Priorities

The inspection on the car is expired. David brought it to be inspected and I was braced and ready to be told that we needed at least two tires. And I knew we needed a headlight. I had a figure in my head of what it was going to be, and I had done the math in my head and figured that after the car was paid for we would have enough to live on for the next two weeks and even pay a few bills.

David called and said that the tires passed. However, there is a crack in something that apparently is vital to passing inspection, and to replace this cracked thingy majingy, will cost over $400.00. Plus $200.00 for the tires to be rotated, the headlight, and an oil change. David left with a new headlight, and rearranged tires, and the crack remains. So does the expired sticker.

My girls are 8, 6, and 2. At this point in my motherhood journey, there are a few things that I have down. I have mastered the veiled threat. I know exactly which yell my children know is my warning call, and which yell makes their eyes bug out of their heads and makes them listen, quickly. I know which girl likes mustard, which girl hates cheese. Who drinks orange juice. Who despises milk. Never give Charlotte meat with even a speck of fat, or she will deem it greasy, yet watch her down a plate of bacon. Molly loves to be sung to, and Olivia likes to have private talks. Small details that we all know about our children, because they are everything.

Little things become big things to kids, and even the mention of something, even a whisper between David and I, is literally written in stone to them. If it doesn't happen, it is bad news. I have learned at this point that it is best to never tell Molly we are going to go and play with her friend Ki Ki, because if something suddenly prevents that from happening, oh the tears. The writhing on the floor. The carrying on becomes painful to watch. And listen to.

We made the mistake of telling the girls that we were going to go camping this summer. We spoke about it, out loud. I cringed as we did it, almost wanting to snap the speech bubbles around our heads back out of midair, and shove them back in our mouths. But we thought that between now, and then, we could do it and it felt exciting to talk about it. To get them excited. All of us got excited actually.

I was looking at the reservations for the sites the other night, and they are filling. Quickly. And now with the car to figure out how we are going to pay for, putting a down payment for a reservation looks impossible. At least for the next few pay cycles. But the girls don't know this yet.

And then I saw Charlotte's journal. And in it, she wrote all about our summer plans. And how excited she was to go camping. She is counting on it. And I realized, that however it has to happen, it will happen. Cracked thingy magingy, or not. We are going camping.

So if you see a woman resembling my photo pulled over and getting a ticket in the next month or so, that would be me.

Deja vu

All of a sudden it's Tuesday.

 I feel like some moments I am wondering if what I am recalling was a dream, or did it actually happen. Even songs are playing in my head...  I am unsure where I heard them. Weird.

I had been thinking we were on an upswing. Started making some plans in my mind. Not happening right now, suddenly.

 So, the painting in my minds eye gets bigger. Yet I have no paints.

It seems like I can see it all happening, but it all hasn't happened yet.

 Perhaps the dream is not of days gone by, but of days ahead.

Sounds nice, anyway.

ham dinner

David turned 42 yesterday. (eeks!) We had a family dinner for him, and a cake. David doesn't like sweets. He rarely eats cake or cookies. Occasionally, ice cream, so I got an ice cream cake. The girls insist on the cake and candle part. They divert his attention in another room while I light the candles. This year, as they were standing in Olivia's room, Molly couldn't contain herself, and told him I was doing in the kitchen. She was beside herself,  in all her two year old cuteness, and just blurted it out.

We had a ham dinner, with green beans, and potatoes. David told me when we were dating, that was his favorite meal. I have made him this meal through the years, for birthday dinners, yet I am doubting that it actually is. He never asks for this meal. He never orders it, or craves it. I adore linguine with clam sauce, and I have perfected the recipe. I could eat it once a week. It is my favorite meal, and I make it as often as I can get away with it. Yet, this ham dinner, a detail I made a mental note of so many years ago, because I was falling in love with him, doesn't seem to really be his favorite. I have been with the man for almost 12 years, and I have seen him really be wowed by other dishes. Not so much with the ham.

When he came home, and I told him what we were having, he didn't seem overjoyed. I think I could have said a meatloaf, and he would have given the same reaction. As I was snapping the ends off the green beans, I thought that David probably remembered a meal that he had as a kid, and when we were dating, and exchanging all of our vital info with one another, he mentioned ham, green beans, and potatoes, as his favorite. This meal is now haunting him. And sweetly, he humors me, and never complains.

Because love is in the details. And you do things for the ones you love that they love. I knew I had met a truly wonderful man, during our first Christmas together. The first week of dating David, we had wondered through a store together, and I saw nesting dolls on a shelf. I have always loved nesting dolls, and wanted a set my whole life. I admired them, and we left the store together. By the time Christmas rolled around, 4 months after that fateful window shopping excursion, what do you think my Christmas gift was? You guessed it. The very nesting dolls that I casually pointed out on an August afternoon.

And that sealed my fate. And Davids. And sometimes, when David goes against my wishes, and spends money on me, for a present for Mothers Day, or my birthday, money that we can't afford to be frivolous with, I get a new nesting doll. I have a shelf of them now, and I adore them.

I am beginning to think David wished he had told me eggplant parmigiana, in those early days. Because love really is in the details, and watching him have his birthday dinner last night with a smile on his face, made that more clear to me than ever.

Hope for choice for all

When I was first handed each of my girls in the hospital, wrapped up tightly in blankets, and smelling that glorious, new baby smell, I was in awe. And the first thing I recall thinking was that to make such an awesome being, it should be way more difficult of an act, than it actually is. It seemed to me that the moon should be at a particular phase, and it should be during a certain weather pattern. Maybe a time of day, or a series of days involved in the completion of making a baby. The simple act that it actually is, and let's face it, most anyone can do, just doesn't quite match the end product.

I was never one of those mother's who placed my hopes and dreams into my child. I was, and am relieved, that they are all healthy, and, I am shocked by how smart they are. My hopes for them are simple. Not for them to become what I want them to be, but who they choose to be. That their choices are never limited, and they will not be told no. I hope they will be able to go as far as their minds will allow them to.  I just want them all to reach the potential that they seemed to arrive here on Earth with.

That being said, I am fearful that my little girls futures seems so unclear. That their choices might be threatened, and that by simply being born female, options will be limited to them, and they will become victims of their own biology.

Society is sending them mixed messages. Already, I can see their confusion. I try and limit and monitor everything that I have the power to, while they are here with me. But my ability to do so ends when they board the bus. And then all I can do is hope other parents are doing the same thing we are trying to do.

But not all of them are. Olivia tells me how some of the girls she knows watch Jersey Shore. She tells me of boys calling girls "hot". The word "sexy" is thrown around daily. And she is in 3rd grade! My six year old has reported similar things! Everything seems so over-sexualized, and yet, our country, at least to me, has never seemed more sexually uptight. 

Look sexy, yet don't have sex. The message is so mixed. And the act of sex, the simple act, that seems so glorified, can lead to serious stuff for adults, and teenagers alike, who really are not ready for it.

And now, we have candidates that want to limit choices. Limit availability of tests, and birth control, pre-natal care, and even abortion. Still some of those very candidates want to limit social programs that would take care of those very babies that they want to make impossible to avoid.

Let's face it. The act of making the baby is not getting harder. And the number of people having sex isn't changing. Isn't it our own personal decision to determine our own fertility? Why do we seem to be going backwards in time? And the kind of sex I am referring to is consensual sex. I'll be damned if anyone is going to tell my girls, or any other girl, to accept the product of a rape, as a "gift". I won't even touch on that angle. It is barbaric.

I am not "pro-abortion".  And really, I don't believe anyone is. Nor am I "pro-birth control". What I am is no ones business but my own, just as everyone else is entitled to make those most personal decisions for themselves. 

But I will keep that hope, and dream for my girls that they can love who they want, without discrimination. And they can choose if and when motherhood is something they want to enter into. And they can go as far as they want, without someone else making the choice for them.

I hope for all of us, the sex we were born as, will never limit us, or determine the path we walk, despite our desires.

Looking back, and ahead

Looking back through my photos.

 Second looks, at prints I dismissed. They are from a year ago. They seem like a lifetime ago, actually.

It was so cold, and grey last winter. Nothing like this one.

This winter, the girls have played outside, nonstop. It has been amazing.

 And a little strange.

Another year older.

                                  And another year, still here.

Couch revisited

When we moved here 9 years ago, we had a new baby, and a crib to put her in. I had a changing table someone gave me, and my old dresser drawers, that were mine, as a child. That was pretty much it.

Oh...and a couch.

We were given a couch, by my parents. That too was  from my childhood. It was purchased in 1975, when I was 4, and there is a photo of me sitting next to it, when it was brand new. It was 70's decor at its finest. The couch has a bamboo print on it, and is green. A bright, yellowish green. It was in our family room, along with a love seat, atop bright green shag carpeting. It was a part of my childhood, and young adulthood.

 I laid on the love seat, sick with the chicken pox, while my sister lay on the couch, with the same illness. I sat on that couch to read, because it was right next to the lamp. I sat on that couch at the holidays, when there was no room on the love seat. I laid on that couch and cried, when my high school boyfriend broke up with me. That green couch was always there. Ever present, and blindingly green.

We had nothing to sit on, when we arrived here in PA, and my mom said take the couch. It was in their bedroom then, in their new house. Gone was the living room from my childhood. The house, long sold. A room left only in my mind. We took the offer, and I quickly went out and purchased a slipcover for it. While moving it into the house, David and my Dad bumped it, and it lost a leg. We piled some books under it, and I assumed that it was temporary. I would soon be furniture shopping, and the couch would be a memory.

But here it sits. 9 years later, and two more kids added in. Bills to pay, and cars to try and repair. The furniture shopping never got done. The slipcovers have been changed out a few times, but there sits the green couch. A constant in my life. Something that has held me, and family members, no longer on this earth. Sitting quietly in my living room. I laughed to myself this past summer as I had my 40th birthday, and thought about being 4, sitting next to it in all of it's newness. All of my newness, as well. Never in a gazillion years would I have imagined my own kids lying on it, sick with fevers, and reading Harry Potter.

I put some laundry away last night, and as I opened up my pajama drawer, I was hit with a smell of time. The dressers were given to us last year. They are ancient, and were in David's grandfathers house. We lost him last year. He was 93, or 94. He never knew for sure because he was born on the kitchen table in Brooklyn, and never had a proper birth certificate.He lost track of his own age through the years, so it was a guesstimate.

We loved Grandpa Joe. My kids adored him. I was constantly blown away by my own children having such a close relationship with their great grandfather. He helped us buy this home. He gave us a chance at having a life. I miss him everyday, and welcomed some of his furniture, after he died, and the house was sold. That house was like walking into a time capsule. Nothing changed from the day him, and David's grandmother purchased, and decorated the house, all those years ago. Even the kitchen curtains remained. Pink gingham, to match the plates, and the pink tile, and believe it or not, the pink oven and stove.

When we got the dressers, I cleaned them up a bit, and found an ancient looking bobby pin, and a stamp. A ten cent stamp. Cast aside so many years ago, and living in a crevice of the drawer. But to me, it was evidence of a woman I  never had the privilege to meet. A woman who just by her presence on the earth, is the reason my own children are here. Those same children who now stand next to those pieces of furniture. She never would have imagined that, I bet.Yet here they are, in my home. Nicked, and marred from years of wear. Quiet remnants of rooms gone. People no more, but given new life.

I realize it is just a couch. Held up by books. And drawers, holding clothes. Nothing more. But even if I had the money to finally go on that furniture shopping trip that I assumed would come with being a new homeowner, I would be so sad to see that couch sitting alongside the garbage cans. And the dressers...I couldn't ask for more beautiful bedroom furniture. 

awake

Last night, I was tired.

 More tired than I can remember.

Tired of outside stuff that I can't control, controlling me.

Tired of all of that stuff taking away from my sanity. And my happiness.

Tired of thinking about it.

Tired of worrying about it.

Tired of it getting in the way of what is real.

Because it isn't real. Or positive. Or productive.

And really, it is out of my hands. And in someone else's.

To do what they wish with it.

But I am tired of being tired of it.

So last night, I let it go.

And I fell into a sleep like no other.

Each time, I woke up, I felt sleepier, and more cozy, and warm, than before.

And Molly curled herself up into me, like a cat.

And soon, our breathing was one.

And it went like that all night. Until the light crept in.

And I know what to do now.

There is nothing more that I can.

And that is what I can control.

Because there are too many things way more important.

And I have been letting that be more important than this.