Where I'm Going: Part II

Yesterday my sister called me to say a swarm of bees had arrived in her lilac bush and two hours later, she had hived that swarm.

I spent a good portion of today defending my own hive like a toothless man on a front porch, a spray bottle of syrup in one hand and a broom in the other, slaying yellow jackets and ants while dark thunderclouds approached from the west, the wind thick with the sweet scent of early summer. I have made myself a bee vigilante, and it will drive me crazy if I let it. I could, theoretically, sit there for ten hours a day, defending the hive.

At some point, I have to trust the bees.

The post I wrote yesterday rattled around in my brain all afternoon and evening. I went in to it intending to do one thing, and by the end of it I think I'd done another. I was unsettled and bothered, (but not in a good way). The line between sharing a story in a helpful way, and sharing it in an indulgent way, is a thin one and I'm still learning to walk it. I'll mess up, sometimes. I hope you'll know my intentions are good.

I tried to banish my bothers from my brain as I sang Indy to sleep, leaving off the last word of every line of "Sweet Baby James", which we sing "Sweet Baby Indy", and allowing her to fill it in. In Indy's version, the cowgirl thinks about "horseys" and glasses of beer, and closes her eyes as the doggies "are tired". (Ayla's version involves a young zombie who likes to eat brains, and begs the listener "please just don't eat baby James"). When I was finished, she put her hands on my cheeks and smashed her lips to mine in a full, lusty kiss. Indy, I said, when she pulled away. You haven't done that in a few years. You used to do that all the time. I spent the next five minutes being kissed in such manner by Indy and then Ayla. I'll tell you here, but don't repeat it: Indy is the better kisser.

The bees are beginning to die off and being replaced by the second generation. All this work they do, not for themselves, but for future generations of bees to survive a winter and into a spring they won't live to see. If I wanted to, I could get morose about the bees. But I've decided not to. The bees do as they were born to, and so must I.

Two weeks ago I wrote in my journal: I must learn to approach writing like the bees--not go into it until absolutely necessary, then work without all this worry, or desperation, or wondering why. 

This is how I want to live my life. I want to put good energy into my children, and let that good energy come back to me. I want to make honey with the faith that someone in the future will need it. I want to let go what needs to go and embrace what needs to come. I want to sail my seasons bravely, knowing that in each moment, we are laying the groundwork for what's coming next.

So we might as well make it sweet.

Mother Loves A Mariachi

This morning I was so tired that when Indy held up a pair of zip ties cut off a bike helmet and said, "Look mom," I said "Ohhh, so cute honey."

Like she had crafted those zip ties with love?

Indy watched me with a confused frown on her face as I proceeded to pour toothpaste into my coffee.

Mother's Day weekend was one of extremes. On Saturday I stayed up until midnight, which I haven't done since 2003, drinking Espolon Tequila in my quest to "know all about all the tequilas, and stuff," (education, people) and watching Supernatural after NieNie's memoir became too much for a Saturday night.

Sunday morning when my husband and daughters came with breakfast in bed, they woke me from a dream in which I was buying ALL THE BOOKS. I sat up confused, unsure if this line of people coming in to my dream state were part of a parade or a funeral procession and wherefore all the books? But they brought me Belgian Tripel Angelfood pancakes with strawberry confit. That's right. My mother's day pancakes had beer in them. Which was good, as I needed a bit hair 'o the dog, as people say and I didn't know what they meant until I looked it up.

Then Mr. V went to work and I spent the rest of the day: cleaning, plunging toilets, saying "what did you put down the toilet? Just tell me, I won't be mad, I just need to know. Is it marble sized? Baseball sized?Was it alive?", mixing Bloody Mariachis, securing Gotham, eating walnut shrimp, giving gifts, receiving Wellies and these beautiful huge orange tulips that I would like to call "Super Tulips", eating Panang curry, buying bike helmets, boldly going, rotating three loads of laundry, opening cards from my girls that made me cry, looking at bees, making Nutella silk dip, feeling guilty, packing lunches, telling my sister that I want to travel to "everywhere, except maybe Cincinnati. Maybe," and finally, eating Tahitian Vanilla Bean and Pistachio gelato before retiring to bed with a book.

And somewhere in there, my sister and I donned our Super Hero goggles, because, Moms: Finding Remedies for Onion Tears since 10,000 B.C.

Until next time, Avengers.

-V

Later, by the Ringed-Round Hill

Just last night my husband rolled his eyes at Glee, and its pretentious mourning of Whitney Houston, and I scolded him, and told him remember when Steve Irwin died? Because he knows good and well that we sat up late and cried together, watching the Crocodile Hunter's funeral. At which point Noah's adam's apple grew very jumpy, and he cleared his throat and said he didn't want to talk about it anymore, but that Steve Irwin was such a wonderful person.

So full of life.

Just last night, and then this morning I find myself crying over coffee grounds, heart sick and sad to hear that the world has lost Maurice Sendak. Through my own tears I am baffled by this, our human proclivity to mourn the deaths of people we have never met. Then I think that the human soul is like God. I believe that the Divine presence is an actual thing in our world, very real, and that because it is real, any person can feel it and know it, no matter where they are born, or what religion they are raised in.

The power of art is similar to this; invisible maybe, but real. Through a person's art we have known a bit of their soul. Because I didn't know Sendak personally I may not know which part, exactly, of his soul that I have known, but I have known it all the same. It haven't known the personality, but I have felt the touch of another soul through that soul's art, a touch just as real as coffee grounds and orange peels and Tuesday mornings and the Divine. When we mourn artists we never knew, Heath Ledger or Georgia O'Keeffe or Whitney Houston or Maurice Sendak, we mourn the part of them that reached out bright speaking through their art and named us, and knew us, and left us changed. Our spirit knows this, and so it mourns. This is why we have to keep making art, all of us, whatever our form. Because this is how we connect, this is how we know each other, when the exquisite, orgasmic friction of soul on soul is too much. Art becomes the medium that makes connection so intense it is painful, possible.

Possible for us to look into each other's eyes, and not die or turn to salt or stone.

My dad used to read it to me, Outside Over There, Ida with her wonder horn and her serious mistake, her frenzied jig that made sailors wild beneath the ocean moon. And I read it to my girls, that and Wild Things and Bumbleardy and We Are All in the Dumps With Jack and Guy. All his work so deeply rooted in the subconscious, so powerful for it. I've been told before, but I remember now, that we must write to our favorite artists and tell them what their work means to us before it is too late. We can't assume they know.

So, then, here are the lines, the ending, which always makes me cry:

I'll be home one day, and my brave, bright little Ida must watch the baby and her mama, for her papa, who loves her always.


Which is just what Ida did.

What We Don't Say

What I didn't say was that Monday, I woke up in a black mood.

There was no reason for the mood. I went to bed feeling fine and woke up with an absence of any feel-good hormones. I was unloading dishes in the kitchen, my entire body feeling heavy and my heart unwell, when Mr. V got home from the gym. "Why don't you go out," he said almost immediately. I nodded. My mood was so dark, I could barely speak.

This doesn't happen often, these days.

I wrote for awhile, came home, and took the girls to Chick-Fil-A. I felt marginally better, but by the time I'd returned from fast food and a very crowded grocery store, the mood had crept back in, unwelcome visitor in the tender places. Mr. V made dinner while I folded laundry in the bedroom with the door closed, the girls perfectly content to watch some early evening Totoro. It had been a good weekend. We'd all gone to see "The Secret World of Arrietty", the new one from Studio Ghibli, an outing we don't take very often. Then a fun party, followed by a good meal. A night's sleep.

Black mood.

A nervous voice in the back of my brain feared that here it was: a late arriving plummet into seasonal depression. I didn't listen to that fear. I knew from my previous experience that the only way was to wait it out. Not to nurture the darkness--not to feed the bad wolf--but not to deny or repress it either. Just to lean in. To let it be. To observe it like from a distance whenever possible. I made it through the day, quietly, avoiding unnecessary interaction. I managed to tell my husband that I wasn't mad at him, this mood wasn't his fault. I just am out of happy today, I said. I know, he replied. It's ok.

I sang Indy to sleep and put myself to bed. In the morning, it was gone.

****

Headed out the door to school drop off, I texted my husband. "Indy is in the worst mood of her entire life," I said. Indy is rarely grumpy, and the culprit is almost always lack of sleep. She resolves this by asking me to put her to bed, and I do. She wakes up refreshed, her good-natured, buoyant self. This morning, I'd told her to put on her shoes. She'd squared her shoulders at me and said "NNNNNNO." Oh Indy. Indy's fate is that she's stubborn so seldom, it becomes comical when she is. I handed her her pink jacket. She took it and threw it on the ground.

I turned away and laughed. Indy angry is like a fierce beautiful pixie. She presents no real threat, can do no real harm.

The breeze changes.

So does Indy.

****

Ayla and I walk a delicate line together every morning.

My seven-year-old in her spirit is thirteen. Being asked to do something nicely annoys her. She drags her heels, not wanting to comply until the power of being told is worn off. She is reminded again. The reminder kicks her off the balance beam and lands her fully in outrage. If she has to be told a third time, things go irretrieveably down hill. She stomps, rolls her eyes, slams doors, calls names. Says, "I knnnoooooow," in her best teenage drawl. O-M-G. Whatever. You're ruining my life.

All have crossed her lips.

Of course it is difficult. I take deep breaths. I imagine white or my preferred caramel-colored light. I try to send her calm energy, try to keep calm myself.

Often I fail.


*****



Driving the girls to school in the morning, I know that Ayla and I have the more difficult time because her moods hold up a mirror, reflect my own struggles back to me in harsh glinting blades. But in the strengthening February sunlight, I know that dealing with my black moods, the process of learning and struggling over time, is what has allowed me to become the person who can ride them out today. Ride them out without hurting others or sending hurtful thoughts at myself

I know that this angsty incarnation of Ayla has emerged early, the moods and anger and defiance rearing long before they were expected. But now, like waking up on a black day, I know there is another side. Sometimes Ayla seems a world-weary traveler, sent to show me how far I have to go. How easily my daughter can tug a thread and ravel me undone. I love this old soul that was sent to me. Who she is, and who she will become.

I know the person that emerges in the light is different from the one who first started out down that dark path, into the woods by chance or by choice. I know there are roads through the blackness and out. I know that I can tell her about them, but she'll have to find them for herself.

I trust the wisdom in this.

Ayla will become, like me, a person who knows that all things pass.

Over and over again, we will walk these roads.

Forever we will find the light.

My Awkward, Unweildy Creations

In the midst of the Broncos game I swore, jumped off the couch, and ran to the oven, remembering the chocolate chip cookies that had been in it for the better part of thirty minutes. Why the hell am I even baking these things, I asked myself, drawing my charred chocolate crisps from the oven. It's like I think of myself as some kind of Martha Stewart meets June Cleaver, but in reality I am exactly what would happen if you gave Spike from Buffy and Balki from Perfect Strangers a home to clean and a bunch of children to take care of. The children would turn to smarth-mouthed monsters dressed like flamboyant singing circus freaks and the house is covered in something that might be blood. I decide to make cookies because I don't want to buy them, because store-boughts are full of hydrogenated oils and other bad things I can't name, other nutritional monsters in the closet, and then I spend three full weeks pulling the butter out every morning to soften it and putting it, melted beyond recognition and unused, back into the fridge at night. Finally I muster the energy to stir the ingredients together, a task which I find boring and tedious and only complete for the end product, and then I go and burn the damn cookies and when I wake up from my domestic nightmare-haze it seems I have feed the children Xtra Pizza Goldfish for dinner and not stopped them from coating it in maple syrup. And they've painted themselves again, Indy paints herself like she is the descendant of the Comanches, or Braveheart, or a Raiders fan, and most nights while I am busy burning the cookies and serving nutritionally insufficient dinners I am also busy forgetting things like bath time, or reading charts, because my mind is dreamy, drifting toward the book I'm reading, or the thing I wrote today, and really I am not suited for this at all.

Mothering is the only thing I've ever done that I haven't been good at. I'm not some sort of life prodigy, I've just been able to avoid doing things at which I suck. I don't do math and I don't play sports. I was good at school and spent a lot of time watching tv, and so you see, I succeeded at nearly everything I tried. I mean, I had the tv guide memorized like some kind of savant. I had a good-enough grasp on the Dewey Decimal system, that was all that mattered. Now along comes this mothering thing and truly, I'm an idiot at it. That and housekeeping. I've owned a wood dining table and desk for nine years now. Never once, in those entire nine years, did it occur to me that my wood furniture might need wood furniture polish. I just kept spraying it with Windex and blaming the poor workmanship for the fact that it went dull and lost it's slick lacquer. What I am saying here is that I appear to have the homemaking skills of Al Bundy.

Sometimes I feel bad for my kids. I wouldn't want me for a mother. I'm trying to think what I would want me for. I'm a poor drinking buddy. I don't get entertaining and boisterous, I get tired and pass out. Sure I had a few good moments over Labor Day flinging marshmallows at the neighbors with my sister, but that was an exception to the rule. I am a clumsy mother, a distracted wife. I could get really down on myself, but then there's this: I want my kids to be happy, damnit. Not perfect. Not successful. Not rich or high-achieving, not results-oriented. As adults I want them to know how to follow their souls, not the money. So Ayla told me she stepped on a cactus and I laughed, so what? I swear to god, I thought she said catfish. So Indy packs her own corn tortilla and Nutella sandwich for school. Who cares? She's the only kid in Kindergarten who can't read yet, she might also be the next Nigella. Or Missioni. I mean, have you seen her ensembles? She might be, I don't care if she's not. My kids know I love them. They are given room to explore. To make messes. To create art. Ayla writes in her diary and sketches a massive fudging grasshopper that I have allowed her to bring into the house, that might have peed on the carpet. Indy spins long tales about George Washington riding rockets and killing aliens, I don't think she's certain it's not true. I don't love them with cookies or well-ordered lives. This is how I love them: I allow them just to be. So I can't control what they think or do. It's difficult to control any person, especially if you are aiming to raise an actual human and not a drone. Between my moments of failure we find moments of grace. My children have an actual human for a mother. A complete and total failure. Not a perfect drone. My demands are not on their appearances, or their skills or performance. My demand is on their hearts, and it is only one: that they listen to it. That they honor it and stay true.

Maybe, somehow, we'll be all right.

Things That End in August

Yesterday they said it would hit one hundred degrees.

Today I wake to clouds and thank the stars. I've got a nasty cold and the end of summer weighing me down. In the living room the goblins fight until they put on Michael Jackson videos and go slack-jawed and silent. I'm reminded of my young self, watching Kids Incorporated. I think how I still watch Kids Incorporated, only now it's called The Glee Project.

I've been waiting for Colorado peaches, but they haven't come.

The neighborhood kids walk up the block to school in the mornings. We've got until next Wednesday. I'm awake to see them because I'm headed to work at Borders. I jumped back on the sinking ship, thinking how Ayla wants an American Girl Doll for Christmas.

I tell myself this isn't going backwards.

It's noon. I hear it's Friday. Octoyeah is going down on twitter, otherwise I wouldn't know. I have spent the last week shopping for back-to-school shoes and jeans and fretting over finances. Indy is starting Kindergarten. I'm not worried the way I worried over Ayla, because by now we've been there and done that. But Indy is my baby. My last one. And her starting Kindergarten only means that I don't have babies anymore.

Ayla's Fairy Godmother sent her an ipod with Harajuku girl headphones. The word for how Ayla felt upon receiving the gift: honored.

She knows I'm a big girl, Ayla said with a tried-on solemnity. I'm going to call her and tell her how I feel like a big girl.

It took a Fairy Godmother to honor something Ayla felt within herself. Her mommy, my job is to keep her young. But I also want to honor her, when she shows me who she feels she is.

You are a big girl, Little Bird. In full bloom.



So it goes.

A Cautionary Tale

Ayla used to ask me to tell her stories.

She had her special requests. "A mermaid--a purple mermaid with a sparkle tail--and a prince, and. .. .pink kitties. And a golden seashell. By the sea. With a castle. And a sea witch."

And I would bake up a fairy-tale with the required ingredients.

Sprinkle in a pinch of 'mermaid saves herself/sister/prince'. You know. For spice.

She could have listened to me tell stories all the time, but of course I couldn't tell them all the time.

I got tired. I have been engineered to resemble a human in nearly every way and, like humans, I eventually tire of any activity and need rest.

But usually when she asked, I'd weave her a Mermaid Tail. Kingdoms by the sea.

Then today arrives.

I'm brushing her hair to get her ready for karate. Ayla Beloved Tuttle is 6 years, 8 months, and 7 days old. When this moment is over, she will retire to the couch with a small tube of nail polish and bend over her toes, looking for all the world like a 13-year-old. She will write a list that says, in scrawling but improving script, "nail polish. lipstick." She will put on iCarly.

I release her hair from the ponytail it's been in all week and it explodes like a Lee Krasner. She looks like the character from Neil Gaiman's "Crazy Hair". She looks like Beatrice Fluffernutter, or Zoe Azul, or whatever her name is, the girl who goes to school and uses her long red tendrils to write on the chalkboard. To distract her from the pain, I start to spin Ayla a yarn. About how she lived with the wolves. She learned where the wolves found berries in the summer, and where they went to stay warm in the winter. She learned the precise wolf calls for 'I love you' and 'we're out of peanut butter'. Ayla was silent.

I thought she was listening.

In the story she came back to me with her hair looking like she'd been raised by wolves. Which of course, I told her, you had. I was so happy to see you, because I missed you. But one day you began to miss the wolves. So you went out the front door. You stretched your long neck and howled your wolf howl. Then you went down on all fours--

"Mo-om," Ayla said.

You know the way. You've said it, you've heard it. The two syllable lament. "Mooo-oom."

"What?"

"I don't want to hear this anymore."

I don't know when this happened.

I finished brushing her hair in silence.

On her way out the bathroom, she paused to grab a tube of lip gloss.

She never saw me cry.

Wonderful World

Brave New Girls

Nine months ago, Ayla couldn't write her name, or read. She didn't have any friends. She didn't know about cup-stacking, or Pavlovas, or Australia or flesh-eating sloths.

And now she does.

And Indy, well. I'm pretty sure nine months ago, Indy thought she was living in a land of princesses and sparkly play-dough, of dress up and face paint and pink-haired pirates. A world in which the greatest attainable pleasure involved a well-timed combination of a hot bath, a warm towel, and fresh cookies. A world of mama and daddy and Ayla and family, and a few assorted librarians and baristas dropped on the peripheries like flowers painted on a theater set.

Now she knows there are other wonderful things. All that and more. There is dress-up with Maya and kickball with Chase. There is the pride of it being your snack day, the flushed accomplishment of line leader. There is her teacher, who apparently on Tuesday afternoon took Indy to China. There is the joy of handing mama a painting she made all by herself. The thrill of standing in spring grass with your friends, putting out your arms, and spinning, spinning, until you crash, a beautiful mass of pale and coffee skin, blonde and black hair, holding each other on the damp warming earth.

The girls are lying on the couch, slurping popsicles. Beside them are their glossy new stacks of summer reading. Later there will be hot dogs and watermelon, coconut sunscreen, cool respite at the library and long days at the pool.

School's out for summer.

Forgive Me, Butt

This is how it went:

Indy came home from preschool and told me that her teachers had spent all day trying to find Plants vs Zombies for me. But they hadn't found it.

I find this totally plausible.

We went to Target. “Mom. I'm tired of listening to you all the time,” said Indy. Conversationally, without any real rancor. Here goes the rest of your life, Indy, I thought. Sick of me, yet craving my approval anyway. Sorry about that. Look, it's not my design. Blame the male god.

We get to the dollar section. I tell her she can pick out anything she wants—except candy. Indy literally tears at her her hair. “Ugh! Why do I listen to you all the time!”

Indy: You are different from me. You are so different from me. Please don't spend the rest of your life trying to prove it.

Mr. V orders a second Plants Vs Zombies, because we lost the original. The girls and I watch each other play. One evening, I get to the boss level. Dr. Edgar Zomboss in his big steampunk zombie robot machine comes to kill my plants on my fudging rooftop. I proceed to slay him without hesitation or fanfare.

I am a true hero.

To me.

The girls lie in my arms, watching. They cry: Oh, daddy is so good at this level! Daddy kills this guy so good! And (I kid you not) I love daddy when he does this level! I love daddy when he kills the boss!

I feel like tearing my own hair out. “Look at mommy,” I say. “Mommy is killing the boss. See! Mommy killed Dr. Edgar Zomboss.”

“Yeah,” they sigh, giddy. “Daddy does it so good!”

I read a book. It quotes a woman on the banality of playground conversations with other parents, and how they are all the same. The women, she says, all want forgiveness. The men all want applause.

I want forgiveness for everything. I drop Ayla off at kindergarten and nearly cry. I watch her, smiling and playing with her friends. Little Jack her boyfriend, little Isha whom she loves. Next year they'll all be together, without her. Ayla will be at a different school, one we don't have to pay for.

I feel awful. What if I am tearing her away from true love? What if the boys at her new school aren't as nice as these boys? Ayla's whole class gets along. Boys and girls slay zombies with finger guns, boys and girls sit down and play old maid. You know I'm a sucker for gender neutrality. I imagine the boys and girls at her new school like lord of the flies vs mean girls. Separated. Warring. Feral. Right now, her entire class lines up without being told and takes turns at the monkey bars, for heaven's sake. They cheer each other on. They work on art projects together and they all call out, “Hey Ayla, look at mine! Look at mine, Ayla!”

“Oh that's very beautiful,” Ayla says magnanimously to every one. “Oh, I love those colors. Oh, that is a very pretty horse.”

I mean, sweet heaven, what are the odds? Is there any other group of five-and-six-year-olds out there behaving this way?

(I don't know why they all want Ayla to look at their art. She is the oldest and maybe some kind of informal ringleader. Maybe it only happened that once, when I was there to see it. Maybe Ayla paid them smarties to make her look good in front of me, I don't know, I wouldn't put it past her.)

Ayla has six days left at her school. Then it is off to the unknown.

Would I like forgiveness? You bet I would.

I read Ayla Ivy and Bean. I feel bad about her room. I worry ridiculous things—that Ayla was meant to be lifelong friends with her buddy, little Jack. I worry realistic things—that the kids at the new school won't be such gems as these ones.

Mom, Ayla says. I love you with all my heart.

Ayla, I say. I love you with all my butt. Cause it's bigger than my heart.

Ayla laughs until she cries.

Go To Bed

Ayla Beloved




sisters



we shall call it a hike.

I did a review of Jean Kwok's "Girl In Translation" for Blogher here. I don't know what I was thinking when I titled it, except that the folks at blogher suggested we use "compelling" and "enticing" titles and apparently, to me, "compelling" and "enticing" equals "arrhythmic, clunky and nonsensical". I swear I didn't write the review while smoking crack. Just the title.


I just stopped by to share the above. I gotta go now. I'm feeling a little deflated, like your boobs when you lose weight or your milk flow stabilizes. I blame Oprah, and not the fact that I spent the whole weekend socializing. I'm sorry for being empty-brained and gormless.

Look, I've been trying to think of something amusing or redeeming to say for a long, maybe, seven minutes now and I got nothing. Once in a book by a dying man, I read that it's better to be earnest than to be hip, or maybe clever, or it could have been ironic? I'm pretty sure his point was death to hipsters/we all are hipsters. Or something. But then Tina Fey said, whenever you can, avoid the salmon foam--no wait, it was 'whenever you can, just go to bed'. Anyway the point is, here's earnest:

I am Vesuvius and it's 9:07 and I'm going to bed.

The Marvelous Ensemble and Magnificient Escape

In news that is of interest to my mom today:

Ayla is home sick because she and a classmate decided to re-enact some Chris Farley or Adam Sandler movie and by that, I mean that Abby puked. And then Ayla saw Abby's puke and then Ayla puked.

It worked. Busted them out of class so fast, you would have thought they were Dean and McQueen.*

"That must have been fun for your teacher," I said, and she giggled.

I didn't giggle when I remembered that I have two writing deadlines this week and one bag full of felt monkey puppets, all of which need two arms, two legs, one snout, and two body pieces, that I OH SO WISELY volunteered to cut out for Kindergarten.

Ayla is having a Despicable Me and MegaMind Marathon, and I am writing this blog instead of the stuff I get paid for, because I'm confused and I'm pretty sure Kate Middleton's going to hire someone to do the monkey puppets for me.

Maybe Camilla?

Indy has put together another delightful outfit consisting of brown velour pants, a bright yellow, silk ruffled skirt, a long hot pink tank top sticking out from underneath a long-sleeved white shirt with a pink cupcake bedazzled to the front, a headband, a flower clip, an Indian-inspired flowy scarf in hot pink, yellow, and orange that I bought after watching Slumdog Millionaire, during my brief Frieda Pinto stage (it lasted a day, Swedes cannot wear hot orange--it goes against our skin and hair palettes and also against our constitutions), one Claudia Kishi sock (red, white, and black),one neon green sock with a monkey and stars on it, and one leg warmer warn on one arm.

She is marvelous.

We are at Mom-ology today.

Thank you, and

I love you.

All of you.

Not just my mom.

*Somewhat obscure, nonsensical reference; sole purpose: amusement of the easily amused blogger with inflated sense of self.

What Ayla Doesn't Know

Indy looked in the mirror and said, "Mom, I'm getting lots of freckles on my nose because I eat so much toilet paper every day."

. . . So, that was news.


Ayla got really mad at me and ranted off a string of things I won't repeat but it did include screaming, "You have so much junk in your trunk!"

I would like to point out that Ayla doesn't know the expression is a euphemism for fat.

(Isn't it? I don't actually know.)

She wrote in chalk on the sidewalk that she was sorry. "I love you mom will you forgiv me?" she scrawled, and left an empty line.

I wrote "for a ticket to Paris, yes".



Then Ayla did this and I was sure: I've got the best kids ever.



She spelled 'love' correctly, but I am having width issues here and they are proving insurmountable.

Just like Ayla.


I am Vesuvius and I'm going to go hide the toilet paper.

Sunny With A Chance Of Wonder

We're driving home from school and three minutes into the ride Ayla discovers that the 3D glasses that came with her book order book about sharks do not actually work.

"They don't work!" she said. "This book is stupid!"

The response I've always given before, to comments like these, is something along the lines of, "I'm sorry you're frustrated. I bet it's a really good book though!"

Ayla and I have this type of exchange all the time. Ayla gripes a lot. That's just Ayla. And usually, our conversations go more or less like this:

Ayla: "I have a problem!"

Me: "I am sorry that you have perceived something as a problem. Now I am going to distract you with talk about something else."

Ayla: "But mom! Problem. No likey."

Me:"Something else somethign else something else sunshine birds."

Ayla:"MOM. BIG PROBLEM! PROBLEM PROBLEM PROBLEM."

Me: "I am sorry you have perhaps incorrectly perceived this situation to be a problem when it actually is not a problem because of everything like such as. "

Ayla: "YOU ARE THE WORST MOTHER EVER."

Me: "DEAR GOD MAKE ME A BIRD SO I CAN FLY FAR, FAR FAR AWAY FROM HERE!"

Ayla: "WHY CAN'T YOU JUST ACKNOWLEDGE THAT I HAVE A PROBLEM!"

Me: "Don't worry. About a thing. Every little thing's. Gonna be all wine wine wine wine wine wine wine sleep wine."

I don't know if I'm making it clear, but that cycle wasn't really working for us.

So today Ayla said, "This book is stupid!"

"Yeah," I said. "Really stupid!"

Did you catch that? It went like this:

Ayla: "Mom, I have a problem!"

Me: "Yeah you do!"

There was silence as we both feel the beauty, the surrender, of this moment. It feels so good to Ayla to have her feelings validated, and not redirected. It feels so good to me just to admit it, to not fight her natural inclination toward dark clouds and stormy skies, to just go along with it.

"It's the stupidest stupid thing ever!"

"It's dumb!" I said. "It's stupid and dumb!"

Silence again as Ayla, now moved on from the glory of validation and back into her usual ornery, searches for a rejoinder.

"I'm not going to bring it to show and tell," she says emphatically.

Please note nobody is screaming or crying or begging the pagan gods to make it rain Malbec.

"You shouldn't bring it! It's a stupid book."

"Well I AM going to bring it." (Look, old habits die hard.) "But I'm not going to talk about the glasses."

"I don't blame you. I don't blame you one bit."

And then--Ayla cries out in delight. "Woah! Mom look at those clouds!"

They were really amazing clouds.

"It looks like a bunch of dead guys watching us!" Ayla says.

"Ayla, are you Hopi now?" I said.

"It looks like a hibernating bear!"said Indy.

"It looks like peacock feathers!" said Ayla.


The windows were down and the sky around us was about all we could see. And then Ayla says, more quietly now, It looks like god.

And Indy says, It looks like a boy and girl god.

The wind is in our hair and the sun is still strong.

Sometimes everything goes wrong. You gasp for air, you're exhausted like you've been swimming through muck, unable to pull your head above the surface. You fight. You fall.

And sometimes, you just let each other be. The updrift catches you and you surrender. You drive along through a gold and green afternoon, sharing the wonder of the clouds.

I am Vesuvius and I'm making this up as I go along.

Saturday: A Tragedy

It had been a quiet week in Longmont, warm and sunny, when the family V got into the mini-van, and drove to Ft. Collins, where it was cold and cloudy.

V Baby One had always mistaken the words "Old Town" for "Apple Town", and her parents didn't correct it because they knew it was a sign of their daughter's above average intelligence and what had V earned an English degree for if not to raise children who were awkward and poetic? In Apple Town, the streets were swarming with beautiful families and bike-to-work types and wholesome college kids with dogs, all wearing what V considered a vulgar amount of green for almost a full week before St. Patrick's day. There had been a parade, they hadn't known. The other children, well groomed if somewhat mundane, carried balloons and clutched bags full of candy, proffering them forth like war spoils. No matter, they said. The Mini-V's were begging for whole-wheat pizza and educational video games at Coopersmith's. Because of the crowd, and the accompanying suspicious number of cars for all the people wearing green bike helmets, they parked four blocks away instead of their usual across the street. Walked shivering in the unexpected cold. It didn't matter, they were of good Viking stock, they were Coloradoans who wore sundresses on Christmas eve and Crocs in blizzards. But their restaurant, their own private, safe place where everybody knew their name, was filled to the brim with the green crowds, their shelter-rescued dogs, and their children whom, the family V saw now, were not only plain-looking but frighteningly misbehaved.

They waited for an hour, V and Mr. V. Debated back and forth between the packed seat yourself bar and the waiting-listed restaurant.

They grew snippy with one another.

Mr. V said "Do you want to split a burger?". V snapped "Fine". It was not what she wanted, but would she say this? No. Fine, Fine, everything was Fine. She drank her children's root beer floats when they weren't looking and sent mutinous glares at her unsuspecting husband, ignorantly playing tic-tac-toe with Mini V One.

The waitress, a fresh-faced, smiling college student who was studying non-profit management, worked with local troubled youth, and who would swear mightily when she later saw what kind of tip she'd been left by the family V, brought the wrong beer.

Don't worry, it was fine.

After lunch it was time to sell clothes at Plato's Closet, the local consignment store for hip teens and college kids who thrift-shopped because it was trendy. V had three bags full of old clothes she planned to rid herself of because it made her feel virtuous. She didn't want the kids coming in, knew no one wanted to buy clothes from a mother emerging from a mini-van that had stick figures drawn into the dirt on the back. She grew restless waiting at the store. The kids grew restless in the car and left for gas. At the hip consignment store, V waited one hour to sell six dollars and fifty cents worth of clothes. She resisted the urge to swear mightily at the 8-year-old working the counter who cheerily told her what they were really looking for was boyfriend t's. Does anyone know what a boyfriend t is, she wanted to scream. But she didn't, she was a woman now, a full-grown woman with kids and a mini-van and a well-meaning, clueless husband to prove it. She didn't swear at 8-year-olds in public, she only wrote about them on her blog.

The family V had not returned; she waited for them outside in the cold, jacket off for spite. Everyone staring at her with her two shameful Trader Joe's bags full of what she saw now were, unmistakeably, Mom Clothes. No self respecting "young adult" would touch a maroon Anne Taylor blazer with a ten foot pole.

Mr. V arrived at last with a minivan full of fancy coffee. She was mad, yet how could she be mad? Mr. V had brought her a latte, something she always wished he'd do. He'd saved it for now, he'd done it on purpose, knowing this was a time when she wanted to be angry, deserved to be angry. He'd brought the latte just to spite her. Usually Mr. V snapped back when she was like this but now he didn't. "I thought you were tired. So I got a grande. I thought it would be better," he said quietly. The nerve of him. He was the most decent husband on earth, to question the fact that he'd driven off and left her to wait ashamed in the cold for 30 minutes could not be brought up by any woman but the greatest harpy.

"It is better," she admitted grudgingly. How had he known to do this? Had they taught the men to diffuse wifely anger with passive-agressive treat-buying and consideration at that non-denominational Christian church he'd been raised in? Would this have happened if he'd been confirmed by Pastor Ingqvist?

In the car back to Longmont, the sun returned. Garrison Keillor came on the radio. She turned it up. Even now, after all this time, she liked her weekend evenings with the Prairie Home Companion. Mr. Keillor sang, his voice comforting like an old hymn, honey could we ask for more? Guy Noir asked a man if he was depressed.

"Well I'm Catholic," said the man. "So how would I know?"

"Speaking of Catholic," said V. "Did you read my blog?"

"Yes," said Mr. V. "It was a little aggressive."

Oops, she thought. She'd been going for Woebegon.

But, thought Mr. V. I like her best that way.


I am Vesuvius and I am strong, Mr.V is good looking, and all our children are above average.

Flash Week starts tomorrow, as it turns out.

I'll Give You Something To Feel Guilty About

Indy and white blankie, in happier times.

When I was pregnant with Ayla, my old college roommate hand-knit us a blanket. It was beautiful. A creation of soft, fluffy, pale lavender wool, and love.

We used the blanket with Ayla, but as these things go, she became attached to a yellow blanket from Target made of silk. Ayla is six years old and still sleeps with that blanket, which didn't even have a hole in it until Indy, fingers itching and no hair left to cut, carved one into it this week with a pair of safety scissors.

It was a good thing Ayla bonded to yellow blankie, because when Indy was born we were free to use the hand-knit blanket for her. And we used it all the time to prop up her bottle. We were on WIC at the time (formula is expensive), and I had to drag the girls in for monthly fascist check ups. These people mean well but boy oh, does that program need some reform. They told me Ayla was too skinny--my Ayla, who's been along the 10th weight percentile since she was born. Fearing having my formula-buying assistance revoked (that stuff is EXPENSIVE), I, against my better judgment, did as they suggested and started feeding her lots of butter and cheese and eggs fried in butter and topped with cheese. Which would, eventually, lead to our kindly and pragmatic German doctor informing me that Ayla had high cholesterol but ve should not vorry, and me never returning to those WIC offices again.

Anyway, every month at WIC they would say "Do you ever prop the bottle?" And every month I would smartly reply "No". Then I would take Indy home and prop the bottle with the hand-knit blanket. It was so fluffy and full, it did the best job.

Indy's best memories of infancy involve the feeling of that blanket against her cheek. It was there when she took her meals and her afternoon tea, there when she woke up from nap with her face pressed against the crib mesh and the late afternoon sun pinkening her cheeks. It was there when mommy rocked her and sang "Sweet Baby James", when daddy gave her eskimo kisses each night before bed. It warmed her during stories. Waited patiently on the tiles during bath. Daddy could make it into a hammock and swing Indy around. Indy could drape it over her head or shoulders and become a super-hero, or a ghost. It was, without a doubt, her lovey. "White blankie", she called it, because by the time she could talk it had faded to nearly-white.

Indy and white blankie were meant to be together.

The blanket went everywhere with us. Indy learned to walk and dragged it along behind her on all her little adventures. To the store, to the park, through the rain puddles, through the grape bushes that overhung like a ladies hooped skirt. It tattered and began to rip up the middle, but Indy didn't mind. The blanket survived three trips to California. Comforted her on the plane. It came to the beach and tasted the salt of the sea. It enjoyed outings to the zoo and the cherry creek mall. It spent countless hours pressed up between her cheek and the car seat during trips to Grammy's house. Christmas morning, Easter morning, up at three am and puking mornings, white blankie saw it all. For four moves and four years, that blanket went with Indy everywhere she'd go. It absorbed stains and tears and mild abuse like a good-natured mother. One who'd waited over two years for the right child to come.

And then, sometime last September, Indy asked for white blankie and we couldn't find it.

We looked everywhere.

We called both grandmas.

We drove to both grandmas' houses and looked ourselves. Under beds, in basements, under couches, inside old boxes and drawers that hadn't been opened for years.

We couldn't find it.

Indy kept asking for it. "I miss white blankie," she'd say before she went to bed. "Tell me if you find it."

If Ayla had lost yellow blankie, we could have driven to Target and bought a new one. But white blankie was one of a kind. Irreplaceable.

I thought I had sent Indy to grandma's house with the blanket and Indy had come home without it. But after several thorough searches at the house yielded nothing, I began to question my own memory. So I went around to every grocery store in town, looking through lost and founds. At one store I was so cruelly, evilly tricked by something that LOOKED like white blankie from afar, but wasn't. I checked at Target. I even asked at Starbucks.

No one in Longmont has seen white blankie.

Indy is pretty even keel. She doesn't whine or complain. Doesn't throw tantrums. But once a week or so, she sighs and tells us that she misses white blankie. Have we found it yet? she asks.

Oh Indy.

She misses it like a best fried. Like a fifth limb. A sensory doorway to many precious memories.

There is not yet a happy ending to this story.

If the person who has White Blankie is reading this, please know we love White Blankie with all our hearts. We want it back. White Blankie belongs with us.

It's not too late to do the right thing.

I am Vesuvius and there's little I wouldn't do for White Blankie's safe return.

Mullet Over

On Saturday, my sister was in labor and poor Mr. V had to go to one of those terrible work-related functions where he has to mingle with other people in the biz and drink beer. Naturally, as soon as we'd dropped him off in Boulder, I put the girls down for 'naps', which they don't take anymore.

And that is when it happened.

Hours before, Indy had looked like this:




And now she peeked her head out of her room looking like this:



Full on mullet. Business in the front, party in the back.

I did not keep my cool. I did not do anything at all related to keeping my cool. "Your hair!" I cried. Doing my best Amy March, I went on: "What have you done to your beautiful hair! Your one beauty!"

Ok, I didn't actually call it her 'one beauty'. But I did say the rest.

And then my poor Indy ran back into her room, threw herself across her bed, and began to wail:

"What have I done to my few-full haaaaaaaair? My haaaaaiir?!? I wuined it! It's all my fault!!!"

Which made me feel pretty wretched. So I pulled her out of her room. Ayla was behind me, drawn to the scene like a shark to blood.

"Listen Indy," I said. "This happens to every woman, sooner or later. Every woman has had a bad haircut. I've had one. Ayla's had one."

"Yep," Ayla nodded sagely.

"Now you've had one." And I told her she was beautiful, beautiful, no matter how badly her hair had made mommy alternately laugh and cry.

I texted Mr. V. "Indy gave herself a fricking mullet" I said, although I may or may not have actually used 'fricking'.

He offered to fix it when he got home.

I told him I didn't think she deserved to be punished that badly.

I drove her to Lollilocks and now I think she looks like Shiloh Jolie-Pitt. We are just so hip around here. The important thing is, she loves it. She was pleased to behold herself in the mirror. She jumped out of the polka-dot chair and moved about with a new confidence. She felt she belonged in this haircut, it was clear.





Maybe because it has completed her transformation into mini-Kara Thrace?

Prophetess

Yesterday:

"Knock knock," said Ayla.

"Who's there?" said I.

"Interrupting diarrhea!"

Well that's just good comedy, I thought to myself. The best part was her delivery--clearly that was the punchline. Because if you were, say, shopping for Shake Weights and found yourself suddenly interrupted by diarrhea, would you take the time to say "interrupting diarrhea who?"

Me neither.


Today:

It had been a long day. I had walked into Michael's thinking it would be 'easy' and, I don't know, 'cute', to pick up supplies and have the girls make their own Valentine's. I have never been so wrong in my life. We took one step into the store that will eternally smell of fake flowers and wicker and I immediately started crying. Indy was all like "What's wrong?" and "don't cry, mommy", and I told her to stop being such a little brown-noser and give mommy a minute to recover from massive stamp and sticker over-stimulation. Panting, in a cold sweat, I called my sister. In reassuring tones she navigated me through the meelee like this was wartime Saigon and she was on her third tour. She knew the natives, she spoke the language. "Card stock and construction paper are basically the same things," she said, calmly enough to almost make me believe everything was going to be all right, despite all evidence to the contrary. "But it all has flowers on it," I sobbed. "And storks, and soccer balls. Oh god I am too young to die!"

"You are not in enemy territory," she said firmly. "That is just the scrapbooking section."

Well. You coulda fooled me.

After that I dragged my weary soldier to Target because apparently Michael's is too upscale for people like me who don't wish to make our own stickers out of German glitter glue and the blood of the Viet Cong. She is four, and she was tired, so naturally she went for the only option available to her: stamping her foot, screaming, and making the bloody purple monsters dance to their eerie funeral dirge five thousand times. Oh baby you . . . got what I neeeeeeed. I think she must have picked up something about torture methods during our time in the war zone.

We made it out of Target with, I swear to god, two cans of chopped clams, one box of stamps without an ink pad, two cute bags with owls on them that I have little to no use for, and absolutely none of the things for which we had come. We called it a wash. Went to get Ayla.

Went to King Soopers.

Almost made it alive through the store at rush hour. Got to the check out. Kindly gentlemen ringing up my goods. Me, magnanimously distributing quarters and pennies to my own little waifs to entertain them during the wait.

"Mom," Ayla whines. "I have to go potty."

"You're gonna have to wait just a minute. We're almost done."

"Mom," she starts to cry. "I have to go POTTY."

And then she grabs her bottom.

"We're going to have an accident!!" Poor, poor me screams to the kindly checker. I grab my daughter and friends, I ran like a bat out of hell--honestly, Louis Zamperini had nothing on me--my daughter in my arms, a mad dash for the bathroom on the opposite end of the store. "Will you watch my daughter!" I cry over my shoulder to the checker, pointing to my little cowgirl Indy--wearing her pink cowgirl boots, grinning like an idiot, obliviously enjoying her penny pony ride like no one has ever enjoyed that ride before. My wallet hit the floor, coins flew, people stared. I'm pretty sure at one point an old woman pushing a baby carriage pulled out of my way in the slickest nick of time. I elbowed and leapt and beat people back the way my teenage self once did trying to get front row seating at an O-Town concert. If you were there, I truly do apologize for those things that I shouted. Please interpret them in the kindest possible way.

The women's room is closed.

"Hello!" I yell, and dash into the men's.

Empty. Good things do happen.

Ayla is flustered. Teary. Probably a little embarrassed and a lot terrified. I situate her so she can see to her business. She's drawing in quick little breaths, chewing her bottom lip. I take a deep breath. She looks like she might cry.

"Ayla?" I say softly.

"Yeah?" her little voice wobbly.


". . . Knock knock."

Blasted Pumpkin Fest of Damnation and Rain

I keep trying to figure out a way to not have birthday parties for my kids without getting handed the worst mother of time and all eternity award.

There is not one aspect of birthday parties that don't send me into basic paralytic shock. Just the mere thought of 'party games' or 'invitations' is enough to knock me fetal. Do French people do birthday parties the way they do Christmas? When their daughters turn six, do they simply breeze down the rue to the local patisserie and select a chocolate torte or a plum and honey galette? Do they gift her a tragically vogue bottle of rum raisin nail polish, a darling pair of tights, a sweet little tutu, and smile mildly as their daughters declare it bien fait, mama, and suggest you adjourn to the cafe for chocolat chauds?

Because that is how I want to do it.



We took her to Whole Foods to pick out her birthday dinner, because she had requested fish. And while I know that money does not buy happiness, I hold firm to the belief that if I could afford to shop at Whole Foods every week instead of twice a year and even then only for seafood, I would be happier. She selected a red snapper. Ayla wanted a fish with the head for her birthday dinner, and when you know your daughter is going to be putting the fish head in her mouth and sucking it, you buy that fish at Whole Foods because of the belief, however illusory, that their meat and seafood is less toxic and your daughter is only going to be eating fish brains, and not brain tumors.

So Noah fried the snapper and served our girl the head. Our girl popped the eyeball out with her fork and stuck it in her mouth. And this is how we know that red snapper eyeballs are not as tasty as trout eyeballs: she made a face and began to laugh in this delightedly disgusted way. We asked her if it was gross and she nodded vigorously, laughing. "Uh-huh, uh-huh!" Everyone laughing. We told her she could spit it out and she did.

She loved every minute of it.

Happy Birthday Ayla. Six years ago you were born in the morning. You had a dainty cry. You looked like your dad. Outside our hospital room window the trees were changing. You were hardly ever any trouble. Except those times when you were a whole lot of it.


Noah and I were snapping at each other when this photo was taken.


I am Vesuvius and I would rather get a pap smear than plan a party.

Little Lights (Don't Forget)

The other day at the grocery store, Indy said something that I don't remember, and I said, "That's crazy talk!"

And Indy said, "My crazy talk is beautiful".

Only she says it, 'few-full'.

She told the people in line that "my mom has red hair like a mermaid".

She told me she is four now instead of three because she ate a really big dinner.

And for her birthday she wants a box full of kittens.

The kittens were Ayla's idea.


Miss Ayla Beloved lost her first tooth. She showed me it was loose, went into the bathroom to look at it, and then came back to me with her tooth in her hand.

I got weepy.

She got two dollars.

Instead of buying ice cream at McDonald's, she put the money into the box for the Ronald McDonald house charity and I got weepy again.

My daughter might say things like, "we need to find a boy to show us how to work this gun" and, "I need to practice shooting this dart so when I get bigger I can shoot animals", but she also forgoes ice cream to help sick children so surely I must be doing something right?

She got her first shiner today at the park and cried for dad. That's ok. Dad and Ayla have a special bond. They will snuggle together on the couch playing video games or watching old movies. They like to go shopping for fish with the heads and eyes still intact. Dad made us plate-fulls of mussels and Ayla slurped them down greedily.

Just now Indy comes out of her room wearing a sequined skirt, thrusts out her hip, and cries, "Oh yeah, bebe!" Full up on sass. Then she proceeds to change her sister into a duck using "abra cadabra" and a wand from the dollar section of Target.

Ayla draws pictures of red-haired mermaids and scrawls 'I', and a heart, and the word 'mom'.

So you see, most times, we are doing all right.