“Mommy, I haffa shek my emu.” In other words, “My turn to wiggle my fingers at the keyboard”. I laugh every time she tells me that. She repeats all the things I say. I must be saying asshole a lot lately because today she called me one. I wanted to laugh and cry and each
feeling vied for elbowroom. It is strange how something can be so hilarious with out being funny at all. How can a small beautiful child be so
hateful one second then suddenly curl up and bat her long lashes and say, “I am sowwy you don’t feel good well Mommy.” Then she will
dance, kicking her legs out in graceful arches, leading with her left hip, swooping her arms like a
reed in the wind. She flashes me her teeth, purses her lips and turns into a
monster chasing the cat, “Come here
butter cat!”
Miles toddles in, face all red and round, squinting his blue eyes, wet diamonds leaking from his eye. Soon enough he is chasing rainbows, finding bits of paper to stick in his mouth, turning on the television and then turning it up loud, getting scared by the noises and crying again. I see him lurch about, his cheeks jiggling at each step, pants straining around his zipper busting pudge, a child so round and stocky strangers make comments – “He is all cheeks!” they tell me, like I have never seen him before. He looks like a parade float when I play airplane with him, which is not as often as I did with his sister because he is so heavy.
Sometimes my lower back feels like it has come unhinged. I imagine that it will swing out like a coffee maker in the place where the grounds go. I could swing it out, reattach the hinge, tweak a few things, maybe sweep, then flip it back in place and be back in business. Perhaps then laundry will get really fun and the Zen of dishwashing will become apparent to me.
It is beginning to snow a blanket of white flakes that fill the air and disappear in the grass. They seem suicidal almost, bent on their own destruction, like they can’t float down fast enough. The sky is dark. I am seeing through milk-bleak, monotone clouds with gravel and tears and needles. Me, feeling like its throat might rip open and ghastly sounds spill out. Small sharp things everywhere will need to be picked up.
I am on my period. There is a red-hot-red churning at the center of all things. It affects the other people in my household. My husband says he gets sympathy cramps. Then we rag together. Lucky me. Means I can not just sit around introspective like and not think of others for a second a minute an hour a whole day even. Means I get stretched thinner and pulled further than I would enjoy even on good day.
I only wish that my children were easier to deal with lately - less insistent, less messy, more inclined to nap.
I wish the sun to shine. I feel like I need a shower, a nap or a glass of water. Which will it be? Don’t want to overwhelm anything (or myself). Yay! A sliver of sunshine! Maybe I will get all three. Wait, here comes the milk again. Maybe I get none.
I wish I had my lavender patch back – it was so glorious and purple, a heaven scented hedge with lazy bees and lounging cats. Now the new owners use that space to park one of their many rusty vehicles. There is an old camper right on top of my herb garden. I imagine the cilantro straining up through an axle, lavender spiking through spokes, an old tire snaked with nasturtium, and a toothless hag sees bee balm fireworks against the bumper, “Hey! That’s purty!”
But chances are they do not see any beauty there at all. They are keeping goats on the lawn. Giant burdock plants block the front entrance. They have yellow brown zigzag afghans hanging in the windows and one horizontal blind that has been pulled into a murderous “V” shape, like someone tried to look out but was pulled back in.
We have toyed with the idea of taking Katie there some day to show her where she was born. At this point I am thinking the murderous “V” might make the wrong impression.