There's the support you ask for and the support you don't ask for. Then there's the support that just shows up.

I love that quote. It's from the Sex And The City episode where Miranda's mom passes away. Samantha let's go at the funeral in Philly and that moment in the church made me lose it. I don't know if I lost it when it originally aired but my mom lent me the whole catalog of the show for the flight home and such. She can quote every episode.

The day after New Year's is always the same, whether you are in LA or NY. It's like the whole city heaves a heavy sigh of relief. The wash of holiday haze has been lifted and it's back to business. The trees, still littered with glitter are hung-over on the city streets and we begin to resolve, take our vitamins, do a cleanse, clean our closets, fill in our new, clean and tidy daily planners and get back to reality.

Reality.

The day I left for LA, I felt uncertain. Sure, I was excited to start my new slightly old single life in a new pad just a block from the beach, see my students, hit the pavement and audition, write, shoot some more videos etc., but I was leaving home, to go back, well, home.

I love my life in this great city. But I love my life in that other great city. What's the right coast? If I lay down on the earth, the right coast would be LA. If I stood up with the sun to my left, NY would be the right coast.

I went for a bitterly cold run on my last day at home in NY. Besides my legs, everything ran, my nose, my eyes. I thought about my old high school friend, Christine. At the pure forecast of cold weather, her eyes would tear from the cold. It always made me laugh.

Like every year, it's like religion, I run on Christmas Eve and Christmas, New Years Eve and New Year's Day. Then I sign off and head back to my busy other life in LA. But this time, I know it's not my last winter run in New York.

I came home, showered and sat down for some soup. My flight is just hours away. Need to nourish.
My mom joined me and we tried to behave like it wasn't a big deal and that she would be ok and that my dad would get through and everything would be ok.

My dad had come into the kitchen. He stumbled around the dining table, and then stumbled back into the living room.

Crash.

My mom and I rush into the other room to see my dad doubled over onto the coffee table.

I grabbed him from behind to try and lift him. My mom hurried over and asked what happened. My dad, didn't snap, but told me that he needed to lie down on the floor before getting up to stand.

He was trying to clean up an accident he had. His muscles just couldn't support his fervor to carry it out.

This wasn't the first time.

They always say you never regret a workout. Well, maybe that's just what I say. As soon as you are out there, running, or taking a class or hitting the gym, the feeling you get was worth the struggle to get there if you are less than motivated one day or the other.

Three days prior, we had come back from dad's pet scan. My mom had some business so it was just my sisters, dad and I around the house.

I decided to go downstairs to work out in their basement gym. Within minutes, my sisters were scurrying around, to the laundry, outside to the porch.

My dad was locked out and couldn't get inside in time.

My sisters, in valiant form, hustled to get dad out of his clothes. They cleaned the outside, dropped his clothes in the laundry. I tried to help, even though I knew they were taking good care of the issue.

I couldn't help but think, how selfish, was I, to go downstairs and workout, when I knew my dad was upstairs and that my sisters had their own things to do. They dropped whatever it was that they were doing to help him.

I stood, sweating, scared and stoic. What could I do?

How can I expect that when I am home, it is enough? How can I expect that when I am in LA, it is enough, to talk to my mom and sisters? How can I expect that I serve any purpose of service? My life is service. I selected that life. I love that life. And the people that mean the most to me need service and here I am, standing, helpless.

When dad fell for the second time, I was there. Both of my sisters were out running errands for my mom and taking care of some of their business.

When they came home, I told them what happened. They were my relief. They were my saviors. We discussed the possibilities of hospice care or hospital care. We got a little riled up in our stereotypical fashions, Karin, quiet and calm, mom, emotional, Kathy, angry, defensive and emotional and me, trying to keep the peace between us all. Everyone was right in their emotions but with one hour before I was to be at the airport, I couldn't feel right about leaving to come back to LA with such scary and new things happening everyday with my family.

I feel like I miss so much. Sometimes I miss the really funny memories they all have at holidays and random visits I'm not home for. Sometimes I dodge bullets from experiences I'm grateful I missed. Mostly, I just miss them all always.

My dad's boss sent someone to pick up his car, my dad's livilihood and freedom.

He won't be working anymore.

We decided I should come back to LA, get myself moved and then come back to NY.

But....

For what?

I still question my role in all of this. Am I enough?

20 minutes before I leave or don't leave for LA, I lie down in bed with my dad. All you can see is his little head and his bulging rib cage underneath the heated blanket. I hold onto his arm, which feels more like holding onto the straps of a handbag. I look into his eyes, my eyes, not my mom's eyes, and I ask him, what he wants. He tells me that I have my whole life ahead of me, which sounds strange to hear at my age. He says that I have dreams and a life that I have made for myself in LA. He says that he would be happy if I stayed or went that it was my decision to make. He said that he always wished that I were here with them in NY, but that I had to follow my dreams.

I had asked him what he wanted.

I meant if he would fight or let go.

I told him that every dream had him in it. I would never have competitively swum if it weren’t for him and his love of swimming. I would have never played softball. I would have never gone to Boston University. I think deep down he knew that I would move from Art to Communications. He always encouraged me to write. I would never be writing if it weren't for him.
Every mile I drive in LA, I think of him and how he would handle the traffic or the nasty driver that flipped me off. I wouldn't be acting or teaching or fit or thin or active or breathing or eating or loving life or here in California if it weren't for him.

I love my dad. My dad has let me down more than anyone I know. My dad has been there for me more than anyone I know.

He used to call me at 7AM whether I was in college on the east coast or in California and ask what I was doing. It drove me up the wall. I barely sleep as it is!

He constantly sends me oversized t-shirts with cats doing yoga poses or New York Marathon memorabilia or kitschy bagel shops or coffee shops from 'ol New York.

He knows I'm a coffee snob but always knows where the best little coffee places are in NY that are NOT Starbucks and I am always amazed and hooked.

My dad is my dream. I am my dad.

So, what the fuck am I still doing here?

If these are my dad's last days or worst days, shouldn't I be there for support?

The phone calls to my mom and sisters keep me updated and allow me to be there for venting sessions on their end, but am I really there for them?

I guess that's the question.

And the answer.

Will my life be here for me when I return?

Shoveling snow. You have to do it.
Then when it all disappears, you think, all that work, melted eventually!!!
Then when it reappears, you think, more, again, really!?!?
So, get the most out of it folks.
If you are one of my blog readers where snow is applicable, take these tips and skip the gym. You're workin' out and getting fit and strong.
And when it's all done, warmth, soup and a cookie can be your reward.

The average person can burn 250-300 calories an hour shoveling snow.

First of all, before you hit the snow, its probably freekin’ cold.
If my muscles were sore after an hour of shoveling and I work out every day, do yourself a favor and stretch your muscles before you go out there.

Before throwing on the layers, stand up straight and take your arms up and over your head. Interlace the fingers and stretch the sides of the waist by reaching to the right and left laterally. Keep your hips square or facing forward.

Take the arms back behind you, interlace the fingers and stretch the front body.

Take a forward fold to stretch the hamstrings. If it's difficult for you to touch your toes, just take the hands on a table and walk your feet back to stretch the shoulders and low back.

Finally, give yourself a hug, the tightest squeeze you can to stretch the back body and especially the lats – they will really be worked in addition to your core when digging, lifting and tossing snow.

When you are out there, make sure to distribute your weight evenly on both feet, bend the knees when leaning in or down, keep the belly firm into the spine to keep the low back secure when the lift, toss happens.

Keep the shoulders as relaxed as possible and back, not rounded forward to keep the shoulders secure.

Bend the elbows when lifting the snow from the ground. This'll work the biceps. If you keep the arms straight, you'll overwork the joints and that just ain't right.

Breathe deeply. The cold air is good for you.

Do the same stretches when you are done and add one for the wrists.

That’s the part everyone forgets about.

Take your hands up against a wall or table edge with the inner wrists facing upwards.

See how close you can get the whole palm against the surface to stretch.

Add a thigh stretch. Sitting on the floor, tuck your feet under your bum and sit like that for a few moments to stretch the tops of the thighs.

Drink lots of water. Just cause its cold out, doesn’t meet you can lose fluids.

You will work just about every body part shoveling snow.

It's a workout with a purpose.

Allow yourself to be take in the beauty of the snow's coverage on all that's around you. It's a nuisance yes, but the initial quiet, peace and beauty of the snow, the way it hugs your surroundings, can be a staggering sight.

Enjoy the season!

I missed winter last year.

I missed Christmas in NY for the first time in my life.

I arrived at the butt crack of Buddha, just hours before hundreds of people would not be able to arrive at all.

A major snowstorm was on its way.

It will be a white Christmas.

Welcome to NY.

~~
My dad is a creature of extreme habit - almost obsessively, compulsively so.
He buys things in ridiculous bulk and replaces every napkin and tissue box even before the box is empty. The gas tanks in the cars are always full. My sister and mom don’t even really know how to pump gas or what a gas-light looks like. He fills up ketchup bottles and dishwashing detergent as soon as there is any sign of slight usage. He buys enough bagels, donuts and croissants on a Sunday morning to feed all of Manhattan and the boroughs. They are never even eaten, not one, but because we, as individual family members, may have eaten one in the past, or commented that we liked a certain sesame or shmear, he continues to get them…en masse.

The cupboards, although not bear, resemble normal cupboards with one or two of the same cans of soup or squeeze bottles of mustard. But it is not normal for us.

The supplies are disappearing, and so is my dad.

He is weak. He can’t shovel or run the snow-blower. He can barely move from the chair to the couch. He sleeps all day and barely eats or drinks. He doesn’t sit at the dining room or kitchen table anymore for meals. He’s dehydrated -body, muscles and soul atrophied. You see him want, try to stick to any of his routines. One routine he’s still sticking too, smoking. Let him enjoy it if he must.

He goes outside to try and shovel but comes back in and sits. He resigns himself to have help. In quiet, angry epitaphs he whispers under his breath.

The things my dad used to do.

We see him let go, like sand between the small nooks between your fingers.

Now you see him. Then you don’t.

I see myself in him. I see all of us, so stubborn and uncomfortable in asking for help with anything.

I’m dreaming of a….
Everything looked so beautiful, but felt so sad.

~~
When I'm in LA, I talk to my mother everyday. I hear things. I know she is sad. She is scared.

But until you see it, you don’t ever really know.

Until you are there, you will never truly experience.

Cancer is a disease that eats away at the heart and soul of a family, not just the diagnosed.

I remember talking to my friends in LA after 9/11. I wondered what their experience could have possibly been 3000 miles away when I was working uptown, just a few miles away from the towers.

I picked up a Dunkin Donuts coffee, had a fight with my boyfriend, dashed to my long-term temp job at an investment bank, ordered breakfast for my boss, borrowed a nail file and filed my nails at my friend’s desk. I picked up breakfast from the lobby, jumped in the elevator just as a couple of bankers were talking about the first tower being hit with an airplane. Whatever, was what I thought. It didn’t even register in my head.

Minutiae.

We were released from our jobs. My secretary friend with the nail file and I, ran back to my apartment, the one I was sharing with my sister in Chelsea. My friend lived in Brooklyn and couldn’t get home. She wouldn’t get home to Brooklyn for hours. And even then she would have to walk part of the way.

The bright stainless blue sky and crisp ripening fall air became littered with dark plumes of smoke, fright, anger, tears, questions, shock.

My sister came home. My dad was driving uptown from the financial district. Wasn’t anywhere near. My mother and older sister were in Toronto for the film festival. They were fine and driving back from Canada. My friend who worked in tower b was late for work because there was a game on television the night before. He got drunk. Was hung over. He called me to apologize for not calling me on my birthday the week before. My boyfriend came home. We ate macaroni and cheese and watched the television. That night, we walked the streets. The sounds of that siren, never ending, always etched in my memory, still sounding. No one was out, the sky was red. Downtown was glowing.

Minutiae.

What were you doing?

I don’t mean to bring the vibe down even more. There is nothing like Cancer and 9/11 talk to really get a party started. And don’t get me started on the economy!

9/11 was a tragic example of something that happened to everyone. Some were closer than I. But the ripples of emotion moved throughout the world and through all of our own individual pairs of eyes, a different set of emotions existed within all of us, reacting to the collective event in our own personal and intimate ways.

We all have our own personal 9/11’s. For me and my family, it’s Cancer. The terrorists are still foreign, scary, uninvited and ruthless. And I know we’re not the only ones. Cancer affects hundreds of thousands of millions of people.

Crying, silence, anger, the list of possible emotions to attach are endless.

~~
My older sis, Karin and I, rallied. We layered - her, the way of a real New Yorker in winter, I the way of a person who forgot how fucking cold it can get on the east coast. I put garbage bags on my feet and stuck them in my waterproof boots with the hole at the base of the ankle. I threw on a wool sweater over my long-sleeve thermal over my t-shirt over my tank-top. I wore two pairs of pants, two pairs of gloves and a hat, a big, wool one with a little cotton ball at the top of it.

Karin wrestled with shoveling the back, side and front walkway.

I took on the behemoth of a drive-way after borrowing the neighbors shovel that looked like one Charlie Brown might have used to shovel his snow storms.

Where does the snow go? How did my dad do it all these years. Where are we supposed to put all this stuff?

We both wore our iPod shuffles and got to work before the snow froze.

Even at different ends of the house, I felt connected to my sister. I would look over to her, a little face peeking from beneath a blob of clothing floating amidst a white haze. She would shovel for a bit then fall back into the fluffy pile behind her and make a snow angel. She’d laugh. I love seeing her laugh. Mostly, she’s rather stoic and consistent with showing little emotion. But when she smiles, she beams. I see me in her.

I held the shovel over my head horizontally and danced around like I was at a club.

Karin and I sliced and devoured every flake that formed its way into 6-inch sheet cakes on our property. It took us hours, but we shoveled our way back into something real that we could see again, something that wasn’t erased into white. We dug to what was underneath, what we remembered.

I sweat a lot for those few hours and worked muscles I didn’t even know I had.

My dad did not have the strength.

I don’t ever remember feeling stronger…

And more scared.