I Grew You

Because I have found that most of my days are spent laboring unnecessarily, this is what I have been "working" on today....

Focusing my attention AND intentions.

Talking to the baby in my belly. He hasn't had near as much time with me as Jude did.

"Doing" less and "Being" more.

Creating...even though there are toys on the floor and dishes in the sink.

Reminding myself...when Jude is screaming as his molars barrel through..."I am a carrier of peace."

The Leaving and the Left

Gina had orange hair, and it was scratchy, like a doll that I once singed when I left it by the fireplace too long. Her thick glasses perched perfectly on a freckled face, and she always smelled faintly of clothes that had been left in the dryer too long. She wasn’t one of the popular girls with perfectly coifed bangs and Guess jeans, but I liked her because she liked to read and write and ride bikes. I liked her because she let me boss her around and because she didn’t make fun of me for bringing cloth napkins in my lunchbox. I liked her because she laughed really hard at my jokes, and she clapped after I spelled neither ‘kneether’ in the all school spelling bee, making others think just for a second that I had spelled it correctly.

Gina and I tried out for a talent show once in fifth grade. We wore matching outfits, skirts with suspenders and we twirled batons to a Sharon, Lois, and Bram song. While the other kids perfected their New Kids on the Block lip-syncing routine, we boasted that we had real talent, and spent several days honing that talent in her basement.

I’m not entirely sure which one of us came up with the miserable idea, as neither of us had an ounce of athletic ability, and the size of our teeth alone was enough to position us against gravity in our twirling endeavors. But we had a good run at it, and I don’t remember either of us being overly devastated when our name wasn’t on the call back list. 

She told me at recess one day toward the end of the school year that she was moving to Kentucky, and I spent the rest of the afternoon ignoring her. The next day I told her that I was mad because she should have told me sooner, but that if she would apologize I would be her friend again and write her letters once a week.

She did, and I didn’t, and that’s how that went.

It’s always seems easier to be the one leaving instead of the one that’s left.

Valentine's Schmalentine's

I was in third grade before they made the rule that if you are going to bring Valentines to school, you have to bring them for everyone in your class.

And so, in second grade, I was devastated when my redheaded friend, Gina, had a valentine from Cory Measel and I didn’t. He was the quiet boy in the class, but he liked basketball, and so I had glued a basketball on the corner of my otherwise Lisa Frank covered shoebox as bait.

When my methods had failed me, I was nearly as heart broken as when a boy named Patrick made fun of my crowned cavities in first grade…but not quite.

I had grown up quite a bit by fifth grade when I let my friend, Randy, kiss my cheek for Valentine’s Day. He hadn’t ever kissed anyone but his mom, and he thought that maybe if he kissed my cheek, then we might find out we were meant to be more than friends.

We weren’t, we decided, and ended up jumping on his trampoline for a few hours that afternoon until my mom came to pick me up in our wood-paneled mini van.

I watched out the window as we drove away from his house and he waved real big with a goofy smile on his face. He was so relieved to know we wouldn’t have to mess things up with all that yucky love stuff.

Don't Tiptoe

Cotton candy skies overlooking the farm might as well have been the sapphire horizon of the Tuscan coast. The pond, thick and overpopulated with catfish, a substitute for the rolling, Baltic Sea. I was perched in a tree on a 2x4, 8 feet off the ground at best. But in the snapshot of my memory, I’m looking out the dormer of a castle with hundreds of acres of lush green countryside slithering into the sunset.

Five Years

Sadly, trying to write about my mom is like trying to write about the ocean. I can talk about how deep the ocean, how frightening its waves and soothing its sounds, but without tasting the salt and wetting your feet and laying prostrate on its beaches, you can’t know the ocean. Description without experience is lame.