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?

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.

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.