Sassafrass

Postcards from the past: Three Novembers ago

Of the thousands and thousands of photos of this child living on my hard drive, this may be my favorite. He wore that newsboy cap without flinching and the hint of the smile was already well-practiced. I hadn't yet worked up the courage to take for his first real haircut and instead snipped little bits while he played in the tub or sat wrapped in a blanket on my lap. And there it is, peeking out, reminding me it is time to let the wispy baby hair go.

Or maybe it is telling me to hold on, one last moment. To the cheeks and round belly and willingness to be held for hours. That's all gone now -- and for good things like attempts at winking and a toothy smile and long legs stretched out and running. But I've still got a lot of that baby held tight in my heart, like we all do. And tucked into the corner of the lid of my jewelry box and inside the front cover of my favorite books,  I am also keeping close some of these little, precious moments.

Nailed (and not the fun way)

My honed-in, on-top-of-it, fully-in-control efforts to take good care this weekend came to a screeching halt only seconds after I pulled out of the parking space, the car full of shorts and swimsuits, floaties and trashy magazines.

I had a flat. Not the kind of flat tire you can (ahem) ignore until your dad looks at you like you have absolutely no knowledge of the intricacies of the machine you operate multiple times a day (more ahems). No, the kind of flat tire you can hear flap-flap-flapping, even above the cranked up Jackson 5 and child with the incessant questions about why we can't have saltwater taffy for dinner if we are technically on a holiday weekend.

Did I mention I was wearing a dress? And heels?

By some lovely fortuitousness or fate, my downstairs neighbor pulled up just as I hopped out to investigate my tire. He asked what was wrong. I tried not to burst into tears. What in the world was I going to do?

If I pull back the camera, if I take a deep breath, I know that a flat tire is a very small obstacle. I also know that I can change a tire myself (right?!...right?...maybe?...probably?...I think so).

But there I was with a car full of kid and bags and just wanting to get on the road so I could take care of myself already and I was completely halted by nothing more than (I would later find out) a nail crammed into my tire. I felt like I was on the brink of irrationality, tears, and some internal rant about how this was surely The Ex's fault for some reason or another when the neighbor asked me if I'd like his help.

I felt a Rolodex of skills I am sorely lacking, things I really should know, stuff I've never learned flip through my brain. How could I be the only adult in a household and not know how to change a tire? Or an air conditioning filter? Or the stubborn lightbulb over the shower? What in the hell am I doing? Would this qualify me to have my feminist card confiscated? How in the world am I going to thrive as a single mom if my household knowledge is at the elementary level. It was a fast and furious downslide of questions and confidence. It was a sudden and sharp feeling I know surfaces often for many single parents -- one of being in it completely alone.

I have not been very good at asking for help, although I have gotten better since I've become a single mom. And I am not even that good at accepting help, although I need it more than I have at other points in my life. Even in this moment, standing there in pink ruffles and patent leather, I hesitated.

But then it dawned on me -- really in just milliseconds, in a message that seemingly fell from the trees -- that saying yes to help is an act of self-care as well. I nodded.

He came back a few minutes later, still wearing a tie and dress shoes, carrying a something called a Super Jack. Even though I insisted on loosening the lug nuts myself so I contributed at least a little bit, my neighbor completely changed the tire for me. No big deal, no complaints, no worries.

We talked about our kids going back to school and the conservative healthcare crazies and whether we'd be renewing our leases in the building where we live. All the while, he cranked and cranked and fit and re-fit my tires.

A half-hour and many thanks later, we were on the expressway headed out of town. I had a grease spot on the front of my dress and we were already anxious to make a dinner stop. But we were OK. We were on our way.

Even better, I felt grateful, assured, calm. I was already a few miles down the road of taking care of myself.

P.S. Just so we're all a bit more prepared: Here's a step-by-step video by a young woman in a janky tank top of how to change a flat tire. Not that YOU need it. Mostly, it's just for me.

Sometimes, self-care is quiet and still. Other times, it is silky and on sale.

When I told you I was going to seize this time to take better care of myself, I wasn't kidding. The other 4,321 times?  Yeahhhh, mildly serious. This time? I am truly putting forth the best effort I can in the moment. In the past, I've told myself I need to take better care, I should take better care. Now, I am just choosing to, and that has made all the difference.

It has made so much difference, in fact, that I happily packed my running shoes and workout clothes for our trip to my parents' lake house this weekend. While we are there, I am choosing not to stress out about the God-awful cell reception and nonexistent Internet connection and have told all my friends I will be out of touch until we are back in the swing of school and schedules next week.

Of course, I will only be out of touch with my 2.0 life. I will be sitting in the sand while Lil E plays in the water, taking cocktail cruises on the pontoon boat with my parents at sunset, and maybe even taking in a third-run movie in town or a bad sitcom in syndication at the house. I may do something radical, like read a whole magazine. I'm crossing my fingers for good estate juju that creates the good stress of shoving a 1950s red-vinyl-and-chrome kitchen table set into the back of my car or choosing between gawdy-awful old lady jewelry.

And if it gets to be too much or I get antsy being unplugged, then we may come home early and take care of laundry and grocery shopping and other details. We shall see.

Just to balance all this om-like behavior, do know that my better-cared-for self is also screaming for this silky number. I am pretty sure it will soothe my spirit as much as the walking and quiet time. And since I don't have any dinner dates lined up for the near future, maybe someone can partner with me in my efforts to choose me and plan a wedding that I can wear it to. Anyone? Anyone willing to help a sister out?

Where we've been

And so it goes that a vacation to Richmond slid into a four more days of time off at home, which slipped quickly into a holiday weekend at my parents' lake house.

Soon, it became clear that my intentions of writing every one of those days, telling more stories from our time in Richmond and still taking time to be silent and centered and unplugged were all too much to expect of my first non-working vacation in almost three years. Instead, I let it be what it was -- a week with my boy.

Before the beginning of school and the dive into new projects for me, in the much-needed pause from work, we did what we don't do enough -- we played.

It felt freeing, just to have our days to ourselves and in our own city, to laugh and be silly and make plans and change plans, to make dinner dates for two and to recapture some of what we had on lazy afternoons last summer. Those trips to the park, rides on the el and scavenger hunts through the neighborhood held this relaxed joy that we have touched in the months since but were able to grasp on to, swing around and carry with us for days.

Now this time is over and tonight we prepared for a new schedule, the school year and another change in a year full of transitions. The Lightning McQueen backpack is full and ready to be placed on the small shoulders of a little boy who will inevitably ask for his hands to be held down the steps of our apartment, his cheeks to be smothered with kisses before sending him into a new classroom and his growing body to be squeezed tight just one last time before we let go.

I will feel better beginning this week with the week we had in our pocket. When the inevitable rush of the morning sets in and all of our intentions once again shift, I hope that relaxed joy won't tick away too soon. I hope I can remember to choose just a little more time to play and I know I am ready to get to the writing now.

He wasn't the only one who was zonked

It was a weekend to wind down.

More precisely, it was a weekend to play in the lake for six hours (the boy), soak up the sun (the mama), eat plenty of confetti-iced angel food cake (the both) and then nap it all off.

He didn't move for two hours.

And this morning just a few minutes pre-swim, he took this one of me. I like think it evokes a certain je suis Jackie O. You don't have to tell me to work it, grrrl twice, even if it is just to shovel roads in the sand, shoo away giant blue dragonflies and ride on the pontoon boat for a few laps around the lake.

Maybe all that attitude came from laptop detox. Or maybe it was all the chips and Diet Coke I consumed all weekend. Maybe it was me gearing up for another court date on Monday. It was possibly the $40 in shipping I just dropped to ship my business cards for BlogHer (holla) that I procrastinated into...well, $40 rush shipping to order. Or perhaps it was me jonesing to hear this song (I'm not kidding, it is as under my skin as my sunburn).  Awww hell, let's be honest. All that attitude was just the result of a good dose of family, a great deal of sun and the intense desire to crawl back into bed.

It was all good, though. All much better than I even thought it would be or even realized I needed.

I can't stop pushing play

I needed some music this morning. I needed to wake-up. I wanted to get going. I was hoping to clear out some of the clutter of to-do lists and things to remember and stuff I want to write about and when the hell am I going to get the laundry done -- all of that out of my head so I could just write. And even before the writing, just sit at my desk and let the sun creep across my keyboard and let the words come together before I put them up on my screen. For that, I needed a soundtrack.

And so I clicked on YouTube and there was an Emmy Rossum song on the homepage. She's adorable, yes, but she's not on my radar. I'm not one of those Phantom-obsessed twinkly music grrls, and so even if I did know she was putting out CDs, that recognition was lost behind something by Pink or Ani or even (shhh) Colbie. But there she was and this song was -- this song...oh, this song -- and I clicked it.

And now I can't stop pushing play. I don't even know how many times I've played this song today, I just know I need to hear these words, this melody, the message.

I love hoodoo-guru-y things enough to know that if I open myself to the messages the universe is sending me, I will see them, feel them, and in this case, hear them. Sometimes, the messages are whispers. Sometimes they are songs synthesized out of an overused, overheated, overwhelmed laptop.

The lyrics say something like, "Save me / Someone take my hand / Lead me." No one needs to do that for me, but I can take the words for myself. Every single time I replay the song, I feel like it sinks in deeper that it is OK for me to slow myself down. If someone else steps in to help me press pause for even longer, well then...that would be just fine too.

For now, a Friday, I will slow down by logging off a little bit early, packing up the boy and giving into the rush hour traffic we will sit in on our way to the lake. When I get there, I won't have any kind of internet connection and very little cell phone reception. So I may just press play for myself, to myself, and sing the words I now know over and over again.

(The video on the link is much better but this little one's embeddable and will do, thank you very much).

What a week

It feels like we've been through it all: Court, a viral cough, the end of co-op, a t-ball awards banquet, the last few episodes of The Hills finally showing up On Demand, the Great Fish Food Bowl Dump of 2008. It's been crazy.

And because of all these happenings, Lil E and I have not had enough sleep and the sleep we have had has been interrupted by coughing jags and crying, mama concern and doses of medicine. We had to rush through some of the fun stuff because of being too worn out or just needing cuddle time. I've missed a lunch with a friend and cancelled a dinner and a party I really hoped to go to. And then, of course, there was The Massive Fish Bowl Cleaning of 2008.

Today, though, things are somehow better. There was a med-free night of good sleep and we are headed to the lake for some time to be unplugged, in the water and away from all those stresses of the week.

There's lots more to talk about. But that will all save until Monday.

Wished you were there.

I glanced at my calendar last week and realized that our first co-op meeting of the year has quietly crept up and that the regularity of our year will resume in only fifteen more days.

I love the fall. I love the back to school supplies that line the grocery store aisles and I love the shiny ads in the paper with new school clothes and dorm room organizers. I love the breeze and the leaves and the lunchboxes.

But I also hate to say goodbye to summer. And while that doesn't seem possible now that it is stubbornly 90-degrees in the city, I get a little anxious knowing how swiftly August will slip by.

Just to hold it close for these few weeks, here are a few photos from our summer (so far).

Little pieces of peace at the lake.

Posts from the Past: Finally, the fair

Do you remember back in the 70s when I promised to post pictures of the 4-H County Fair? At long last, here they are.

Now why in the interwebs would this possibly be a pinnacle in our lives? Easy -- we live in the middle of four gajillion people, most of whom think animals come in the form of pigeon, squirrel and ferret, which happens to be a bizarre designer hybrid of pigeon and squirrel designed to make single women and strange comic-book memorizing apartment dwelling men in their 20s happy.

And why must I insist, even after all this time, taking up your precious blog reading "coffee break" to post pictures of basically a giant barnyard? Also easy -- my kid's in them. And he's freaking adorable, dude. Especially in the cowboy hat, especially since he actually looks natural amongst the fur and the feathers and the yee-hawing. Maybe that boy ain't so city after all, y'allses.

So indulge along with me, friends. I give you the County Fair:

He told me if he wore his cowboy hat someone might let him drive one of the tractors. OK, maybe he didn't drive the tractors, but at least he got his ride on.

Goats are cute. Sort of like toddlers with horns. Or puppies with hooves.

This goat has a coat on. I kid you not. I know she probably just got sheared but it was like 85 degrees outside and close to a thousand inside the barns. Ninny.

This is Cook & Belle, the band that played (you must check out their website). They were (gulp) good. Seriously, they rocked those four grannies in the front row for hours. We had so much fun watching them, especially their son Seth who, right there in the main 4-H digs, filled up the place with his It Factor. Stop laughing. He was good. And Lil E...

...he was overtaken by this kid and his Jackson Five medley. I snapped this after I whispered to Lil E, "Would you like to be up on stage like that someday?"

Lil E could only muster a nod. See? All that American Idoling in the living room with baseball tees as microphone stands and golf clubs as guitars really does speak to his big soul.

Clearly, my mom is just as taken with the boy performer. Here he sits down and sings to her. Try to ignore the empty ampitheater in the background.It's rural Indiana, people, and the folks have ducks to tend to.

Post fair exhaustion in the hammock.

Time out

We celebrated Bruce's birthday yesterday by sleeping in (until 8 o'clock...thank you, Lil E!), getting bagels for breakfast and having a lazy morning around the apartment together. Then we packed up a bunch of bags and little containers of snacks and drove to my parents' lake house for a few days.

On the road, we talked about everything we'd like to do here in Nothing to Do, Indiana -- go to the county fair to see the animals and climb on some tractors, swim in the lake, ride the pontoon sloooowly around the lake, play in the sand, just relax. As soon as we turned off the highway and on to the windy road that leads back to the little lake house tucked in the trees, it started to rain.

We ditched our plan to swim first then grill steaks for dinner and went out to the best restaurant in town. It was dark and quiet and the martinis lulled us out of thinking about anything else but each other.

Then it poured and then lightening and thunder clapped and echoed
across the lake. It came down hard and Lil E huddled against me as I read him bedtime stories and sang him songs, pursing his eyes shut to avoid seeing the flash of lights that revealed the whole room. He fell asleep against me while the storm raged on.

Bruce decided not to go to the liquor store in town that (actually, delightfully) has shelf after shelf of microbrews to pick out a special birthday six-pack or two. Instead, we finished off a few we left in the fridge the last time we were here, popped Office Space in and cuddled on the couch.

 It was a far cry from the celebrations we've had on this day over the last ten years together, but it was right for this year.

We laughed at all the very familiar and funny parts of Office Space (my favorite:"Well, I haven't exactly been missing work, Bobs"). We stretched out and talked and sat quietly for a bit in a little romantic respite from the stormy show outside.

Lil E woke up early this morning. He always does when we're at the lake. And even though he was content to crawl in bed with us for a few minutes, he got too excited about Bruce's promise to take him "real golfing" on a local public course to stay still for too long. He danced around naked while I tried to dress him, shaking his skinny little booty and singing, "I'm so excited to go golf-iiiiing with my daddy!"

It seemed promising with a bit of sun peeking through the trees canopied over the front deck, but the boys only made it through four holes before they got rained out. For good. It was the same resurgence that nixed the weak little wireless signal I was co-opting on the deck. Also for good.

Once the golfers were home and fed and ready for naps, I went back out in the rain and headed into town to the only place for miles with any kind of wi-fi -- the nonprofit coffee shop that caters to teenagers. So here I sit, trying to catch up on work while small crowds of tweens and teens race through the cafe, cussing up a storm (hell yeah) and talking about who likes who and playing pool and taking off, standing on the back of one short kid's bike, only to return thirty seconds later. There is a girl who is about twelve, with hair that long and wavy and red and gorgeous, with a very round belly and lots of freckles, wearing a Paris Hilton flirty skirt and a t-shirt that says, "On the rebound. You'll do for now." There are four barely high-schoolers looking up girls on MySpace. There is a fifteen (or so)-year old trying very hard to dress like Eminem. This is where I am trying to work, my friends. It is funny and irritating and it is anything but quiet or peaceful.

But Norah Jones is on and I am sitting at a table by the window where I can hear all the kids say goofy stuff and I can observe that this ridiculous town is the only place in an industrialized nation where acid wash is still considered acceptable attire. But it's all good.

It's my baby's birthday and we're finally the same age, we're spending time all together and we've stepped out of our lives for a minute. It may be incessantly rainy and our hopes of swimming and boating and playing outside may have changed, but we're here. Not quite what I planned, not at all like years past, but it's still all good.

photo credit: Jessica Ashley

Goodnight, Corky. We'll miss you so.

The dog has died. Not our dog, my parents' dog, the family dog, Corky. Yes, our dog.

She drowned at the lake house this evening, where she is free to roam and swim and bark terrritorily at anyone who drives down her road. Where it gets very dark and where my parents could not see her when she had a seizure too close to the shoreline or slipped off the dock and into the water.

She swam really well. She loved to swim and she would often follow us out to play in the water, paws frantically paddling. As she got older, we put a child-sized life-vest on her so she could swim easier with us. She would emerge from the lake, fur dripping, tongue hanging, tail wagging, a happy, happy dog.

She was fourteen years old and epileptic and arthritic. We knew she wouldn't live much longer. We just didn't suspect my parents would be burying her on the hill overlooking the lake and the house and her road so soon.

Before Lil E, she was our living room entertainment. Like many pets and people, in her age she was sometimes nippy and crabby. But there was still that sense of mutual love when she was around us, when she barked and paced protectively when Lil E cried from his crib and when she waited patiently at my dad's feet at just about 9 o'clock every night for my dad to give her permission to go to bed.

My dad, the one rather irritated that my mom gave him a puppy as a present, said he never wanted a little dog to carry around in the crook of his arm. After he saw her, named her Corky as a reference to her Welsh Terrier breed's liveliness and also for Corky Sherwood-Forrest on Murphy Brown, he made her his dog. A few days later, I spied him walking through the house with Corky nestled in the crook of his arm.

My dad had a special whistle for her. When he whistled it and called her tonight and she didn't come, he says he just knew.

She was a jumping jumping jumping dog, the one we called Corky Phyllis, Corky Arlene, Corky Anne, Corky Lu.

We are sad. Crying and very sad. And we somehow have to tell our boy who had a love-fear relationship with the being in our family closest to his size. I am going to miss that little crazy dog, miss her waggy tail and her love of microwave popcorn turned snack time into a gane of fetch. I am going to miss her at our feet and in the yard and most of all, swimming with all her heart along with us at the lake.