Today's Entry -

Top Five Wishes for my birthday:

5. Breakfast in bed

4. The entire house all to myself for 48 hours.

3. NO laundry for one week (but it all gets done anyway)

2. A Tano purse of my choosing

and my number one wish for this birthday ---- *drum roll*

1. A Pretty Princess Easy Tear Out Coloring & Activity Book **

** If it doesn't have the activities section, I don't want it. :p

*** Btw, my birthday is the 29th. Of this month. It's a week from Thursday. ;-)

Image courtesy of Pink Cake Box

When You Tear the Cellophane Away

Last night I caught the bug. The “I must read now” bug. I am of the one-day-click-order-from-Amazon school of lit-tra-ture. Imagine my surprise when I drove to the library. My memories of the library of my younger summer days were not wonderful. Mom had MS, and part of her maintenance therapy was to rest her legs every day for two hours. Lying down. I was eight; my brothers, five and three. We did not want to lie down for two hours every afternoon.

Mom dragged us (me) to the Yucca Branch of the Phoenix Public Library every single week. She made a haul of six or seven books, my brother John found three or four science fiction books, and Dave, the toddler, drooled on his picture books. I wandered. And sighed. And protested. “There’s nothing to R-E-A-D.” Moments later mom had pulled a random volume of Nancy Drew (in which the 15 year-old heroine wore gloves - gloves) from the shelf.

Last night I read Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”. The last time I made contact with this material was as a freshman in high school. Funny how different a work feels and sounds after 30 years. (I wish I’d kept Miss Schner’s reading list from my senior year.) I fully intended to write about my lovely experience with this piece of miraculous prose, but a funny thing happened on the way to the typewriter.

I went to the library again.

Today, though, I noticed people were culling and perusing and flipping through books, and they were happy about it. I turned my attention to the books and really took them in. Mostly cool plastic wrapped hardcover books. Have you ever noticed that when you crack the spine of a library book it crackles like fire? Or do you think the pages of an old book smell like your grandma’s couch from when you were ten? Of if the book is newer, do you think the pages smell just like a fresh pack of three-ringed notebook paper at the exact minute you tear the cellophane away?

I slid my index finger across titles looking for just the right words. Those words that stop a strolling finger in its tracks: “Ash Wednesday” by Ethan Hawke. Ahh…. See, in my writing, I just made reference to an Ethan Hawke string of dialogue from “Reality Bites” and this was surely providence.

After my daughter’s rehearsal, after a late dinner, after my son hugs me three times, I will take my book and kiss my husband heading down the hall to our room. I will lie down and read my new book. For two hours. While I rest.

Something Old

Last night I folded about 27 loads of laundry. Seriously. Between friends, family and work I am that behind on the domestic front. I gathered up two hoodies and went to hang them in the front hall closet. As soon as I opened the door it became apparent that there was no way I could fit another jacket in there let alone two.

So began the organizing. That was going well, but I still wasn't creating space, just reshuffling what was already there. In the next instant I was calling my kids out of their rooms, mind you it's 9:00PM, and ordering them to participate in a fashion show of sorts. I even had them trading jackets, which turned out to be quite fun.

We finished piling their jackets onto the "keep" and "give away" stacks. Then it was my turn. The first jacket I tried on was a red & black nylon jacket. I paraded for my daughter, "um...you sort of look like a super hero, Mom." "That could be good though, right?" "Yeah. Not in this case." Dejected I threw the jacket in the "give away" pile. I slid hangers across the rail. And in the back. On the right side. Against the wall. Was my mother's blue corduroy barn jacket. My mother died in August of 2007. I inhaled and wasn't sure what to do. I wasn't even sure if I should touch it.

It eventually occurred to me to exhale, and I reached for the coat. It was soft; the brown suede collar worn and faded. I held it up to my nose and inhaled again. Oh. Even after two years, it really did smell like her. I slid the coat around my back, put my arms through the sleeves, stuck my hands in the pockets and pulled it tight. My right hand fingered something soft. A kleenex. I pulled the tissue out of the pocket and help it up. Her lipstick. A perfect imprint of her blotted mauve lipstick. Most likely three years old.

The coat didn't fit me, and I probably wouldn't have worn it anyway. I took it off and laid it carefully on the "give away" pile. And the kleenex. I moved it from hand to hand, tracing the outline of the lipstick. I let out a little whimper and put the tissue in the trash. I have to keep practicing the process of letting her go.

I turned back to the closet, exhaled hard, and slid the jackets across the rail again. I pulled down my old jean jacket and tried it on. I didn't much care for the cut and the sleeves never were exactly right. I shoved my hands in the pockets - well, because when we're trying on clothes, pocket-shoving is what we do in a last ditch effort to talk ourselves into keeping something we don't really like anyway.

In the right pocket, was a kleenex.

Photo courtesy of The Enabler

The Bull's Eye

I am a relatively private person. For those of you who know me personally this is not surprising to you. I am rarely "public" in public. Anne Lamott talks about writing three or four rings out from the bull's eye. Where we live.

She spoke at a conference in San Diego several years ago and talked about the nightmare of giving a very long interview in which she thought she remembered discussing her mother. When the article was printed she was mortified to read the quote about her mother. Anne had been lulled to sleep, and made a reference to her mother that was "too close to the bull's eye."

Her words were a cautionary tale. My husband frequently reminds me to speak in short declarative sentences and to talk in sound bites during interviews. Ironically, the only television interview I gave wound up on the editing room floor because I wouldn't bite. The reporter chatted and massaged the other women and eventually got them to give her the crap she was after. And I was really okay with that because I wouldn't want to own those words.

Sometimes I think blogs, email, and all social media are the "lull". For me anyway, I forget that I'm attaching words - immortalized-in-the-cloud words - to real emotions, experiences & people and then putting all that out there for anyone to read. Stories about myself and my family. My friends. My colleagues.

Tonight I sat down to write and was going to post about a very personal experience between my daughter and me. Something very close to her bull's eye. And I wondered if I was willing to look into her baby blues and own those words. Later. Forever.

So I wrote about Anne Lamott instead, who by the way, is my favorite author. :)

Because I'm British!

You know the phrase, " At ______ (o'clock) anything is funny." For example, "At 3:00 in the morning anything is funny."

Last night was the opening of my kids' show at Creative Stages Youth Theatre. The play is titled "Funny at Birth" written and directed by the Artistic Director, Jim Gradillas. He is one of my favorite people. My daughter is the Asst Stage Manager, and my son is part of her crew for this show. The "after party" was a celebration of one of the cast member's birthday at IHOP. They spent two hours torturing waitresses and snorting eggs out of their noses. At least no one danced on the table. Not yet. Christmas future...

I picked them up just before midnight. When we pulled into the driveway, my son was asleep and my daughter was just getting started. She needs to decompress. Like her mom.

The boy kicked off his vans outside, peeled his shirt in the kitchen and walked out of his jeans in the doorway to his room. He crawled into bed, wrapped the comforter around himself, and rolled up into a ball. A size 11-wearing toddler.

The girl on the other hand needed. She needed. Attention. Many many minutes of attention. I love that about here. She regaled me with blow by blows from backstage. The kicking of asses, the pleading of tears, and the hugging of fears. As she processed she realized an hour later how much she loves stage managing. Once that realization began to gel, she needed to work through this major shift in self-perception. Relaying this brick and mortar inside her skin - inside her bones - and ultimately within her spirit NEEDED to happen right then. And so she labored and I supervised. My girl fascinates me.

Just before 1:30AM I suggested that she needed to sleep. She had rehearsal for one show tomorrow afternoon and was ASM for "Funny" that night as well. "But I n-e-v-e-r get to you have you all to myself for this long. Please! Please can we stay up longer?" I gave her 15 more minutes. I could have stayed up with her all night and some day in the not so distant future I'm sure I will.

Eventually I made my move toward the kitchen. She jumped up and blocked me from entering the hall. She had that look. Her eyebrow cocked, smiled crooked, and eyes narrowed.

"Come on Sweetie Pie, you've gotta go to bed."

"No I don't." But she said it with a british accent which I must say, at 1:30 in the morning, confused. me.

"C'mon Peanut, let's go."

"You Americans can't do anything right. You can't even sing a lullaby properly." Again with the accent. "We are so much better educated than you because we have wizardering schools..." followed by more random stuff and she concluded her speech by saying, "Because I'm British."

I thought I was going to pee in my pants right there.

I'm here to tell you that at 1:30 in the morning, after decompressing with a 14 year-old girl for an hour and a half, "Because I'm British." is not just funny. It's hilarious!

And then she knew she had me. So for another half an hour she speechified me and randomly added "Because I'm British." I finally walked her down to her room. She asked me if I would sing to her. After 14 years of this same song, you'd think that an Asst Stage Manager, who takes her job very seriously, would be eager to let go of our little bedtime ritual. But she's not. She crawled into bed, and I sang "You Are My Sunshine" to her like I do every night. She smiled and cooed like she was four and rolled over with the comforter pulled up to her chin. "Why do you still like me to sing to you?"

"Because I'm British."

In Your Face

Facebook.

My husband broke the news to me while I was straightening my hair this morning, “The kids want Facebook accounts so they can stay in touch with their theatre friends.”

Huh. Now, see, I thought my husband and I were of the same opinion on this matter. We don’t use our kids’ names or put their photos on-line. We want them to have lives that are not forever documented on video for as long as possible.

Can you imagine? My god, I wouldn’t want more than 20% of my life before the age of 25 available on-line. And to be clear, that 20% would be me sleeping. In my own bed. Alone. In response to his bait, I said nothing.

Then I remembered my son telling me how Zander was taping rehearsals because this is the last show he can do with the youth company because he is now 18. (I use his name because he is 18, and because he readily uses his name all over the net.)

Facebook.

My son said on the way home from rehearsal this week that he kept running away from Zander because he didn’t want to wind up on Zander’s FB page. I felt like crap.

“No, buddy, that’s okay, you can be in his videos.”

“But mom, he’s going to upload them. You said—“

“Well. This is different.”

My son was silent. My daughter was silent. I could hear their telepathic victory dance, and I giggled. Crap. So it would follow that they would first approach their dad with what was surely going to get shot down by me out of the gate. My husband is the harbinger of all-things-bad-ideas.

In the car this afternoon, I asked. “So. Dad said you guys want Facebook pages. Is that true?”

Daughter, “Yes.”

Son, “Uh-huh.”

Long dangerous pause.

I love wielding so much power. Mwaa-ha-ha. “Here are the ground rules…” They nodded and made we-understand noises. They didn’t care if I said they both had to do the laundry until they moved out. Darn it, why didn’t I say that? “Okay, you guys we’ll set up the accounts.”

My son was silent. My daughter was silent. I could hear their telepathic victory dance, and I giggled. Crap. Here we go.

Facebook.

Buttons

I wrote this piece in May of 2008, and it never found a home. This morning I pulled a load of laundry out of the dryer and noticed a loose button on my daughter’s shorts. I thought, I better sew this back on before it gets lost. I set the shorts aside and suddenly remembered this bit of writing. It’s a conflation of memory and a chunk of one of the “firsts” after a loss. I think it’s true. But memory and grief and regret often weave their own distinct narrative. A wish for something different.

BUTTONS

Sewing all the buttons.

I’ve sewn dozens of buttons back onto shirtsleeves, sweaters, and even doll clothes. And of course there is the inevitable “Mom, the button fell off again!”

One such call to arms came from my daughter last night, “Mom, the button fell off my shorts.” So I said, “put them on my desk. I’ll get to it later.” Then the wailing started, “But Mooom, I want to wear them tomorrow. I’m going with so-and-so to such-and-such a place after school. Mom, I need these shorts. Please Mom… are you even listening to me, Mom?” For god’s sake, how could I not be listening?

So I sat down in my office to sew this button back onto my daughter’s favorite pair of shorts. I started to cry. The more I tried to control myself, the more tears rolled down my cheeks. I tried to wipe my face and of course smeared make-up on my daughter’s shorts. Great. Now I had to wash them too. I grabbed a Kleenex to wipe my nose and cheeks.

I thought, “What is your story?” I was so irritated with myself. I wanted to get this done quickly so I could get back to my writing, but I could not pull myself together. More tears. More make-up running down my face… and suddenly it occurred to me what was happening.

We have lived with my parents for the last eight years – ever since my daughter was four years old. She was born in San Diego. As she approached school age, and since most of my family was still in Phoenix, we decided to move back to the desert. I know what you’re thinking – visit… and suck up the school situation like the rest of us in the state of California! Yeah, we know.

There was another reason we wanted to come back to Phoenix. My mother had been suffering with Multiple Sclerosis for nearly 30 years, and we wanted to be closer to her. When the opportunity to live with them came along, we just couldn’t pass it up. So, here we are with no ocean, no marine layer, and no freeway system. But at least it hits nearly 120 degrees every year, so we have that to look forward to!

Last night, while I sat there holding the needle and thread, the tears started to make sense to me. Since we moved back, my mother did all the mending. Mom sewed all the buttons. I lost my mother nine months ago. Not from complications related to MS, but because she was consumed by cancer. Mom lived two weeks from diagnosis to death.

Sobbing, I realized that though I miss my mom every day, and I can still smell her perfume, and hear her laugh, I need to let her go. I needed to sew this button for my daughter, tears and all, and let my heart… and my mom… rest. Now it’s my turn… to sew all the buttons.