That is That

When I was a little girl, I boycotted pre-school. It was 1974 and pre-school was rare: mine was in a suburb of San Francisco, a Montessori school and a hippie start-up at that. I churned butter like a butter-churning fool there and rarely touched the "learning tools" but I made lots of friends (who's hair I might have trimmed? sorry) and I was having a helluva time.

I can't remember why I quit. I have no idea. But my mother has a theory: she told me every morning what she would be doing that three hours while we were apart. It was always something like "I am going to a League of Women Voters meeting honey and then I coming to pick you up!" My mom thinks I was pissed to be left out. My mom is sure that some part of my five year old self was convinced that what she was doing? It was way better than what I was doing.

I was churning butter all day and hairdressing (?) and my mom was out there making the world a better place! I was insanely stubborn and a drop-out, so my mother decided to drag me through each of part of her mostly boring daily rituals -- making a world a better place while doing laundry and washing dishes and grocery shopping and errand running.

My mom thought my boycott would last one week. It lasted three months. THREE MONTHS. Twice she tried to force me back to school. Once I held onto a fence, unremovable. The second time: my mom had to pick me up after an hour of wailing.

I don't remember any of this so when she told me these details tonight I asked, Separation anxiety? And she said, Hell no! You were already roaming the neighborhood...

Then why, I asked. What the fuck, I said.

She said, I don't know.

WHAT? I said. How can you not know?

(See it? Right there? That's when my modern parenting mode kicked in...*)

She said, Well, one day, we drove by the school and you saw the kids playing and you said you wanted to play with them. So I pulled over right there and told the very sweet teacher (who always loved you by the by) that you wanted to come to school. And she said, bring her in! And I did, and that was that.

That was that? I asked.

And she said, Yup, that was that.

(* She's so smart, my mom. Why do we parents want to explain every bit of atypical kid behavior? Why do we want a reason and diagnosis for almost everything? The upside of our good work? Our children with authentic issues are being identified and helped. The downside? Sometimes our healthy, typical kids never get the chance to be, for a while, just weird, just a kid boycotting school, just a kid.)

Sometimes, that is that, and nothing more.

Why I'm Going Out Again Tonight

This'll be short because I need to go upstairs and get dressed for the kegger I've been coerced (?) into attending. The Kid, slightly hungover from a birthday party last night, is not quite -- how shall I say? -- up for it and so has taken the kids to the movies and dinner. The house is warm and quiet so naturally, I'm all: wait! maybe I should just stay home in this nice quiet warm house!??

It's tempting, because I don't really know who's gonna be at this party or if by kegger, they really mean "kegger" and not the fancy bottled beer and Pinot in real glasses kind of kegger, and also it has turned into fall overnight. I am wearing a sweater coat as I type. Inside. It's a spoooky leaf-swirling windy New England kind of cold night and I think I just heard a wolf howl. Or a goblin. Not sure which.

BUT! Bridget and I went to the lovely Fall Festival in town after soccer -- sidewalk sales and artisan fairs and hayrides galore -- and we hit the awesome jewelry and cute clothes store and HELLO? Any three things in the sale section for $25! So I bought a great scarf (which I probably won't ever figure out how to properly drape, but still), a pair of very cool earrings and a headband for Bridge with a bow on the side -- in green tweed. I know! Naturally, I figured since I saved so much damn money, I should totally buy this truly beautiful (not on-sale) necklace. Which I did.

So, I am relenting to this kegger invite because I got a great deal on some cute accessories which somehow meant I could spend recklessly on a lovely necklace that essentially kicked the balls out of my budget-conscious bargain hunting but it was soooo pretty, I'm mean, really really cute, and I am completely psyched to wear it. Like tonight.

Twisted logic? Or perfect sense?

It's True, What My Mother Said

Oh, what a doozy of a week that one was.

We kicked it off with (more) bad news on The Kid's work front. Fuck.

And I followed that fuckness with a whirlwind of pre-planned back-to-back girly get-togethers. Which was awkward, considering The Kid's sitch, but also AWESOME. Still, you know you've been out too much when you can't stand menus and instead just choose to cover up in blankets on the couch for a movie on Saturday night instead of barhopping with your girl, CarolynOnline.

(Uh, yeah, she was here with me again -- it's a long story -- but let me just tell you: my children call her by her last name now, 'cause they think it's funny and it is, and she and me? We stood above them in their beds while they made her laugh with their sass toward me and she grabbed my hand and waved her free finger: "Go to bed now, Short Drunk People!" and they did.) (So, I love her even more.)

On Friday, we saw our old friends, affectionately known as the Minnesotans. She was my First Friend in the Small Town and we enjoyed a year of very fun, very scary, very lovely times parenting our first baby girls. I admitted I cried sometimes; she admitted she did too. She called me from the pantry one day, where she was eating what? gummy bears? gold fish? She couldn't eat in front of her ever-hungry girl, which I knew and we laughed and laughed and felt okay. Our husbands became instant friends. She liked beer! They were the first people to ever babysit our first daughter: we trusted them that much. It was perfect and I was happy and then? They moved.

They moved home, which made me feel good for them and desperately sad for me. I told my friend when she was leaving -- maybe I wrote it in a letter? maybe I said it to her in real life? -- either way, I told her what my mother had told me: "you will never forget the people you raise your kids with."

My mother is so smart because she is absolutely right. The Minnesotans faces live somewhere in our photo albums but they live better and mostly in our hearts. Our affection for each other: it's more permanent than our photos. It was a precious, delicate time in our lives and we shared it. WE shared it.

And over old photos on Friday, we went way back -- for a short time, to that time -- and then we became old friends eating pizza with (bigger) kids running around. Just two moms, four friends hanging out like always, our lives divided by nothing but geography. Divided by nothing but space. Our hearts? Nothing splits that.

You will never forget the people you raise your children with. Yo.

Ms Picket Checks Up On Her Home Management Systems

School has begun, muthas, and what a great opportunity I've had to check on the operational status of the Home Management Systems.

Let's have a look, shall we?

Yep, the Beauty Management Home Management System seems to be in tip-top shape! We've got

a doll's shoe, just one, that no matter how much I try, will not fit -- now (keep.hope.alive!). A retainer case -- empty! The top to a tub of brown foundation play dough. And a bacon key chain, with no keys attached. I misplaced mine, again, which is why there is no deodorant in the Beauty Management Home Management System. My bad.

(Also: I have no idea how that marketing ploy cheap beer holder got into the Beauty Management Home Management System, because god knows I have no idea what to do with a cheap beer holder.)

Moving on...

The Homeland Defense Home Management System is also in excellent operational shape.

No! Really...

One sock, no match. A pirate bandanna. Another one of those useless beer holder thingies. A cow bell. A tiny canister of tiny questions. Some duck tape, red, and a glue gun. You can never be too careful, people, and are there not a million uses for a pirate bandanna and a cow bell? WE CAN NOT LET THE TERRORISTS WIN.

The Homeland Defense Home Management System also continues to serve superbly as

the Bank. FYI.

Let's move on to the Home Maintenance Home Management System

which we recognize (duh)

by the one gardening glove, for one-handed gardeners, say.

But domestic life is not just defined by maintaining high standards of beauty, safety and perfectly one-handed manicured lawns. One must also remember to carefully document the sweet passage of time, and by that I mean the Great Works of Art and School, with the Archival Home Management System:

There is Turkey Hand in there that will make grown women weep. I swear it.

15 YEARS YO

I have a cold or allergies or something sniffly enough that made me, last night, decide to blow off this day. I told him then: it's a Thursday, there's soccer, my throat hurts and let's wait to have big fun. He said OK and also "15 years?" and I said, while rolling over into tissues and my pillow: that's a fucking long time.

Last year: it was different. He was a majahplayah and I was alone a lot.

Now? He's with me all the time. All.the.time. 

And yet: I am not sick of him. I am not done with him. He laughs at my jokes, and despite his politics, I love what he says. He is still the most interesting, most annoying, most compelling part of every day I have. 

Someone once told me she felt butterflies when her boyfriend walked into the room. I was three years married and I worried: why don't I feel butterflies?

It takes fifteen years to realize butterflies fade and die. It takes fifteen years to hear crickets and coyotes out your door -- and beat both back. It takes fifteen years to know that butterflies come from shitty caterpillars and that one day, the fluttering pretty thing you cling onto, that you cling onto, will not become the thing that is lasting.

What lasts? his laughter, his strong thighs, your obstinacy, his sweaty sweet neck, your will. What lasts is one night on a couch not speaking, or a night in the dark figuring it out. What lasts is not some butterfly flutter, not a fancy gift but this: some easy cocoon, the life we made for each other.

Kid, I love you and for every way I have turned you out and embarrassed you in these pages, this is for you:

DUDE? Truce? 

I Think He's Deepak Chopra

On a long ride home a while ago, before I learned my friend's child had died, the GFYO said, apropos of nothing, "My baby years went by so fast."

Days later, when I was sitting in the sun on the porch, trying to absorb the horror that happened on a Small Town street a few blocks away, trying to figure out how they would go on without her, while all three of my kids lazed around me, safe and my god, perfect, the GFYO asked me how it is that he can lay down on a planet that is floating in space. Before I could answer, he said, "There is something that holds us here."  

More days passed and we waved goodbye to summer with a long day riding roller coasters and log flumes. In the car on the way home, the GFYO said, again apropos of nothing, "What happens when we die?"

I don't know, I said, too tired to be freaked out. No one knows really.

The GFYO looked out the window, a five year old boy secure in our speeding bullet, a five year old boy who doesn't know about tragedy or accidents or any of the ways that grief creeps in, a five year old boy with an ice cream cone all over his face. He thought for a second, maybe more, and said,  "I think when you die you just start over."

I hope so, I said.

Today on the couch, curled into me for the five minutes I seem to get these days, he said, Knock Knock. 

Who's there, I said. 

Me, he said. 

Me who, I said.

"Me who loves you."

Things You Can Count On: School Starts Version

The Night Before:

1) You will go to bed early, or early for you, and it won't matter.

2) Insomnia comes like an asshat in the night.

3) You will worry not so much about the next very big day, because as the disease of sleeplessness goes, you will worry about days you had five thousand days ago.

4) You will decide at some point -- 2:14am? 3:20am? -- that you totally suck.

The Morning Of:

1) You will not so much wake as come conscious.

2) You will braid deliciously, somehow perfectly French.

3) The GFYO will bury in his blanket and fight for and get ten more minutes.

4) This will break you: my baby.

5) There are some things about some kids that never change: she hates the way her shoes feel, she hates how her pants feel, she hates you this morning and you expected it.

6) Last night, when you weren't sleeping, you knew this would happen.

The Minute Of:

1) She poses. She grimaces. He cracks jokes with his face.

2) You take the pictures, just clicking, like always. 

3) They will leave you today, armed with your armor and garbage and manners.

4) She hangs on as long as she can before her sweet walk alone.

5) She hangs on until you explain the cast, then she hovers over everyone. So big, that kid.

6) The GFYO.

7) The GFYO? He goes to school for the first time and you beg him to hug you and he does and the room is sweaty with all the other parents and all the regret and hope and fear and you bolt.

9) I bolt.

Morning alone:

1) You manage a meeting with many well-meaning parents amongst you.

2) You get busy and make more meetings and you sit and type and type.

3)  None of it is poetry or your fiction.

Afternoon:

1) Quiet is such a relative word....after they come home.

2) Loud is louder.

3) The GFYO is untouchable and grumpy and exhausted and every part of your body wishes to swallow him whole, to slurp up his final tiny boy.

4) He gives you five seconds of love and then, he is a pile of whine and lousy.

5) The oldest girl says her teacher is "awkward"

6) The other girl can't remember the name of one classmate.

7) Success? 

Later:

1) The GFYO at bedtime says "wait! what! It's another school night?"

2) The Girls easily batten down to the great promise of their tomorrow.

3) The Kid makes fantasy picks in Boston.

4) You write it down and you breathe out -- mostly smoke still. You're such a loser.

5) You are left with a mountain of paperwork and no poems in the pile.

6) You are left all by yourself at last.

7) You wished for this once, when you were buried in children and diapers and terrible songs: you wished for this very day to come -- unburdened for a while, a respite, School.

Now:

1) You should write more than ever.

2) Besides them and him, stringing words together is your favorite.

3) It's a fine line between you and me.

Fios Con Dios

Today, a kind yet quiet man, who looked like Turtle from Entourage, spent the day with us at Casa Picket hooking up speedy TV and web stuff and magic. It was a tricky business that required a brain bigger than mine and also, the pure bravery of that guy -- Turtle spent hours in the bowels of our house. While down there, I casually kicked boxes of ancient detritus out of the way, shoved plastic crates of haunted house props to the side, handed him a light bulb when none seemed to work, all the while donning my gardening gloves and with a "helpful" child in tow. Turtle was all, "What the eff, man..."

Me and my gloves (a hole in the finger, totally useless) and 5 kids (two spares) split to the backyard where I engaged them in arts and crafts and nature lessons handed out slushies and fruit snacks and like Huck Finn, only uselessly, bragged about the joys of weeding. They played sticky kick-ball, hopped up on straight sugar, with red and blue and purple mustaches. It was a perfect, sweat-free day, and I made a mockery of crab grass. At last.

Meanwhile, Turtle toiled. He ran cables and fiddled with... stuff. He sauntered up and down stairs, casually strolled past the side-cart of a sleeping spot the GFYO has set up near our bed, and he never spoke once. Naturally, I showed him where the bathroom was and how to get a glass of water. Forgot to tell him where the glasses were. Forgot to check if there was toilet paper in the loo. Which there wasn't.

He heard poop jokes and stories about electrified bb pellets in the woods (they weren't; kids are always so thrilled when they think they might, you know, die) and he literally had to walk through Monopoly bits and short drunk people like they were mines. I am not sure why, but I kept my gloves on all day, ran rubber fingers through my hair, left dirt and probably lady bugs behind. We ate frozen pizza in front of him, on plates shaped like monkey's faces. Do you need to pee? I probably asked the GFYO twenty times: No? Then let go, for Christ's sake. A neighbor said, cheerfully, helpfully, There always someone tugging something, right? Right, I said.

Turtle never spoke. I think he blushed a little. Not sure.

Later, much later, like 8 hours later, the Kid got impatient (his own description) and decided to help. Which he didn't...at all...and it became all "oh Turtle, dude, I'm so sorry" and Turtle was all "what the eff, man -- I just want to go home to someplace normal" and I decided it was best to make Sloppy Joes out a giant mound of frozen beef.  (I removed the gloves, FYI.) Spatula in one hand, I carved my way through icy meat and also opened a 16oz aluminum bottle of Miller Lite, wide mouth and screw top no less (a gift from a lovely and always thoughtful cousin-in-law), and thought: today was another great day.

I meant it. It was. It was a great freakin' getting things done being nice Mom weeding and prettying-up and souping-up kind of day. There was no part of this day that sucked. 

Patched in and hooked up, Turtle never said good bye. Later, while hauling a trash can back in from the curb, a butt dangling from my lips all classy-like, I saw the faint sign of his farewell: black smudges from burning rubber.

Godspeed, Turtle. Go with God.

****

ALSO: please visit Polite Fictions -- a wikkid cool, hugely fascinating, and communally told story, that turns with every author, and Picket? She wrote there too....