nick's Parents. She played the defensive for awhile, hiding behind furniture and walking low to the ground with her belly rubbing the carpet, ever aware of these new people in her home. Of course, and this should come as no surprise if one takes into account the regular narrative I give on Sophie's appetite, she came around very quickly when she realized that Joan brought treats. Please Sophie's tummy, please Sophie. It's really quite simple, and I'm happy we've finally figured out the equation. She ate a cranberry orange muffin on us last week, or rather, a cranberry orange muffin wrapper...and grabbed a butter-flavored paper towel that I had used for my toast from the garbage. Good ol' Sophie: waste not, want not.

Well, just weeks after proclaiming proudly to Nick that I had found a cure to black toenails—the plague of running seasons years past—I up and un-do all of my preventative measures:

Mostly, I've started running again.

And, I blame it completely on this doohickey that makes me want to run every day, to keep outdoing my last run, even if it means jogging in 90° heat and seeing black spots in my field of vision. I am addicted. Nike+ is my new best friend.



I came in from my run last night with a shoe that looked like it could be the set for a CSI episode and I said wryly to Nick that I guess that blister wasn't ready to go running without a bandage yet. He asked unbelievably how I couldn't have felt that, that I should have had a voice in my head saying, "Stop running, you're hurt." I had to chuckle. You don't go from a couch potato to a gym rat without learning how to ignore pain.

Still, I was back out there again today, cursing the sun for coming out and beating down on me while my shirt felt 2 pounds heavier sopping wet with my sweat and actually wishing—and I can't even believe this crossed my mind—that it was a little bit cooler, that the humidity was less, and wishing for fall, when I can really put on some mileage and display some speed without that pasty thickness coating my tongue and fluid clogging my airways.

I got the doodad from Nick's Mom for Christmas, and, sadly, it lay dormant for months while I struggled to find my will to exercise after so much post surgery lazy time. Finally, Nick hounding me to use it (knowing I would love it once I started using it), I plugged it in that first time and I've been hooked ever since. I've run more in the last two weeks than I have in almost all of the summer before that—and isn't that a disgusting little tidbit? It's crazy. If you're a runner, you need this.

Nick thinks I should share with my internet audience:



It should be perfect for my birthday present at the end of this month—a trip to The Keys. Nice, short, and quite conducive to humidity. I went to Jean last night with a picture I had printed of Meg Ryan, grimacing as I handed it to her, knowing I had just become the sort of salon-goer that I hate. I did make it clear that I didn't expect to look like the actress when it was all said and done, I only wanted her hair.

After months, nay, years, of blow-drying this puppy straight day after day, it's rather nice scrunching in some gel and calling it done. I feel spoiled.