Stretch

Worries today:  David. My girls. One of my kids dying. Money. No bills in the mailbox the last two visits. Job in Middle East on hold due to government cuts. Overheating car. My parents ages. Drinking too much wine last night. Money. My weight. My grey hair. Olivia talking to her friends on the bus about "making out"...ugh...The little bit of gas left in the car. David's car. Our mortgage. The two friends that I have been meaning and wanting to call back, tick tick tick...Just finding out those poor girls in Connecticut involved in that home invasion were burned alive. Wanting stronger locks. My heating system...it just keeps going and going. My inability to write the story I want. Hoping that the hospital here will call me back after receiving my resume. The evil force in California, and all that it entails. Will we have a snow storm and will the power fail. Money. My friend having a hard time in her marriage. The small black speck on Molly's tooth. My dishwasher. My lack of owning paper photos.

So far today: Woke up at four thirty for the day. Finally got in bed with Olivia at six thirty, and we just laid there. I held her. She melted into me. We stuck our legs in the air, and compared knees, and ankles. Her legs are mine. Just a smaller version. We stretched our calves, and pointed our toes. She giggled so hard. I am always Mom. Mom with a job to do. Mom going somewhere. Mom mad about something. Mom cooking. Mom yelling. Mom cleaning. Never putting my feet up in the air. Never getting under the covers, and enjoying the quiet before the day begins.

I woke Charlotte up, and stroked her small, tiny arm. She got goosebumps. She sat up in bed, and sleepily, smiled at me, without saying a word. She just looked at me and smiled. Not just with her mouth. Her eyes too. We just stood still for a moment.

I had a friend over for coffee yesterday who finally told me her whole story. She was given up for adoption by her mother, when they still lived in her native Honduras. After 13 years, her mother surfaced, and asked her to come visit her, in the US. Her parents, the only parents she had ever known, who beat her her whole life, said the only way she could visit was if it was for good. They would send her, from the hut she lived in, with no running water, and a bucket to use as a toilet, if they were repaid every penny they ever spent on her.

 Her mother purchased her, and she went to live with her and her equally cocaine addicted boyfriend in Queens. Their reuniting would be brief. She was on her own at the age of 16. When she was 18, her mother had another baby. A boy. She quickly went back to using drugs soon after the baby was born. My friend got a call one night. It was her mother. She asked her to come over. She needed her. She went to her, and listened to her problems, in the middle of the night. She said that she finally got her mother to sleep, and the baby awoke. He was three months old. She said she remembered feeding him, and changing his diaper. She held him until he went back to sleep.

Her mother awoke in the morning and said she was going to take him to Saint Anthony's church, in the village, that day. She had named him after Saint Anthony. My friend said goodbye. Instead of going to church, her mother jumped in front of a train, holding Anthony. He was killed. Her mother was not.

She still goes and visits her mother, in a nursing home, on Staten Island. She goes there a few times a year. She is a bigger person than I. We spoke of worries, and I talked about just a few of mine. She said she doesn't worry about a thing. Nothing small. She doesn't let money problems upset her. She can"t be worried about the crack in her windshield right now. She didn't get that angry when her son burned their family home to the ground a few years ago.

She said that it's useless to sweat the small stuff. It is what it is, and next year, you will be worried about something else.

I think I might have some more morning leg stretches.