Mama's Hitting the Hard Stuff

Liquor boxes are the best.
They are sturdy, a good size. They are made for toting heavy valuables. They are free.

Should you see my husband driving around, hitting up all the liquor stores in town, do not be alarmed.

Should you see the kids and me in our Sunday best sitting in the car outside the liquor store, waiting for Daddy to return, it's not what you think.

Should you walk into my living room and see what appears to be twenty cases of good vodka stacked on our hearth, you will be disappointed if you think we are planning some sort of swank party. I don't know how to mix a cocktail. In fact, the only cocktails I know are the names I've read in books. Nerd, I know. It's the kind of nerd I'm all right to be, though.

The truth is, Mama has been hitting the hard stuff again.

The hard stuff like that cupboard under the stairs that has been a repository for random and useless things for the last five years.

The hard stuff like trying to determine which of my babies' priceless works of art to part with.

The hard stuff like resisting the urge to sit down and read all of the letters from friends and family that I have saved for the last 20 years or so.

The hard stuff like sneaking broken toys and cherished junk to Goodwill when no one is looking.

So it's my fault. I've sent my husband out to the liquor stores. It's me. I'm the one who's been holed up in the house, ignoring my kids, too dirty to be seen by the general public, hitting the hard stuff and hitting it hard.

My husband comes back loaded with gems that make my head spin: Grand Marnier, Goldschlager, Seagram's, Smirnoff. I exclaim with exhausted, half-sick glee over them and hoard them to myself, telling everyone to go away and leave me to it. I just need them to get me through this time. I'll quit in a month. I won't need them after that. I promise.

In a few weeks, we'll load it all back on the wagon. I'll be done with it all. I'll send them on their way. It will be back to business as usual. I will quit and I will enjoy the summer outdoors, I will play with my kids, I will socialize with friends again. I may even shower and shave. In a few weeks. For now, I'm hitting the hard stuff. Please excuse the mess.

Liquor boxes are the best.

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.

Derailed

You should have seen my to-do list this morning. It was epic. It rhymed in spots and it was a monument to ambition. But then there was this house...

I know, you're tired of it. I'm tired of it. Derailed. Drop everything, jump and run, feed the Hooligan a hot dog in the car. He gets to sit and eat a giant hot dog and read Calvin and Hobbes instead of cleaning up his junk. Best day ever for him. That's OK, though. It's all OK.

It has to be.

I suppose that I could whine and complain a bit. Wah. Things didn't go as I'd planned today. Wah. I have the luxury of a flexible schedule. Wah. My husband wants to buy me a house. Wah.

Seriously. Starving kids. Not just in Africa, in my city. I'll keep my guffing on the down low.

So, my Love Train got derailed. There were checks to write and paperwork to gather and cuticles to bite and Hooligans to feed and one thing led to another and I was just now standing in my kitchen making Muddy Buddies feeling like perhaps there was something else I should be doing. Is there really ever anything better to do than make Muddy Buddies? I think not. Not in the grand scheme of things.

But then this song popped into my head:

And I was transported to Michigan Avenue in Chicago about ten years ago. We'd gone on a weekender with some dear friends of ours and we were, of course, shopping. This song burst out of one of the store fronts and Alain started it.

I know it was him because it was so surprising.

He was usually so proper and French and intellectual and he suddenly clapped his hands, raised them over his head and started to dance down Michigan Avenue... people all over the world... and then Edward scooped me up and we followed ... join hands... arms aloft, beckoning the Chief Lou, who executed just about the finest Water Sprinkler you've ever seen on a Saturday afternoon... start a Love Train.

We danced in our motley parade of four amid tourists, amid shoppers, amid families.
Just a few steps of exuberance down the street. Love train.

Thirty seconds on a sunny afternoon amid a weekend away with friends, amid the chaos of a time full of stress at work and school, amid a whole lifetime of memories.
Thirty seconds of pure abandon that will likely stick with me forever.

We all moved on from there. We finished our shopping, we went back home.
They moved to California and eventually split up.
We moved on to law school and children and on and on.

All of us are always moving on. That's the nature of things, isn't it?
I could whine and complain about that, too, I suppose.
But the idea of standing in my home, getting ready to move on again, making Muddy Buddies and suddenly feeling that train again.
This idea sustains me sometimes.

The idea that these golden moments come and go, like the flash of sunlight on a river.
The river keeps moving, but it carries the sunlight with it. I don't want to be a stick in the mud of this river. So I'll move with the currents, see where it takes me, bask in the sunlight when it comes.
 I'll get swept into a brief dance and then go back to work.
It's all part of the same thing.

This is my Love Train.
This moving, this chugging forward.
 The dancing, the holding hands.
The dropping everything and running.
The hot dog in the car and the Calvin and Hobbes.
The making of Muddy Buddies and the signing of large checks.
The memories and the future.

Let it ride, let it ride, let it ride, let it ride.

Exhaust Fumes From the Word Mines

Author's note: My deepest apologies to my gentle readers for the appalling lack of quality in this post. As a peace offering, I have offered you several links to good things to read. You may just want to click on those and ignore all of the rest.



I had a writing breakthrough today. I will share my secret. I moved my laptop two feet. Kelly at Southern Fried Children posted about the state of her desk the other day. I can honestly say that I had not thought about my writing space until then.

We have a coffee table that lives in a corner up against the back of the couch. We moved it back there when the Hooligan was still the age that goes careening into sharp edges leading with his head and we never moved it back for one reason or another. The laptop lives on the coffee table there so when I write, I usually just sit on the floor in the corner and use the coffee table for a desk.

Last week I was complaining that my neck really hurt and the Chief Lou suggested that it might be from hunching on the floor to write and perhaps I should consider moving this new-fangled laptop invention to another locale where it might be more comfortable to sit and write. It took me a week to do it. But today I threw caution to the wind and picked up the laptop and moved it two feet to the dining table behind me so I could sit in an actual chair at an actual table. Brilliant, I know. The difference was amazing. Not only did I get a considerable amount of work done, I also managed to send a rather lengthy email to a blog friend of mine commenting on her thought-provoking post rather than just responding in the comments section like a good blogger, and I also managed to offend two of my friends' husbands on Facebook. How's that for productive? Look out world, I've got a chair and I can feel both of my legs now. Nothing's going to stop me now.

I had a long discussion with a complete stranger about the nature of introversion, parenting styles, and whales today while the Hooligan got to show a small girl the wonders of climbing through a tube and hooting. I don't go out of my way to talk to people, usually. If you may recall, I'm a little bit challenged in this regard. I'm proud to report that I didn't blurt a single inappropriate or embarrassing thing while I chatted with this woman for an hour. I really think that moving the laptop has helped me not only work better, but to grow as a person.

I had a long, meandering chat with my real estate agent today, too. She is a fellow blurter, I've discovered. I knew I liked her for a reason. So today she called to tell me that the house she looked at for us seemed fine if we wanted to come take a look, but that it gave her the creeps. She also informed me that she attended yoga class this morning, that she has no fax machine at home, and that she was still in her pajamas. I trust this woman implicitly to help us find a house. She probably uses her laptop at the table. She's a professional.

I had a heady post to write today about the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. Really I did. I'll write it soon. But for now, I suggest you go and check out Michelle at Buttered Toast Rocks because she forgot to shave her legs today, and then read the comments because it appears that Larissa from Papa is a Preacher also forgot to shave hers. And then I remembered that time I forgot to shave my legs for six months. And then you should swing by Tara's place: Faith In Ambiguity. She's got a fantastic discussion going about how we are all being strangled by our children, or about how the French made up for being surrender monkeys by being better parents, or wait. That doesn't sound right. It's about how we can all be better women if we would just move our laptops to the table.

I'll Know When I See It

Oh look at that one! It's great. Well, except for the smell, and that whole thing going on with the one wall there and there's a window that's leaking. But it's great, right?!

Note the edge of desperation. Possibly it's because I've been thinking about dating a lot lately. That sounds wrong. I'm not thinking of me currently dating anyone except my husband. Although, it has been said of us that we do still act like we're dating. I'll take that as a compliment. I'm working on a project. It's a project about projects, in a way, so my dating life has been shuffled around to the forefront of the rummage sale in my head.

Possibly it's because I've been thinking about dating a lot lately, but I'm feeling a little desperate. That also sounds wrong. I'm desperate, but I wasn't particularly desperate while I was dating. Most of the time. But right now, this thing I've been feeling lately, reminds me of the time that maybe once or twice I did feel like that.

We're looking for a house. It feels like everyone around us is happily pairing up with their perfect houses and living their perfect lives and we're the ugly kids on the edge of the dance. We finally work up our confidence to go over and make an offer on one, with our sweaty palms and our shaky knees and our tiny earnest money and just as we're about to get there, someone dashing and confident and gorgeous steps in front of us and takes it. Oh well, we say. They probably would have said no anyway.

I look at houses and I think "Oh, this one is handsome, but not my type. The roof also appears to be a little leaky."

I look at other houses and I think "I'm in the wrong place. They will never accept me."

I look at still other houses and I think "If I could change this, this, and this... then maybe I could live with it."

And the most humiliating of all, well-meaning people say "Oh, what about this one? I think it would be perfect!" and I look and I cry. Because it's under a bridge, or the bathroom is caving in, or it reeks of cat food and old lady and I think someone died there and was eaten by cats. Or because it seems perfectly fine on the surface and then you look deeper and the 147 Marilyn Monroe posters in the basement are covering some serious mold. And then I cry. I cry because I don't feel like I deserve a nice house, that my expectations are too high, that I should accept my lot in life and be grateful for the mold and the Marilyn Monroe posters and the corpse and the cat pee smell.

People who have done this before smile smugly and nod while they glance around their own cat-pee free houses and say "Don't worry, honey. It will be your turn. When you find the right one, you'll just know." And I hate them for that because I know that they are right, but I am tired and I am hungry and my clothes smell like the living of dozens of other people because I've traipsed through their lives and looked in their cupboards and in the dark places where no one goes - the furnace room, the basement, the garage, some showers. I've looked at the hopeful pipes and utility closets and "cozy eat-in kitchens" of strangers who have gussied and styled and preened, all with their own scent of desperation and I have found them wanting. I hate them and I'm tired. I hear myself saying the dreaded words "Maybe we'll just go live in the suburbs. Maybe we should just settle."

I'm not asking for much. I'm just asking for perfect. But you don't understand. "Perfect" for me is flawed and quirky and wonderful and strange. I don't need the flashiest, the showiest, the latest craze, the most stylish. I just need right for me. I have standards you couldn't possibly understand. I just know I'll know when I see it. 

Twenty-Five Bucks in Trinkets and Beads

Tomorrow, I will become a woman. I met with my very first real estate agent last week to begin the process of finding, and then purchasing, our very first house. I very nearly died.

Neither my husband nor I have ever bought a house. We decided to mortgage our educations instead. We did not follow the proscribed steps to adulthood with which we were raised: go to college, get married, get a job, buy a house, have kids, buy a bigger house, buy a mini van and so on. Our route looked something like this: get married, go to college some, move across country, go to college some more, move to another state, go to college some more, have kid #1, finish college, move across the country again, get a job, move across country again, have kid #2, pay on student loans forever.

Since I am the one with the most time on my hands, it has been tasked to me to do that which frightens the tar out of me. Tomorrow our real estate agent with very expensive hair is picking me up. I will ride around town in her moderately expensive car hoping I don't smell like last night's cheeseburger and look at houses. This makes me so nervous I feel like I might vomit said cheeseburger in the footwell of said car.

This is roughly what we can afford in our current neighborhood.
Photo courtesy of The Morgue File

Remember when there was a housing crash? Well, Seattle doesn't. Sure, the houses went from astronomically overpriced to appallingly overpriced a few years ago, but the Chief Lou put it best when he said: "It seems a little strange to think of a quarter million dollars as an incredible steal."  And that is precisely what we are looking for: an incredible steal. You see, we have these kids. They like their schools. I like their schools. The PTA has grown accustomed to my face. The fact that we are renting in a neighborhood that is really populated with more well-to-do (or at least more fiscally organized) people than we are never really occurred to us when the jBird took her first gleeful steps up the hill to kindergarten at our neighborhood school. We're "live in the moment" kind of people. This moment is distinctly uncomfortable for me.

I am a vagabond at heart. The six years we've lived in Seattle is the longest I've lived anywhere since I was 13 years old. I have no hometown. There is no house with my childhood bedroom still intact somewhere. Home, to me, has always just been whatever structure contained the people I loved. Like the early Native Americans, the notion of owning land is somewhat foreign and preposterous to me. I am hoping to run into a like-minded soul who will sell me some prime real estate for twenty-five bucks' worth of trinkets and beads. I probably have that much saved up in my couch. Yet, in spite of my protestations, I long for paint colors that I picked out. I want to be able to rip up carpet if it smells like a dog. I want to build a chicken coop and raised garden beds. I want to change out an ugly faucet if my heart desires it. I want to settle. My vagabond heart will always want to wander, no matter where I live, but my traveling shoes are wearing thin. I have these kids, you see. They like their lives. I like their lives.

So for them. Tomorrow I will put on my grown up pants - the ones without holes, the ones that don't fall down as much, the ones that feel a bit stiff and uncomfortable - and I will choke back the rising gorge of cheeseburger and fear and I will look at houses. I will look at houses so that they can have a home.