Resolve

Welcome to 2017, everyone!

I just realized that this intro makes it seem as though I was already in 2017 and I’ve just been waiting for the rest of you to arrive. That is not the case. We all got here at about the same time, give or take a few different time zones. But now that we are all here, and school has blissfully started again for my six-year-old (who is down two teeth and up one Baby Alive, a doll who eats and then fouls its diaper), I would like to impart some relationship wisdom to you all, in the form of the following tale.

On a recent fine evening, my husband was lifting my hands so that I could pick my nose. I already know what you’re thinking: how can I make this magic happen at my own house? It’s been a long time since I was able to blow my own nose, and Rob’s fingers have been proven too Shrek-like for maximum effect, so this is how we do it sometimes. The holiday fever had mostly died down, though our house was still softly lit by the Christmas tree, and it was quiet, since Scarlett and Otto were snuggled up in her room, visions of baby poop and pig’s ears dancing in their heads. I’m pretty sure Rob’s eyes were squarely on me, and not at all on the football game playing from our 65-inch television screen, when a booger the size of a Gummy Bear fell out of my nostril and onto my dress.

“Ew,” I said. “That thing looks like a gummy bear. Get it.” Read More>

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

Someday

I canceled all of my appointments for this morning, feeling too tired to deal with the real world and the people who live in it. It’s raining outside and Otto is pacing the floor. I spent an hour reading blog posts that I wrote to Scarlett in 2011 and 2012. They didn’t make me sad, but I did feel nostalgic for a time when she was a ferocious toddler and I was her complete mom. I know, I know. I’m still her complete mom, but that’s not what I mean. I mean the mom who moved, who drove, who carried her across the city, even as I began experiencing symptoms of ALS. I read blogs about her first few days, weeks, and months at preschool. When I knew I had ALS, but I was still so mobile that I saw no need to acknowledge it.

Right now my sister and her family are in New York, and when I facetimed her this morning, she immediately put the phone up to the street sign over her head: 23rd St. and 10th Ave. Where Rob and I used to live. They were going for lunch at our favorite tapas restaurant, a place we frequented when we lived in Chelsea. I miss New York. I miss those early days of Scarlett in San Francisco. Sometimes I wish I could go back for just one day and appreciate the use of my legs, the strength of my arms, my ability to be alone with my little girl, or to jog along the Hudson River, just to be in charge of my life. But in most ways, I don’t want to go backwards. This month has been busy, but fun. We went to a gingerbread house decorating party yesterday, and Scarlett has a winter sing at school tomorrow. In the mornings, we sit together at the dining room table while she eats a scone and tells me stories. Who said what, who did what. She laughs and uses the words like and dude. She is so different from that feisty baby I remember, and somehow still the same. Read More>

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

Elf

Scarlett wants an Elf on the Shelf in our house this holiday season. Many of you are probably years deep into this Santa’s little helper phenomenon, but to my knowledge this is the first year Scarlett has been made aware of it. My first reaction to her request was that it would create a lot of extra work for me, meaning the people around me who are tasked with being my “hands.” In the grand scheme of things, moving an elf around the house so that he’s in a different place every morning doesn’t seem that complicated. But when you have a dog who eats garbage, and you yourself cannot go to the bathroom without being bodily lifted on and off the toilet, you may be more reticent to add to the list of things you are asking others to accomplish on your behalf.

Scarlet took immediate issue to this, and set out to reassure me that I simply didn’t understand how the Elf on the Shelf worked. “You don’t have to do anything,” she explained. “He moves himself. He’s alive.”

“Oh,” I said. “Does that mean he’s going to eat our food?”

“No! He doesn’t eat food! He just moves around and watches you and reports back to Santa if you’re not behaving.” Read More>

| Categories: Life | Permalink