the words. they are restless.

my words are all restless right now. i feel them, dancing around issues and knocking over glasses but i can't seem to get them to explain to me why they are here in the first place and why they won't just sit down. in alphabetical order. i feel that if i pluck one of them from the back of my head, a story might sprout. but i just tried it and all of these other words were attached to the space between and i couldn't untangle them so i put them in the pile of christmas tree lights that haven't quite made it to their proper storage space. i have observations about my daughter's new habit of throwing a fit at bedtime, my son's newly developed ability to eat mashed bananas and avocado. the fact that i have a daughter and a son in the first place makes me feel like writing letters to strangers. but these words. they just won't stop circling around. they will not gather themselves together. so i'll just let them rest. less.

boundaries

it's in the seventies during the day. finn is learning about the seasons at school and she sees pictures of snow and talks about ice skating. she asks if it will be snowing when she wakes up tomorrow. how about after? what about after that? i tell her that no, it won't snow here. we could drive to snow and bryan shakes his head with his eyebrows scrunched and i smile because i know we are the people who want to have the family excursion of driving to the snow to watch her play in frozen dirt and mud for ten minutes before deciding she is too cold and wants to go home. but we aren't really those people, if we're being completely honest. i am in my pajamas. i have been in my pajamas all day. this is the type of people we are. the type of people who think 'oh crap' if there is a knock at the door because what if we won publisher's clearinghouse and i answered the door with my breast milk stained tshirt and camera bulbs flashed. do they even have publisher's clearinghouse anymore? i would still enter except for the fact that someone read my palm once and told me i thought i was luckier than i actually am.
we learn a lot about ourselves when we have children, yes? like my flash of bright white overreaction when finn denies something i know she just did. looks me right in the eye and says 'no.' bryan's bubbling over when she ignores him when he's talking to her. we both know these are our issues, not hers. that we teach her more about herself by the way we react to the worst parts than by the praise she gets for using her kind words. that our broad, sweeping generalizations about her being in 'big trouble' fall into her palms with the same weight of not being allowed to have one more juice box. we all have our boundaries. yesterday she walked into the bathroom while i was in the shower. and she said 'mommy i love all of your parts. i love your heart. i love my heart.' and i remember that she isn't even four yet. her boundaries are paved with juice boxes and markers on furniture. mine are paved with the intention of prevention. and trying to explain that even though it doesn't snow in los angeles, it still snows. in winter. and that, yes, we can go there. 'after this day? how about after that?

socially awkward butterfly

last weekend i drove two hours to attend a surprise party for a friend i've known since junior high.  strapped the baby to my chest when i got there and stood, rocking, talking to people i hadn't seen in years. people who got babysitters for their kids and who weren't nursing. i felt misshapen, stretched out. i couldn't remember how to have a conversation that didn't include talking about children. yet i cursed like a sailor and waved the sarcastic banter flag because i felt awkward and postpartum wearing my one pair of jeans that fit. the baby's flailing arm connected with a friend's glass of wine and left her soaked and it wasn't funny like when you're young and drunk and stumbling. i was the lady with the baby at the party knocking over drinks. i didn't stay very long.

driving home, i was struck by something. it wasn't melancholy. it wasn't regret. it was something liquid, metallic. it shined and it smudged and lay on the passenger seat the entire two hours home.
and the thing is this:
i haven't yet reconciled being a mother and being me.
i mean, i know how to be myself around my kids. and i have never been more myself in a relationship while still having room to change and grow. and yet. i'm a bit in flux, i think. as a person. my body is somewhat hijacked because bearing children is amazing, yes. but it is also somewhat traumatic. it takes time to recognize yourself. i never quite got there after finn and then i got pregnant again. i didn't last this long nursing with finn. this time around, it's amazing and beautiful and awesome and yet i feel in limbo. like my body is on loan and i've never been a fan of living out of boxes.
this unsettled feeling is strangely comforting and humbling and i'm not sure how to wear my newly stretched out skin just yet. i'm not sure what i will look like when this is all over and i am at a point in my biological timeline where my skin and my hair and my nails need to be tended to. not expected to take care of themselves anymore.
i document the tiny moments in my life and i lose friends on facebook because all i post pictures of is my kids. but i can't help it.
right now? my life?
this is what i DO.
THIS is who i am.
there is more to me than the things my children say and clogged milk ducts and grey hairs. but the more is somehow less than. at least for right now.
i can't help it.
so, if you happen to see me out. at a party. somewhere.
i apologize if you ask me how i am and i tell you a story about my kids.
this is what i DO.
THIS is who i am.

this is the year

this is the year. not because of anything that might make sense to a scientist. not because of the mayan calendar or preconceived notions or new year's resolutions. it's just...the year.
two kids and done. tubes are tied. i turned a corner and the year changed and all of a sudden i'm swinging from the rafters toward forty and realizing that perhaps i should harness up all that i know in case i need to use it one day. then again, i just had to google 'toward vs. towards' because i found myself with mouth pursed and brow furrowed, left ring finger hovering over the 's' key longer than necessary and i got sidetracked into wondering what i would have done without google and if the dawn of all of this technology has made me more or less intelligent.
this is the year where i start to see my daughter as someone. not just as some mysterious creature taking shape but as the little girl who will become a young woman who will start remembering most of her childhood from here on out. this is the year i have to get it right so that all of the other years will balloon out in the right direction.
this is the year my tiny baby boy will walk and talk and become a toddler. and while he toddles i will slow down and cry at each milestone because (a) it will be the last milestone of that kind for me and (b) i am such a fucking cliche.
this is the year i will make soap by hand. because pinterest showed me how. i will close certain chapters and maybe write new ones and i will continue to unload a verbal barrage upon bryan when he walks in the door at the end of the day because i've been dying to unload the nonsensical garbage i've read online while the kids are resting. i will plan more art projects than i have time to do, i will photograph even the most mundane of moments with obsession. i will continue to make grand plans for the future that include vacations and potential tattoos and new gadgets for the kitchen. i will make pasta or butter from scratch and then wonder why i ever felt the need to do so.
this is the year i will make good on my promise to bryan to write. 
this is the year i will write.
this is the year i will write.
this is the year i will write.
this is the year i will remember that i always said life would begin in my thirties and realize i was wrong.
it's forty.
this is the year.

so this is the new year

i couldn't remember what day it was this morning. i thought maybe monday. i dreamt of dogs and kidnapping and cameras and wet sand and i spent a solid 1/4 of my dreaming trying to find a lost baby. my mind snapping like a flashbulb trying to remember where i put him. who had him last. trying to rewind the tape and i woke up with the baby right next to me and when i nursed him he bit me.
if i hadn't checked facebook last night i could have easily overlooked the fact that it was new year's eve. i watched a documentary about the salton sea and thought about when my dad and step-mom took me fishing there and we camped in the middle of the desert and i coudn't stay in my tent because of the sand storm. i spent one whole afternoon dipping myself in the water like an ice cream cone and watching the rings of salt dry on my bathing suit. i was still so young, round belly and spindly arms. i have pictures of myself holding fish and i remember how desolate and brown the water felt. how warm. i never knew the desert could smell so wet. there were no waves, just water and sand. and wind. and heat. we cooked the fish we ate and i didn't enjoy it as much as i enjoy the memory. then again, i'm not a desert girl. with or without an oasis.
funny how the perfect spot to create a desert oasis turned into a mirage after all.
we made family goals this year. well, individual goals. as a family. because we are the sum of our parts. and our parts are full of possibility and we know that the only way to keep ourselves afloat amid all the chaos and runoff is to each have our own dock. our one combined goal is to make/craft something together as a family once a month. i already have art projects bookmarked and yet i'm thinking that there might be months when we need to craft hope or love or patience. and that the tangible result of these things might look less like art.
but more like home.

tis the season

the day after the day after christmas and we are in pajamas still. i am drinking my body weight in eggnog and finn is dancing. dash is laying on me fighting a nap, smiling. i am typing with nine fingers.
the day before the day before christmas i was chopping cilantro with a mediocre knife. i am now missing a portion of the nail on my left pointer finger. wow, your knives must be so sharp, i was told.
no. they are dull. but at least i have a good example of irony to add to my arsenal.
in a serendipitous stroke of christmas magic, my in-laws gifted us a set of fancy knives this year. we laughed in the warm pocket of want meeting need.

christmas this year was small, intimate. up close. spread over three days with pockets of family and friends sprinkled throughout. gifts were a hybrid of bought and handmade and the kids and i shared a cold. we ate chicken enchildada soup (the scene of the finger hacking crime) and brussel sprouts. italian sub sandwiches on christmas eve and homemade sourdough bread. christmas morning was strata (made by bryan's stepmom and seriously. make this now. you can thank me later.) and fruit salad. an italian feast on christmas night. we stayed up too late on christmas eve and stretched out of bed like taffy when finn yelled I GOT A BIKE! at early o'hundred.

we spent our first christmas as THIS family. and i took pictures. of the moments big and small. to try and have something tangible to go along with the feathery movements that are stuffed in my ribcage. to have something to hold as evidence. so that when i grow fragile and childlike again in my twilight years, i will notice the colors painted in between the breaths and i will think to myself that this year was the best christmas yet.
until the next one.

love. thumbs up.

driving in the car, listening to the radio. or music. whatever. she will pick words out of the air and ask me how to spell it. i sound out the syllables, ask her what letter makes that sound. slowly make our way through word after word. i hear myself explaining how the 'c' and the 'k' sometimes make the same sound.
yes, mommy. but sometimes they don't.
she likes to practice her letters. she will ask us to dictate the spelling of words to her and she will write them out, noticing how the certain letters strung together make a garland of words that mean one thing and sometimes another. she is a gust of wind away from reading. i can see it rounding the corner. like a large bristled broom moving letters haphazardly into a pile. pretty soon she'll be able to look at that pile, leaves in the bottom of a cup, and see stories.
until then, i will always answer when she asks me how to spell love.

and thumbs up.

why i should always make a list

i wish my checking account was a game on the price is right. i would stand on stage and move the numbers around until, intuitively, i feel they're right. and then i win a car.
in related news, we are out of butter and parmesan. toilet paper. wipes.

i left the house today with the kids. bribed finn with a carousel ride for her best behavior in target. it mostly worked. carried a 15 lb baby on my chest and let finn walk next to the cart. now i know why those moms have that look on their faces. i gave in to the bag of goldfish crackers. i circled the two story target three times, trying to remember why i was there in the first place.
i bought eggnog.
i forgot the butter.

finn asked me about heaven and dead people this morning. while eating her life cereal. i thought for a moment about commenting on the irony because i figured that would be easier to explain than the real issues. that i can't promise her i won't die tomorrow. that i can't promise her anything that has to do with life or death because those aren't the rules. she doesn't know that yet. on this thursday in december. 2011. that sometimes life makes no sense and hurts like a motherfucker and santa can't make that go away. she doesn't know that. not yet. i begin to formulate an age appropriate way to have this conversation when she switches to bodily functions and where and how they come out.

on the way home from the store we got caught in a hailstorm. i was so excited. i mean, it's los angeles. we never see ice. then i heard sirens and flashing lights and finn waved at the firetruck as it passed. dash looked out the back window, his eyes blinking with the pummeling of water and ice on the roof. i held the steering wheel like a glass flower and thoughts of freezing oceans and crashing metal curled up on the dashboard.

that's right about the time i realized i forgot the damn butter.

twenty years

twenty years. he has been gone for twenty years.
a blink, a wrinkle. and yet, forever.
when i was little, my dad always had a camera with him. or the large camcorder that looked like a boombox with a lens. he used to record random things, like hanging out and eating lunch.
we used to mock him at the time.
recently, we watched some of them at my dad's house. my sister and her family and my little family. there he was. smiling at the camera, laughing, just being himself. he had long curly hair, jeans, tshirts. bare feet most times. at one point, i am standing on a sidewalk with him. i am about 12. my dad makes a comment about his unruly hair, about cutting it. a running joke between my conservative police officer father and my hippie of a brother. i rush to his defense leave him alone. he looks great. no one, not even my father, was allowed to criticize him.
he was my hero.
he was everyone's favorite.
i can still hear his laugh, i can smell him.
i was around four when this picture was taken.
my daughter is nearing four right now.
there are times when i think...
she sure would have loved him.
 

updated to say: i suppose i should have been more clear. i'm talking about my brother. dad is still alive and well. xo

training wheels

i had forgotten. the click. the flash. the edison bulb moment.

different family members lent me their afternoons when i was young, attempting to teach me how to ride a bike. i did not learn well. patience was short on my end. i frustrated easily. if i couldn't master it the first time, i didn't even want to try again. i may have told you this before. the quilt of my childhood stories borrows from the same fabric in a new corner.
i cried. and screamed. and threw tantrums all over the oval of concrete that wrapped the island of cars in our condominium complex. i fell. and didn't want to keep trying. my ego was my saving grace as well as my downfall. because i was ashamed of failing. and yet i could not live with the idea that my best friend learned before i did. i was comfortable knowing that we were both incompetent. the first time i saw her ride in a circle around our building, i walked up to her mom and asked for the other bike. i got on. and i rode. and rode. and rode. and we screamed and clapped and i remember how i felt so proud of myself. because it clicked.

she has been playing with scissors. does not want help or instructions. yet her fingers would put the scissors on backwards, upside down. the paper would catch. it wouldn't cut. i would guide my hand and show her the snapping face of thumb and fingers, paper eating monster princess. the minute i tried to help her she would shake her hands free and tilt her head to the side. i don't wanna do it. no, no. i don't wanna do it. and she would walk away and find something else to occupy herself with. occupy drawing. occupy blocks. occupy anything but being told how to do something by one of us. so we offered help but let her walk away when she wanted. two days ago, the edison bulb lit itself. there are scraps of paper all over the floor. and she went from cutting jagged edges in the morning to this one is rectangle and this one is giraffe. look, mommy! i cut out a nose for the princess. and her hair. no, not that. that's just a square.

the edison bulb.