I Didn't Just Wake Up This Morning With A Craving
I Write To Stop Time
The questions come so fast I can barely collect them.
“Mama?” (She always begins with the question, “Mama?” Even if she’s already talking to me. She just has to get my attention special for the next comment.) “What does fair and square mean?”
Continue reading “Why, Indeed?”An update to a previous post, “On the Edge of Two Eternities.”
Flashback: Bike rides and summer days. My dad’s trumpet. Climbing the trees in my backyard. Moving to a different part of town for high school, feeling like I was telling the story from 90210. Marching band, and cool football night air on my cheeks sunburned from a week of afternoon practices. A threatening interaction before college, a direct result of my dad’s shit. Car accident, coma, hard work and a triumphant return to building a life. Dad was cheating again in a way that threatened to put me out of school. This time, for the first time, I have the power to stop him from hurting me, and I do. He hasn’t talked to me since. I get closer to God and deal with health issues stemming from the accident. I backpack in England and Poland, and get a Master’s degree while working full-time. A trombone player from that high school marching band finds me and we marry, happy to have someone to sit with. We have a little girl, the most magical being we can imagine. We have an adventure in Seattle before moving to Ohio. I get my hip replaced and fall in love with Muay Thai.
“In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.” H.D. Thoreau
Flash forward
I am blessed enough to get pregnant again, so I decide to homeschool our daughter until she can get a COVID vaccine or until the baby is born, whichever comes first. We all get vaccinated and can see my mother again, and I can go back to Ren Fair. I keep raising out kids and creating as I can, particularly a social justice movement in Columbus. Finally, we buy land in the Wenatchee forest to be back close to Seattle. We build a small home, explore the mountains and read together under the trees.
I just finished watching Little Women, the more recent one. Oh, now my heart.
The 1995 one was very dear to me, and watching this one made me remember when I saw the old one-what life was like then and how different it is now.
I’m also watching it with the eyes of a mother, and the eyes of someone who has now seen 25 years pass. It’s bittersweet, and I cried ugly when Beth died.
Continue reading “Thoughts Upon Watching The Most Recent Little Women”That’s about how long I have until the Oxycodone kicks in. What a week this has been. What a time. When I heard, as a kid, that you can’t imagine how life will be, this really wasn’t it.
Continue reading “30 Minutes”I did it.
It took a year and a half and I think my state will be closed down again soon, so I got it in under the wire.
A new hip.
Wee One’s teacher talks to the class a lot about having a “Growth Mindset.” She sent the parents a visual about it.
If you don’t click on the link, I’ll summarize the gist of the list: Brains can grow, no matter what. Praise effort, hard work, remind yourself and your kid that mistakes are how we grow and and change is possible. To be positive.
Continue reading “Growth Mindset”
Dick. You should have slowed down more. I thought you were slowing down more. I thought you had seen me and were slowing down to turn and let me go and were just doing that rolling slow thing. Then I realized you fucking weren’t and were even gonna speed up. Fuck.
Continue reading “To The Man Who Almost Hit Me Tonight And Other Thoughts”Over night has been rainy, but it’s now dry enough to sit on the pathway in my neighborhood. It’s chilly for August. I’m in long sleeves.
My daughter just called me, but I think she got distracted. We went on a search for mud this morning; my headache demands an outing with little exertion.e
Now she’s sitting under a tree, digging. She’s wearing a new dress we got yesterday that is, miraculously, not really getting dirty. What a good play dress.
There’s a horse farm across the street, but they have corn growing this year, too. When I look up over the fields, the broad leafed trees behind them and a mist settling on them, I always get lost in imagining flying over them or being surrounded by them. Like that bird calling right now.
It has been 23 years since the accident. 23 years, today. What a 23 years.
Now she wants me to shake bush limbs over her head to pretend it’s raining on her. Those grey clouds tell me real rain is coming again.
Last week, as I was driving with Wee One, she heard me smack at a small bug that had flown into the car. She asked why, and I told her I was trying to kill an insect. She suggested that I shouldn’t because bats eat insects. I said it was a great idea and we should get a bat in the car to get the bug. She said, “Mom. Bats are nocturnal.”
Because duh.
Casa Sahara is getting a new roof today, complete with the rhythmic thundering from above.
