Sassafrass

Taking leaps

 

 

I love this photo so much. It's difficult sometimes to take a step back and see, really see, how much he is growing. I can tell by the pants, which seem to shrink on him in one week, one little trip through the wash. I can see it in his face when he sleeps, the outlines of the man he will grow into. I can feel it in his gangly legs and the quick kisses where he used to linger and cuddle and curl into me. But then I see a photo of him as a baby and think, "He was so tiny and he's so big now!" and then see him alongside older kids and think, "He's so tiny still!" It's hard to know. I'm his mama, so my vision is blurred.

There on the sidewalk while we walk, side by side, I see how he is stretching. And then he took this jump, what seemed like a huge leap but was really not that far at all, and he was taller than I am, even in heels. 

It will come too soon, I am sure. I see what's ahead in these shadows. Clearer than in the mirror or face-to-face.

Put down the Doritos and read this

I've written many, many health posts over the years and it all began with one little post about how a seemingly endless Ayurvedic cleanse was making me unbearably crabby and in need of one -- JUST ONE! -- real cracker. That post got me a gig at AOL's That's Fit, which led to a weekly feature, which led to an editorial position at another site and so on and so on. Subsisting on ghee and plain tea for more than a month did more than unlock my organs toxins, it created a new career path for me. Today, I eat crackers. But I also am still writing lots about women feeling better in their own bodies. 

I am thrilled to be contributing to a cause-related site over at MSN called TakePart.com. They produce beautiful magazine-style issues centered on topics we all care about at heart but don't see enough of on our screens. Here's what I've been working on for TakePart lately. Won't you raise your raw, unprocessed, gluten-free, vegan fake cracker as a toast and read some of my posts at TakePart?

 

10 Myths of therapy - I've written many times about my fear that my therapist will set sail on a Meditteranean cruise and never return, leaving me sitting on the leather couch in her office twice a month by myself with a box of Kleenex and tiny bottle of water. Because I see how much therapy and a therapist who is a great fit for me has helped me be stronger, more centered and strategize in the most trying of situations, I was very excited to contribute to TakePart's edition on mental health. And why wouldn't I? I got to ask some very sage experts all about client-therapists relationships and no one charged me a co=pay.  

 

Health breakthroughs that changed women's lives - I was tasked with writing about advancements that have directly impacted women's well-being in the last 50 years. That's a huge undertaking. Of course, there's the pill and vaccinations. But when I interviewed doctors, like the director of preventative medicine efforts at Mayo Clinic, the list became overwhelmingly long. There was no way to write about every single breakthrough, but I loved pondering how fortifying cereals and milk with vitamins, the HPV shot and smoking bans have made American women's lives better. This one's up in the women's health issue.

 

8 Tests women must get - With mammo guidelines shifting and the ack! of just considering things like colon-cancer screenings, I get why people -- and, hello, WOMEN -- would much rather focus on making sure the kids get to the pediatrician and dentist in a timely manner and ignore-ignore-ignore what could possibly involve taking blood/inserting tubes/flattening boobs. I talked to a lot of medical experts for this one and it soothed me to hear which screenings will do me good and which ones I can hold off on for now (and maybe forever). This post is no pressure, just empowering, I promise. Find it also in the edition on women's health.

Summer: almost there

This was all I needed yesterday, to see this flower mid-bloom and blood red. Big, swollen heart leaves in-waiting all around it.

OK, I needed this and some extra hugs from my boy, who barely wrapped his arms around me, then ran off down the street. He was so free in his body, legs getting longer every single day and arms flailing in the air. I loved watching him from so many steps behind. 

When I bent to take a picture of this peony -- is that right? -- he ran back, stopped when his shins were touching mine and leaned in to see my view from behind the camera.

"Pretty," he said matter-of-factly. "Get that one, too."

He pointed ahead at another. Then waved his hands toward a tidy row of pansies.

"A few of those,  too."

This is how I like my summer evenings. Even if it means a stressful day, my head full of mama worries and money concerns and questions about how we will spend our vacation and if I am all caught up on that project and where my tax paperwork is hiding, I am happy with a summer evening that ends like this. Business and busyness interrupted as we make our way through the neighborhood at our own pace, talking about the day, standing in silence over a row of flowers, waiting patiently for the full bloom.

Single moms on Mother's Day: It's still happening Monday

We put a lot of pressure on Mother's Day, don't we? Even if we don't intend to, even if past experience tells us to relax our expectations, we end up on the couch with a cup of cold coffee and the sounds of "Big Time Rush" blaring on the TV and wish we could blink and be back in bed for a few extra hours, on a massage table, maybe just showered and dressed and out the door with the kids in less than an hour (or two). We wish for a card, a kind gesture, an offer to make it a bigger and better and easier day than the others. And even if we get all of that, we could very well be sitting on the couch with that twice-reheated coffee and wondering where the glitter and balloons and magical feelings are.

But what if they don't have to come on Mother's Day? What if they could arrive on Monday after? What if we let go of the pressure of Mother's Day itself simply by scheduling some time later in the week/month/year to celebrate the way we really want to?

My Mother's Days have mostly been lovely and wonderful and full of enough cuddle time and sweet cards. But I've also found they feel even nice if I take care of myself on the days after Mother's Day. As a single mama, I have a support system that includes my parents and good friends and other single parents. I also have a child who is a great gift-giver and loves a celebration. Mother's Day, though, is about celebrating the mother I am and the place where my son and I are on this journey together. And I take that celebration on myself after the roses go back to regular price and the cards at the grocery store are sold out.

This year, I am cashing in some gift certificates the week after Mother's Day. I am purposefully assigning some time alone to luxuriate in all I am and want to be and have been through as a mother, releasing and renewing. Without the small child around. This is paramount as a single mom, this is what gets me through the five minutes when I just want to run the trash out or have someone else make dinner or not be the disciplinarian or talk on the phone without fourteen interruptions from one kid. I can get through those moments of head-screamy solo-parenting because I know tomorrow or last week or whenever, I am celebrating myself on my own terms. It's a mind game that works wonders for this single mama. 

I've outlined my favorite five ways to take care of myself on Mother's Day/Week/Month/Summer over at The Happiest Mom. Pop over and ssee if any of these strategies work for you, no matter what kind of mom you are. And please, share your tips for making Mother's Day happier and healthier, particularly if you are a single mom who has developed good self-care habits! We are all still learning.

Need more incentive to click over? One of my strategies involves ruffled panties. I promise.

 

Happy Mother's Day to you all, single, partnered, wishing, wanting, waiting, blissed out, stressed out, figuring it out.xo

Essential weekend reading: Should your kids see "The Avengers"? and other critical questions

 

Should you take your child to see "The Avengers"? Lil E has been talking about this movie like crazy. And his fire is further fueled by the Lego Club magazine cover with "Avenger guyyyyys". If only the move was PG-7-1/2. Kristen at Rage Against the Minivan says the "13" didn't keep her from taking her boy (who is E's age) and from giving it a thumbs-up. Read on for her super-thorough, super-trustworthy superhero review.

 

Want to be more productive during the weekday and declutter the weekend? The Boston Mamas are sharing their tried-and-true methods for taming the madness of paperwork, email, Pinterestimesuckage.

Wondering if they always be little bugs curled up on your chest to you? This post goes back a few weeks, but it has stayed with me. Maggie May's description of her teenaged son made me tear up to think of the boy I think is already leggy and letting go. This is pure honesty and loveliness.

Or if it's just enough to have a son - a silent, questioning son - on the other side of a camera? Rebecca Woolf at Girl's Gone Child writes about all the leaving and coming back of her boy. And I get it.

Have you felt the ache of infertility, even after having kids? This post by Allison really burrowed in to my own longings to have more children and worries about if and how that will all work. The definition of infertility seems to be much wider than we often even consider.

Did you love Eat, Pray, Love? It really doesn't matter whether you soaked up every word, as I did, or thought it was oversold and..and...whatever made you hate a lady talking about eating loads of pasta and learning to love sex. No matter. Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk on a new-old way of thinking of creativity that is nourishing rather than self-destructing is completely engaging and inspiring and wonderful. Even if you didn't make it past chapter one of any of her books, this 20 minutes is worth your time. I swear on the last plate of bolognese I inhaled.

Did the Beastie Boys play on every decade of your life soundtrack? We say a sad farewell to Adam Yauch, MCA from BB, who ended his battle with cancer today. I am holding on to the memory of "Girls" playing over and over during the hours-long bus ride for my eighth-grade trip to Washington, D.C. That was back in the days of pressing play-stop-rewind-play. That's a long shared history. I think it's time to hit repeat on some of the classics for Lil E. 

Here's how I'll make the appeal to the kid. (Legos + Beastie Boys?! Come. On. Genius.)

 

 

Where all the coolest things are

Here's what I brought Lil E back from Washington, D.C. It's a little cheapy statue of the Lincoln Memorial. He loves Abraham Lincoln and can even quote him after studying freedom fighters in school this year. He also has a collection of cheapy landmark statues from my travels elsewhere -- a Statue of Liberty, a Golden Gate Bridge, and other souvenirs that mark where I've been and he'd like to go, too.

The Abraham Lincoln has weight and he cradled it in his palm, smiling. But only for a few seconds. 

Then he flipped it over and asked excitedly, "Why are ALL THE COOLEST THINGS made in China?!"

It wasn't asked to be answered. He was already gone, placing the Abe carefully at the exact corner of his dresser, next to a little laughing Buddha, Pokemon cards, a collection of stuff picked up from the sidewalk and latered emptied from his pocket. All those treasures, plastic and worth pennies, make up one kid's center, dreams, markers on a 7-year-old life map.

Closing up the little kitchen

I put the little kitchen away. I was sad to lug it, what felt like a hundred pounds of solid wood and plastic food clanking around in the cabinets, down the stairs to the storage space in the basement.

We have a three-room storage space, obscenely large and packed-full of the last apartment. I promised Lil E more than a year ago that as I cleaned out, we'd make space for a play area down there. We'd make a corner where his plastic tools and workbench would be set up, where all those stuffed animals and little cars we cleaned out of his bedroom could be displayed, loved and held on to rather than sold or trashed for good. I swore that knowing that the play area would probably never be set up, and even if it was, the toys would not be touched down there either. It was more of a strategic way to purge a messy boy-room rather than a promise. Instead, it is all piled down there among wedding china, grad school text books, bins and bins of baby clothes. It's our old life, absorbing a musty smell and dust the more time goes by.

Now the little kitchen lives down there, too. It is the one toy that makes me sad to leave abandoned near the laundry and my bike with two flat tires and a flower basket.

Santa delivered that kitchen three Christmases ago. And the littlest elf's grandpa and mommy spent six hours using incomprehensibly tiny Allen wrenches to secure each shelf and burner into place. It was the first Christmas in our own place and an exhausting joy to be the parent in charge of such a big and laborious gift. 

It was a hit, right down to the baker's hat and apron. No one has played with there for quite some time. While I loved the shiny red lacquer, the kitschy style, the way kids couldn't help but answer the little phone every time they passed it when we had parties and playdates, it was well past the time to close up the little kitchen.

Minutes before the cleaning lady arrived to prep for my birthday party, I hoisted it up partially on my shoulder, rested the refrigerator against one thigh and hobbled down three flights of stairs to the dark corner where animal-sound puzzles and Tonka trucks live. I've been used to climbing over kid stuff since I first brought home the vibrating bouncy seat, stored the stroller on a one-person-sized landing and pushed the dining room table aside for that crazy-loud-spinny saucer seat babies adore and parents abhor. But that day, the kitchen seemed really in the way.  We didn't need to step around it, no more Legos needed to live on top of it, anymore. That kitchen had outgrown us.

Lil E didn't even notice how big the hallway looks now that it is gone, hasn't once let out an "aww" that the half-doen tiny wooden eggs will stay cool below ground from now on. But I miss it. And that kid who whisked up air pancake batter and called for take-out on the fake phone.

That chef is retired, I guess. He's moved on to Power Rangers and squishy little robots and zombie games that suck the life out of my phone. He's bigger, toys are smaller, and there's no need for a hundred-pound miniature kitchen in the hallway anymore.

What happened when I told the boy

The Not Boyfriend and I have been discussing these plans for him to move to Chicago for some time, vaguely at first and then in more detail. We'll take it slow, we've agreed again and again. He will move here and we will learn what it is like to date in the same city. Eventually, we'd like to share a home (but not closets). First, we'll tend to the transition.

I told a few of my friends. Shared the information with my parents and brother. But I kept the news casual, in that vague space until it was time to share it all with Lil E. When he knew, I knew it would all be crystallized and real.

No more one days and maybes. Stuff that we could mark on the dry-erase calendar propped on our kitchen floor. I knew the conversation was coming but I couldn't plan it.

Then one night a couple of weeks ago, we were eating dinner and talking lightly about something that happened during the day.

"I have something to tell you," I said. He looked up. He loves news. "The Not Boyfriend has decided to move here. To be closer to us."

The light in his eyes turned up. His half-smile shot out to the corners his dimples make on his face. 

"OH! This is so great!," he blurt out. "Because you will be happier and I will be happier and he can get to know Grandpa and Grandma more and it's going to be so great!"

I couldn't cry. I was smiling too wide myself.It was time for him to talk.

"Why do you say that?" I asked.

"Because...we're all going to be happier. And he can stay here sometimes and we can stay at his house sometimes. And you can have someone to be with when I am at Daddy's and we can all hang out together."

He was saying all the words. The ones that may have been prompted. The responses he may have thought I wanted to hear if I asked more questions. But he was saying them all on his own.

"So while he is at his training for the National Guard, you and I have a very important responsibility to help him in his move. We need to find him an apartment. Can you help me with that?"

He was quiet for a moment, so I took my turn. 

"He asked that you help me because your opinion is important."

"Oh YEAH," he interrupted excitedly. "Like maybe his place can have room for some of my Legos. Or a room where I can spend the night if I want to."

How had he known this was the discussion? We were in sync.

"Would you like to do that?" I put it back to him.

"Yes. And like, maybe sometimes, we can hang out there or here," he went on. "Either place."

"And he'd like an apartment that can fit a big dining room table," I told him. "Where we can have dinners and invite our friends."

"Maybe some of my friends, too?" he asked. "And their parents?"

"Yes, of course," I answered.

"Yeah," he said, and spooned another bite of mac-and-cheese into his mouth.

The next day, we visited my parents. The sun was bright in the living room and Lil E dumped a bag of soft blocks he has loved since he was a toddler out on to the floor. He pulled Lego Clone Troopers out of my purse to play in the foam structures he built.

"Tell Grandma the news about the Not Boyfriend," I whispered.

His head popped up.

"He's moving here! And Mommy and I are going to find him an apartment with a big dining room so we can have dinners there and he can cook. And Mommy will be happy and so I will be happier, too."

My mom squealed like she hadn't known.

"This is so great for all of us," she said. Lil E nodded at her, then turned to me and flashed me the face he uses for private, across-the-room communication -- a closed-mouth smile, eyes soft, then a wink.

It is all coming together, I thought. 

It won't all be easy. The fear still resides in there. Tough moments and trying talks are ahead, I am quite sure. But I will hold on to that private smile, that "You will be happier. And I will be happier..." tightly, and with two hands. 

This summer we will be seeking a new apartment together. Not one that he and I will live in more than a night or two at a time. But one that will hold more than a bin of toys or a few stray Legos, a lipstick and a hair band. Our hearts will be there, gathered around with the Not Boyfriend's and our friend's and all those beats of hopefulness for this next place we meet.

This getting to know the Not Boyfriend thing is not easy

The Not Boyfriend is exiled for the National Guard training for four months, which is grueling for him and tough for me and a strange limbo between coasts and visits. To help, I keep telling myself when he can't return texts or is exhausted mid-Skype that is just a pause.

It's a pause of 12 weeks before we hit play in a big way. In September, the Not Boyfriend is moving here, to our city. 

It's big news. Huge news. A major commitment that I've wanted and asked for since we hit the year mark and decided that maybe, probably, yes, this was something serious. 

And now that it is a reality, I am terrified. I am thrilled but I am also scared, not about the Not Boyfriend. About The Boy. 

We have a good gig, Lil E and me. We have a routine, a way of being together happily and with lots of laughter, dance parties, inside jokes, quiet times to snuggle and read, ways of arguing and apologizing and being stubborn that all seem to work out into a home we are very comfortable in. The Not Boyfriend wants in and oh, how I want him to be closer as well as nearer.

Lil E feels the shift and turns clingy and sensitive and talks in a baby voice I don't recognize him as ever using. The Not Boyfriend pulls back and I try desperately to make everything OK for everyone. And in my head, I am grabbing my son and running far and hard and justifying the thoughts like, "I don't need to be with someone. It can just be Lil E and me. It will be fine. I will be fine."

It's ridiculous to think like that. Being in a happy, healthy relationship (even one that's hard sometimes, too) serves Lil E as well as me. I get to have that kind of big-time gooby love. I choose this man, this Not Boyfriend, not only because of who he is and who he is to me and with me, but who he is with my child.

And it's good for my son to see what that actually looks like. He says he doesn't remember his father and I being together at all and I see the truth in that when he looks at photos of the three of us like it is a map to a foreign country. Lil E has very few models of what happy couples are like together, and I am aware of this. I point out when I see parents who are affectionate and silly and supportive, make little notes in conversations about how those families work -- "I love it that that mom and dad take time to go out and enjoy each other every Friday," I have said. "That means the kids get to have a fun babysitter and the parents get grown-up time." Sometimes he joins in, asks questions, nods in agreement. Other times, he's quiet and I wonder if he'll bring it up months later, as is often his way.

The Not Boyfriend is very different from Lil E's dad. This is a choice and also a blessing. His dad will always be his dad, and they have a gig none of us wants to interrupt. And having a different kind of man in his life will help my son to see new ways of being and to be parented from a different perspective. Nobody can engage in full Nerf Gun warfare like the Not Boyfriend. No one else can speak to Lil E's Buddhist curiosities or teach him to roll pizza dough in the ways this new(ish) man can. He's disciplined, meticulous and has definitive rules -- all qualities my Virgo son needs soothed. 

The Not Boyfriend's own childhood has some similar threads to Lil E's life in three homes. He gets where Lil E has been and he sees where situations like this can go. I hold that tenderly. 

The Not Boyfriend has things to learn from my boy, too. Like that a messy room can be a wonderful space to retreat to and that "Penguins of Madagascar" is hilarious, that not much can interrupt a mama during the bedtime ritual, that parenting is exhausting and blissful and worth it.

There's much more to discover, of course. These two are complicated, layered, sensitive, intense. It will take time and ice cream and colluding and many more Nerf darts. 

Other single moms have wrapped their arms and experiences and understanding around me while I've told them about the quick weekends the Not Boyfriend has been in town that I've tried to pack full of FUN! AWESOME! activities and Lil E has gotten whiny and quiet or rolled in the grass being goofy or charged off to his room for some miniscule reason. They already know this will make the Not Boyfriend pull back and me frantic. They've related when I've told them I feel caught in the middle of these two, not knowing where to give my focus or sympathy or hand. All of them have said it takes one thing: time.

And another thing: stepping out of the middle.

They've said over and over I must let them figure it out on their own, sending them off on missions or walking away for a few hours. One told me to simply say, "I'm going to let you two decide together" or declare it Guy Day and hand over the wheel to the little sticky hands and the bigger sticky hands.

They've assured me it will come. One day, walking home from school together or planning a snack or watching a Penguins marathon, the love will wash over them. 

There have already been some of those moments. The Not Boyfriend visited us several months in a row, forgoing my trips to SF because it was simply time to involve E more. When he couldn't be here for my birthday, he engaged Lil E in a secret texted mission to find out what I'd like for my birthday. Lil E took that so seriously, and the Not Boyfriend nudged that along while making me laugh in the process. It was a delight. There will be more of that, right? Less planned, longer=ranged but still man-moments that call on the best of each of them to meet secretly, laughing and conspiring and having fun?

I hope so. I love each of them so much. I know both of them so well. Now it is time for them to find their way to each other. 

To be honest, I am scared for that to work as much as I am scared for it to fail.That seems ridiculous but it is the truth. I know that I can handle it if this relationship or these hopes for the life ahead don't work out as I'd like -- I've survived all that before. But I can't handle one more man breaking my son's heart. I can't protect him from that, of course, but the thought is unbearable.

Can there be great excitement, big love, huge news and no fear? I don't think so. At least not yet.

It's going to take more than weekends every couple of months for the Not Boyfriend and Lil E to see around me to trust and know each other. It could just be that we are all trying so hard, too hard, because we see what could be.  Or that we're lovingly, wonderfully protective of each other's hearts. Maybe it helps that we're all a little apprehensive, that it is new for every one of us, that we're all scared and squinting and tentatively holding hands as we chart his foreign land we're standing in.

 

 

Five until 40. (And furry after 40)

I'll just put this out there -- I haven't been doing well with turning 40. The email I sent to my family saying that my one birthday wish was to not have to endure any old jokes? Yeah, that was a real thing. A real thing that apparently none of them read. 

The person giving me a hard time has been Lil E. He already thought it was hilarious to put a significant quiver in his voice, shake his hands over an imaginary cane and say old-goodies like, "Ehhh, sonny?" and "Dagnabit!" It was funny for a while. Then just fine. And finally, I asked him to stop. 

"It hurts my feelings," I explained. He couldn't get it. "I feel fabulous and in a great place in my life. And I'm not thrilled about this age's number. So I want to focus on the good part -- how wonderful I feel. And also how pretty I am. Let's focus on how pretty I am."

He apologized. He can't even fathom what 40 means and I know this. In kindergarten, he announced that he loved being six so much he DID NOT want to turn seven. Until I mentioned that would mean not getting the piles of Lego sets he usually unwraps after parties and then he was completely fine with his birthday being eleven months away. Still, he tried to relate.

A few nights later at dinner, we were talking about my birthday, the party my mom was throwing me, what I was excited about.

"I wish the Not Boyfriend could be here to celebrate, though," I said. He'd be leaving for National Guard training the day of my party and coming home the day of his own 40th. No birthday celebrations in person for us this year. It wasn't making the transition into the next decade any easier to have my man out of reach. "That makes me a little sad."

Lil E cocked his head compassionately, smiled and said brightly, "Don't worry, Mommy! You have lots of birthdays left to celebrate!"

I smiled. It was sweet of him to say. But he wasn't done.

"...since you are only going to be TWENTY-SEVEN!"

And then he winked as if I wasn't clear on how he was choosing to un-hurt my feelings about all the previous teasing. He followed that up with a chipper, "You should really enjoy the last days of being...TWENTY-SIX!"

He said it loudly, drew out the number like he he was making sure the Russian spies next door heard every word and would cancel their mission, foiled by the Not-Forty-Year-Old one thin wall away. Well done, 007-1/2, I thought. Kind of well done.

One day, if life goes as it should, he will call me up and tell me how he feels about his 40th birthday. Maybe he'll remember how ancient he thought I was and that looking back on pictures, he realizes how youthful -- and pretty -- I was at this age. And for a few more days, this age is blissfully 39. Or 27. However you look at it.

To enjoy them, as the boy who didn't want to turn 7 suggested, we made a list of words that could describe 40. All beginning with the letter F. 

You can see my optimism -- reframing, my therapist calls it -- in the first three that I chose.

Fabulous

Fantastic 

Fierce

Lil E interrupted with his own and it delighted me.

Fancy

Then he followed it up with a word that hit a little too close to home. Or the chin. One that made the shaking hand over the invisible can reach confidently for the tweezers.

Furry (like Chewbacca)

Oh yes, he added in that last part and asked me to please write it down. And spell it correcty.

Next came tangential F-words that I was obligated to write down.

Fresh

Fruit & Fruity

I countered with something less first-grade.

Fun! 

Exclamation! Necessary!

He ended it all with one of his own.

Flippy.

Why not? Better than flippy-offy. Especially at your own goofy but somewhat well-intentioned kid. 

 

I'm not sure what to do with all that exactly, except laugh. No, not at him with his insistence that I am steps away from requiring a walker. Not even at my parents who have all kinds of jokes to chuckle over in the car and with their friends. 

I can laugh at myself, for wanting to see myself and this time as FABULOUS! and FUN! and FIERCE! but really being mostly fuzzy (OK, furry) about it all. It's a number. A number I don't love. But myself and this time, I do love. 

I just won't be laughing too loudly. Or around my son. Nahhh, I will let him keep *wink*winking* and telling me in an exaggerated voice how PRETTY! and FRESH! that TWENTY-SIX is. 

 

What I see when I look down

 

Sometimes seeing us just a few feet from where we stand is enough to stop me from my fast-paced, click-click-click rush down the street. It's enough to make me overwhelmed at how fast he's growing, how long his legs look, even after calculating the difference of the exaggerated shadows. It makes me heart pound to remember when I carried him on my chest, then hip, then back and shoulders, making us look like an unrecognizeably merged, amorphous person outlined in black on concrete. Now we are decidedly two, independent shapes, only my purse clinging to my leg. Still, still...look at him. Reaching up and past me so fast and with such fire that I am left standing still.

 

Easter details

I like holidays to be full of big, fabulous, fireworks moments bursting out of a box of quiet and grateful and calm. Not to much to expect of myself or ask of my family, right? 

Easter is the exception. I like my Easter low-key. Or lower-key. 

There's a somberness and stillness to Good Friday that overwhelms me every time I sit in the pews at church as the lights dim and the congregation is nested in vast and dark sanctuary. I've been up-close with death, but this moment, sitting with scripture and songs about death, I always feel the peace and presence settle in and ground me.

Then comes the day of dyeing the eggs. I don't usually worry too much about boiling and coloring and decorating and hiding until last minute . It's the gift of this holiday not coming with the chaos and planning of Christmas.

And finally the jubilation. I know, it sounds far more religious than I am comfortable with, or even comfortable saying aloud. I struggle with the "He is risen!" plastered on billboards and church programs. But when trumpets play and the choir processes and the lilies and hydrangeas flood the altar and we all sing, "Christ the Lord is risen today! Alleluuuuuuia!", that peace and present-feeling swells up again, but this time with light and air.

I love the mad dash to find Easter eggs hidden in tea cups and planters and too near the potty. I love the flowers, pinned to lapels and tucked at the wrist and given in memory of people we miss. I love the dinner right in the middle of the afternoon, and later a meal of candy and leftover sandwiches on little dinner rolls. I love the end of day, with the last glory of a corsage floating delicately in a crystal bowl of water and transparent Easter grass stuck to everything. I love the ride of darkness into light and all that means to me, even while I am scribbling faces on hard-boiled eggs with a Sharpie.

The us-ter eggs

 

It is all these little moments, details of the day that make for a holiday, a shift in the calendar, a transition out of fear and cold into possibility and spring. It also means it's only days until my birthday and more turns to be present and grateful and still and celebrating. 

For our family, this is a quieter holiday. Not as casual as Valentine's, nowhere near Christmas. But it doesn't mean it isn't important. It doesn't mean little ones aren't delighting in dollar bills -- oh, yes, there is cash -- folded into plastic eggs and in why they are required to dress up and be at church that day.

So Buddha, the Easter Bunny and an African storytelling elephant walk into a bar...

$13.72. And yes, I made him add it up doing it's-not-a-holiday-from-using-your-noodle math.

It doesn't mean the rest of us aren't stealing candy and having a hard time not snitching where those last three eggs are hidden. Smaller, a little more still, and still important. 

So here we are on Easter. Dressed up, corsaged, candy-happy. Hydrangeas in hand, Easter egg hunt coins rattling in our pockets, that one hymn in our heart. Alleluuuuuia.

No bonnet, but blue. Lots and lots of glorious blue

We didn't even realize we were matching until the lull in between bread and wine and communion. My mother pointed it out. I think of my dress as Pan-Am stewardess blue, but Lil E whispered softly and matter-of-factly, "My favorite color." 

And then I saw that it was everywhere, and it made this pink-seeming day seem brighter, more luscious. 

Dress, hydrangeas, handbag

Shoes

Shirt

Self-portrait on an egg

Ready to burst

I found my other winter boot, just in time for the first day of spring. It was buried among clothes I'd piled in my basement storage space to donate. I finally began sorting through them last week, hauling giant flexi=black-garbage bag after garbage bag to the back of my car, where they still wait in the second stop of donation purgatory.

Inside the bags are clothes of four sizes, twenty or so pairs of shoes, cheap glass vases, a wireless printer I could never get to work properly and ditched as a $300 loss after months of phone calls and frustration. There's a wine rack that has never held a bottle, and wine bottles I carefully painted and displayed in windows of other apartments. Books I never reviewed. DVDs of pilot TV programs I never watched. Swag from conferences I never found a use for and tote bags -- so many tote bags. 

All of it is from another life, old jobs, past times. It's all stuff that goes beyond not-needing. Each item has become a burden, and I need to clear a path in my basement and head. I need to make room for nothing.

I like seeing the dirty carpet under all of it in my storage space. I welcome the dust and cracked bits of plaster where the piles used to be. 

There's a lot more to haul out in the months ahead. And there's this first full load to get out of the back of my car.

But at least now I can ride to Goodwill with the windows down, letting the dust and past and all that I was holding on to air out on my way.

In all that filth and discarding, I feel the spring indoors. And even on that blue battered carpet, it feels fresh and clean.

The most important people is me

Standing at the sink, brushing teeth, mouths full of blue bubbles and fluoride, the whir of two off-sync electric toothbrushes humming, both of us so ready to end the day -- this is where a lot happens.

You might not guess that critical conversations, meltdowns, moments of complete peace congregate right there at the sink, but they do. It's the bit of time when everything's getting packed away for the day, sometimes folding up neatly into and "ahh" and sometimes spilling out wrinkly and faded and full of tiredness and holes.

Lil E perches on a plastic step stool so he can see himself in the mirror. I stand just around the granite corner, avoiding spit and reminding to get the gums, the back molars, the inside of the cheeks. The night light pulses red to yellow to orange. There's a clank of a stainless steel container filled with flossers. Sometimes we wink or smile or shake our booties at each other while we brush.

Last night, as Lil E tap-tap-tapped his Spiderman toothbrush against the sink to signal the end of it all, I watched him. He has that lanky look about him that tells me he is about to grow or is quietly growing, his face changing once again on the body that seems to only get stretched out every few months. 

"I think you're awesome," I said around the fingers in my own mouth, still flossing my teeth.

He winked at me, slid a comb through his wet hair so his bangs were flattened against his forehead and dangling over eyebrows into his eyes.

"I think you're awesome, too!" He said it brightly, tossing the comb in the drawer, pushing it closed quickly, wiping toothpaste from the corner of his mouth a towel, pushing his step stool aside, all in a flurry. "The two most important people in my life are you and Daddy..."

In the pause, I was about to acknowledge, to say, "GOOD! And you're the most important person to me!" But I didn't get it in on time. 

"...and me, OF COURSE," he finished.

He was out of the bathroom door and nearly in his room when he concluded that way. My head whipped around to see the backside of the little boy I think is so tall, clad in Star Wars jammies with bedhead setting in before his head has even hit the pillow. He was doing a half-skip sort of thing. Next, he'd kick the Legos out of the way, throw the pillows and stuffed animals from his bed and do a dive on to the side where he snuggles in when we read at night.

But before all of that, in the second or two between toothbrushing and book-reading, in the time between affections and skipping away, in the space between his dad and me -- he placed himself, confidently, emphatically.

The most important person to me is me. OF COURSE.

I could ask when we lose that and why, but we all know it comes incrementally with obligations and guilt and relationships and movies and books and love and lust and heartbreak and children and desperation and misguidedness and all kinds of crazy moments our parents cannot shield us from and serve us in other ways and maybe shouldn't ever be controlled. Instead I wonder why it's so hard to get it back once the ME, OF COURSE, once the confidence has slid slowly down the drain. 

I'm exhausted from the time I spend justifying taking a bath or a nap or a birthday trip with my girlfriends to myself, especially when my son is home, even when 95% of that time is completely centered on him when he is home. It doesn't matter to anyone else that I let him watch a show while I get in the tub or insist he read quietly while I nap next to him or arrange for him to have an extra night with his dad -- they are not even asking. So maybe it is time I get a little more OF COURSE back into the equations I'm tallying for me.

And maybe, if life is as simple as we hope, Lil E will see that and get it, or at least remember it years from now when he's debating whether he should take that bike ride along the lake or get on a plane or wander through a Target or forest or library for a few hours on his own. I can't make him preserve all of that emphatic-ness, I can't decide his priorities for him. But I'd really like to help him hold on to that answer in some form for many years, through all those inevitable experiences, as much as possible. 

Not because he deserves it, but because he owns it. Just like I do. Maybe not in all-caps all the time, but deep in there when we least expect it, most need it, in the everyday or end-of-day craziness and calm. It's there. Still very there. We just both have to tap-tap-tap into it. Of course.

 

Quiet observations

He likes to be the lead. He was not happy he only had a few small lines in his Sunday School play at Christmas. He raises his hand, even when he doesn't have an answer. He believes his opinion is just as important as every adult's words in the conversation. 

I love this about my boy. I am raising him that way.

I recall a conversation about cancer research at the kitchen table one night when I was about nine. My parents were discussing some article or study or something that seemed heady and important when my dad stopped abruptly and turned to me and asked me what I made of all of it. I remember the yellowish light from the aged fixture that hung over our hand-me-down table and the clank of the forks on unbreakable china plates and the swell inside that made me physically feel what I always knew, "What I think matters in this family. I have a voice." 

I wanted my child to grow up feeling that. He does. Sometimes overwhelmingly so. Once he cried when I made a unilateral decision about something tragic like where to go out to dinner or what time to leave for the park, sobbing, "I thought we were a team! I thought we made every decision together!"

Obviously we don't. But I also realize I make many solo decisions behind the scenes and rarely skip asking his opinion, even when it's in no way a deciding factor. It's not that I want to un-do all the space and voice and judgment I've given him at our own second-hand kitchen table. But maybe loosening the knot a bit would serve him well, too.

I thought of that when my dad texted me this photo he snapped with his phone last week on a day off from school. Lil E is bathed in the light shining through skylights at the Art Institute, carefully sketching a Picasso painting. 

It was my mom's idea to take sketchbooks to the art museum, in part because she is an artist who has recently re-lit her love of drawing. And in part because she loves to do projects with Lil E and he loves that time back. 

There is something about seeing your child that still. And not just a quiet body, a calmed mind. That was my intention when I created the home where we now live together, for it to be safe and bright and happy and also a place where minds could ease. When I see this, though, I wonder if there could be more room for the stillness in our place, piled high with recycleables and books to review and high heels and plastic crap dug from little boy pockets.

It wasn't all romantic at the museum. He was not shy about telling me many times about the "nakey guy statues" and "boob statues" he saw there. 

He also had a mission from me to find his favorite detail in Chagall's blue stained glass panels, my long-time favorite installation there. 

A pause for something luscious and deep:

In the early '60s, Chagall said of his stained glass window art, "For me a stained glass window is a transparent partition between my heart and the heart of the world. Stained glass has to be serious and passionate. It is something elevating and exhilarating. It has to live through the perception of light." 

But here and probably only for minutes at a time at other stops in front of other paintings, he is sitting, observing, interpreting -- just quietly.  

His body tells me how hard he is concentrating -- he scrunches up like that when he is most focused. And as an only child, he certainly has many moments of reading, drawing, and building Lego in that state. 

Here, though, there is a silence and stillness and a peace that I always associate as being within him but often don't hear coming out of him as he talks and talks and talks details of Wii game levels and movies and shows and crazy-kid stuffs. The balance is good.

It's on me now, to bring some of that basking-in-light, blue-glassed sweet stillness and calm into our home, to fit the museum into through our tight doors and packed schedules and excitement to get our words out. 

The reminder and the balance is here, though, in this photo. If only for one little moment. If only until it's time for dinner again.

All too soon, this will erase

 

 

It was a long night. Lil E, still recovering from an unknown virus that came and went with fever and vomitting all week, slept fitfully. I sang him back to sleep four times throughout the course of 8 hours. He woke up at 6 a.m., then again at 7. I told him to read for an hour. I felt like I'd only napped all night.

A little after 8, he crept into my room and slid this white-board next on to my pillow. He whisper-asked if he could watch TV and slid out again. 

I could barely read it, my glasses on the nightstand and my eyes heavy. But I saw the words "love" and "pritty" and silly" just before I fell back asleep clutching it and smearing the word "fun" with my fingers.

"She rock-s!" he scribbled in pink.

All of it will fade soon enough. But he used the word "happy" to describe us. "Happy" after a long month of stress and inadvertent weight-loss and worry wrinkling in between my eyebrows. "Happy" after being up most of the night and being home most of the week and a virus that germy-ed up our home. "Happy" after things have changed around here in ways I can't yet fully explain so that we will be living more simply, so that the stress will be swept out slowly and methodically. 

Happy. 

The note ends with lines of Xs and Os, as we always end our letters and post-its and phone calls to each other. But I hope those stay there along with the happy-us, the dry -rase marker imprinting the wish for the words to stay long after the rest has been wiped from the board. 

Happy Mommy. Happy Boy. Through tired eyes and swells of stress, that's what I want to see most.

Why do so many divorced parents in movies get back together?

I wasn't exactly excited to see "Mr. Popper's Penguins," but there it was OnDemand and an easy pick and better than seeing "Kung Fu Panda 2" again or trying to convince Lil E that some movie I loved from the 80's really is hilarious. 

In a nice turn of "Mommy and Lil E Movie Night" events, Mr. Popper ended up being funnier and sweeter and less slapstick-y than Jim Carrey can annoyingly be. The story was improbable but the penguins were cute and the storyline of an overworked, checked-out dad turning his attentions toward his angry and neglected kids is one we all can get, if even just a little bit.

It didn't have the visual amazement of "The Adventures of Tintin" and it didn't make me laugh out loud like (oh, I admit it) "Despicable Me." But it was good enough. Better than expected.

There's just this one thing.

The parents. 

Jim Carrey and Carla Gugino (who is ridiculously gorgeous in a real and lovely way and should definitely be cast as a leading lady a lot more often) play divorced parents of a teenage girl and tween boy. Without much explanation, it seems that they had been together for many years and were wedged apart by his intense work schedule and inability to tune in to the daily happenings of his family's life and affections. 

Over the course of Carrey's character inheriting penguins from his adventurer (and also absentee) father and Gugino's character pursuing her own big research career with a new boyfriend, the two are brought together, not surprisingly "for the sake of the kids." 

Of course, you know what happens next. The moments with hands hovering over a sick baby penguin and rushing about to find the angsty teen daughter a perfect dress for a dance and escaping the evil zookeeper in a limousine chase all lead them back to renewed love. 

The penguins fulfill the cute-factor. But the parents provide the confusion factor. Why? Because they have to get back together in order for the family to be healed. In order for the family to be a functioning family.

I'm not so naive to think that movies, particularly those geared toward kids, need a predictable arc, a tied-up ending. But as a divorced mama, I see this particular conclusion as more concerning than easy. Or sweet. Or satisfying.

We all grow up with unrealistic ideas of life based on a sparkling scene we see projected in front of us as kids. That enormous screen envelopes us and we believe.

I rushed home from seeing a"Grease" at the drive-in when I was seven, put on my tap shoes and watched myself in the mirror, fully believing I could sing and dance myself into a stunning popularity/red shoes-black leggings transformation. I held on to the scene from "Sixteen Candles" when Samantha Baker and Jake Ryan kiss while sitting cross-legged on the glass dining room table through high school like it was a guarantee that even nice girls have magic moments. I believed I had it in me to be Norma Rae. I was Winona Ryder's character in "Reality Bites." 

And so I can't help but wonder what my son thinks when he sees silver-screen parents reuniting after fights and heartache and divorce. Does he notice? Does it faze him? Does he ever conjure up his own plans for the ultimate Parent Trap? Does it make him wonder about his own split parents and whether the final scenes will be the three of us holding hands? That part of the script is just about as real as a house-full of arctic-imported penguins at this point.

Lil E and I have had many conversations about what happened -- he comes back to this question at different places in the four years since I packed us up and left the home where we lived, the three of us. In every conversation, no matter whether Lil E is sad or confused or curious or indifferent, I acknowledge: what happened was sad and what happened also led us all to a happier, healthier life.

In our home and world, a kid with divorced parents is normal and OK and sometimes, the route to a much more loving life than a home full of tension and untruths and arguments and other bad stuff. I couldn't have that for us then and I couldn't ever return to that.

I love that Hollywood has embraced single mom characters and one parent-one child families in movies -- one of the reasons I adore "Up" and warmed to "Despicable Me" and wanted Lil E and I to see "Where the Wild Things Are" together. But I am angry than divorced families are also treated as "broken" in so many other kid films and that fixing them is trite and calls for the parents getting back together. 

We will always be dealing with divorce in our family. It will always be an undercurrent as Lil E packs up his Daddy Bag for the weekend, navigates time with his other grandparents, watches how his friends' families are, gets to know the Not Boyfriend better, puts the pieces of his own childhood pain and happiness together in therapy or relationships or if he one day becomes a parent, too. But we will deal with it by being honest - sometimes it hurts, mostly it is healthy. We will cope with crayons and little notebooks of lists and books and sometimes just crying into each other's shoulders. We will have tough times in court and driving back and forth between houses and in managing different rules between parents. We will be grateful and prayerful and see the light and love of learning to say goodbye to one life in order to welcome one that fits better. 

But we won't ever be getting back together as a family in the way we were. No matter what movies say to my kid or me or any other person watching, that just is not a happy ending.

 

What movies have helped your kids deal with divorce or your own family situation? Which movies hurt?

 

 

Keep on:

Right after I explained to him what divorce is

Best gifts for kids after divorce

A funny thing happened on the way to the wedding website

Climbing hills

I was on the Stair Master, sweating out stress I've accumulated for months, reminding my muscles how to work hard going nowhere on a machine, blasting Florence and the Machine through my ear buds, flipping through a magazine.

I was overstimulating myself into relaxing. It's a trick I play while I work out. If my mind is too quiet, I focus on each second that passes, each eighth of a mile I tick off. If there's music and magazines and maybe even the television, my mind eases into celebrity gossip and my body just does its work. 

On this day, relaxing into my exercise was important. It has been an incredibly hard month and an especially dramatic week. I was using the Stair Master -- and baths and scrambled eggs and matzo ball soup and folding laundry -- in the same ways I use other modes of overstimulation. To let (my thoughts) go and (my legs, the stress) work itself out.

I climbed floor after floor on the stair treadmill. I imagined I was nearing the top of the Sears Tower as I flipped through recipes and deodorant comparisons and an interview with Kelly Ripa. Then there, right there on the very last page of the old SELF magazine I was skimming while I exercised, was something that fueled my carefully un-focused mind.

It was a small paragraph in a section called "A moment for yourself." Page 118. 

 

Be a hill seeker

Most of us try to avoid hills, but what's so good about flat? Think about it: flat tires, flat hair, flat returns and - the ultimate - flatlining. Life happens on the hills. They're opportunities to prove to yourself that you're stronger than you ever imagined. If you never attempt the ascent, you'll never know the thrill of swooshing down the other side.

 

Of course, it's magazine-speak: your cheery girlfriend's cheery text that makes you cringe a little and also tear up at the sweetness and good intention. That doesn't matter, though. Just like that text (we've all gotten them at some point, right?), it spoke to me.

The Not Boyfriend, in his Buddhist ways spoken softly into the Skype screen with one raised eyebrow that always triggers my instinct to pull out a pen and take notes, reminds me often, "The obstacle is the journey."

In my own church, the congregation's voices rose up during Ash Wednesday services, saying also: Do not let us be so burdened by the pain of today that we lose faith in the glory that shall be revealed tomorrow.

All these words came to be in different ways but they are all on the same page. All telling me keep climbing. Each hill is its own exercise. Pumping blood, flexing muscles, shedding stresses, easing mind.

Stealing magazine and tucking that one centering page into the pocket of my purse.

He's a little more in love with himself right now

And how could you blame him? 

I hesitate to use this term to refer to a 7-year old, but it really can't be helped: My kid's pretty bad-ass right here.

I mean...look at the weapons. WEAPONS! One that is a trident of the gods. In my first grader's hands. And the heel pushing back at the sky (or anyone taller than 4 feet). Pretty amazing.

The photos were taken weeks ago, the day of an in-studio tournament we negotiated on. His friends had already been to a competition way out in the suburbs and he wasn't interested in going. His confidence in Tae Kwon Do was waning and I just felt no need to pressure him. It was his choice, I told him. But then the school offered the chance for students to compete in a smaller tourney, one that would show younger kids what the big show is really like. His teachers encouraged him to participate, they told me how good it would be for him. And so I offered to take him, telling him if he chose to go, we could leave at any time. But maybe it would feel good just to try, just to be open.

On the mat, his nervousness melted away. His forms were steady. His face solemn. He scrambled about in the sparring. He was completely himself, both in the calm spirit and the crazy kicks. When he was awarded first place for forms in his age group and third place for sparring, his smile was full of pride but his eyes reflected a bit of surprise that he'd done that himself. I handed over my credit card freely to the photographer and Lil E chose those flames as the background for the most serious of his poses.

We texted a picture of the picture to my parents. From their sunny spot on the beach in Florida, they agreed. LOVE IT! Our hero!, they texted back. I held the phone out toward my own airbender and his chest puffed up. He nodded just enough for me to see. This morning, I wrote the words again on his lunch-time note, and the same look and little nod overcame him as he read the four words one more time. Please please please let him hold on to that feeling, I said to that fiery sky surrounding him in the studio snapshot.

Will he compete again? He says he doesn't know. Watching from the sidelines, I see that I don't care if he's good. I just want him to feel that good again. 

Today, however, he'll test with his class for the next belt. The purple one here with the slash of black down the center will probably be outdated in hours. But I'm quite sure this photo -- all 9 x 11 fiery inches that cost nearly as much as a pair of covetous shoes and is full of much more kickbootery -- will be displayed for a long, long time. And maybe he'll still feel those medals, even when they're not hanging on his neck, still move like a calm warrior when the tournament and the trident are mostly memory.