labeling the almost-truth

Avi: Mama, do only boys have wifes?

unusually long pause as I consider the best answer. do i use this moment to talk about the right to marriage? legaleeze and politics? or do i provide her the labels and hope that by the time she is grown, this right really will exist no matter where she lives.  i opt for the latter.

Mama: No. When two women love each other, than can get married and call each other wife.  If two men get married, they call each other husband.  When a man and woman marry, they call each other husband and wife.  And then there’s people like me and Dada who aren’t married at all so we don’t have a husband or wife.

Avi: Oh.  (and she laughs.  she finds this last part about J and I funny.)

and then we stop talking and listen to “The Fisherman and his Wife” in silence.  a poor man badgered by his greedy wife who wants everything for nothing.  they end up in a hovel after all.

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Breathing In

I love the smell of my child’s hair in the morning.

I love the feeling of her soft cheek on mine.

I love the way she wraps her tiny hands around my neck and tucks herself up against me.

I breath her in.

Our photographer captured this ephemeral breath last Sunday.  I never thought I would see an image of myself breathing in the spirit of my child and treasuring it.  And yet, here it is, in all its power, in all its vulnerability.

When I am fifty, I will show my child this image and she will marvel at my youth.  And I will marvel at her youth.  And I will say, “You see?  I have always loved you and I always will.  No matter where I am.  No matter where you are.”

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Mewling Transitions

In my little world, fall is a time of reflection.

September arrives in a whirlwind of seasonal change, school, theatre, jobs, and loss of daylight.

My birthday looms precariously as the leaves begin to change.

My dedicated relatives send me little L’Shana Tova emails and I have to pause and re-visit my heritage.

And, heartbreakingly, my child celebrates a birthday.

This has, by far, been the hardest addition to this time of transition. This year, it knocked me over the head, sent me flying and then proceeded to bounce up and down on me for a while.

I spent about three weeks getting teary-eyed at babies, sighing to myself when Avi wasn’t looking, and weirding her out by saying things like “I’m so proud of you being a big girl, but I miss you being a baby.” To which she would smartly reply with a huge grin, “Your baby grew into a big girl.”  And I would swallow the tears and grin in reply and move on.

The fact is, having my baby become a kid was an unexpected slap in the face because unlike most of my married girlfriends with two and three children, this is it for me.

Oh, I know, I’ve “got plenty of time.”   But, for now, this is it.

And that makes me really sad.

I would love to have a house just busting with kids.  But I don’t.  And, right now, it makes me sad and down right jealous to see women and their new babies because I want a new baby (and the dazed dad to go with it, if I’m really being honest).

Blame the genetic code if you want but no matter how you slice it, I want a mewling, puking bundle of squishiness to keep me up at night, latch on to my boob for instant comfort and make all the day-to-day stress completely obsolete with the lift of a tiny soft pinky.

I’m pretty much over the teary-eyed weeks until next year but I still sigh about the rapid growth of my “big girl.”  It doesn’t help when she asks me complicated questions from the backseat like, “Mama, what’s Simple Twist of Fate mean?”  And that she actually seemed to understand my halting reply.

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County Fair

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Change the Wol-old

Avi:  What’s that?

Mama: It’s an article about a woman who is going back to school to learn about leadership.

Avi: Why does she want to learn about leadership?

Mama:  Because she wants to change the world and it’s easier to do that when you’re a leader.

Avi:  I want to change the Wol-old

Mama:  You do?  That’s great!

Avi:  Mama, I’m going to change the world with these cds.

Mama: Okay.

……

Avi: Hmmmm, these aren’t working, I guess I’ll have to do it myself.

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I Chose You

The final refrain of ‘A Whole New World’ sung through the screen and fireworks burst in the sky.

Avi: What are those?  Fireworks?

Mama: Yes.

Avi: Why?

Mama: Because they’re having a celebration.  They decided to spend the rest of their life together so they had a celebration called a wedding.  And sometimes that means setting off fireworks.

Avi: Weddings are fun!

Mama:  Yes, I think they are too.  When you’re a grown-up, you can have one too, if you find someone you want to spend the rest of your life with.

Avi: I don’t want to.  I want to spend the rest of my life with you.

Mama:  Oh, honey, someday you might find someone else.

Avi: No. I chose you.

I don’t think my heart could feel any more full.

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Don’t.Take.My.Picture.

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uh oh

She sat at the table eating a snack.
She pushed her plate forward, causing an avalanche of crap to fall off the back of the table. On my list of shit to clean up.
“Uh ooooh!” I exclaim.
“Say, ‘Geezuz kiest’ mama. Say ‘Gezuz kiest’.”
Great.
Yet another not-so family-friendly semi-swear to work out of her vocabulary.
Crap.

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Winter Fae

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Shut it, whiner.

I’ve been sitting here, contemplating going to bed but I’m having a hard time stomaching it, literally.  I did not eat great today, not awful, but not great.  And then I stuffed myself at dinner.  It was so freaking good.  I made pizza with my own home-made sauce (a first! the sauce, that is, not the pizza) and tofu-basil mash on top with black olives.  I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

But now I have indigestion in the form of acid belly and a tight throat.  Mint tea isn’t quite cutting it.

I was starting to feel a little miserable, basking in the sludge of self-indulgent blah, wondering why I let myself do this so frequently.  And then I went to the message board of my local mother’s group.

One of the moms posted a vent yesterday.  It involved crying twin infants, poop, cat vomit, heads in tiolets and missed naps.  She’s got four, yes FOUR, children under the age of three.  Two sets of twins, my friends.  And then another mom responded with a vent about her equally crappy day involving her two year old and twin infants.

My reply?  “Next time I start to vent about my one kid, someone tell me to shut-it.”

Now, don’t misunderstand me, we all have our days, and we are all entitled to vent about them, seek comfort, go cry, or pound a few pillows into dust.  But this was a pleasant reminder that I’ve got it pretty easy:  I’ve got one kid.  Only one to cry, cloth, feed, and chase.  Only one.

And that, dear friends, is how it shall stay for a long long time.

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