“Darling, be a dear and grab me a beer.”
She never knew what to say, so she went to the word hose looking for some inspiration.
Year: 2016
Ma Vie En Rose
Posted onIt only takes a few hours for a memory to become rusty. Like an orange haze that speckles the surface of a nail or an old door hinge, my memory starts to fill in at the corners, and the sheen wears away if I don’t immediately write about the event I want to relive.
Mom Lessons
Posted onOne day, not in the next nine months, but one day, I’ll have a little baby (babies?) of my own. I’ll have babies that grow irretrievably into children who play soccer (perhaps play soccer badly if they’re my children) and lose teeth.
All Heroes Great and Small
Posted onI Wish I Hadn’t Said Nothing
Posted onI wish I hadn’t said nothing.
Hands folded around a dollar bill like a newborn clutching her mother’s fingers.
An interchange in my pocket.
She, big and blue, asked me for spare change with a darlin’ attached to the question.
I am the giver of granola bars, the tucker of money underneath shopping cart wheels.
I am not the bolded question mark that asks what you’ll do with my money.
It’s yours now.
But it’s stuck in my pocket.
Because I said nothing.
The 5 AM Crowd
Posted onI’ve never understood this mid-90’s trend of wearing pants so low that they sag around the ankles. I didn’t like it when Murray wore it in Clueless, and I didn’t appreciate Justin Bieber’s low riding days, and I’m surprised by how much the trend concerns me now that I see it in the high schools. Mostly what confuses me about the trend is the mental gymnastics I need to do to figure out how these pants stay around the knees when someone is walking. How do these boys manage to strut when their pants clearly require a waddle?
Zero Hour
Posted onTechnically, Zero Hour, according to Google (because I checked) is the time when an operation or a coup is supposed to begin. Instinctively, I knew that. But this morning as I ambled the streets with a tired Maeby in tow, I couldn’t help feeling the phrase “zero hour” was an appropriate description for the moment. Maybe it’s because there were zero (do we pluralize zero grammatically?) other people on the streets with me. Maybe it’s because it was gentle 7 o’clock sunny with a 6 AM attitude. In my version of Zero Hour, everything’s gentle. Everything’s null.
An Unfiltered Look at my Entryway
Posted onYesterday Jeremy and I were sitting on our couch and facing the door to our apartment, and it occurred to me just how much of our life was currently represented by the debris in our entryway. Since yesterday, even more life has happened, making our entry way admittedly messy, but authentically so. Did I want to clean before photographing? Desperately! But that would have negated the time spent (or lack of time spent) flinging our coats off and casting off our boots because our radiator is hyperactive. It would have fed into the social media perfection machine. To clean would be to edit, to cover up the life that hides in the small moments. And my title promises that this is unfiltered, and it’s not clean either.
Don’t You Talk About My Momma That Way
Posted onMost of us have seen enough to know the age-old rule: no matter what someone says about their own mother, you are not allowed to agree, and you are definitely not allowed to offer your own critique—at least not publically. There’s a sacred family bond with trashtalking someone dear to you. It’s a promise that what you say doesn’t mean that you’re divorcing them. It’s a promise to continue to love, despite whatever critique you may need to expel—however violently. Outsiders can’t comment, because they haven’t made the subconscious vow to love your mother no matter what. This is a fundamental law of nature.
Oh, hey Maeby Baby.
Posted onAfter a pleasant evening and a rough morning, I came out of the bathroom to find Maeby, our newest family member, snuggled in the crook of Jeremy’s torso and knees. She was the curious kind of calm we’re coming to expect from her at this point. She was accepting Jeremy’s sleepy pats with gratitude, and, without stirring, lest she wake him too significantly, she invited me into their cuddle.