Thank goodness for rarely used table clothes in rarely opened, weird, trunk-like things built into kitchens by previous owners, where one might store table clothes that come in handy when they decide they want a drink of water after already going to bed too early for ordinary grown ups.
I have a girl who's a Girl Scout.
A girl too shy to impose on others to try and sell her own cookies for herself, so I buy them all...
I have a son who's a mild yet confident self starter with time on his hands this week, who took it upon himself to sell those cookies in our relatively new neighborhood.
He's a little brother who wants to aid his sister, so he knocked on one door and sold cookies on good-faith.
I have a neighbor who comes to the door with four dollars she owes my son, who sold his sister's cookies. A neighbor who is clear that 8:53 p.m. on a Friday night is an acceptable hour to approach a closed door with a brightly lit kitchen visible through the window. A neighbor who thinks nothing of a mother wearing something that looks like a toga when she answers the door.
"Your son is very sweet", she says.
"You have no idea", I think to myself.
We are the naked family.
I probably need a life.
I must be doing one thing right if I have a son who sells his shy sister's cookies for her.
Next time I want to see an example; proof of an honest to goodness, working, loving, male/female relationship, I'll look inside my own house.
I think about the music my parents used to play. How I loved it. How I knew and still know the words to every song from my very early childhood on...even the most obscure, even the golden oldies so old their gold is now patina, tinted green with age.
Theres a constant soundtrack for every event throughout my entire life. As far back as I can recall, musics playing.
There were Lay Ladies Laying on Big Brass Beds Special Angels Tomatoes-Tomatos Little Surfer Girls Tiny Dancers Guys With a Pin to Burst Your Bubble Witchy Women Wise Men Saying Only Fools Rush In Brown Eyed Girls and Sweet Caroline
I'd like to take this opportunity to say a very heartfelt F YOU to Andy Williams, Neil Diamond, The Lettermen, Johnny Mathis, those Beach Boys, and even Elvis. The list goes on and on and on. The Beatles get an exemption on account of Back in the USSR, Happiness is a Warm Gun and Rocky Raccoon, but everyone else is quite likely in large part to blame for my heightened sense of romantisim, my unrealistic expectations and my over emphasis on LOVE and the act of being IN LOVE, which I sometimes think is truly just an act - but, ah, not really. I look back on the love I've known and felt, not the Love Love, not the less complicated kind like I have with my precious kids, my sibs, my pals, my folks, my pups. Love I have for chocolate, dry chardonnay, white roses, sunset - those loves, well they're simple, they're a given, they fill me up. What I puzzle over is the other love, the kind those mushy songs taught me about, lead me to obsess over, encouraged me to wait on, believe in, hold my breath till it came, to die for...
I look back at ALL the loves in my life. I think about my first love and how easy that was, till I decided to complicate it, probably because it seemed too easy and as the songs say - easy love can't be real. I think about the loves that followed, flirtations, distractions, devotions and the heart ache as well as the bliss of every relationship I've had. I think about where I've put my energy in more recent years and on whom I pinned my hopes and why. How I'd convince myself that I was over someone only to find that no matter what and no matter who else came along, I'd always return to just that one; that more then likely unrealistic, over emphasized, highly romanticized and as many of those old and plenty of new love songs imply, that potentially hazardous love. Do people make Valentine Resolutions? If not, then how about I start the ball, or in this case, how about I start the heart rolling?
How about I resolve to never again hold out, hang on and pine for anyone who does and says anything other then....
Anything You Need - You Got it
And by the way - Have I told you lately that I love you? I do. Happy Valentine's Day.
I love life and how it knows just when to throw a curve ball.
I admit that there are times, many times where absolutely I could be found gloating to other parents about what some might consider an adversity.
I believe I've said, "All girls should have Asperges Syndrome", dozens of times over the past couple of years and I meant it, but not really. Sometimes I just want to make it seem like an utter blessing...
For the most part, my daughter does lack a certain drama that seems to hitch itself to the star of many tween females as they mature - and I do relish that. I'm often grateful for the differences.
I love that I pick her clothes and that she easily agrees with my choices. Though it was hard to drag her away from those white, plastic, 9 dollar, velcro closing tennis shoes she wore tirelessly, year after year. The ones I could only find replacement for at certain Walmarts, worn solely by my child and a handful of third world, pseudo nurses parked outside of inner city drugstores asking for loose change on behalf of a charity I never heard of but supported just based on their sneakers alone.
I love her self imposed discipline with sweets. I love that she must do her homework before watching TV. I love that she brushes her teeth exactly as instructed. I love that she seems to care little for boys and shopping, doesn't want an Iphone, won't succumb to fast food and has never tasted soda and that soda is loathsome to her simply because I allowed her to watch "Fast Food Nation" multiple times when she was four years old. I love the uniqueness of my daughter and her gift of Asperges and I love it's affect on my life through her, my incredible child.
I admire her. I cherish her. I wouldn't trade her for the world and I wouldn't change a thing about her if my life depended on it...but sometimes I want to run away from her, even now that she's wearing better shoes.
It's a trick, I think to myself.
The calmness, the flat demeanor, the lack of drama, it's a trick.
Or maybe she's a volcano, sleeping mostly and dormant, beautiful to look at, inviting and majestic, but then it blows and all hell breaks loose and those of us who worship and live beside the sleeping volcano get pelted with heaps of deadly, boiling hot, molten lava and we are ill prepared for the rare and unexpected fallout to say the least.
Last night my volcanic daughter erupted and last night I reeled with worry over what to do and how to do it and I felt her feelings like I feel my own and man how I missed the cool, calm and collected version of her.
I slept like a stone all night, safe in the depth of slumber from what daylight hands us.
Words like "bullied" and names like "hairy arms" are waiting for her at school, the very school she wins academic awards at and seems to love most days. The one I say challenges her perfectly, the place I've thanked God for. How can a good mother allow her great child to walk into school when there in lies the ugliest hardship of life? I need to protect her and I can't, but I can't accept that, because I never have to deal with it! I only have to persuade her to wear cooler shoes. She's easy peasy, until she's not and again, I'm ill prepared.
So today, as school let out, I met her in my usual parking space, with an unusual amount of anxiety in my heart, a smile plastered across my face, two dogs on leashes and a perfect, red Honeycrisp apple sliced into 8 equal sections, just the way she likes it (THANK YOU again Fast Food Nation, who knew?). And together we went down to the edge of the world. There beside the wild ocean, we talked about how hard life can be. There we let go of our collective worries. There we discussed subtleties and techniques of how exactly one might let things roll off your back. There I suggested witty comebacks but sometimes I'm very wrong and so we let go of that idea too.
And as I watched her walk away from me; my precious girl and her big, terrible, awful, lovable monster of a dog beside her, I realized I was not just letting her go, I was in fact letting go of her - a little bit. I let her separate from me, put some distance between us. I let her grow up a little and venture from the soft, safe sand to the jagged edged jetty and I trusted that the waves wouldn't come sweeping up to wash her away from me and out of my life. I let go and believed that someone besides just me would keep looking out for her, understanding that she was really very similar to other girls her age, just like the rest of em, a tween...
Tween God and me, Tween heaven and earth.
Between,
Beneath
Before and after
Everything, my love for my daughter.
