All Adither

Six

It was the worst day ever

she says as she rounds the corner

Lips drawn down

Eyes pale

You have lots of worst days ever

I remind her

She shakes her head

And offers up a small award she got in gym class

See? I raise my brows at her

This is not what she wants

She wants to believe, right then, that everything is awful and bad and wrong

The most horrible

Ever

She lies on the floor of her room like a deflated balloon

Unwilling to tell me why

This is what it’s like to be a man, I think

Momentarily, I pity the other sex, trying to figure us out

I give up and leave

She'll talk when she's ready

Or not

We are in the fecund pool locker room

She changes from her wet suit into dry clothes

Nothing is ever fun

I wither

because I swam through blue-yellow water

teeming with kids

for her

I understand this is payback

But that doesn't stop it from being 

hilariously dreadful

Besotted

Some things I am currently loving:

Pictures drawn by my kids. Especially when they illustrate their love for me.

 

Shopping carts with cup holders. It's the only thing that makes fetching groceries endurable.

 

The holds section at the library. Seriously, I'm hardly spending money on books at all anymore.

 

Matches. My big, plastic candle lighter ran out of juice, and I've rediscovered the simple pleasure of lighting a match. The scratch, snap, and sizzle.

 

My new slippers. I finally had to trash my beloved old standbys, which were embarrassingly ratty.

Repetition repetition repetition

Claire wanted to visit her old preschool teachers this last week. Since her elementary school has been on Thanksgiving vacation and her preschool has not, we snuck in Tuesday morning to say Hi.

They all crooned to her in staggered rounds, "You're so tall!"

The refrain: TALL, tall, tAll, taLL.

A song scratched across my eardrums like a dusty record.

Later in the day we ran into friends we hadn't seen in a while. It was the same chorus. Claire, you're so tall. Look how tall you are. You've grown so much.

Claire, for her part, didn't seem fazed.

I try as hard as I can to make Tall seem positive for her. Tall is great! Tall is cool! You can reach things and see over heads!

But inside, when Tall dribbles out of people's mouths like blood, I writhe and gnash.

She's also brilliant! I want to cry. She's funny and spirited. And look at those dimples and that thick, chestnut hair.

Of course, though, Tall is the first noticeable thing about her.

I just have to give in and realize it is one of the themes with which we live. And understand that the world likes to exclaim the obvious.

Work in progress

Did you notice how I neglected to post yesterday? I blew Nablow.

We're busy over here cracking shelled almonds.

I let Max eat his first one yesterday. Paranoid kook that I am, though, I only allowed him a nibble. Then he had to wait ten minutes before he could gobble up the rest of it. Half hour later, when I was pretty confident nothing terrible would happen, he popped the second one in his mouth.

Today he ate another two or three.

I think all is well and that, truly, he is no longer allergic to almonds.

Which is strange. Strangely good.

He keeps saying, "I can't believe I'm eating nuts!"

This morning he, Claire and I were hanging out in the living room, me on the floor while Claire shoved a million sparkly barrettes and clips into my hair, and Max lying across the couch.

He was thinking about death. Or, getting deaded, as he still calls it. "I don't want to die," he said.

"I don't want you to. I don't want to either."

We do not, around here, have the comfort of saying But then you'll go to heaven. And we'll all meet up there. Because that's not something we believe. I wish it were. Believe me. I fucking wish it were.

As my therapist used to say, death is the big one. The enormous issue with which we all grapple.

When I was in third grade, Max's age, our school system decided we should be taught classroom lessons in death. Not necessarily how to deal with it, or better yet, how to avoid it. Just...that people die.

My teacher showed us a movie. It was about a dying girl named Mary Ann. She had an unspecified illness and spent all her time in bed. Her mom spoon fed her ice cream. Then Mary Ann died. And she was shown, in blurry filmstrip haze, skipping through heavenly meadows of wildflowers.

That stupid movie shook me to my eight-year-old core. It had something to do with the matter-of-fact way the death was dealt with. The brilliant summer weather during which a girl my age had died. The awful distorted sounds of the seventies filmstrip.

We then, as a class, read a book about a boy who was picking blackberries with friends when he was stung by a bee and killed.

Good elementary school times.

Anyway, probably not as a direct result of my third-grade teachings, but I'm someone who thinks about death and dying a lot. More than the average person, I suspect.

Of course, I wonder if Max is heading down that road too, or if he is just at the age where he's realizing it all has to end at some point.

"I mean," he said, "how can the world not have ME in it?"

Just don't think about it is the best advice I know. Find your passion and your pleasures and focus on those.

Poor baby.

We're all just processing.

Bring on the almonds

Maxwell had his annual food allergy testing today. These particular appointments used to push my sanity to its limit. Sitting in a tiny, hot room with two little kids for hours while Max was pricked and then we waited. To be blandly given the news that peanuts and tree nuts could kill him.

Now it's easier. I've been through it eight times. I know the drill. I know that peanuts, pistachios, cashews, and walnuts will be deemed lethal. I pretty much get that, as much as I want him to outgrow his dairy and egg allergies, this won't be the year. I don't expect much.

So, today, when he tested negative for almonds, Max and I grinned at each other and then we both burst into tears. He apologized for crying and buried his head in my lap. I didn't let myself think about all the high positives still ticked across his chart and enjoyed the moment. Almonds! Almond extract in cookies. Roasted almonds as a snack and new protein source. Granola bars with almonds. Almond milk.

"We'll start with a sliver," I said. "Tomorrow. During daylight."

He nodded and we high-fived.

What a sweet development for us.

Little by little

When the kids were toddlers, we canceled our Sunday paper subscription. Trying to read it while Max and Claire destroyed the house was too hard.

Burying myself in the newspaper, before having children, was a highlight of the weekend.

There's still not a lot of lazy time, not the leisurely perusal while sipping multiple cups of coffee that I used to look forward to. But we've started the paper back up again.

It feels like a milestone.

15- word fiction

You know how I love the super short fiction. Here are a few vignettes. I say vignettes because, with maybe the exception of the last line, I couldn't get them to read as full stories. Ah well. It got the juices flowing, anyway.

 

She rubbed her temples and looked up at the sky. "I feel it," she said.

***

Her pants didn't fit well anymore. It was because of him. And his mother.

***

He strummed the guitar like his life depended on it. Which it, in fact, did.

***

She wrapped her baby in the ratty blanket and set him on the concrete steps.

***

The mouse ran from the house to the tree. It sensed a shadow above. Shit.

 

Cat video Friday

This is ridiculous. But amusing. Happy Friday!

There are some things I do kind of right

Max and Claire just started piano lessons. It's hard to convey how happy this makes me.

The lessons are a huge investment of both time and money. And in some ways it makes me feel like just another upper middle class mom over-scheduling her children.

And yet...I love that they're going to learn music. I love listening to them plinking the keys and singing along. In some ways, their taking piano makes me feel like I'm doing my job well. Like I am enriching their time on this earth. Which is important to me.

When I was growing up we had an upright piano brush-painted blue. I remember desperately wanting lessons and asking often. Had I actually gotten my wish, I'm sure I would've balked at the practice. But I never got the chance. Back then, I didn't realize how expensive piano lessons were and my parents, on a teacher's and nurse's salary probably weren't in a position to shell out the bucks necessary. I totally understand and don't begrudge them. When I was sixth grade, they rented me a trumpet and I sucked at it and didn't practice and generally decided I wasn't put on this planet to make music. Later, I picked up the guitar and worked at it for about six months before setting it aside for more fun things, like drinking with my friends.

My lack of musicality was disappointing to me. Especially because my dad, my sweet, sweet dad had a crazy awesome musical streak. He taught himself to play piano, guitar, and banjo. I also remember bongo drums, recorders and harmonicas around the house. He loved music and was pretty good, too.

He used to have a reel-to-reel tape recorder and these massive microphones on stands, into which, every Christmas eve, my sister and I would squeal, excited by Santa's imminent arrival, and sing carols and talk about school.

The reels never completely erased, so that if you taped over something, which we often did, you could still sort of hear whatever had originally been recorded. In the background of many of our Christmas Eve tapes, which still exist but which I can barely stand to listen to, you can faintly hear the hippy singing of my dad, mom, and several of my dad's high school students.

The reels have been transferred to cassettes. But the remnants of early 70s harmonizations remain behind my sister's and my youthful musings.

I don't know if Max and Claire will take to the piano. I don't know if they'll show any sort of musical inclination or if nagging them to practice will just become too much and we'll all collectively sigh and say, "Screw it."

But I want to try. I want to see what, when we give them the opportunity, comes of it.

I'm boring myself to tears

I woke in my overheated hotel room at four this morning and slapped off the alarm. I felt surprisingly decent, though, as I rushed around showering and throwing clothes into my suitcase. I attempted to slam coffee (Diplomat brand, I know you wish you were me), but wasn’t able to ingest as much as I wanted before I had to dash to the front desk where, despite my incessant bell-ringing, found no one to check me out. I tossed my key down and left.

When I was finally able to find a Starbucks in Detroit, I proceeded to over-caffeinate myself until my arteries thrummed and my heart pounded double-time.

I was sure I’d be catatonic all day, but on the plane I turned into a Tasmanian devil of productivity. I tore through a lot of electronic filing, photo deleting, and writing. I did a fair amount of thinking, too, and am happy to report that I’ve come up with several possible solutions to the literary conundrums I’m facing…(I guess I'm not as "done" as I thought).

Also, for my new YA manuscript (I’m still working on submitting the old one, Spectacle, and have an agent who would like to read The Mating Habits of Fireflies, so I’m trying to polish that, as well), I’m following the guidelines of the brilliant Alexandra Sokoloff . Her premise is that writing like a screenwriter (somewhat formulaically) with three acts, well-placed climaxes, setpiece scenes, etc., will suck readers into your story like a Dyson.

We’ll see how that goes. I have to admit that thinking in terms of the entire manuscript rather than just blindly typing is forcing me to plan more, to outline, and to hopefully create a more compelling narrative arc.