Monumental Tooth

My last post was honest, difficult to write, depressing as all get-out and necessary. It can't remain as my home page, though. Why not?

Here's why not:

I dare you to look at this picture and not at least smile a little bit. Besides the hilarity, besides the casual arm flung around her little brother, look at my jBird's giant front tooth. That, my friends, is a monument.

It is a monument of tooth-bone to change, to growth, to shedding childish things, but not quite growing into the permanent things, either. I love that huge, solitary front tooth and sometimes I just want to touch it. My jBird is a patient girl, but she rarely indulges me in this. I don't blame her, but still. Look at that thing!

Her teeth will all eventually come in and straighten out (hopefully without a whole lot of orthodontic intervention) but for now, I secretly cherish this giant front tooth that is so awkward, so strange and out of place in her face, but a talisman of more big things to come. For now this is more beautiful to me than any movie-star-perfect smile in the world.

These two - with their life and their energy and their constant vibration - these two wear me out and they worry me and they drive me straight up a wall sometimes. But look at how they laugh. They lean into each other and laugh. With their messy hair and hand knit sweaters and heads full of nonsense and of course the giant tooth, they laugh. I can fume around and stew and boil about things that are so much bigger than they are, but you know what? These are the biggest people I know. They have virtually no control over their lives, they have very little say in the things of the world; they get told what to do, where to go, how to behave and to go and pick up all their Legos. Their mother is moody and somewhat unpredictable, she's intense and she's insane and she loves them with all her heart. And still they laugh. With eyes closed, without self-consciousness or guile - so hard, they laugh. This is their default mode.

And that monumental tooth. Well, you know how it is. It brings me to my knees and it makes me laugh, too. So hard. 

Day 7

Twenty-nine third graders sat on the floor in an old refurbished building. They were collectively writing a story and the leader of the discussion was a patient man named Steve with lots of enthusiasm. There was talk of a rapping hamster who was stuck in a tube. There was mention of rocket boots, of money, of wanting to see the world. I stood and watched this creative chaos and wondered how it would end.

The sweating volunteer paused the discussion and asked a question: "OK, wait a minute. We have the hamster in this dark and strange tube, but why would he go in there in the first place?" There was general shouting and creating and "Rocket boots!" and "Why not?!" and such when a hand shot up in the front row. Steve the volunteer quieted the mob and pointed to the intense little girl, sitting straight-backed and waggling her hand in the air as high as her shoulder would allow. "Did you have an idea?" Steve the volunteer asked. A loaded question, if ever there was one.

"Well, you want to know why he is in the tube. He wants some money, too. So why not let the motivation be  the same? Put the money in the tube, just a little back so he has to go in to see it, and then he can get stuck. It will be a trap." There was a chorus of "Oh yeah!" and Steve the volunteer bounced a little bit, "Great! And what is hamster money?"

The little girl answered promptly and calmly. "Why cheese, of course. It's funny because 'cheese' is an expression for money."

I have written a lot about my daughter. She is the walking embodiment of where all of my nerves and feelings and heart end. Bruise her and I will bleed. She smiles and I dance. She storms and I drown. I work hard to keep the responsibility for this intense visceral connection off of her young shoulders. I am supposedly the grown-up here, so I carry the weight of these intertwined souls and all the beauty and heartbreak that involves. I am the mother and this is my job. As she gets older - suddenly so tall! - she pulls away and defines herself in contrast to me. I celebrate this even as I feel the tiny stabs of loss. This is the way it is supposed to happen. This is what I am raising her for - to be independent, to think for herself, to find what she loves and pursue it. This is not about me.

My wee girl with her nose in a book.
She's in her Halloween costume, but it's not Halloween.

But sometimes, you know, it is. I stood with the other parents along the edge of this mayhem of ideas and laughed with them at the cheese, if only to mask the vivid, grateful tears that suddenly threatened to fall. I will never force my kids into being like me - heaven forbid they be like me. I would never insist upon their interests or their goals. I will not project my unfulfilled fantasies onto their small frames and make them live for me. I just won't. But my little girl - my beautiful, independent little girl - loves to write. She loves to tell stories and has invented them since she could talk. She loves to play with words and make them sing for her. She amuses herself with plays on words and explains them carefully to me. She has journals full to overflowing with bits of ideas and and dialogue and characters. She totes them everywhere with her and stops to write when she feels like it. Her spelling is atrocious, her handwriting is sloppy, punctuation is frequently optional - but she writes. Oh, she writes.

There are times when we don't communicate very well. There are times when my "I love you so much I could just lay down and die," comes out in a shout or a criticism. There are times when I try to tell her all the words she needs to avoid the heartbreak of growing up. I try to fill her up with the information that I felt I lacked as a child, not realizing that she lacks it for the same reason I did, she's a child. Sometimes she's weary and says, "Please can we stop talking, now?" Sometimes she has more ideas to share, more questions to ask. I try to listen and answer the questions she asks, not the ones I think she needs to ask. I try to listen to what she tells me when she rages or fumes, or can't sleep at night. I try to hear what makes her truly happy, what she really needs from me. I fail at this as often as I succeed. So it is to be a mother.

But this intense little straight-backed girl with her ready smile and waggling hand so high in the air, who is thrilled by "motivation", who thinks a story through, who makes a silly play on words - she is familiar to me. So familiar it hurts. I see me in her, but she is not me. I don't have enough words to explain to her how this fills me so. I have only my stupid, grinning tears that embarrass her on a field trip to communicate this deep connection to her, this gratitude for a shared love, some common and sacred ground. We don't always communicate very well, but I hope that we will always write.

Sex, Drugs & Rock and Roll

Three conversations in my house over the last few weeks that prove I'm still rock and roll.

Sex:

jBird: Look, your Hobbes doll has a bladder!
Hooligan: What's a bladder?
jBird: It's that pouch thing that dangles behind a boy's penis.
Me: Um, that's not a bladder. Your bladder is an internal organ that holds your pee.
jBird: Then what is that pouch thing?
Me: Those are testicles.
Hooligan: I have testicles! Testicles!
jBird: But what are they for?
Me: They hold sperm.
jBird: And sperm is...
Me: Uh, sperm are little swimming cells that fertilize an egg to make a baby.
jBird: [considering this] Like I ate for breakfast?
Me: Sort of. That's a chicken egg. Human eggs are much smaller and we don't eat them for breakfast.
jBird: Well, Hobbes has testicles then.
Hooligan: Testicles!
Chief Lou: What are you guys talking about in there?!

Drugs:

Me: Turns out my headache was sinus. My ear hurts, too.
Chief Lou: Oh, did you take some Sudafed?
Me: Yes.
Chief Lou: Did it help?
Me: Well, yes and no. It decongested everything, but it did not help me to learn that ear congestion tastes different from sinus congestion when it drains.
Chief Lou: That's so hot.

Rock and Roll:

Me: There aren't any love songs about stay at home moms.
Chief Lou: I'm sorry. There aren't any love songs about mid-level government employees, either.
Me: I guess you're right.
Chief Lou: We're just not that interesting.
Me: But we're still remarkably good-looking. That has to count for something.


I really wouldn't trade all this nonsense for the world.

Think Outside the Dead Horse

Several years ago someone sent us a movie about talking ponies with falsetto voices who rollicked around baking cakes and rollerblading and pouting and misunderstanding each other and then making it all up in song at the end. I generally don't allow such falsetto nonsense in my house, but the jBird was intrigued and I didn't want to come across an evil dictator, so we watched it. There was a sort of musical interlude where the ponies sang directly to the camera something to the effect of: "Your dreams can come truuuuuuuee!" and so on with all of the self-esteem building that pastel animated ponies could muster. My jBird looked at me and her little chin crumpled up and wobbled.

"Yes, honey. I know. It's so bad it makes me want to cry, too."
"Mama! They are saying that my dreams will come true!"
"Uh, yes..."
"I don't want my dreams to come true! They're strange and a lot of times they're scary!"

Looking into that frightened little face was a moment of pure maternal adoration. I shut off the movie and hugged her and reassured her and explained to her about clichés.  She snuffled around a little bit, verifying several more times that the giant spider who walked on her bed the night before in her dreams would not actually materialize because the talking ponies said it would and then she got angry.

"Why would they tell kids that? That's just mean!"

Why, indeed?

I tell you this because it's hilarious. Also because it perfectly illustrates one of my pet peeves about language. I'm not a fan of the cliché. (Even though I just used one in that sentence. Ooh! Quick digression: when jBird was tiny, we would say "I'm not a fan of ..." instead of "I don't like..." or "I hate..." because we'd rather she not learn those particular phrases when she was two. One time we were in an elevator and a man got in with us and stood rather too close to jBird for her taste and she ducked over behind my legs and looked out at him and said: "I'm a fan of my mom." It was cute and he laughed and she and I were the only ones who knew that she was really saying "I don't like you" to the man. See what I mean? Language matters.)

So, pet peeve. It would seem that we indoctrinate kids from a very young age to think and speak in catchphrases and clichés and then they grow up and think that's honest communication. We tell them things like "your dreams will come true" and expect them to know that we're pumping them full of delusions of grandeur, not threatening them with their nightmares made corporeal. Not only do clichés oversimplify things (which is why, I suppose, they turn up so much in children's literature and on Facebook), they are boring, and to a certain extent, dishonest.

I will fully admit to being a bit of a language freak, here. I didn't speak baby talk to my children, even when they were babies. We taught them the correct words for things when they asked. (Well, except doughnuts. The Chief Lou gave the jBird a doughnut hole when she was about 18 months old and I said, under my breath to him, "She doesn't need to eat that crap." The next time we got doughnuts, jBird piped up and said "I want crap! I want to eat crap!") There were no binkies or ba-bas or tee-tees or ta-tas in our house because I am a curmudgeon about such things. Having these two little language sponges around really made me stop and think about the language I used with them and in general and how I communicated not only with them, but with everyone. We get used to speaking in shorthand, we accept the strange clichés of our particular demographics, and we take the words we use for granted.

As writers, this cannot be so. As writers, we can't take the words we use for granted. We can't resort to shorthand and clichés.  I suppose we can, but we wouldn't be very good writers, then. (One last digression: that is not to say that we wouldn't become published writers, though. This is an odd conundrum.) So, for the writing. Audience participation time! I have it on good authority that people enjoy this. And so do I. Immensely.

Let us think about cliché.  Pick one out.* Write about it. Explore what it actually means. Make a defense of it, or disprove it. Think about the language that you use and blast that cliché wide open. (And, for funsies, you can do what I do, go through all of your old writing with a Sharpie and eradicate anything trite or at least admit that it is and try to find a new way to say it.) Send me a link or an email or leave it in the comments. Share with your friends. There's no particular deadline, just let me know what you come up with and when I get a bunch of them I'll share in a link-up post. Fun, no?

Remember: Think outside the box on this one.

(All right, it physically pained me to type that.)

*This is based loosely on a prompt in The Writer's Idea Book. I highly recommend the whole book.

Crying on the Playground

It has been a while since I have stood in the middle of a playground and cried.

This is a half-truth.

I have stood in the middle of a playground and cried more often in the last 4 years than I did in probably my entire childhood. But it still catches me by surprise almost every time. I have also stood in an auditorium and cried, in a school cafeteria and cried, and in a classroom, and one time in the hallway.

It's embarrassing.

But not really.

I stood on the playground of the monkeys' new school yesterday afternoon in the brilliant, warm autumn sunlight and cried. I was wearing large sunglasses, so my tears were mostly hidden.

I watched 300 little people in lime green shirts walk in circles and I cried.

I cried because all last week I was grumbling about how our state is lame and under-funds our schools; about how the powers that be think that things like art and music and theater and classroom aides and vice principals are luxuries in education and we have to go, hat in hand, to ask for money for our schools several times a year. And yet, on this sunny Wednesday afternoon, dozens of parents took time out of their schedules to count laps, hand out stickers and pretzels and small cups of water, to cheer for little students and to dance to loud music. I cried because people who didn't have to, happily wrote checks to be given to teachers in grubby little crumpled envelopes so my kids could paint pictures and sing songs.

I cried because there were hundreds of kids walking with purpose in laps around the playground, collecting stickers for each lap as if it were the most important thing in the world. I cried because they were laughing and singing and clapping and skipping and happy to do it, full of pride for their school.

I cried because after searching the sea of constant motion, all in matching T-shirts, I saw my jBird. She's a cygnet on her way to a swan. She was walking alone with a goofy grin and an occasional shimmy to the music, her head tilted forward in determination and her little wings flapping. I missed her on her first few laps because I was looking for someone shorter, less mature, closer to the chubbiness of the baby she was than the long and lean and graceful young lady she's becoming. I cried because when she saw me, her pretense melted away and she came clopping over on suddenly larger feet and uneven teeth and breathless and said "I am having so much fun!" Because she asked me to walk with her and was still child enough to proudly hold my hand and giggle at my ridiculous jokes. Because she let go of my hand when I walked too slowly, telling me: "I need to do this."

I cried because my Hooligan cruised up with a friend in tow, their hands full of snacks and water, and told me they had 'Nilla Wafers. Because he is so very much himself, my slow and steady tortoise who stops for snacks whenever they're offered. Because he will happily participate in whatever is there and find a way to make it suit him. Because he is so small, but such a large presence there, whooping and singing and exclaiming about the food. Because he doesn't seem to care about anything but then saves important things up to tell me later. Because he wanted to sit in my lap and show me his stickers, but then realized he had to get up if he wanted to get more. Because he is still so much my baby, but goes mightily about his business.

I cried because while I watched the two of them holding hands and urging each other along, another mother, a stranger, told me they were sweet and I was lucky they were such good friends.

I cried for all of it. For the community and the generosity. For the absurdity and the silliness. For the determination and the spirit. For what is past and what is yet to come. For this fleeting moment on a weekday afternoon where I could be suspended in time for just a little while and watch them walk in circles. For the knowledge that they are really walking onward, heads tilted forward in determination, small wings flapping and growing stronger, ambling and charging and occasionally stopping for snacks.

I stood on the playground and cried.
It's embarrassing.
But not really.

Back To School

We here in Seattle are rugged individualists. We do not start school the day after Labor Day. No sir, we start two days after Labor Day. I secretly believe it is to give the parents an extra day to recover from attending Bumbershoot. Maybe it's to give everyone a chance to get back from their last ditch camping trip of the summer. Or maybe it's to give us this spare day between holiday and routine to speculate and ruminate and drive each other crazy.

My jBird has proclaimed herself the "luckiest girl in the world" because she gets a locker in her new school, because her mom bought her the tackiest shirt on Earth to wear for back to school because it was deemed "cool" by that fascinating eight-year-old rubric, and because she gets to ride the bus this year. The Hooligan is more quiet about his inner-workings, preferring instead to give involved descriptions of space machinery. But today he told me that "School is awesome because there are so many possibilities." They are ready to go. They've been counting down the days for a month now. Tomorrow is the day. Today is the day they will eat popcorn for breakfast and watch too much TV and wrestle with each other in great, giggling, tumbling chaos that spills into every room of the house and out in the yard. Today they will get on each other's nerves and holler and then hug. Today is summer. Tomorrow is not.

Tomorrow they will go and learn the geography of a new school. The odd chemistry of making new friends. The arithmetic of when to sit quietly, when to stand in line, when to run and play. The poetry of being on their own amid a crowd of friendly strangers. Tomorrow when they dress it will be for school. When they eat breakfast it will be with an eye toward getting them through the day. When they step out the door, it will be into the unknown. Tomorrow they are going back to school.

Tomorrow I am going back to school, too. I will have to learn the silences of my house. I will have to regain the trust that the things they've learned that are far more important than reading and writing will stick with them as they navigate their days. I will have to resign myself again to giving them away to others for what is the best part of their days. That I will only see them sleepy in the mornings, worn out in the afternoons, and recharging on the weekends for the next several months. I will have to remind myself that this is for a greater cause. I will have to remember how to go about my days without stepping on midday Legos, stopping to make lunch for three, listening to the non-stop narration of two little lives. I will re-learn how to paint by myself, write by myself, eat by myself, clean by myself, shop by myself, even go to the bathroom by myself without the inevitable urgent conversation through the door. I have a lot to learn.

I am glad to learn it, though. These small people given to my charge are ready, so ready, for this next step. Their little wings are wet with newness, their fawn legs are wobbly but strong. They are thrilled with learning, with stepping out, with independence, with challenge and with the chaos of all those new people to meet. They gobble with their senses and absorb new knowledge as if through their skin. Who would I be if I were to deny them that? If I kept them babies in my nest and squashed their first attempts at flight with my feathered, motherly ass? I talk big. I'm all bravery and centered and selfless in my speech. I'm terrified. I always am. I resolutely do not think of the worst possibilities and smile brightly and say "It will be so much fun!" And indeed, it will. For all of us. I crave a quiet cup of coffee, uninterrupted time to think. And yet I quake inside. Have I done enough to prepare them? Will they be all right?

Of course they will. It is they who have taught my wobbling fawn legs how to walk like a mother. It is they who have helped to unfurl the wings of my heart to soar higher than I ever thought imaginable. It is they who have prepared me for this. This incremental letting go. This watching two distinct people who carry a little bit of me in their DNA to walk around, to succeed, to go further bit by bit away. It is they who have taught me that I have no control, only love and fragments of my own experience to share with them. They will be fine. I will be fine. Tomorrow, school starts for all of us.

Today I will watch them play and enjoy this spare day.

She Has the Monopoly on Him

The Hooligan saved up some allowance money and was dead set on purchasing (his word, purchasing) the game of Monopoly. I have played a lot of Monopoly over the years. Sometimes with random and far-reaching consequences (another story for another time.) But I had no idea where the Hooligan had even heard of it. We tried to convince him in the store that it might be a little long and a little tricky for him. He's five.

"Um, yeah thanks, no. I will purchase Monopoly."

All-righty then. It seems to me, that's precisely the sort of mentality one needs to succeed at Monopoly. Needless to say, the last several days have concluded with a family Monopoly game. Like all good socialists, I lose every single time I play. The monkeys love this. They hand me one dollar bills out of pity as I mortgage my paltry holdings to try and pay the Luxury Tax.

The jBird is a real estate magnate, always. But she's generous. Can't pay your rent? She'll smile sweetly, give you a hug and then tell you to pay up. She will occasionally trade a property to boost your portfolio if she feels like it would be fairer if you could build some houses. But mostly she toes the line and calmly demands payment.

The Hooligan, on the other hand, is kind of like playing with a mad, drunken trust-fund baby. He howls if he has to go to jail: "I'm rich! I don't have to follow the rules!" He careens around the board buying properties at random and insisting on smelling the money whenever you pay him rent. He doesn't distribute his houses evenly, creating odd financial landmines all over the board. He always lands on "Free Parking", he always wins the beauty contest, his trust fund always matures, it's always his birthday and we always have to pay him $10 apiece. He cackles with glee, stores his money in an untidy heap in front of him and occasionally rolls in it. Can't pay your rent? He hollers "Give me all your money, sucker!" and then does what he calls "The Hooligan Shuffle" - a little song and dance routine that's half soft shoe, half end zone dance. The boy is insane. His stated goal in any game is the same: "I want to build all the hotels!"

Tonight's epic battle found the jBird and me almost immediately sporting barrels with suspenders. "I'm eating out of garbage cans!" she wailed. She is unaccustomed to the poor house as far as Monopoly goes. Meanwhile, the Hooligan was building "all the hotels" along two sides of the board. He hooted and hollered and danced and offered to let me be his servant when I couldn't pay his steep rent. But then it was jBird's turn. She landed on Park Place with a hotel and couldn't scrape together the cash. She made a big show of handing everything over and taking her thimble off the board. She came and giggled with me in the poor house and played assistant banker. She was fine.

The Hooligan, however, was not. His laughter got a little strained and he started wiping furiously at his eyes. His turn took him past "Go" and as he collected another $200, he started crying in earnest.

"I don't want this! I feel so bad!"
"Why do you feel bad? It's just how the game goes."
"Noooo! I feel terrible that jBird lost everything and it's no fun for me to be rich if she doesn't have anything!"
"It's OK, buddy. Look, Mama lost everything, too."
"But I feel so bad for jBird! She's my sister and she's eating out of garbage cans!"

We finally struck a deal with him to assuage the grief. jBird went and played on his "team" so that he could share his wealth with his sister and then he happily carried on completely stomping his father and me into the ground.

My Hooligan is a sweet kid, but he's a bit of a meathead. He never seems to be paying attention when I try to tell him things. He seems to shrug off just about everything. He's a hugger and a headbutter. He's my baby boy and I love him like only a mother could, but he doesn't have the more universal appeal that his sister does. He's not a networker or a people pleaser. He is, however, fiercely loyal to those he deems worthy. That list includes about five people and his sister tops it.

I have feared for years that he may be in the mob. I think these fears are well founded. When he was three he toddled up and asked me for a thousand dollars. When I asked him why he might need the money, he shrugged and said: "I need to go to North Chicago. Business." These fears have grown to include the mental image of visiting him in some strange mansion one day where live sharks swim in a moat around it and giraffes roam freely through the hallways. I have pictured him answering the door in a silk smoking jacket and nothing else, inviting us in for hot dogs and macaroni and cheese. My waking nightmare has swelled to include wild real estate deals made from jail and pants-less dance parties upon his release.

But I can rest a little easier knowing that if even half of my fears do realize, he'll always have his sister's back.


Author's note: I'm supposed to be writing about inspiration this month. I'm not sure anyone will find my Hooligan's antics inspiring, or even interesting, but when your days get long and you are sweating in places you didn't even know existed, you take inspiration where you can get it.

They Bob

They bob.
They wink and wave and smile, fall over and get back up again.
They sputter and shake like puppies, bewildered and offended at a sudden change of events.
But they bob.

They float back to the surface, reaching for the sun.
Their energy.
It's as if they draw it from the flailing of arms and legs.
Like solar powered perpetual motion machines.

They've drunk half the lake by now.
Falling, mouths wide open, laughing.
Bellies full of algae, sand, plankton, small fish?
But they bob.

There have been wild whoops.
The excitement of a few dollars' spending money, some ice cream, a penny on the ground.
There have been squeezed-so-hard-eyes-shut-in-the-effort hugs.
The gratitude of small gestures, the dawning realization of a world so much larger than themselves.
There have been sullen mutterings.
The little indignation of inconvenience required of them.
There have been torrents of tears.
The injuries of person, of heart, of feelings that come from being the smallest in the room, the ones with the least say in things.
There have been shouts, giggles, mad dancing, the maniacal laughter of using that last ounce of energy to just let go.
There have been tiny snores and snuffles in the night, small bodies seeking solace in something familiar, to lie like a spoon and be sheltered, safe in the soft warmth of their origins that they know like breathing, like food.
There have been explosions of every color: mean red, the indigo of loneliness, the violet hues of twilight come too soon, the verdant joy that rolls like hills and breathes life into its surroundings, the firecracker oranges of cackling mirth, the stormy blacks of despair, indecision, exhaustion, frustration, concession.

And still they bob.
These large and messy presences, bound so tightly into small, lean bodies.
These impossibly buoyant little souls of whom much is demanded.
They roll with the changing tides, slip under, stand up, sputter, smile and do it again.
They reach out, grasp each other's wrists and tug.
They tumble, collapsed into a heap of each other and come up fighting.
Fighting for air, for space, for solid footing, for a place in the sun.

Love seems an inadequate word for what happens inside me for them.
They grip my viscera with their grabbing little hands and eyelashes and that tilt of small chins, a wink, a sudden tear or smile. The curves in the backs of their little knees, their strong little shoulders, the moles on each of their cheeks, their breath, those dark and endless eyes.
They grip me and they pull me up, an aching lightness fills me up.
They take me with them.
And they bob.

Remembering My Lines

"Honey! Time to get up. You don't want to be late for your last day of school!"

A few months ago, the jBird and I were lying on the floor reading together. In the book she was reading, the main character's mother said this to her daughter. jBird read it to me in that sing-song voice that denotes a friendly and warm adult.

"Can you say this to me when it's my last day of school?" she asked me.
"Sure," I said. "You want me to remind you it's the last day of school?"
"No, I want you to say it to me just like that," and she repeated the line in the same sing-song Mother voice.
"No problem," I said.
"You have to remember to do it."

The mothers in the books she reads are either perfect or absent. The perfect ones are attorneys, astrophysicists, veterinarians. But they always seem to be on vacation. They always have the correct words to say to their daughters. They are warm and loving when they need to be, but stay out of the way most of the time. They are these benign, flat characters who serve a certain purpose and then fade into the background. The absent ones are another sort of wish-fulfillment, I suppose. My jBird is intrigued by orphans. Some of the mother characters are so horrible that it is a relief they are gone. Others are an ephemeral snapshot of beautiful perfection kept close to the child's heart, but not interfering all that much when they want to go chase fairies or something. These things fascinate my independent little girl.

Her books never say things like:

 Daisy's mother was a complicated woman. Her jeans never seemed to stay up. One of Daisy's favorite games to play with her mother was to yell 'Coin slot!' and stick her finger in the spot where her mother's jeans had slipped down. Mother sometimes drifted off in the middle of sentences and left Daisy wondering what she was even talking about. She was by turns dreamy and disconnected, crabby and blunt, present and attentive; but she was always loving. Daisy was never exactly sure what her mother did. She would sometimes spend hours at the computer or writing in a journal and then she would suddenly get up and go on a mad cleaning spree or take Daisy and her brother to the park. Mother could talk for what seemed like forever about certain things, but then other times answered with a distracted 'Mmm-hmm.'

They just don't write moms like that for kids. I'm not even sure that they should. My voracious little reader escapes into books for hours at a time, her favorite place to read is sitting in the tree in front of our house. She absorbs these characters and scenarios and tries to fit them into her world. She is still young and doesn't quite realize that her world is richer, more textured and interesting than the formulaic stories she reads. After all, she has no real fairies that come and talk to her or clans of cats who come to her for help. I remember being eight. I remember imagining the worlds of my books while playing in the woods. I remember thinking sometimes how much easier my favorite characters had it. I remember wishing my mom would be more like the moms in the books. These were things I never would have dared ask my own mother, so it thrilled me to my very childish soul when my jBird asked me to say the lines from her book. That kind of openness and innocence in a gesture of wishing is something that brings me to my knees with gratitude. I am more than happy to oblige.

This morning we woke up on the couch. My jBird suffers from chronic insomnia and last night was a little rough. In the wee hours she had finally fallen asleep and she lay there snuggled against me, warm and safe, mouth open and breathing her little snaggle-toothed halitosis into my face. She's getting older, but when she's sleeping, she looks every bit of my baby girl still. I watched her sleep for a few minutes, trying to squeeze the last drops of silence out of the morning, trying to give her just a few more minutes to restore that whirring mind of hers. I kissed her forehead, stroked her hair and said:

"Honey... it's time to get up. You don't want to be late for your last day of school..." in that lilting voice of fictitiously perfect mothers.

She stirred and smiled a tiny jack-o-lantern for me, and snuggled closer. I often miss my cues. Sometimes I step all over other people's lines. Sometimes I burst into the scene and start reciting a soliloquy from an entirely different act. Almost always, I improvise and confuse the other players. But sometimes, sometimes... sometimes I get it right. I arrive on cue and remember my lines. My ovation is that little smile and an extra snuggle.

jBird and her real mom.

In time, she will realize that life is not like her books. That people, even people who love her with all they have to give, are fallible and messy and real. She will come to see that this drama we live is a rich story unfolding without formula, without a script. I know my daughter and I believe she will come to appreciate this. Just as I hope that she comes to appreciate that even though her mother is not the glossy perfect mother she reads about, that she is a real mother. A woman who tries and sometimes fails. A woman who loves her more than she even knows how. A woman who will say the false lines that she requested to show her how real the love is she has for her.

Little Girl

Today is my dad's birthday. He would have been 66. I mark the day every year because it is almost impossible for me to forget dates. Unless they are happening in the future, and then it's almost impossible for me to remember them.

I resembled my dad physically when he was alive, and our personalities were very similar in a lot of important ways. The kind of ways that enabled us to enjoy an amiable relationship and not push each other's buttons too much. One time when I was getting in very bad trouble for some indiscretion in high school, he sent my mom out of the room and he said, "A father isn't supposed to have favorites, and I don't. But I think you and I understand each other, we think alike in some ways." I've always been his little girl.

My dad and me when I was a little girl.

I think about him every day. Before he died, I used to hear people say things like that and think "Oh, how morbid." It's because I didn't really understand. I didn't understand how you can miss someone, but not be sad all the time about it. For the first year after he died, I didn't understand how anyone could miss someone and not feel like they'd been punched in the stomach. For a year I saved up most of my tears all day and then cried them into the sink as I washed the dishes after dinner. I don't really do that any more.

I was thinking about his hands today. He had big, broad hands - full of scars. They were the hands of a much younger man. My sister said she would never marry someone who didn't have strong hands. She didn't either. The last time I saw him was in a hotel room in San Antonio, Texas. He was sick. He was waiting for open heart surgery. He was going to die. I think we both knew it, but we wouldn't say it. I sat with him on the bed and he held hands with my jBird. Her tiny white hand in his big brown one. Even sick, he was tanned from working in the yard. She sat and she petted the curly red hair on his arms. Sometimes he would slip and call her by my name. He sometimes had a hard time relating to me as an adult. I was always his little girl. It drove me nuts because I'm not a little girl.

"We never talked to you kids about dying," he said. "It's nothing to be afraid of."
"I know," I said.
"Papa, will you die?" jBird asked.
"Everybody dies, baby. It's part of life. It's why you live your life well today, so the dying is all right," he said. I'm not sure if he was talking to her or to me. I could only sit and listen. I had no words. I didn't want to lie or say something ridiculous and comforting.
"I want you to know I'm not afraid to die," he said. "I want you to know that whatever happens, it's all right. I should have talked to you more about this while you were a kid. Then you wouldn't be afraid."
"I'm not afraid," I said. "You did talk to us about this. It's just hard to know how to think about it until it happens. I'm OK. I want you to focus on getting better. You and Mom can move out West. You need to be near us."
"Yeah, Papa! You can come live with us!" jBird piped up.
He laughed. He always had a marvelous laugh. "I'd love that."

The Hooligan wasn't quite two yet and he was rolling around on the bed with my mom, showing how he could count backwards from 10. We watched them play for a while, because his big old pumpkin grin is somewhat irresistible. He looks so much like my dad. We didn't talk about this dying business any more. I sat and held his hand and I could almost believe that everything would be all right.

You know, everything is all right. He died. Three days after his surgery, just as the doctors said he was getting better. I'm not angry with them. They did their best. They were surprised and grief-stricken as well. But everything is all right. Sure, I miss him. I think of him every day. I think of him at milestones. I remember his birthday. I think of him today, his birthday. Tomorrow we go and get our new house inspected. It is our first house. We will be moving to someplace my dad has never seen. He would have been out of control with excitement. He would have driven me nuts. He would have had all sorts of advice about things I already know. He would have double checked that my husband knew what he was doing and it would have infuriated us. He would have had to have been restrained by my mother from coming immediately and painting every room and digging flower beds and fixing every loose screw in the place. He would have pestered my mom to look at the pictures of it over and over. I would have been irritable and flattered and I would have known that he was like a kid when he was excited about something and that he didn't really mean to intrude.

So I think of him especially today. I'm not very sad, though. I laugh at the silly things I remember about him. I laugh at how he would have been so excited to see this next step in my life. I wonder if where he is, he can. I don't wonder about it too much, though. Because he is where he is supposed to be and I am where I am supposed to be. And because he told me not to be afraid. Because I knew he was ready to go. Because he told me it's part of life. Because he told me to live the best I can now.  He told me everything would be all right. And I believed him. Because I've always been his little girl. And because I'm not a little girl.

She's Eight

Pure joy. Opening birthday presents.

If she was a fruit, she would be a mango.
If she was music, she would be rock and roll.
If she was a flower, she would be a primrose.
If she was a color, she would be magenta.
If she was a fabric, she would be silk.
If she was a food, she would be a loaf of artisan bread.
If she was a politician, she would be irresistible.

She's indescribable, my jBird. She's tough and she's gentle. She's imaginative and she's literal. She's ladylike and she's messy. She's bold and she's humble. She's caring and she's practical. She loves babies and she wants to be an astronaut. She's an activist. She's persuasive. She's brilliant. She's a networker. She's intense. She's fair-minded. She's very, very silly.

She's a maelstrom that entered our lives eight years ago this week.

I've been reflecting on the last eight years and have been finding it difficult to put it into words. From the very start, she has systematically shattered any preconceived notions I may have had of motherhood. She has done it with a smile and a gentle, unrelenting spirit. Eight years later, she's still doing it.

When she was 18 months old, I noticed she was singing along with Frank Sinatra in the car: Gotchooo unda ma 'kin! 

Under my skin is where she is. I am madly in love with my husband. My Hooligan is my sweetheart and can melt me with a wink, but nobody on this planet is as viscerally attached to me as my little girl.

I go to bed every night feeling like I've failed her. Like I haven't been the woman she needs me to be, let alone the mother. I have this powerful, gregarious, magnetic little girl and I fear I will make her ashamed of me in my retiring and relaxed ways. She would not agree with me if I told her this. She would wail and hug and reassure and kiss me all over my face and tell me I was the best mother in the world, and then she would ask for Daddy to put her to bed.

I am honored that the job of mother has been entrusted to me. That I have been given this complicated, delightful little girl to raise. It is not my job to make her into something. It is my job to recognize that she already is something. Something amazing and wondrous and more than I could ever imagine. It is my job to hold her hand and guide her through. To teach her the things she needs to know to be a grownup. It is my job to celebrate who she is and teach her to do the same.

It is a fearful and rigorous work. But she makes it more than worth it.

Happy birthday to my jBird with all of her quirks and facets, her shining light.

Feathering My Nest

There be geese on my horizon. I am wrestling with geese right now. They are flapping and honking and beaking  me. I love a good wrestle. One of us will emerge victorious and when the mud is washed off and the cuts and bruises are bandaged, I will display the fruit of those efforts here. Meanwhile, there are feathers everywhere. And there are things that come with Monday that preclude extended wrestling matches.

Here are some things from my weekend that I collected:

The feel and weight of bamboo and silk yarn in my fingers and across my hook. The drape and the sheen of the fabric they made together by the marvelously simple repetition. Hypnotic. Stitched into the whole experience is the knowledge that my mom will wear this sweater as she embarks on a brand new adventure, a life-long dream, and a courageous act of healing.

My jBird on my lap. So heavy, her head sticks up taller than mine, her boniness digs into me as she snuggles, her legs drape almost to the floor. But she sits and snuggles still. She turns the eyes toward me from an angle I've seen then since her birth. So dark and intense and thin veneers for everything under the surface. Her dimples and gums as she grins and closes her eyes, hugs and is happy.

The Chief Lou, who smiles and encourages and loves. I watched him flirt with the old ladies at church. I watched them twitter and giggle and clutch his arm in hilarity. He was telling them how much he liked my leather pants and my new haircut. He spreads ease to people in a way I find enviable, and I watched him, for a few short moments make a recent widow laugh uncontrollably and feel young and daring and fun again. My heart opens and opens and opens with love for him.

My Hooligan and his best friend sitting together, sharing books. She is a little younger, a little smaller and he knows it. Ever conscious, ever gentle, he shares and defers to her. They draw each other pictures and whisper secrets in each other's ears. They hold hands and pray. The Hooligan prays that "everyone who might get lost will find their way home" and I blink away tears. He tells her a secret and her laugh is explosive, surprisingly deep. In a fit of pure delight, he kisses her on the cheek and plays with her hair. He does this because this is how he expresses love to people that matter to him. An innocent, pure gesture of genuine affection for his friend.

A dear friend lolled about on the floor of my crowded living room with me. She saw my kitchen in disarray. She was close enough to the carpet to see the spots. It didn't matter and we talked of things that mattered. We talked like friends in comfort, silly, teasing, serious, wondering, blurting, madness. Three hours passed and I wondered why she thought it was time to go. Good friends are rare. Especially the kind that don't mind that your kitchen is a mess.

I picked apart a ball of fear in much the same way I do my beloved yarn. So tangled and claustrophobic at first, it's easier to just chuck it in the back of the closet and forget about it. It's not easier, though. I know this. I sat and unraveled, patiently, vigilantly. Strand by strand I sorted it out. I picked it apart and untangled the knots. I wound it into something useful and beautiful. The beauty of decision, of aligning and analyzing, of letting go and watching it whip too fast to see, round and round on my winder, turning it into something solid and manageable.

I will be back to speak of water fowl soon. In the meantime, read my inspiration most fowl: dbstevens at Kicking Corners has ruffled my mental feathers with this and this.

What Is

The sky was throwing a fit this morning. It was huffing around, throwing big fat tears every which way. This is March in this part of the country. It's a manic-depressive drama queen. One day bright and shiny and kind of warm, inviting everyone out of hibernation and into their yards; the next all storming or sulking or giving the cold shoulder. Sometimes all of that on the same day. It's a time of year for dressing in layers and then peeling them off, one by one, or adding them back on as the sky stalks around changing its mood. It is useless to get upset about it. There's no changing what is.

These are the thoughts that attend me like handmaidens this morning as the Hooligan and I get ready to go about our day. We safely deposited the jBird at school, where she will doubtless encounter many exciting things. She is always encountering exciting things. It is part of her nature to do that. The Hooligan and I have less exciting things in store for us today. But we are less exciting people, most of the time. Our excitement is the slow burn variety. The kind that quietly enjoys what there is to do. There are errands and necessities. There are things that must be done. It is useless to get upset about these things. There's no changing what is.

I spent a weekend disconnected from screens and sign-ins and electronically charged pastimes. In a quiet fit of rebellion I ignored this space and all that it entails. It was refreshing as rain. I spent time with friends that I can hug. I played and rested and read and reveled in the flesh and blood of my life. There comes a point where the ideas in my head grow stale, like so many leftovers in the fridge. I can almost always think of something to write. I cannot always think of something I need to write. There's a difference. Sometimes it's the equivalent of reheating some old soup I found and sniffed for freshness and joylessly consuming it because it's there and fuel is needed. Sometimes it's the discovery of odds and ends that come together in something new and exciting and delicious. But sometimes I pull the lids off of things and gag, leaving me no choice but to get out, out, out, away and seek new stores for my pantry shelves. It is useless to get upset about these things. There's no changing what is.

Outside, March is making up her mind. Will she storm and rage or will she coddle us with gentle breezes? Inside, I'm making up my lists. Lists of things to eat, things to do, things to dream, things to write. Will I be distracted and put off by the things that take doing to live this life? Or will I embrace them with purpose and simple appreciation? Sometimes I am like March - an alternately raging, storming, smiling drama queen. Sometimes I am like my jBird - a dancing flame, excited to lick up the world. Sometimes I am like my Hooligan - given to quiet obsessions and solitary delight, oblivious to the raging around me. Most of the time I am like me - a combustible combination of the three. It is useless to get upset about such things. There's no changing what is.

But there is preparation - the layers of protection we put on or remove as needed; there is perspective - the possibility of good in all things; and there is contemplation - the slow burn of intentional satisfaction, contentment, enjoyment. There's always acceptance of what is.