julierichmond

List of What I Need to do Before Kids Go Back to School Tomorrow
Everything
List of What I Will Actually Do to Help My Kids Get Ready to Go Back to School Tomorrow
I will wake them up an hour before school starts, and explain to them, while I pour whatever cereal is least stale into a bowl, that nobody brings their backpacks, or their pencils, or their calculators, or their crayons or their summer reading assignments to the first day of school. They won’t believe me. I will then point out that I did buy chocolate cookies for their snack, and that 4 of them are left from when I watched that movie the night before. They will be a little pissed but take the cookies.
They will come home from school and tell me that EVERYONE was better prepared than they were. I will apologize and take them shopping and backpacks and pencils and calculators will all be on sale, incredibly cheap. We will use the savings to buy a summer house.
The End.

Today was my first day back at the gym after a long summer. I got there just in time for zumba, one of the most joyful and humbling workouts imaginable.  (I can’t describe it. If you don’t know what it is, picture a whole lot of white women doing the salsa to the music of Pitbull. If you don’t know who Pitbull is, and you feel the need to know who Pitbull is, you are on the internet, so look him up.) I followed class with a long, hot shower, uninterrupted by children looking for socks or a telephone call from a computer trying really hard to convince the home security system they want to install is actually free  And then, also for the first time since the middle of June, I took out my fat, round brush and blew dry my hair. It boils down to this- I spent an hour and a half this morning looking at myself in the in the mirror.

This is what I learned.

1. I look really good with a tan.

2. There is a reason Zumba is often done in a dimly lit room, most people look like idiots while zumbaing. I caught a glimpse of myself in between a gyration and a hip thrust and decided next week I would take out my lenses beforehand.

3. Scowling doesn’t look sexy on most people. I know photographers and models have conspired to make American women think that scowling is mysterious and inviting. However, after catching a glimpse of this particular expression on my face, and the faces of other women in the class, I noted  that it in fact makes the wearer appear mad, constipated and, in extreme cases, dangerous. Of course, I caught myself smiling in the mirror and regretted not wearing my retainer after my braces came off.

4. That thing I do with my mouth when I look at myself, that pouty thing, it makes me look like a llama. I don’t hink it’s ever going to fashionable to resemble an irritated animal that lives in the Andes.

5.  I need to do my eyebrows. I don’t know what I need to do to my eyebrows, but I do know that something needs to be done. They don’t look right.

6. Blowdrying is the most insanely boring activity since traffic. I think someone should invent a way to blow dry ones hair while sitting in traffic, thus killing two tedious birds with one stone. I should patent this.

7. Next week, I’m standing in the back row and letting my hair dry in the car. All this visual introspection has made me uncomfortably aware that I need to make immediate appointments with both an orthodontist and  aesthetician, and I will never get a call back for a chorus line.

But at least I look good with a tan.

I lived in New England a long time before I got over my distaste for the beach.  Until I was ten, I spent each summer day at a pool. When we moved, it was to a place called Mountain Lakes. It took me time, I wasn’t crazy about sharing the water with fish, but I got used to it. For years, the beach always seemed too damn sandy and too bright. The  boom boxes were loud and the seagulls were greedy for lunch.

I got over it. Today was my day at the beach. 

We didn’t get there until around 2. The tide was coming in. The water was chilly, but not painful. (Yes, pain is often part of the New England experience.) I dove into the belly of a wave, into the dark cold depths, and then she lifted me back up. I floated. I chased my daughter. I caught a ball. I lost a ball. I raced the waves, I lost, I won. I rode high on the crest, I slipped in underneath and came out the other side.

In the ocean’s arms, I am not 50 or 5. I am a slip of skin, a bag of bones in the middle of  a wet world that lifts me,  throws me over, then lifts me again holds me floating for hours, or minutes. I am the loved and the a lover. I was tickled by crabs and tangled in seaweed. I was stunned, and fell when I walked back into a wall of water. I swam strong easy strokes against the tide. I was home. 

That was just a few hours ago. I showered but there is still a little sand on my skin. My mouth tastes like salt. I have a burn on my ankle that didn’t get sunblock. A long day at the beach leaves me marked, spent and hungry for more. 

• I was away on vacation and I had some time to ponder since my time was spent mostly underwater searching for one more sand dollar, or wandering around the condo looking for Colin’s shoe. My thoughts often turned to one my favorite things to think about- me. I have changed in the past few years, mostly in ways no one would probably even notice. So just in case no one has noticed, I thought I’d jot them down.

a. I like coconut. Someone slipped it to me in one of those bars with the crazy names like “fiesta” or “yum yum” and when I felt the tell tale sweet shred on my tongue, I was pleasantly surprised. I’ve had it since, and not all muddied up in a pina colada, and I have to say, I am a fan.

b. I am no longer the woman that shoves toddlers off the steps of the shallow end of the pool so that I can make my way into the water inch by inch. At the ocean, I don’t spend hours at the edge of the water with a bunch of four year olds I don’t know, (who obviously haven’t been given the speech about stranger danger) while I wait for my shivering flesh to get used to the water in New England. I am now a person who plonges, whole body, toes to the top of my head, into the wet and I don’t resurface until I’ve stopped trembling. Mostly. This policy is in effect July 25th thru August 30. As long as it doesn’t rain too much.