a love story

there is no greater happiness than my hand on your back while you sleep.

tracing your face in the dark, i memorize the changes. there's a scar near your eye i pause by and remember before it was there. how smooth this spot once felt. your lashes, always longer than i dreamed possible, feel soft beneath my fingers.

you're quiet. nothing moves except your chest, slowly rising and falling under my hand.

there's a space inside me that swells when you're near. at times like these, it feels so full and warm with love that i am soothed into this moment, this time, this life with you. no worry matters, as i have you.

i am more than just your mother, but being your mother makes me more than just me.

you are my whole heart.

its hardest hue to hold

"am i able to stay up later than normal? she got to." he asks. it's a fair question.

"you can go to bed at 8:20."

"thank you!"

he's eight. when he was little, he always went to bed far earlier than my friends' kids. bedtime came early, leaving me quiet time to unwind. it was important for both of us.

now, he's eight. approaching adulthood, it seems most days. certainly the teenage years. he's smart, funny, emotional. he has a girlfriend. sleepovers. homework. sports.

when i picked him up from school today, i caught sight of myself in the window's reflection, smiling at him. wrinkles around my eyes.

when did that happen?

i'm drinking wine, watching trashy tv. texting friends. contemplating a house purchase solo. single, grown-ass lady, raising kids and getting older.

i have to chug water to keep hangovers at bay. i have to workout regularly to keep fit. count those carbs. i buy special lotion for my face and under-eye cream.

when did that happen?

it's fascinating to see the transformation in my life. i'm not where i hoped i'd be, but i'm better than i thought i'd be. i know that's vague. my heart has been torn to shreds, continually beaten and still i'm here. and pretty damned strong. i'm a really good mom. a passable friend. a roller coaster of a girlfriend.

sigh.

watching the years creep on, slowly, then all at once ... it's hard not to be completely in awe with the passing of time. the way things go. forever and ever amen.

i watched my face in the reflection for a few seconds, wondering how long i've looked like this. how often i look like this. who sees me like this. will i be remembered like this. etc, etc, and so on and so forth.

32. thirty two.

tick.

tock.

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.

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.

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

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.