This morning, I found myself locked in a turn so tight, it needed basically 900 points to get myself out of it; and that still didn’t even do the trick. Jeremy’s new car and I are having some growing pains. Its turn radius is different than our handy dandy 2007 CRV, and it has all these fancy features that feel rather restrictive. For instance, it won’t let you back up over your neighbor’s recycling bin that’s got you locked in the 900 point turn from hell, even if you really really want to. Instead, it just halts the car abruptly with a ping that makes you more irate because someone is telling you no while you really just want to say yes, YES IN THIS MOMENT I DO ACTUALLY WANT to plow over my neighbor’s recycling bin, send debris into the collective alleyway, ruin relationships with my neighbors forever, and dent the new effing car. Damn this smart car for denying me this freedom.
Category: Memories and Anecdotes
Good morning, Morning
Posted onThere are fall sounds outside my window while I wake up: Breeze weaving through leaves and making them shiver, wind occasionally bumping up against my windows, and making their knuckles crack. Maeby’s whispering (snoring) from her bed, and Jeremy’s not snoring at all, but I like that I can hear his inhale and exhale. I can perch my head between his shoulder blades and breathe with him. It’s like a meditation. We have two panels of windows in this room, but it’s darker than it usually is—gentle on the morning eyes. All of this coincides with clean sheets, which is a special sort of magic.
There
Posted onI think I can be accused of not living fully in the present. In middle school I kept a blog about how excited I was to go to High School, to have a rival school, to heckle the rival basketball team. And yet the second I got to high school, I was always one panic attack away from college stress that I didn’t go to my first basketball game until senior year. And I couldn’t wait for that basketball game to be over, because everyone else knew all the collective heckles and chants, when to stand up, when to stay silent. I spent an hour cheering out of turn.
This Post Doesn’t End in a Metaphor
Posted onThis post doesn’t end in a metaphor.
It’s just an image.
It’s just a little boy swaying on level two in a pastel swing, flirting with a mobile made of what appear to be stuffed mice. It’s ten fingers and ten toes, recently trimmed. It’s a little bit of drool. It’s blue-grey eyes with a puzzle piece of brown in the upper right iris. I saw that before anyone else did, and no on can take that gift away from me, even when his eyes give way to a soulful brown.
This post isn’t a metaphor; it’s just a squeal and a happy, guttural gurgle punctuated with hiccups. It’s a pacifier with a red dragon—named Drogon—lying on his tummy as it starts to give way to 4-month-old chub. It’s a peek-a-boo tongue, the occasional yawn, and Dumbo ears. It’s a rogue, perambulatory foot.
It’s not a metaphor, it’s just a moment.
It’s just a moment where Hudson happens to be exactly 3 months, 2 days, 11 hours and 58 minutes old.
This post doesn’t end in a metaphor. It ends in a full-body smile, a smile so big that it needs wagging feet and flailing arms to go with it.
It’s Happy Huddy in his natural state. It’s hard to imagine that life gets happier than this.
All That I’ve Met
Posted onA few days ago, I brought Maeby inside from a morning piddle and found my grandma with her arm around my father singing, “My home’s in Montana, I wear a bandana, my spurs are silver, my pony is grey! When riding the ranges, my luck never changes, oh yippee ki, yippee ki, yippee ki-yay!”
She’s commissioned the entire family to learn it while she stays with us this winter. Recently, we were all indulgently singing along, and my father pulled up a quiet Youtube video of ambulance sirens which could only be heard by Maeby. The sirens prompted Maeby to howl along while the rest of us were Yippee Ki-Yaying. We all giggled happily afterwards, but there was a subtle profundity to the experience too.
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.
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.