Time falls away

Full day Kindergarten starts tomorrow. I'm not ready, but they are. I am handed the lesson, yet again, the catechism that a mother learns, over and over. What happens when unspeakable sadness collides with unimaginable happiness? Children grow up.

I am unspeakably sad tonight as they sleep their last sleep as mine and mine alone.

I am unimaginably happy to see them walk away from me, confident and bold and eager.



Saige and Garrett,

Here we go. Thirteen years of school, at least, before you face the wide world. I'm a beggar tonight, riding wishes, importuning stars, closing my eyes tight and throwing my rosy copper thought pennies into the mirror-still surface of the fountain of life.

I wish you letters, for they are the basis of writing and writing allows the communication of ideas.

I wish you numbers, for they are the basis of science, of everything that whirs and moves and computes and grows and spins in this grand universe.

I wish that you learn to play nicely with others, for this is the basis of politics and business.

I wish you an open mind, for it is the basis of creativity.

I wish you confidence and courage, for they are the basis of justice.

I wish you kindness, for it is the basis of peace.

I wish you humor, for it is the basis of laughter.

I wish you empathy and awareness of others because they are the basis of friendship.

But most of all, I hope our family has taught you, is teaching you, and will continue to teach you love. Because that is the basis of happiness.

I've always liked new beginnings. I'm a traveler. A mover. Unlike most people, I like goodbyes. They signify journeys, excitement, unexplored vistas just around the corner, new people to meet and new places to experience. But, I realize today that I have spent almost forty years in the role of leaver. Always the one walking into the sunrise, embarking on a new adventure. It's easy to see the beginning when your back is firmly and merrily turned to the ending.

The ending is the province of the ones left behind.

Today. Today I face the inescapable conclusion that for the second forty years granted to me - should I be so lucky - I will, forever and always, be the one left behind.

I'll be right here, babies, when you check back for the light in the window.

Love always, Momma


((AND OHMYFREAKINGGOD IS IT QUIET HERE. YEEEEEHAAAAAW.))

Title credit to --- Little Wonders, Rob Thomas

Let it go, let it roll right off your shoulder
Don't you know, the hardest part is over
Let it in, let your clarity define you
In the end, we will only just remember how it feels

Our lives are made, in these small hours
These little wonders
These twists and turns of fate
Time falls away, but these small hours
These small hours, still remain

Do fun stuff

Everyone loves to do fun stuff, right? Perfect, because Ryan is doing fun stuff today. He and his friends have made a children's album called, of course, Do Fun Stuff. It's cool. Really, really cool.

The album is a charity fundraising effort to raise money for research on Smith Magenis Syndrome, a condition that Ryan's son, known as Little Buddy, has. 100% of the proceeds will go to a grant fund set up by PRISMS to make money available for SMS research.

Even the graphic is awesome.

You can read more about Ryan, Cole, the adorable LB and their beautiful daughter Tessa Tangerine (Cole and I labored on the same day!) and Smith Magenis Syndrome on Ryan's blog, Pacing the Panic Room.

You can hear sample tracks from the album here.

You can download the album from itunes (and make a fabulous contribution to SMS research) here.

But, even if you can't afford the album, or you don't have kids, or you don't like music, or you can't get the &$(#&*@&# itunes account on your computer to work because you are lame and you never download music. Ahem. Not that I know anyone like that. ARG. You can still help spread the word. Steal that graphic and put it in your sidebar. Do a post. Twitter. Tell everyone you know that Do Fun Stuff is out there and it's fabulous. Because it is and so are Ryan and Cole and their effort on behalf of kids struggling with SMS.

Thanks for listening. Comments are closed. I'll be trying to make my itunes account work. xoxo.

Gnome and fairy magic

I'm not sure how to write about the party this morning and that says a lot because at a loss for words is not a typical state for me. It was worth all the planning and felt cutting and glitter stressing. I have amazing friends. My mom is a saint. My Dad makes an excellent guard troll for a fairy village.

My children were enchanted. All the children were enchanted, which was just exactly, perfectly, wondrously how I hoped it would be. Maybe it's best to say it with pictures this time around.

Finding the fairy bait cake crumbs and the note from the fairies. They had found their gnome toadstool vests, fairy tutus and glitter scarves by their beds when they woke at 5:30 a.m.

The fairies and gnomes left tutus and toadstool glitter scarves in the backyard for everyone.


Following the glitter trail. The fairies and gnomes led us on a merry chase from our backyard, through the big city park a block from us, ending in an absolutely perfect grove of Dr. Seuss pines (not the official term, but it's a grove of these pine trees that are seventy feet tall and have drooping, fairy beard type needles cascading all the way to the ground) on the south end of the formal rose gardens. They are following the glitter and pipe cleaner arrows through Duncan Gardens in the picture below.

The fairy village at the base of a cascading, Dr. Seuss pine. You can't tell, but the branches touch the ground and create a perfect circle around the trunk that completely hides the fairy home inside. Yes, the miniature fairy village aspect of this whole thing absolutely delighted me. I'm a total geek. What's your point, Matt? (Omigod, squeeeee, make bigger that picture and you can see the tiny wheelbarrow and the bench and the broom and the miniature train for the tiny little fairy babies and ... I'm stopping ... and the little tool set... stopping ... squeeeaaal.)

Finding the wishes the fairies left. (The gnomes left a treasure chest full of chocolate kisses.)

The wishes.
And now the cake. Kristina, a woman I already adored, a friend of the sort that is hard to find and that you nurture and tend and kiss and love just to keep her loving you because it's that important to you, even though she doesn't ask for anything, Kristina offered, actually joyfully insisted, that she make the cake for this party months ago. I agreed happily because she is a baker and I am not. I don't know what I expected. Just a pretty cake. I cried when I saw it. I kid you not. Brace yourselves.

Uh huh. I know. That is a fairy family in front of a little fairy house. NO. Wait. That is my fairy family in front of a little fairy house.

Matt and my three pasty pale red heads. Olive-toned me and my beautiful brown daughter. In fondant fairies. I'm crying again. Look. The girl fairies have wings.

That pretty much says it all, right there. The whole day was like finding enchanting little pink wings on the back of the little pink fondant fairies.

Sigh. That brings us to the end of the saga of the four-child joint gnome/fairy party. It's over. My village rocks. It was hard work and it was worth it. The glitter was ample. The magic was everywhere. And we all know that everyone needs a little magic in their lives.

It takes a village. And a basketcase.

Liveblogging the fairy/gnome four-child joint birthday party.

Currently: NINETY MINUTES to fairy/gnome four-child joint birthday party.

We'll try to bring you updates as they occur, but it's a volatile situation out here.

8:31 a.m. Saturday. Wish us luck. Remember, we all have to close our eyes and say we believe in gnomes and fairies.

8:30 a.m. Saturday. (Ninety minutes to fairy/gnome joint party.) Mom and I are leaving to set the glitter/sparkly pipe cleaner arrow trail and create the fairy village. Grandpa is in charge of sitting by the fairy village as a troll guard until the fairy gnome hunters get there. He's thrilled. Matt is in charge of controlling our overstimulated children until we get back. He's also thrilled. I'm trying not to worry aloud about glitter because someone might smack me.

7:00 a.m. Saturday. We are feeling the magic, but it's going to take a lot of coffee.

5:48 a.m. Saturday. Matt is completely over the fairy/gnome party thing. Feel the magic, Matt. Matt refuses to feel the magic until 7:00 a.m.

5:45 a.m. Saturday. Children wake up and check fairy bait cake. It's gone!! Excitement!! Yelling!! Screaming!! The gnomes left vests for the boys!! The fairies left a tutu for Saige!! Omigodfairygnomecaketutuexcitementheadexplosion.

******** Begin Second Update ********

10:00 p.m. Friday. (TWELVE hours to fairy/gnome joint birthday party.) It may have taken me five minutes to type that sentence. Wine and lots of it. I think we're ready. Except for the paltry supply of glitter. We're eating the fairy bait cake and we left the kids a note.

Wait. Look at how adorably little that actually is.

8:00 p.m. Friday. Post glass of wine, I don't give a shit if there's enough fricking glitter. We prepare tutus, glitter scarves and toadstool vests for the morning, pack all supplies for the party and fairy village set up in the van and clean the backyard of horse-dog droppings.

Toadstool vests. Glitter scarf with toadstool slider. Yeah, that's right, I made those toadstools from felt. Alright, fine, my mommy did, but I glued the dots on.

Fairy tutu. I had absolutely nothing to do with this, but aren't they darling?

7:15 p.m. Friday. All children in bed. Mom and I scout route for fairy/gnome glitter trail to fairy village and do reconnaissance at fairy village location. Commence second glitter supply meltdown.

6:25 p.m. Friday. Children decorate burnt fairy bait cake. They are so freaking cute it's ridiculous. Look.





4:15 p.m. Friday. I shower because I'm not supposed to smell like a forest gnome at the party. Nate miraculously plays on the floor of the bathroom. Clearly fairies are involved.

******* Begin update *********

3:45 p.m. Friday. I remember the cake. Everyone knows fairies like burnt cake.

3:35 p.m. Friday. Only two minutes left on the fairy bait cake. Matt and my parents take the older children away. My mom reminds me not to forget the cake and burn it.

3:00 p.m. Friday. Put the fairy bait cake in the oven.

2:45 p.m. Friday. The felt toadstools are done! The felt toadstools are done! They are so cute. I'm so glad we made felt toadstools. (If my mom hadn't been here, there would not have been any felt toadstools. Or tutus. )

2:00 p.m. Friday. Amy calls, because she is awesome, to tell me she can do any last minute running tomorrow morning. Including for vodka. I ask her if she can bring the vodka over right now.

1:45 p.m. The mailman comes and he has the tutu box under his arm. He has the tutu box under his arm. I kiss the mailman on the lips. That might be a federal offense.

1:00 p.m. Run to the store for cake mix for the fairy bait cake. (It's like link bait, but for fairies.) We're going to lure those little suckers in.

12:30 p.m. I effing hate felt toadstools.

10:00 a.m. Friday. (One day to fairy/gnome joint birthday party.) I consider buying eighteen more tutus. That's only what, like a $200.00 tutu investment? Plus, a total waste of a month of my mother's time.

9:00 a.m. Friday. We stop by the local post office to beg them to call us Saturday morning if there is a package in the morning delivery so that I can come over and pick it up. They are a little shocked by my desperation for 18 tutus. I am a little embarrassed by my desperation for 18 tutus.

2:00 a.m. Friday. Not sleeping. The shopping is complete, but the 18 fairy tutus my mother and her friend made over the last month and shipped to me have not arrived. We have one more postal delivery. We are not hopeful.

9:00 p.m. Thursday. Wine night. I drink a lot of wine to erase all thoughts of the fairy/gnome party. Kristina lets us try a sample of the cake she is baking for the fairy/gnome party. It is phenomenal and I cry a little because if I didn't have such awesome friends and such an awesome mother there is no way my non-crafting ass could pull off this gnome/fairy party.

3:00 p.m. Thursday. Fourteen felt toadstools down. Fourteen felt toadstools to go. Shut up. Gnomes like toadstools. They are for the glitter scarves. Shut up. Fairies like glitter.

12:00 p.m. Thursday. After four stores, my mom suggests glitter pipe cleaner arrows and glitter for the fairy trail. I condescend to accept this plan. GRUDGINGLY.

11:00 a.m. Thursday. (Two days to fairy/gnome joint birthday party.) I have a massive meltdown over glitter. I need LARGE quantities of glitter to lay the fairy trail from our house to the secret fairy village. WHY IS GLITTER ONLY SOLD IN TINY VIALS? This is why I hate crafting.

Judgy momblogging at its finest

It's crazy here. Well, yes, always, but slightly crazier than usual because we had dear, dear friends from our Saipan days visiting for the last three days and my parents arrive today and between focusing and enjoying the time with people we love, madly cleaning for the next visit and panicking about the enormous four-child joint birthday party that we're throwing on Saturday, I'm, how can I put this, oh hell you know me by now right? I'M LIKE AN ANAL RETENTIVE CHICKEN WITH MY HEAD CUT OFF.

It's fun though and I mean that with all of my heart.

But something happened at the park the other day and I have to take a minute to share it and get it off of my chest.

I stood next to my friend Denise at the playground and we chatted while occasionally pausing to count children or respond to the seventeenth repetition of "mommy" while a child hung from my pant leg. The sun shone gloriously and the park was packed.

I was fairly close to a ladder that has been causing me grief and parenting fail moments for five years. The top of it is probably six feet off of the ground and the gap in the railing for entering and exiting this ladder is perfect for an unsteady but determined toddler to fall through. The ladder itself is made of slippery metal rungs spaced too far apart for your average early walker. Which makes it, of course, the only thing on an entire acre-large playground that any of my early walkers have ever wanted to play on.

A little girl, probably just two, bit it from the top rung. The thump was impressive when she hit the wood chips. I was the closest parent to her, but she was moving and crying and using all limbs, so I only spoke to her, "oh ouch, that was scary, huh? Is mom here?" without touching her or trying to help her or freaking her out in any other way. A woman moved her way immediately and since she was obviously mom, I considered my duties done unless help was specifically requested.

Mom sauntered over at a brisk, but unpanicked pace, knelt down for a hug and a cuddle, get this, without ever taking the cell phone away from her ear or breaking her conversation. I know. The little girl went back to playing and mom still continued talking.

I thought, OMIGOD, THAT IS OUTRAGEOUS. HER KID FELL SIX FEET AND SHE WAS TOTALLY CALM AND SHE HANDLED IT AND SHE NEVER EVEN PUT DOWN HER CELL PHONE. DUDE. I HAVE SOME THINGS TO SAY ABOUT THAT. I'M GOING TO TALK TO THIS WOMAN RIGHT NOW.

.
.
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.
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"Hi, I'm Stacey. That was impressive, will you be my friend?"

****************************
To everyone: Thank you so much for the comments on the Shiny House post. They are gorgeous. I always love your comments, but I've read those like six times. It's a true, soul uplifting pleasure to read your dreams.

At my brown shiny house

My children have shiny houses. Saige's is pink. Garrett's is blue, except when it's green. Quinn's is yellow. I'm sure Nate will pick a color in the near future.

I don't know how it started Maybe I said something obnoxious like, when you have your own house, you can do what you like there. Maybe they came up with it on their own. No idea, but I love it. Whenever the shiny houses come up, I get such insight into their thoughts and their dreams, into what has caught their attention or their eye.

At my pink shiny house, I have fifteen bathing suits. Like Ila, did you like her new bathing suit? MORE than Ila.

At my blue shiny house, I have one hundred animals. Like the Cratt brothers? Yes! Do you have a cougar? Yes. And I just got a jaguar.

Sometimes, it hurts a little, though I'm glad to learn the lesson.

At my pink shiny house my other mother lets me set the picnic table all by myself.

At my yellow shiny house, I can take the cold thing to bed for my owies.

What color is your shiny house, they ask me. Brown. NO! The horror is unanimous. Purple? Red perhaps? Dark blue is nice? Not brown, momma, use your imagination. But my shiny house, I am sorry to disappoint them, is brown. A light mocha brown with deep chocolate accents and cream trim.

What happens at your brown shiny house, momma? Sigh.

At my brown shiny house, I have a maid, four nannies and a chef.

At my brown shiny house, I have a dog trainer.

At my brown shiny house, I have a laundress. Her only job is to do the laundry.

At my brown shiny house, I have a writing studio. It's on the south side of the house, so plenty of sunshine seeps in.

At my brown shiny house, children sleep until 8:00 a.m.

At my brown shiny house, there are always vodka tonics at five, with fresh squeezed lime, like Elizabeth makes them. There is a bartender. His name is Gabriel.

At my brown shiny house, there is a work shop far from the main house where Matt parks all of his 1972 Fords. He has as many as he wants.

At my brown shiny house, parking lots are not allowed in residential neighborhoods and city planning people do their jobs.

At my brown shiny house, someone else does the grocery shopping. He always buys Cambozola cheese and Giesen Sauvignon Blanc.

At my brown shiny house, there are six children and not a drop of trouble or angst or worry went into procuring the last two.

At my brown shiny house, a hairdresser straightens my hair every morning. It never looks like a sponge.

I could do this all day. Seriously. What color is your shiny house? What happens there?

Fives

Five years ago today, I was a mother of two children I hadn't met yet. One lived inside, his heartbeat just under mine. I spoke to him and nourished him, but I'd lost the child before him and he didn't feel like mine. One lived a world away, one day old, held tight in her first mother's embrace.

January 2005. I tried to nap on the filthy floor of the Miami airport at 4:00 a.m. Crumbs and carpet grunge stuck to my limbs. Periodically startled awake, I raised my head from its backpack pillow and checked the clock above the line of check-in desks on my left. They wouldn't start processing my flight until 6:00 a.m. I dozed again, uneasy.

Four a.m. is a tricky time no matter where you are. Hung from a noose in the middle of the witching hour. Not that I believe in such things. Just above the gritty carpet, a lump in my backpack dug into my neck. A dream's sticky tendrils hung over my thoughts.

I dreamed I was pregnant with a baby girl.

The images were gone, but that fact remained when the stale breeze of a trash can emptied and a large security machine shirring into life blew the dream web away.

I was pregnant in my dream. I was pregnant? In my dream? With a baby girl.

Mystical thinking doesn't appeal to me. I'm a realist. A science geek. A facts girl. But mystery enhances life. I can accept that there is "science" I can't comprehend. Powers of the mind I can't fathom. Intuition. Foresight. Are these just a mystic's words for the secret language of hormones, whispered to synapses and sheaths and neurons in the brain? It isn't all that removed from the shaman chanting in the night. Merely renamed.

I didn't feel any joy. The grief and struggle of the baby lost were still too raw. I felt certainty, but not joy. All I knew of the mystery that is conception was that it could end unexpectedly and that it hurt.

The girl on the floor of the Miami airport saw only ends. She was no shaman, no wise women. Looking back, it is so clear. The rocks sticking out of the raging river, leading her to her today. A miscarriage. A trip to Haiti. A pregnancy and paperwork. Four kids. But, she placed no faith in greater plans. She had a tender heart and she was tired of counting days and she clutched a ticket to Haiti in her sweaty hand.

And now she had this new thing. This fact. Pregnant. With a girl.

********************

So? He asked me.

I held the plastic stick in my hand. I never doubted, despite the months of tears, I never doubted. For three weeks, in Haiti, holding other people's babies, I never doubted. I came home three days late and doubt free.

I held the stick with those two pink lines confirming what I already knew via mysticism or science or chicken blood in the night. Take your pick.

I still want to adopt, I said.

I know, he answered.

**********************

It's a boy, the technician told us. The paper gown rustled under my legs. She pressed the knob of her wand tighter to my belly and moved it slowly, searchingly, to the left. There. There he is. Matt wiped away tears. So much for dreams. Pregnant, yes. But with a boy. Even brain synapses play the odds wrong.

That's what I believed, that's what I wrote in the gospel of my life before the dream was lost in the reality. Until last week, sitting at a stoplight, contemplating the fifth birthday of my two children, when a missed cobweb of a forgotten dream fluttered in some back corner of my mind and brushed up against the cells that held another memory.

We filled out paperwork. Before the science of ultrasound (or is it a sacrifice to the gods of whales and dolphins that lets us see that fuzzy picture in black and white) told us that a boy swam inside me. Sex? the white form asked. A baby girl, we wrote. A baby girl and a toddler boy, under four years old, but his is another story that I've told another way.

Why did I care? Why did we specify at all? Baby boys are harder to place. I was so certain I carried a girl. I can't remember the reasons.

Waiting in the rain at a stoplight five years later, goosebumps formed on my skin. Was the guy with the Cubs hat in the blue truck next to me having a realization or just singing a mindless song? Realizing the power of the brain? Of God? The stars? Synapses and hormones? Fate?

Five years and nearly nine months ago. January 2005. On the floor of the airport in Miami, I woke from a dream that I was pregnant. I would have been five days pregnant that night. With a boy. And a girl.