to be looking at the board, not looking at the city

so it's been a while.

what have i learned?

i need to write. i need to read. i need to be lost and found and snuggled and comforted inside the arms of words on page. 

god, i miss it. the permanency of words. your thoughts on paper. and his thoughts. and her feelings. mine. ours. forever in print.

why do we get so tied down by things, distractions ... why do we deny ourselves the things we know will make things RIGHT because we are tempted by things that make things RIGHT NOW ... immediate?

oh, i WOULD read that book/write that thought, but look! shiny penny! new documentary on fonts! brand new package of cheese sticks in the fridge!

i am letting short-term distractions muck up long-term contentment. 

sigh.

i realize this is probably nonsensical, and more to the point, i realize no one reads this but me. and that's fine. it's whatever.

it's for me, anyway. that's what this whole blog is for ... raw thoughts on "paper."

if you want to travel, sell your car and go to bangkok, amiright?

fill in the blank, part 1

it was such a lovely day.

that's what i remember most clearly about the before.

driving to work with my windows down on an unusually warm winter day, i sang country at the top of my lungs and believed every word.

it was a great day to be alive.

my phone rang from the passenger side and i glanced at the screen. an unknown number flashed on the front, but i answered because why not?

she was in the hospital.

dying, apparently.

i pulled into work and stared at a blue sky.

----

i used to watch her for hours when she didn’t know i was there. quiet as a mouse, small as a whisper, i would hide around corners, behind chairs, anything i could do just to watch her. if i did it just right, she never even knew i was there. 

she was so different when she was by herself. 

from her doorway, i stood watching her sitting in her bed, propped up with pillows, tucked into blankets, carefully hemming some clothes. she had nimble fingers and a creative mind that allowed her to make the best halloween witches from scraps of fabric, or angels from tea cloths. 

today, it was mundane. mending clothes. but she did it with precision. a steady hand holding a thin needle, moving swiftly and smoothly along the lines. 

i must have made a noise or a small movement, because her eyes flew up to mine. 

she smiled. i felt warm. 

“come here,” she said, and beckoned me beside her. 

i flew to her side as she moved the covers to let me snuggle next to her. 

“want to learn to sew?” she asked. 

this is what heaven feels like. 

the love of a mother.

----

he said he didn’t trust me to drive myself, so my dad drove from fort worth to waco to take me to tennessee.

to her.

i packed a small bag with a blow dryer, makeup, a few text books, pens and a random assortment of clothes.

what else, i wondered, would i need?

but i knew what else.

i knew the if.

i walked to my closet and was for once grateful for my slight OCD. my clothes hung in perfect color blocks from black to white.

i only needed the black.

----

it was supposed to have been my weekend with her. 

i'd only seen her three times in the last year since they divorced, yet her boyfriend's daughter, beth, was there every saturday. to make up for breaking my heart, she tried to bribe me by letting me name one of the kittens that had just been born at her house. 

there were three — one white with a black spot on its nose, one black with a white paw and a red tabby. she said i could pick any of them to name.

i knew she’d been drinking. her speech was slurred and her reactions were much too slow. i could almost smell the alcohol through the phone. i suppose she thought her odds were good that out of three, i wouldn’t pick the black one — the one i wanted to call moonbeam. 

but i did.

“you can’t name him,” she said. “beth named him blackie.”

blackie. ok. unoriginal and obvious, but fine.

“wait — beth is there?” i asked. “i thought you said you couldn’t get me because your car broke down.”

silence.

“it broke after we got her.”

“so, she got to see the kittens be born?” 

don’t cry. don’t cry. don’t show her that this hurts you. she doesn’t deserve to see that this hurts you.

“yeah, and she really liked blackie,” she said. “and snowball.”

“she named two of the cats?” 

i’m stuck with the tabby? she said i could name any of them, but what she meant was, i get the tabby? beth gets two, but i get the tabby.

“well, no, i named the white one,” she said. “rick calls the other one scout, but i told him that you get to name him.”

“but you said i could name any of them,” i whispered. if i spoke quietly, she wouldn’t hear me cry. 

“don’t you give me that shit, caressa,” she hissed. “it’s a damn cat. you can call it whatever the hell you want when you’re here. beth won’t always be around here when we get you and cats don’t know their fucking names anyway. it’s a cat. shit.”

----

we drove all night to get to her, stopping only for coffee, gas and restrooms along the way.

i don't know how my dad stayed awake, refusing to let me drive and insisting i get more sleep. as i laid there, tapping my fingers against the glass and staring at the ink black sky, i felt the swells of anger rise and calm within me. 

she's so dramatic.

she's just doing this for attention.

i'm going to drive all this way, i thought, get to her bedside and find her eating jello and watching daytime tv. meanwhile, i'll have missed three of my midterms and the chance to see a really cute boy in my thursday class. 

and for what? an impromptu roadtrip with my dad in the middle of february? there are better ways to get me to talk to you, mom.

fell into an orange sky

"tell me the best day of your life," he asks. and then waits. 

-----

in the dream, i drove. i got into a car and i felt the need to escape, so i drove and i drove until i remembered meeting a man who told me the best place to get away happened to be just around the corner from the road i was on. i pulled over and found myself at dusk, under a swirling, almost eerily orange/purple sky, facing the man i'd just remembered. he led me to an unusually tall, tiny room set atop wooden poles that stretched 10 stories into the sky. the wind whipped across my body, slicing me in two with its surge. i looked back at him from the porch, where he started to climb down. 

"be still. look. feel," he said. "take as long as you need. you'll know when you're done."

-----

do i go with the obvious? the "mom" answer? do i say, "of course it was when my children were born." or "it was the day i met their father (despite the later crash and burn)."

yet i am more than motherhood. so should i talk about the unexpected joy i found laughing with my mother for the first/last time? should i tell about the boldness that comes from the steady constant of my father's love?

still, he waits.

how do i answer? what is my best day?

-----

i dreamed i was losing my hair. i leaned into the mirror and saw a map of an enormous lake that rivaled an ocean in its beauty and depth on the bald spot on my scalp. along the hairline, the coast. in the dream, i knew this was a place i'd always wanted to go, but didn't know the way until i lost my hair and found the map permanently imprinted on my own body.

-----

when i feel small.

when i lie on my back, in the dead of night, with nothing but my breathing to note the passing of time while i look at the stars, feel a sense of oneness with the universe and wonder ... why? how? when? who?

when my focus becomes narrowed by the lull of the ocean, the spray of the water, the feel of the sand. when i'm grounded on earth, firmly planted and still feel ... fleeting.

a blink. a nod. smoke.

there are so many things that cause me to feel bigger than i am. more important. the chance to feel small ... to really feel the freedom of my own insignificance ... is at once frightening and calming. reassuring and sad.

but it is freedom. it is such freedom.

and if you string together the moments i've felt released, the sum might equal a day.

the best day.

landslide

i had a breakdown in the middle of a barnes and noble parking lot two months before i graduated from college. i sat in my car, on the phone with my dad telling him about the hundreds of lives i wanted to live and realizing that i only got one.

one.

one life. that's it. one.

my dad calmly told me to chill the f out.

"just pick one," he said. "work hard. do your best. just pick one and, honey, you'll be surprised at all the doors that open for you that you never even saw coming."

in the nearly 9 years since that conversation, there have been doors. doors, and windows, and a few walls i've had to knock down myself to make a new way. a new path that led to new doors with new faces and pain i didn't know to watch out for along the way.

but joy, too. two kids in less than two years who push me to become not just a better mom, but a better human and isn't that what all these doors are supposed to lead to anyway? isn't that the point of everyone's path?

but ... i still want a hundred lives. a hundred chances to start at that point in the parking lot, talking to my dad with my future so very wide open in front of me.

because the older i get, the narrower my view looks ... and that's hard. and humbling. and scary.

but true.

now when i look at the horizon of my life, i still see doors, but i'm less brazen about flinging them open and stepping inside. i'm carrying two passengers along for the ride, and each door i open creates their futures, too. so i'm cautious. calculating. and while those can be very positive traits, they are limiting and less exciting.

remember when literally anything you picked for your major was fine because you had FOUR MORE YEARS to change your mind? i'm the college junior realizing that maybe accounting isn't for me, but i'd rather finish it than start all over again.

and it's fine. it's all fine. i have food on the table and clothes on their backs. i can buy them things like random new bikes and splurge for dinner out once a week.

i'm fine. i'm good, even.

but i'm not extraordinary.

and if i'm honest, i really thought i would be. i'd write that novel -- and it would be so good. i'd find love -- and it, too, would amaze us both. i'd travel. i'd be respected.

i'd rise.

and ... i'm good. i'm fine.

i picked a path. i picked a person. i picked a peck of pickled peppers and ... i just want to be back in that parking lot sometimes.

in her head

she curls her body beside me, her cold feet resting on my legs between the warmth of the blanket and my skin.

"i just want some mommy and me time," she says.

it's always before bed -- right before she knows she has to go to sleep. as a baby, she never fought the nighttime or naps. when she was tired, she slept. on the bed, on the chair on the floor -- wherever. now, this older version of her clings to the daylight like a lifesaver. to sleep is to admit defeat.

i sigh and let her in. five minutes, i tell her.

we watch tv, quiet and close. she rests her hand on my hand, her head on my chest and she breathes. i listen to the sound and feel her weight against me, struck by how quickly time passes.

-----

i spent today looking at videos of her and the boy from years ago. a two-year-old boy blowing raspberries and refusing to eat broccoli. a three-year-old girl telling a rambling story about princesses scaling rooftops. 

i miss those kids. it's a physical ache.

-----

she's smart. frighteningly so. not like her brother, who has my emotion but his dad's brains. where the boys are mechanically inclined -- they can mentally take apart machines and easily think of ways to improve the design -- my girl and i, we aren't that kind of intelligent.

we dissect people, situations, social interactions. we ruminate and meticulously construct just the right way to say something before we speak. we think abstractly on love, life, universality.

she's five, but you wouldn't know it. age means nothing with her thoughts.

"what's that?" she asks, pointing to the tv.

"oh," i say and pause. "well, that's a brain." i explain why the surgeons are operating, and what role the brain has to a person or animal. without it, i say, you couldn't speak anymore, as is the problem with the girl in the show.

she asks how a person's speech is regulated by the brain -- she thought the vocal chords took care of that. once again, she has awed me.

"yes, the vocal chords allow you to speak in the same way that your muscles allow your arm to move," i explain. "but without the brain function, the body doesn't DO anything."

she thinks on this. i can see the wheels turning.

"so," she wonders aloud, "the person can't even THINK without a brain? but their body ... would still be alive?" she's not misunderstanding the brain's role in thinking -- she's scared of the possibility that she could one day not think.

the realization that when we die, we no longer think -- EXIST -- hit me when i was close to her age and is one of the most fundamental changes in my life. i nod in response to her question.

"i'm scared of that," she says.

"me too," i admit and pull her close. we talk about how the body can live without the brain, but that the person would no longer BE.

"they would be like a plant," she says slowly. "their body would grow, but they couldn't play."

i look at her. i see her in my arms, giggling as a baby. her hair in first pigtails, as she takes her first steps. here before me, grappling with existential crises.

i miss her -- all her stages. the girl who exists now only in videos and memories. i will miss this girl, too.

one day. but not this day.

tonight, we snuggle on the way to bed, whispering secrets and talking about dreams.

tick tock

i stood outside the kids' room, listening to them talk and laugh. had a flash of the future, some christmas eve 25 years from now, with them back home, tucking in their own kids. i thought of my future self, watching them, thinking back on tonight when they were just kids, laughing about fairies and magic stars. i teared up, went inside for hugs/kisses/snuggles, round two. rubbed warm bellies, held squishy fingers between my own and tried very hard to imprint the video of the night in my mind so when the future comes, i can know i did everything i could to stop time.

free bird

they don't tell you how lonely it will be. how hard making new friends becomes with age and jobs and kids and exhaustion. how vital proximity and youth are to forming bonds that stretch beyond a pleasant hello in break rooms and hallways.

but it is. it is lonely. especially when you're doing this adulthood thing solo.

even the people you count as your closest friends become ghosts. a movement in your peripheral vision that disappears when you look, but you'd swear was just there. they all have their own white whales they're chasing. their own next step, next step, next step, bed.

each morning, i wake to two lovebirds nestling in my bed. warm bodies wrapping me up in a cocoon of "good morning mommy" and deep stretches. i'm bombarded by full-body hugs, drowned by piles of papers adorned with rainbows, ninjas, hearts, stars, horseshoes, clovers and balloons ...

and yet.

and yet.

at night.

i tuck them in. the little one and i fight about bedtime while the big one begs to sleep in my room. always later than intended, they're asleep and ...

it's just me.

i wish it was a small world.

little boy mine

he lost his first tooth yesterday. in just one summer, he grew almost two inches, gained more than a pound and lost the first part of his babyhood.

i remember when that tooth came in. the sleepless nights that accompanied the first tangible sign of time moving forward. now it’s wrapped in tissue in my jewelry box.

this tooth is not just a tooth. it is another small slap in the face of what I already know, but can ignore most of the time. he's growing up. every day he slips further away from this little boy I won’t see again. the baby that is already gone.

and i miss him.

i miss the little boy who only needed my chest and a song to be happy. whose sticky fingers curled my hair, dirtied back door windows and fumbled delicate things. whose content sighs lulled us both to sleep at night.

but then there's this kid in front me.

this big man who steals my heart with his curiosity and enthusiasm. the one who asks me about whether I’ve been in "indian wars." the one who is so good at monkey bars that i brag to anyone who will listen. who won't touch his dinner because he's too busy journaling math problems to notice his hunger pains.

the one who is still trying to hold on to his babyhood, too.

“Mom, is the tooth fairy real?” 

“What do you think, kiddo?”

“It doesn’t seem possible that someone that small could hold a tooth.”

“Well, that’s a good observation. What does that make you think?”

“... I think maybe I’ll ask that question when I’m older.”

“Just let me know.”

i am in love with him, he who is becoming a man in front of my eyes, with his head on my shoulder and his dreams on his lips.

and i'll miss him one day, too.

fire and rain

there is a vibration inside me
a hum of emotion
it moves through and warms my body
lights a fire from inside until my walls crash down
exposed
i'm left screaming, shaking
exhausted at the love, the fear, the joy, the pain
then, silence
a cool, smooth calm takes over
i sit in the stillness
waiting for the next wave to move in
and start again

red and black

i loved her jewelry.

she had this small, square glass box framed in brass with tiny pieces of stained glass on the top. inside, she kept all of her special pieces. large dangling earrings made of tiny interlocked metal circles, painted in teal and pink. chunky studs with owls adorning the front. feathered earrings. ornate, but cheap, plastic broaches, designed to look like ivory, studded with plastic to look like diamonds.

i loved them all.

at 10, i was inches away from my mother’s petite 4’11” frame. where she was thin, dark and wispy, i was solid and already starting to look like a woman. and it was her i wanted to be. some girls may have played dress up with costume ball gowns and tiaras. my dream was my mother’s closet. she was the princess i pretended to be.

in our house, the tenth i’d lived in in as many years, her bedroom had a walk-in closet. such a luxury for a duplex. clothes were packed into each side, the shelves piled high with boxes of papers not to lose, pictures to remember and tucked away in a corner, my mother’s pot stash.

when she was away, i’d spend every second i could, modeling her clothes. trying on dresses with this necklace, those earrings. walking in high heels and her robe.

trying to be her.

without fail, i’d stop at my favorite skirt. made of rough red fabric wrapped around soft black satin, this was my drug of choice. it fit my waist perfectly, the red elastic waistband cinching to meet my hips. i knew i’d wear it when i was grown. i imagined myself going to high school dances in it, swirling perfectly on the floor. moving off to college and meeting my husband in the skirt, him as taken with its beauty as i was. i would fall in love in that skirt. i would mother my children in that skirt. 

i longed for the day that the bottom hem would brush the floor, not pile at my feet. 

that skirt was the ruler by which i measured my years. she’d been back and forth into our lives dozens of times since my parents first separated when i was 8. each time she came home, i’d try it on. had i grown? did it fit better?

how much longer before it was mine?

post, the first

hello you.

the about section tells you what you need to know about this blog and me ... i'd repost it here, but it's a pretty good representation of me, so i shoved it on that page.

i never know how to start these things. it's how i feel when i walk into a social situation, not knowing anyone. who do i go to first? how do i break the ice? what the hell do i do with my hands?

at least here you're behind your screen, i behind mine. my hands, they type.

here we go.