Category Archives: Parenting

Unsent

Dear ____,
I was thinking of you today, and thinking of myself, too, in that sort of unattractive, self-pitying way I sometimes do. Don’t you just want your life back? I want my life back so desperately today. I realized something recently: spontaneous acts of affection are slipping away from me. Not all intimacy, that’s not what I mean. But the little things, the things that feel much bigger once they’re gone. To stride across a room and embrace someone just home from a trip. To reach out and squeeze someone’s hand, a quiet connection. Even to completely and totally invade someone else’s personal space while you’re watching television, so that for the duration of the show, you’re not quite sure where you end and the other person begins, and you start breathing at the same pace because it’s just easier that way.

If I could have full command of my body again, I would positively spin across the floor when the front door opened. I would take a bath, my toes flexed and my hair spreading out behind me like a mermaid’s. I would stand in my closet getting dressed, and I would pile my wet hair on top of my head in a bun, and I would pour two glasses of wine.

I miss my life. You know what I’m talking about, ____. There’s plenty to be happy about still. We do make the best of things. But right now I’m tired of compromising. And you’ve been doing this for so long. How? How do you keep your frustration from spilling out, forcing the ones you love most to back away so they don’t drown in it?

I still have my little person. Read More>

|Categories: Life, Parenting, Progression, Relationships, Venting | Tags: | Permalink

Extra Yarn

“Soon, people thought, soon Annabelle will run out of yarn.

But it turned out she didn’t.”

-Extra Yarn, by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen

Scarlett has a fabulous book called Extra Yarn. It was a gift for her third birthday, and we still read it often. It’s about a little girl who finds a box of yarn, and no matter how much she knits, there is always yarn.

Now, I’m not going to get all “life is like a box of yarn” in my best Forrest Gump voice, but I do love this book. The little girl makes a colorful sweater for herself, and one for her dog, and when a neighborhood boy is mean, she tells him he’s just jealous. I’m not, he replies. But, as the author tells us, it turns out he was.

The little girl is told that her sweater is a distraction, and when she offers to make one for everyone, she’s told that it’s impossible. That she can’t. But, the book goes on to say, it turns out she can.

And in the end (do I have to write spoiler alert here? The book is like 22 pages long, so I think you’re ok to hear this) when a terrible archduke curses the little girl, yelling that she will never be happy again, it turns out she is.

I kept thinking about that book during ALS Awareness Month. Read More>

|Categories: Life, Parenting, Progression | Tags: , , , , , , | Permalink

For My Mom on Her Birthday

Today is my mom’s birthday. I would post how old she is, but I’m not sure if that sort of thing is acceptable, even on one’s own blog, so I’ll just say that yesterday when Scarlett was asked that question, she responded “49.” Let’s go with that. Happy 49th birthday, Mom!

I was scrolling through old blog posts I’ve written about my mother: her visits to see me in New York, back when I was childless and she was a professional grandchild advocate (“I don’t even care if you get married!”); our trip to Florida when my parents met Rob’s parents for the first time and my mom and his stepdad bonded over light beer with ice in it and a mutual inability to stop themselves from overdosing on mixed nuts; our wedding weekend in New York (because that thing about her not caring if we got married was nonsense); her time in San Francisco right after Scarlett was born, when she saved my sanity by going everywhere with me and not judging me when I cried during the opening credits to the TV show Parenthood, then in its very first season, just like I was.

But that’s just the stuff I wrote about. When I was younger, my mom was a source of great pride to me. She was a teacher, she did Jazzercise, she had a ton of friends. She wore little short shorts and bandanas, and in the summers she was as brown as a leaf, and smelled like tanning oil. She had 4 sisters, 3 brothers, and parents who lived a mile from us, and our house was always overflowing with family. Read More>

|Categories: Life, Parenting, Relationships | Tags: | Permalink