To my 28-month-old

Dear Sophia,

I know, I know, I said once you turned two I would stop counting your age in months. And I have, but once in a while I have to think about it in that way to remind myself of how young you are. You don't act that young. In fact, you act older than most adults that I know. This includes the tantrums that you throw, oh, ten times a day.

You have changed in so many ways in such a short period of time: You know every word in the English language and half the words in the Spanish language, thanks to Dora and Diego. I have never seen anyone, besides me, get so excited about peeing and pooping in a potty. Plus, you have become quite the negotiator. For example, when you threw a book across the room and it hit me in the face, your reaction to my exclamation of pain was, "It's okay, it's just my princess book." When I stepped on something while trying to get to my computer, again yelping in pain, you said, "It's okay, it's just my plastic kangaroo." When I entered the room while you were eating lunch, and asked why the floor around your booster seat seemed like it was covered with glue, you shrugged, "It's okay, it's just all of my apple juice."
There is no way, no possible way, to be 10 steps ahead of you.

Part of your development is learning fear. You suddenly say you are scared of things, even though I have tried to enthusiastically shrug off most things as not scary. Halloween has had a lot to do with it, I think. Last week when I took you down the Halloween aisle in the drugstore hoping to find some new candy that I could not live without, about 1000 animated decorations started hooting and howling and groaning at us. All you did was jump in my arms, while I took off running. I have always hated Halloween, it demeans the paranormal and the spiritual, but that is a conversation that we will have when you are a little older. When daddy is not around.

There is really nothing to be scared of in this world, sweets. Besides Republicans. We are given the capability to endure anything, that is what I want you to know. But there is absolutely no way you can know this without learning it first hand, and I hate it, I hate that I have to stand by and watch. I think you woke up from a bad dream last night, so I had to hold you and rock you and rub your back for a while. Then I did the unthinkable: I put you back in bed. You wailed and screamed, "Don't leave me, Mommy!"
I know it seemed like I did leave you. But you have no idea, kiddo, the tears I cried while standing outside your door for the five-minute eternity that it took for you to fall back asleep.

Then I smiled, as I pulled a card from your deck. Into the dark, I whispered, "It's okay, it's just a hard lesson." For us both. The truth behind that lesson is that there is no possible way that I could ever leave you.

Love,
Mom

Oh, so now I am THAT person

Before we had a kid, my husband and I used to marvel at how parents could tune out the incessant naggy, whiny voices of their children while engaged in conversation with other adults.
"How does that happen?" we asked each other, wide-eyed and dumbfounded, when we would leave an engagement that involved such parents and children. You see, back then we were the "other adults."

Now I am a parent, and my child talks ALL OF THE TIME. My ears are constantly ringing at a pitch that mimics the voice of my daughter, even when she has been at daycare for hours. The last time we slept over my sister's house, after a night of drinking some (lots) of wine, a collective attempt to knock the voices of all of our children out of our ears, I jumped out of bed in the middle of the night because the smoke alarm was running out of batteries. It was chirping at the very same pitch as her voice and I thought she was calling to me. If you have ever heard a smoke alarm chirp, you are getting the picture of this torture.

This morning, as I was dropping her off at the day care/sitter's house, I was trying to have some much-needed adult conversation with the sitter. I was talking and laughing until I realized that during the entire conversation, my daughter was whining something at me over and over. The problem is, she was whining about picking up the bag of toys we brought, and I did not realize it, did not even hear it, until her sitter bent over to pick it up for her. As I rewound the moments and tuned in, there was that chirping, "I want that bag, I want that bag, I want that bag, I want that bag, I want that bag. Get me that baaaaaaag."
The sad thing is, I was holding my daughter the whole time, which means her mouth was about 2 cm from my ear.
The sad thing is, I have no idea what else I am tuning out in the world.
The sad thing is, I am really missing her pinball-like movement around the room right now, and yes, even the sound of her voice.


About this photo: Taken last weekend at a local park, she is holding a tiny leaf, explaining to me that it was falling, falling, falling from the sky, how it lived in the clouds, in a castle on top of a beanstalk, that you had to climb, climb, climb and be careful of the BIG GIANT that says fo fum and stomps, chirp...chirp...chirp...chirp.

Dear Michelle, Dear Karla,

What a week you two have had, huh? Michelle, you said goodbye to the matriarch of your family, the deepest root of relation that you know--your grandmother. Karla, you welcomed your second daughter into your family.

I have experienced both events like these in my personal life, and I can't help but think of the raw emotional roller coaster that you both are still riding. Strangely enough, you are both riding in the same car, and the fact that you are close friends is not the reason.

Death brings such sadness with the hole that it leaves in our everyday lives because of the inability to see the person that we loved and lost on this Earth. That feeling of helplessness, that surrender. The odd moments you find yourself laughing, the times you can't stop crying. It seems like a mess, but it is God's perfect mess. Michelle, you have told me of the time you have spent with your family in the past week, and how it has been filled with joking, with stories, with remembering...

Birth is a blessing that does not need to be disguised. A new life! A growing family! The end of a long pregnancy (wink)! However, as mothers, we experience a loss. We give up so much of ourselves to our children--our ability to rest, our sanity, our personal space (I have not peed alone in 2.5 years). I can only imagine that you are starting to feel like the juggling act cannot work, and you are starting to ask the questions, "Am I giving enough to my first daughter? Am I giving enough to my second daughter? Am I giving, giving, giving enough to anyone?" Ah. Motherhood. I remember by the end of week one I was lying in a pool of tears and breast milk wondering how it was going to possibly work. God's perfect mess again. I can only hope that your hindsight saves you and gives you the knowing that no stage lasts forever, and there is very little you can do wrong.

Every moment, even the hard ones, especially the hard ones, are a gift. God's mess.

Okay Michelle and Karla, it may not feel like the most fun roller coaster in the world, but you are on it next to each other. I am behind you, of course, my hands are on your shoulders. Your hands? Throw them up in the air and enjoy the ride the best you can.

Love,
Amy

In Love

Perhaps I feel the need to follow up from my last post by saying this:

You know that you are still in love with your husband when he is out of town and when he sends you an email, your stomach does a little flip-flop.

Never before have I wanted to be something...

...like I want to be THIS microphone.

To show that I do have a thread, a tiny thread, of morality left: My husband looks similar to this certain lead singer. Minus the tattoos. And the ability to play a guitar that I bought him a few years ago. Hint, hint.

I thought this video was, you know, appropriate for the end of summer.

Dashboard Confessional--STOLEN (acoustic version)

Poems that dim my confidence

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.

I want to free what waits within me

so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,but this is what I need to say.

May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents, these deepening tides moving out, returning, I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels into the open sea.

-Rainer Maria Rilke
from Book of Hours:Love Poems to God, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

But is it good? What I do that I want to flow from me like a river? Is it good? Is it God's kind of good? Lately I open my mouth to say something and then close it, what can possible come from my mouth that is without my contriving?...it almost does not feel right to speak anymore.

Life is a Verb

I cannot remember how I stumbled on Patti Digh’s blog, 37 days, but can we really remember when or how we stumble on something important? We would like to think how we discovered the love of our lives, or how we really felt holding our first child, and how it feels to let go of the hands of the ones we love when they need it…but the truth is, that sort of remembering is like fabricating a fairy tale about our own lives. Many of us decide at a young age to construct a to-do-list for the next 70 years that goes something like this: college, job, marriage, kids, retirement, grand kids, security…
At any given part of this larger to-do-list, we have constructed smaller ones, lists that may look like this: pack lunches, grocery store, gym, work, call insurance agent, TIVO Survivor, feed cats.

I have never been much a of a list maker. In fact, list makers scare me, and I have never been sure why until I read the first pages of Patti’s book, Life is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally. She writes clearly about the importance of Marginalia, and not being afraid to inhabit the margins, for this is where you will truly find life—not in the lists and the plans and the prose of our day-to-day. Life is a Verb is clearly a very well planned piece of art, with beautiful quotes and photos right where they should be, and large, large margins. Patti hopes that her readers will hold a pen as they read and use those margins to make her quest for an intentional life their own. She writes:

“Marginalia is a way of carrying on a larger, broader conversation…I hope you will find yourself in the margins, between and beneath the words and perhaps if I have done my job, in them.”

In your mind, take a moment and scan your life so far. Are the moments that you remember in the plans that you made, in the to-do lists? No, they are in the margins. The chance meetings, the acceptance letters you never thought you would receive, the rejections you never thought you would feel, the goodbyes…

Patti encourages us to not be afraid of these margins, but underneath her words resides a truth…we have no choice. Our lives are already in the margins, inhaling and exhaling the unexpected. If we frame this truth correctly, we can see that this truth is a gift. In the short week that I have had the opportunity to hold Life is a Verb in my hands, I have learned how to frame my truths and see with new eyes. Again, I have no idea how I stumbled on Patti Digh, on 37 days, and Life is a Verb. I guess one day I gave it all over to Marginalia, and Marginalia gave back.