oh hey there. i'm here.

It's been two years, one month and three days since my last confession...er, post. since then i have failed many things. BUT, i have succeeded in losing weight and also successfully gaining it back. yay, me! I have successfully moved 7 million times and been thru 2 relationships and some really bad dates, one with a murderer and another with a stalker. so there's that. i've also succeeded in chilling the fuck out. life is damn messy, people. like, really freaking brutal. and also quite lovely and delicate and filled with little things of awesome....it reminds me of those tiny daisies you see in a huge field of weeds. just there and fragile and perfect and so happy. just to be. faces to the sun. i'm really good at that now. like, man....i am real. if nothing else, i am raw, real, me to the core...and dude, it's not always pretty. it's not always strong. it sometimes cries. like, ugly cries. but i am successfully being me. and also, i say dude more. i'm not entirely sure why. i'm a mom. a real messy, chaotic mom. it's a damn miracle if my kids get their homework done. but for real? kindergarten and 2nd grade. i'm sorry, but what the effing eff? like i don't have enough to feel incompetent about, my 2nd grader can't turn his homework in because his totally awesome, real (read tired and forgetful) mom didn't sign off on his homework sheet. where's the love, teach? granted, his poor teacher probably has to rein my dreamer in, like, pretty much all the time. for all the things. she's probably all, come on, lady. do this one thing. and i'm all, come on, lady. give a mom a break. we do what we can. as we can. i am successful in recognizing that. i'm aware this is a rocky resurgence. bear with me. i'll get back in my groove.

It was suggested I use this site for something other than the nonsense of my day to day. How does one blog for income? I don't know. It never occurred to me. I have interests...I do stuff....but enough for an actual blog that more than you 4 people read? Meh....design? cleaning? bread? Herbs(not "herb" folks, calm down)....or I don't know, maybe I could venture into my past, or my failure at relationships. Truth is, I have very little expertise in a very long list of things I think I do. I talk a big game, I even try earnestly to be an expert....and then I deflate. I will have to ponder this awhile. I have funny mom stories, I have good food to eat and take too many pictures of...but I'm not Julia/Julia worthy, or even close to the many mama blogs I follow, that are truly hilarious. Know that I'm formulating, however slowly, a plan for world domination.

specks

our lives are made up of these tiny little moments, many of which are so heartbreakingly beautiful. i wonder, in our hurry to be somebody, to get something, or somewhere, how many we miss? i live a simple life, and i know i miss so many. when i catch those little things, hear the words from a song my child sings to himself and realize they are about love, witnessing an interaction between brothers that speaks to bonds that will remain, God speaking thru the tiny voices of children, sunshine glinting off the edge of a person's jaw, these small moments of beauty that become the fabric of your little world...without them your life becomes very threadbare indeed...and we feel naked, lost and vulnerable in the world. Because with out them we are, these little things become those little christmas lights of joy that light up an often dark and lonely world.

untitled ramble

There has been a single goose alone in the middle of an emerald field near my house for a few days now. My heart throbs a little when I see him there, knowing he is at the end of his line. Not able to go further, to warmth, to rest. He's been left behind. And there he stands, its seems he's not even moved an inch, or even turned around,just standing. That goose has been on my mind and oddly, without much explanation, I feel like that. Alone, disconnected from where I'd like to be, whom I'd like to be with, or maybe, rather, who I'd like to be. Here's this creature, surrounded by beauty, but all alone. I wonder, if most of the time we do this to ourselves...put ourselves out in the middle of a place, where nobody else is, alone, then pity ourselves for it? I don't actually have an answer, just wanted to put somewhere, that this goose makes me ache, feel the pull of loneliness, perhaps imprints on me what I don't actually feel, by the pure heartbreaking beauty of it all.
Every day we have the choice to move forward, sideways or backwards...most days, forwards it is...but on odd days, when I see a lone goose, the heart goes a bit askew and heads the wrong direction. damn goose.

The Invisible Lives of Parents

I wonder often about the things in plain sight that I missed as a child. The stress in my father’s voice, the hurt in my mothers as they smiled and made our world right. The pain of a fractured marriage inflicted in front of us, that in our childhood daze, that bubble of self absorbtion, we missed, or maybe didn’t….is this what they call ancestral memory? Is it really just a blip stored in a small space in the brain that pops up…why smells and sounds can recall bad and good both? Why a flash of mom standing in our dads kitchen crying to herself, over an offhand remark about an advent calender suddenly surfaces. I think this was the first time I noticed my mother crying. I was already 7. They were already divorced. Surely she cried many, many times before that. Surely, my father, reading our bedtimes stories, blow drying our hair felt the angst of that break. I notice now, because I feel these thin lines of hurting.

I’m a mother now. I have pain, I have hurt, regret and resentments. All of us grown ups do. It comes with the territory of living in a world of fear and sadness. Don’t mistake me, there is beauty , too. Breathtaking, aching beauty to behold all the time. But as my children merrily play around me, tug on my pant legs, ask for bathroom help, need bathing and off to schooling….I smile and truly cherish them, hiding the turmoil in me. It does surface. They seem to not notice…this invisible life of parents. Invisible as a pink elephant. Not seen at all.

It seems now, so many years later, the pain callused over, I can feel and see what my family went thru. I seemed not to notice then. My marriage is not ending. We have the chips of bone that people get from flinging life at one another, sure. Our parents must have felt the yearnings of youth, their heads turning to look at a fresh face, the pull of temptation to get in the car and drive as far as the road would take them. They must have felt this as I do now from time to time. This means they also felt the intense joy of us kids, the blinding worry when we were hurt or sick, the sort of pained pride as we grew. I’m not sure where I’m going with this except that as I sit sometimes feeling like I will never get my life together at the age of 35, I wonder if this what it means to be invisible.

oh, back in high school

i feel like i should write. i see a blank page and nothing pressing my heart. ms staley, my high school creative writing teacher used to give us each a line from a poem or prose to stem from...i think i'll find one..i started to use the first poem that comes to me when i think of this...Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver, but felt the same stream of thought bubbling up that I've written so many times before over the years....page at random, please stand by..."I live and move here in my borrowed trappings;" from "Wintering" by Diana Kappel-Smith...

I live and move here in my borrowed trappings
straps cutting from that day long ago, bindings from another moment not as long ago
leave bruises
they are not my own cages i'm stuck in, though i do have my own i slip into from time to time
i take them from others
put that skin on my body, put that heart inside my own ribcage
these burdens of others, some intentionally laid, some i've taken on, however unwillingly
i live within
they shape my days and hours

well. a rocky stab at getting into the habit of writing more. of letting my mind go where it will.

ode to my firstborn

my boy turned 5 today. i also coincedentally saw a picture of him at 9 months. it still looks like him...he'll always look that way.the big round head, skinny legs, serious eyes about to break into a mischevious grin. this child, my Cole. today is for him. this kid grabbed me by the heart, i mean, every single valve and vein. i could not imagine this feeling i had when i set eyes on him. it was this incredulous moment of how could this beautiful creature come from joe and i? as he grew (and continued to be a crummy sleeper, i might add), his capacity for love and gentleness amazed me. his smile made every sleepless night bearable. it still does. only now, his smile gets him out of the tantrums he's learning to throw, the verbal jabs he tries to make, but knows are wrong, so he whispers them. this kid to whom I am the sun, the moon, the stars....his sense of humor is remarkably sharp and sweet, and he's stubborn as a post set in concrete. but this kid can love. this kid can show compassion and generosity and empathy. he humbles me so often in his spirit of "take this, i love it, but take it because you'll love it too." i love you, my son. i am so achingly proud of the little spirit you are. i take joy in your uniqueness, and revel in each new thing you learn and teach me. you are my firstborn, you taught me love. happy birthday, buggy.