Maybe Ten Steps AWay
July 1, 2014
This is the weekend our next door neighbors finally packed up their things and moved. Well, that’s not true. They’ve been packing their things for three months now. I’ve been mourning their departure for about six months, when Thao first told me they had rented a home in Atlanta. So we’ve been saying good bye for a long, long time.
Saturday night, I took my daughter and the two girls that lived next door for so long up to Canobie Lake Park. I wanted to give them one last adventure together,and get them away from the boxes and the trash bags and all of the detritus that clutters a house that is being left. I let the older daughter bring a friend, as a bribe to get her to come too. It’s lonely at Canobie, with four pre-teen and teenage girls, all of whom would rather do anything than go on the chicken ride with me. But I brought a book. I had decided it was not my night to be a martyr, but to be a good mom and a great friend.
Thao, the mom, thinks she doesn’t speak very good English but I always understood what she was saying. We worried about our children together, while I stood in her beautiful kitchen with the shiniest floors in the world. She loves bananas and etsy and beautiful clothes. She has a smile so big I would laugh whenever she smiled at me.
Tue is the youngest. She grew up with Katy. They made videos of themselves dancing along to pop songs, and I’d watch them tonight, but then I will not only miss the Vo’s but the two little girls that aren’t so little any more. Tue is crazy smart. She told me yesterday that she is concerned today’s youth are becoming too disconnected from the world. I’m glad she’s one of today’s youth, she gives me hope.
Thanh is older, she’s in my son Colin’s grade. She is level headed, and kind, and hates fruit with an intensity most people save for brussels sprouts or really bad winters. She used to be shy and nervous. I remember once taking her with my family to Scream Fest, and spending the evening walking around looking for something that didn’t look very scary. I think I ate a lot o junk food that night. Now she is self possessed and graceful. If she is still nervous, I think it’s mostly about being made to eat fruit. And since it is unlikely she will ever find herself in a situation where that happens, I think she’ll be fine. Better than fine. Thanh is and will be amazing.
I never knew their Dad’s name until yesterday. It’s Hue, though I’m sure I spelled it wrong. He would show up at our door with huge bowls of noodle soup, or massive slivers of cake, or platters of shiny chicken wings. He is the only man I know that looks good in red pants. He loves his family.
And Coco. Coco was their little mini pinscher. Coco is a mean, nasty, yappy little dog and Coco probably loves me better than anyone. Ever. Than my mom even. Being loved like that feels really good, even when he’s trying to jam his sharp toothed little head into my mouth.
There is much more to say. But I’m going to let it be tonight. In life there is love and change and loss. And there is the blessing of truly getting to know another family, and the thousands of memories they have given us over the years.
Tonight, after we had said our goodbyes, my daughter grabbed me by the hand. She said- “Come on, Mom, we have to go stand by the drive way and wave good bye.
I had, like I mentioned, laundry to put away. So many phone calls to make. An online test I need to complete for my job. A library book that needed finding, and a dishwasher that needed loading.
But I followed her outside. We stood at the front of the house,by the porch that Katy and Tue played in all winter long. I’m really not sure what they did in there, just that it involved boxes and plastic dolls and a chalkboard. We waited in the twilight, on the stoop, next to an abandoned coffee cup. Ten minutes went by. I got impatient, all that damned stuff pressing down like a thousand heavy boxes on me. “We’re waiting, Mom.”
We got bit by mosquitos. We talked about books and camp and being nicer to her older brother. I think I saw a bat.
And when they pulled out, we waved goodbye and we smiled and we told them good luck.
And then we walked home in the dark. But it wasn’t far. Ten steps maybe. They were as close to us as neighbors can be. And really, really, really wonderful friends.
Dear Parisa
June 23, 2014
I am entering uncharted territory.
Next week, I will be living in a world that doesn’t have a little dog named Coco visiting me every evening for a long walk and a cuddle on the couch. Well not a cuddle. He sits in my lap and tries to lick the moisturizer off my face. But that sounds kind of gross.
Tonight, my daughter looked puzzled when I asked her if she wanted me to read her a bed time story. Now that she’s finishing the fourth grade, she can read for herself. I guess that is why we sent her to school in the first place.
My minister gave her last sermon this morning. I don’t know what it’s going to like not hearing her voice. She has a low voice, a throaty voice, she pauses in unexpected places, like Christopher Walken, but in a nice way. At her going away party tonight, my heart broke a little.
At first I thought my misery was just because she was leaving.I’m not a huge fan of the simple fact of life that people do tend to come and go in and out of our lives as easily as we pass thru revolving doors at the mall.For some of us, even easier.
Next I thought I was grieving because no one asked me to speak about how I felt about her departure.
I’ve come to what is probably a temporary conclusion- I’m sad because she’s going, and I’m even sadder because I never had the chance to say why she meant so much to me.
Parisa, (that’s the name of my minister, and yes, that’s her real name, isn’t it cool?) made me feel like I was special. Now I know that doesn’t sound like much. I mean, God’s children, or children of the universe, we are all snow flakes, everyone’s special in their own unique way, deck the halls and fa la la.
But when I entered that church for the first time, I felt very, very small. I felt like I should bring my own snacks to social hour. I couldn’t imagine I had anything to share with kids in religious education, or anything interesting to talk about over coffee or any gifts other than the ability to stay awake during a sermon.
A few years after joining First Parish, Parisa addressed me with the words- “Dear Julie…”
I don’t remember what she said after that. She might have been asking me to go find a broom, or stop stepping on her robe, or help out with the kids at the Christmas pageant. But I remember how those words made me feel. I thought, “Parisa thinks I’m dear.”
(“Dear” is not often an adjective used to to describe 49 year old women who are a little clumsy, sometimes loud and quite often unsure of themselves. It was a gift.)
And it felt really, really, good. And I’ve carried that feeling with me ever since. Not all the time. Not even half the time, to be honest. But enough of the time that I am probably a little more dear, and special, and worthwhile because Parisa thinks I am.
And now Parisa is leaving, and Coco is moving with his family to Atlanta. And Katy doesn’t need me to read her bedtime stories anymore.
But I will move thru the rest of the time in my territory, the charted and the wildly unfamiliar, knowing that a very wise, smart, funny, woman thinks I’m pretty damn special. Dear as a matter of fact. So I’m sure I will be able to figure it out.
Thank you, Parisa. I needed that.
I guess I understand now it’s time for you to get busy and lift up the rest of the world.
Just a Thought
May 28, 2014
Since I’ve been sick and sitting around a lot I’ve come face to face with some very basic, and probably obvious, facts.
I can’t do it all. I can’t even do close to it all. And I will never in the future be able to do it all.
My kids aren’t perfect.
Neither am i.
Damn.
Memorial Day Weekend (Three Parts)
May 27, 2014
Part I Thursday Night
Sitting on the edge of a holiday weekend-. There will be cook outs and Mexican food and swimming at the Y, and catching up with Girls, and long, long walks with the dogs, and arguments over who has to feed the pets, and discussions over whether it counts as “family time” just because a certain teenager spent time in the house. With six of his friends.
I will zumba and read and look out in our back yard and spend at least fifteen minutes thinking about the need to landscape. I will dance with Katy to the radio, I will applaud Colin’s jump shot. I will scratch Sophie’s belly and kill 30 minutes looking for her damned leash. I will give up and take her to Cunningham. I will call friends and see friends and miss friends that are far away.
Happy Memorial Day weekend!
Part II
Saturday Morning
Not on the brink anymore, now I’m sprawled on the sofa in the middle of a holiday weekend. Just near enough, there lay two weary dogs, two well fed kids, and one glass of cold wine in easy reach. It’s Saturday night. But instead of Monday looming large with lunches to be packed and homework to be done, I’m thinking a day at the beach. Or a trip to the pond. Or a long, long hike thru the Greatest of Hills with the Greatest of Dogs.
I love post horrible-winter, late spring, long, and lazy, afternoons.
Part III
Monday Night
It’s done. Monday night. Backpacks lined up. Cereal bought, milk in the fridge. I think they did their homework. I think they have clean socks. I think there is money in their lunch account.
No beach. No trips to the pond. Or long hikes thru the Greatest of Hills.
But I finished a book. I made whipped cream from scratch. I snuck up to their bedrooms yesterday morning and held them close and didn’t remind them that clean clothes don’t go on the floor.
I sat in the back yard with the dogs and watched people drive by with places to go.
I was a little bit jealous. And then I was a little bit lonely.
And then, the sun wamed my shoulders, the breeze touched my hair, and the radio started playing “Tupelo Honey”.
And by the time the song was over, and the sun had slipped behind clouds, I didn’t have time to be sad the weekend was over.
Tomorrow they will kiss me goodbye on their way on out the door.
I can’t imagine “empty nest syndrome.”
I will need to start thinking about hobbies, updating my profile on LinkedIn, or adopting three or four children from overseas.
Spring Fever
May 17, 2014
I got it bad.
Not the spring fever that means I really, really want to go see a baseball game. Or the variation that sends people to the drugstore to stock up on Clariten and the Kleenex with the vaseline in the tissue for a soft, comfortable blow. Or even the milder version that involves staying out in the garden until past dark, pulling up weeds and planting petunias or whatever it is people plant around here. I don’t garden. Or like baseball that much. And I’m lucky that so far I’ve avoided this seasons allergies.
I’m as restless as a cat with no claws in a house full of mice.
I live a quiet life, mostly. Two kids. Lots of long walks in the woods with the dogs. Work I love that is just part of a life that I also love, most of the time. I dance, I see friends, I go to church, I cook dinner. I even like trips to the grocery store, can happily spend a half an hour engrossed in an aisle with 17 kinds of mustard. And walk away without buying any, if they don’t have the cranberry spice mixture I like. Until the past week, contented was a word that would apply to me and the world I have made for my family.
Now, I’m inside an itch I can’t scratch.
I want to go out. I want a manicure and pedicure. I want a new dress and to wear it inside a circle of well dressed people sipping cocktails muddied with herbs and infused with fruit, like I read about in the Boston Globe every week.
I want to be able to wear high heels without staggering. I want to go on vacation, stay up after jon stewart, meander somewhere without worrying about stepping in dog shit.
I want to be thirty two, and be mulling over a variety of book deals and suitors.
And right now I’m mulling over if it makes me a bad mom that I really don’t want to see what Ben Stiller did to The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. It’s no secret that the reviews were horrible, and I’m not in the mood.
I guess I’m not in the mood for much right now, except for things that I a. can’t afford or b. probably wouldn’t do much to make me feel a whole lot better.
Fever is a transient thing.
So I’m going to take out my flute, close my eyes, lose myself in a melody and let the night fall around me.
I’ll have a cup of tea.
I’ll let Katy braid my hair and I’ll tell her about fireflies.
And if nothing works, maybe tomorrow I will visit Home Depot. I’ll by a twelve pack of perennials, some gloves and some extra high quality organic darker than dirt dirt. I’ll see why everybody outside holding a spade looks so damn content.
It couldn’t hurt.
Sentimental Journey On the Way to Buy Cat Food
May 4, 2014
I was driving to the grocery store this evening and went right by a playground. It was just after 7, dusk here in New England, windy and cloudy and warm. It was crowded; spring has been a long time coming and some of us are not quite convinced it’s here to stay.
And a thought came to me- My kids don’t go the playground with me anymore. Colin is 13, Katy is 10. They go to the park these days, all by themselves or in packs with other kids from the neighborhood.
I hadn’t even noticed the passing of playground days, and they are gone, along with mornings of helping them pick out their clothes for school and the Thursday night phone calls in search of a sitter.
I remembered our trips to Andrews Park. Katy would clutch my hand, which would then smell like peanut butter until I got home. Colin would race ahead, clutching a frisbee or a football or a backpack with snacks. I would juggle my phone and my iced coffee and a book, all while one of my hands was clenched inside Katy’s warm, smudgy grip.
When we got there, I swear, it took us twenty minutes at least, and Andrews is three blocks away, I’d find a bench and settle down with the book and the drink and the phone. I’d make nervous conversations with other mothers, who all seemed to know each other, while eyeing my kids to make sure they didn’t hijack the swings. I’d wish I’d brought wipes, or bottled water. I’d look at my phone and calculate how much longer we’d have to stay until I could safely give them the five minute warning. I’d wonder what was underneath all the sand in the sandbox, if that was even sand in the sandbox. I’d call someone, anyone at all who might pick up the phone, and wouldn’t mind helping me kill some time until I could safely check the time again. Finally, Katy would make me push her on the swing. Then Colin would make me throw him a ball, or shoot baskets, or teach him how to make a frisbee sail thru the air. And I’d wish I was just a little bit better at doing any of those things while looking around to make sure no one was watching. And they weren’t. Until whatever I was throwing hit someone in the head.
Today, I took Katy to SOWA, an open air market with food trucks and art galleries and one stand that had an entire display of 19 different kinds of cheese. Colin went with me last week to the Y, and we worked on the new Keiser equipment. I can’t get a basket, well I can, but it’s not that often, but I can work with him on strength training to help his jump shot. Next month, I’m going to take them to see Lion King, The Musical, which is a helluva lot more fun than watching the Disney video four times in the same afternoon, (not that we ever spent that much time in front of the tv.)
So tonight I was sad for a bit that the playground days are gone until I thought about it. Now, I’m mostly relieved. Though I’m thinking that for Mother’s Day, I might request a sentimental journey over to the swing set on Castle Island. And I will let Colin and Katy take turns pushing me.
Just a little bewildered.
May 2, 2014
I am in the middle of a mess of change right now. My son is hurtling forward towards adulthood. My minister is moving on from our beloved church to take on a bigger world. And my boss at the Y has rearranged our fitness equipment and left our members wondering where the Kaiser Stretching Station went.
Colin’s voice changed a couple of weeks ago. Overnight. It’s low and strange and doesn’t sound like me anymore. He’s sprouted the beginnings of a mustache. He plays basketball in the driveway for hours. He smiles at me all the time, indulgent- I love my mom even though she is a little nuts but I’m going to put up with her for a while longer because I still need a ride to the dance. And then he speaks. And I’m so busy listening for some trace of the boy I knew last month that sometimes I don’t even hear what he said. I think he wanted me to give him a check tomorrow for his school lunches but he might have been asking when I was going to drive him to get his hair cut.
Parisa has been our minister ever since I found my way to First Parish seven years ago. I had the privilege of working with her when I held a summer job in the office one summer. She is a bit of an introvert, I think. I have the sense that getting up in front of a roomful of people isn’t something that comes naturally to her and she chose to become a minister because she had, and has, something to say. Every time I hear her from my pew, I applaud her courage and I walk away aware she has lifted the bar for me a bit. To be a better member. A better mom. A better person. To take on challenges that may not come naturally to me just because I have something amazing to share. I will miss her, her wisdom, and the knowledge that this magical, fierce, wonderful woman was my minister. And I will always count her as one of my friends.
And if you belong to a gym, I want you to know something. If the management changes around the furniture, so to speak, it’s not to mess with your heads. It’s not because the trainers are bored and discovered an article in Fitness Today on how a little feng shui makes a better workout. It’s because it’s important to take a step back from time to time and evaluate. To pay attention, even if the information is coming from a source that recently sprouted a few more hairs and can no longer audition for the Viennese Boys Choir. To move on, to greener pastures, if that’s what is calling, or to places where there are no pastures, if that’s where you’re needed.
Let me know if you need any help. I’m not always good with change, and it makes it a little easier for me to handle if I’m helping somebody even more bewildered than I am.
Not quite yet
April 7, 2014
It’s so hard
to love a teenager.
They don’t smell good,
either they stink of cheap deodorant
Or sweat
Or the urgent desire to fit in.
They snap at any little thing-
“how are you?”
“Where are you going?”
Don’t ask unless you know
They will not answer.
Or if they do,
It will cost a large slurpee.or ten dollars or
Both.
His voice will not
Belong to the one you love.
It will be lower
Or delivered in a funny accent
Or it will reek with disdain, or impatience,
Or misinformation
Designed to distract you
From whatever it is they don’t want you
To know.
It is hard, and humbling, and
Impossible to love this
Big Footed, Deep Voiced, Mysterious, and Weird
Soul that lives with you..
It is Amazing when you see signs
They still love you.
They smile.
You swoon.
They laugh.
You swoon.
They listen.
You stop and try to remember what it was you said.
You stop everything,
You turn off the phone, you step outside, you close your eyes.
You try to remember what you said.
While they discover the rest of the world outside of you.
I think that’s how it goes.
I think that’s how it goes,
I’m not there yet.
Tonight, sitting in Ayeesha’s kitchen for the first time, it occurred to me. I’d made a new friend. She and her husband had books, good books, familiar books. They had board games and a cat. Her cat is not allowed on the kitchen counter, and her cat doesn’t go on the kitchen counter. They have big conversations about the world and not about car pools or the finale of How I Met Your Mother. Though she did make me want to watch The Walking Dead.
She got me cookies, made me coffee, and gave me the sweet spot on the sofa. It was a magical moment, when I glanced at her face and realized, I hope I see more of that face. And it wasn’t because of the cookies, though I am a sucker for cookies.
As I get older, the moments are fewer and farther between when I look at a face that isn’t related to me, and want to see it on a regular basis. There is so much stuff to do. Recitals, basketball games, work, more work, working out so I don’t look like an idiot at work. (I work at a gym.) I’m glad I met her, and I’m glad I was smart enough to get to know her. Oh, gosh, I hope she likes me too. When she comes to my house, I will bake her a pie and try to talk about something political, or at least current, or at least not about my kids.
When I got home, probably inspired by Ayeesha’s kitchen, I went on a bit of a bender. A cleaning bender. Did you know dirt gets under the knobs on the stove? When I lifted up the stove top, there were drips of indeterminate animal fat, and candle wax, (I think,) and matches, and hair elastics. I swept under the stove and found 4 milk caps, one broken glass that someone didn’t feel like picking up, 97 broken crayons, primarily in pastel shades, and an earring. It’s like mining, deep cleaning my house. There are layers and layers of stuff, and they all tell a story. We really like milk, eat too much meat, sometimes are a little lazy, do most our sketches in primary shades and are constantly looking for hair elastics.
We are a messy family, and I am a work in progress. Tomorrow I will tackle the dining room and next week, I will invite my new friend and her man over for dinner. After I teach my cats not to spend most of their time napping on the kitchen counter.
Maybe I will wait until it’s a little warmer and they spend most of their time outside.
TMI
March 31, 2014
I remember as a teenager living with the constant-well not constant, more like when I took a break from fussing about my hair, or my boyfriend, or how to get a ride to the ticket scalper- concern that my mom would embarrass me. I knew she would, she was my mom. She had an accent. She knew things about me, which is not surprising, she’d given birth to me. She had seen me in diapers and been the one that walked me thru tampons.
My mother’s nature did not make her the Gary Cooper of moms. But nor did she over share, actually in my teenage years we had as little to do with each other as possible. And even now, we have a mutually agreed upon pact of silence. I wasn’t easy, she wasn’t easy. As a matter of fact, we were both mean as hell. I will leave it at that.
Now, things are a lot more complicated. My kids and I have a pretty healthy relationship, right now anyway. But the potential for me to cross the line, stick the foot in, piss them off- any minute I’m going to reveal something horrible. There is facebook, wordpress, instagram, text messages, emails, and actual conversations.
And they are alert and waiting to catch me. While I scan the history for porn, or any evidence that Katy really does like One Direction, they are checking up on me. “Mom, I didn’t say you could post that.” “Mom, why did you pick that picture”” “Mom, don’t tell Gramma I’m sick.” “Mom, don’t tell Jen I feel better. I don’t feel better.” “You can tell Maggie I feel better, but that it might be temporary.”
It’s a matter of seconds before I’m thrown in kid jail and they stop leaning in to kiss me good night. Actually that’s history. I have to find them, then I do the leaning. I brush my teeth first, I rehearse topics of conversation, I bite my tongue when I notice the pile of dirty clothes under the bed, or, more often the pile of clean clothes under the pile of dirty clothes. I brush and bite my tongue and land my kiss on a cheek that might still have a spot of egg from breakfast just above the lip. I bite my tongue. I say good night. And most nights, I head right to my own bed
To avoid just this, the overwhelming temptation to reveal that-
yes, I am a mom. I’m proud and I’m ecstatic and sometimes I’m disgusted and I truly don’t know how on earth I’m going to get thru the next twenty years.
Wanna dance?
julierichmond 