Today, I got back from a week long trip back to Missouri with Wee One (WO). We visited some people, including my folks, and then went to a Renaissance Fair out there with some friends – things we haven’t done since Before Times. It was awesome. She quickly made friends from other reenacting families, and I could hear her delighted laughter from across the field.
On our trip, we stayed in different hotels and one air BnB, bed sharing the whole time. We are not strangers to bed sharing, though once she started sleeping in her own room, we haven’t slept together save a few family slumber parties.
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?”
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.
In the Northern Hemisphere, in the US, things have been fucked up all year, by which I mean 2021. (It was supposed to be better than 2020!) It sucks.
Those of you living on the North American continent are aware know how cold it’s been this winter, yeah? And, I don’t know about you, but our ground has been covered with snow for longer than I have, I think, ever seen. And least, in my remembered history.
And you know how I feel about winter. Well, I have Wee One (WO). Am I going to deprive my child of the chance to frolic in the snow because I am an old curmudgeon? No. I’ll put on my big girl panties (and base layer and wool sweater) and go out with her.
I’ve been having a lot of fun. I got proper snow pants in preparation for time outside with her, and waterproof gloves, so I’m considerably drier and warmer and I can sit down. I’ve been outside twice as much this month as I was in February last year. (The two years I’ve been keeping track. Tryin’ to get WO outside for 1000 hours this year.)
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.
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.
