If the Shoe Fits

My daughter and I went shopping just before school was out, while the air was cool and tank tops were still a memory from last year.

Our mission was tri-fold: (1) Gym Shoes for the running she loves to do, (2) a Tankini Swimsuit to bridge the gap between parent and tween desires for a full-body scuba suit and a string bikini, and (3) Summer Attire. We found comfortable shorts and bright, colorful tank tops with ease. Even the tankini selection was nearly painless.

Then we landed in the shoe aisle.

We’ve been up and down countless shoe aisles in the years since she learned to speak, and it has never ever ever been easy. But I was prepared to hold my tongue. I had my phone. I could distract myself for hours. I was here for the long haul. Because I knew. I know. And sure enough, here it came, the unstoppable commentary.

She likes laces, doesn’t like laces, wants black, then blue, not pink, maybe green. These are dumb and those are boyish and these are high in the heel — they cut into the back of her ankle when she walks. These are high tops. Those squish her feet.

“What about these?” I slipped. I spoke. Oops.

“No,” she said, simply.

There is never a pattern I can discern. There’s no brand that’s better than another, no singular color or style she’s searching for. Her shoe  goals are elusive. Every time, it is a solo journey, a kind of Shoe Quest.

Those are what so-and-so wears and these are too babyish and those there are just – not – going to work.

After twenty minutes, or maybe an entire day — I don’t know; I was on Facebook — I told her we could shop again for shoes in three weeks if she didn’t find something now. It was our third store. Today was not the day. I was done. She was tired. And she hadn’t tried on a single pair.

She looked at me, really looked at me, running her hands along the soft fabric of the shorts she had tried on hours and hours and hours ago. Then she chose (in one minute flat) three styles of shoe and we found them all on the shelves. Miraculously. After we laced them up, she jumped and stomped and walked around the store and then, wrinkling her cute little nose, she said to me, “Mommy, they don’t fit right.”  My heart dropped to the floor. I tried to remain upbeat. There were no more options.

“What do you mean? Where do they not fit?” I pushed on her toes, and squeezed the sides of her shoe against the balls of her feet. What had I missed?

“They don’t fit like my old ones.”

Ohhhhhhh. That. Right.

I softened my impatience – or tried – with my reply. “Nothing will fit like your old ones, Honey. It takes time for new shoes to form themselves to your feet. They always start off a little stiff. But look how the heel and the top, and the whole shape of the shoe is so much like your old pair. I think you’ll really like these. What do you think?”

For the first time in an hour, she smiled. My little girl just wanted the familiar, the soft, the well-worn, the perfect fit. Who doesn’t?

She stood up again and walked some more with her head tilted to the side. “Can you not throw my others away?”

“We can keep them for a little while.”

“Okay,” she said, finally. “These are good.”

*  *  *  *  *

After she had worn them for a full day, I asked, “How do they feel?”

Her eyes lit up. “Great. They fit me, Mommy!”

“They’re the right size?”

“No. Well, yes, but no – they FIT me.”

“They FIT you. I’m glad, Honey. I’m so glad.”

And I was, and I knew: Now, we could let the old ones go.

Now, we could let the old ones go.

Hardly Gay Today

Blogging for LGBT Families at a time when I’m more curious about the secret language of Nine . . . when I’m squeezing every loving moment, every hug, every insight, every quip and observation about life, itself, from the next two days before Miss E scampers off to spend ten whole days at Camp Grandma . . . proves challenging. Now, I love that I can always run over to Mombian for that dose of same-gender-loving perspective I crave and I am Thrilled with a capital-T that she hosts this themed day every year.

I’m just not . . . feeling it today.

It isn’t that I don’t believe in LGBT families – and I don’t mean “believe” like you might believe in fairy dust or God or the roundness of this earth or anything else you can’t see, smell, or hold in two hands – on the contrary, I very much believe in this family I’ve made with my partner and our two girls, and the families around me on every side. But this is my life, my every day. Not much of it is gay.

I’m lucky that way. Where I live. Very, very lucky.

Don’t get me wrong. There are moments now and again when being gay is more than a blip on the screen.

I was angry when the Illinois legislature failed to call for a vote on marriage equality last week. When my partner and our eldest daughter arrived home, I was sitting at the dining room table scouring my Facebook feed and grumbling quietly. “They didn’t call the vote,” I said as they walked in – after a quick hello and the tiniest flash of a smile to greet them.

“I know,” they replied in tandem, one of them holding out the “knoooooww” a bit longer than the other, neither of them especially disturbed.

“That’s ridiculous,” I continued, prodding them into a conversation to match my mood.

My partner walked into the kitchen for a glass of ice water. “Well, what did you expect?” she called back to me.

That’s the thing. Despite all the busses and rallies and calls and tweets and posts and general hoopla, I never really expected to be married under the law. But I am a bit of a dreamer. I am. So I hoped they would call the vote and we would win and that . . . deflation . . . left me feeling glum.

I wanted to send my Honey roses and propose.

I wanted to celebrate our 11^th anniversary next week with wedding bells chiming in our future.

Because I am just that old fashioned . . . A fact about myself I’m learning slowly as I age.

Yet, the absence of marriage hardly impacts my everyday life. Yes, it is annoying that I can’t claim my partner’s new prescription eyeglasses against my tax-protected medical spending account, and yes, it’s bothersome that I need a legally notarized document to say that my worldly assets should be passed along to ALL my girls in the event of my demise. But this isn’t something I puzzle over daily.

It isn’t something I puzzle over as much as I should.

I know the culture is shifting. I’ve witnessed the parents of Miss E’s classmates turning their Facebook profile images into symbols of support, one after another. It’s shocking to me how widespread this “show of support” has become. And it isn’t just show. Not by far. It’s real. I feel it in the way I’m seen on the playground before and after school – as a person first, and then as gay. This sequence has shifted over time. Because we know each other now.

I have great hope.

But I am not naïve.

None of us knows what the Supreme Court will decide, or how – if at all – the shape of our lives will change in the wake of their decision. What conversations will happen among my daughters’ friends? What new work will need to be done?

I am clear about one thing only: It will always be important to tell the stories of our lives – our struggles, our dreams, our hopes, our giggles, our every day — LGBT or otherwise. I know this to my bones.

Even though today, I don’t feel gay.

And I have nothing new or life-changing to say.

I’m just a mom whose daughter is scampering away for ten days and I will miss her.

Fiercely.

Nine

My editor came to visit today, that quiet editor who nobody hears but me. Her voice is amplified in my head. She worries what I will say about Nine, because she understands what so few women of my generation glean: Nine has joined the ranks of pre-teen.

She worries for me.

She knows what happened to my mom when I reached this stage and she doesn’t want me spinning down the same path. She thinks I should concentrate on changing the course of our lives, but I won’t listen. I want to do it my way. Mine.

My daughter is nine.

At One, when her hand stretched up to me on a walk, her fingertips wouldn’t touch mine unless I bent sideways. I got a crick in my back so that didn’t last long but recently, we’ve begun to hold hands.

At Two, she ran gleefully across the grass every day, and if I went into the bathroom alone – ever – she’d fly at me in passionate reunion when I returned.

At Three, she pressed her face against the window of her preschool classroom each morning, forlorn, until I learned to walk her to her teacher and chat a moment before leaving. Leaving still broke my heart, but she seemed fine.

Now she’s nine.

At Four, she stood on the stage with her class and sang for the first time.

At Five, she did the same thing again, but first she said – in that silence before the first note, in a packed school auditorium – “I’m hungry.” Loudly. Plain as day. My quiet kid said that. Then. There. Before she started to sing.

By Six, she was on her second pair of glasses, reading voraciously, discovering that humor made her popular in class.

By Seven, there was yoga. There was missing her sister, still hours from home. There was my stepmom — her Abuelita — passing away. With. Her. There. There was the birth of my blog.

By Eight, she was paddling a kayak on her own, telling her own stories, considering her own path.

“Do you want her to read this one day?” my editor now protests each time I sit down to write. I don’t know. “Be careful what you say.”

Right now, she’s Nine.

She tells me that two of her friends wear training bras. At least two. More than two. She hasn’t asked for one yet, but it’s only a matter of time. She’s still mustering her courage.

She tells me she wants a tattoo – of a skull and crossbones. She shows me where – on the inside of her right forearm. She is that specific. I put my entire face in my palm. She says, “Well, maybe. I don’t know yet.” Of course she doesn’t know yet. She’s only nine.

We watch “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” for Family Movie Night – with this child who was afraid of a robot dog in some other movie just last year or maybe the year before. Now, she’s nine.

She nearly falls asleep in my lap. She invites me onto her bed for a quiet night chat, and then puts her head on my leg. I stroke her hair awhile, her cheeks, each perfect eyebrow. It’s been months since she lay on me like this. She is so Nine.

She is angry. She throws something in my direction. She is not trying to hit me; she is trying to make a point. She makes it. I demand that she go to her room. After I release her, ten more minutes creep by and she comes to me with sad eyes, to apologize. “I’m sorry, Mommy. Really.”

We hug. She is only nine.

Arriving at school, she scowls when I walk with her towards the playground, where her class lines up at the back of the school, ready and waiting to be let in. She’s nine already, forheavensake – What am I thinking?! So much time has passed since… yesterday.

She re-discovers our “Just You and Me” journal and asks me to write her a question on the “free space” page. I write, because I really want to know, “What is one thing that makes you super happy?” She takes the pencil, pensively.

She writes back, “You.”

I tell her she makes me super happy, too.

———-

Photo by Sharmili Majmudar

Writing Keeps Me Honest. Parenting, too.

I thought about closing my blog down for a few weeks – saying “Closed for Repairs.” Internal repairs. External repairs. Repairs. There are so many things competing for my time.

Then I was packing my work bag – After my daughter had thrown a complete fit because I dripped water on a very important piece of paper she left lying in the middle of her bedroom floor – After I failed to keep my scowls and growls to myself – After I stripped the beds, threw sheets into the washer, and mopped the bathroom floor – the bathroom where the door knob had fallen off during a play-date the day before.

I was pulling papers out of my work bag, throwing them away, gathering all our bills into a rubber band to pay online at lunchtime because lunchtime in the office I share with other people is the closest I have lately to alone-time and for some reason I feel that paying bills requires this: Alone-time.

So there I was fuming, and I pulled out a set of stickers – those random stickers the school photographer sends home to up-sell families on stuff – those stickers that last  year or the year before were plastic bookmarks instead – those stickers you get whether you want them or not but if you don’t send them back to school the next day intact, you have to pay for them. Those stickers. I held my daughter’s Fall 2012 picture-on-a-sticker in my hand.

She and my partner had just left for school and the house was strangely quiet. I held my daughter’s picture in my hand and I knew that I was going to have to make it work – this blogging, writing, parenting, everyday living thing. I just knew.

See, I don’t know how other moms find time to write and make it funny. Or poignant. Or useful. Entertaining. Something someone else may want to read. I really don’t. I don’t know how they do this and raise their children into gentle loving people, too. And cook. And keep the house sparkly clean. And jog maybe? Some moms do that. I’ve seen them. But I don’t know how they do it. All that, and work every day for a paycheck, too? Impossible. Right? There is so much evidence out there to the contrary – so many mom bloggers having it all, or looking like they do anyway. These moms are not me.

I am not that mom.

I find parenting a tween hard. Really hard. You get all this hype about the Terrible Twos – which for us were idyllic really, and I thought my life as a mom was charmed – and you hear horror stories about the teenage years. But tweens? Angelic, right?

Here’s the deal:

One minute, my darling daughter is on my lap kissing my hand and holding it against her cheek, radiating love from every pore of her body.

The next, she’s screeching that I don’t understand her, that no one understands her, that it’s not fair when she’s been nice to me all day and it’s not her fault. She’s slamming doors and stomping out of sight because I suggested that writing “1/2″ as the answer for twelve consecutive math problems was not showing her best effort.

When she’s calm, we talk with her about big feelings, about how to express them without hurting anyone.

When she’s not, her big feelings bring out ours. I suppose it happens this way in every house along the block, but I only live in this one.

I remember stomping down the hallway hundreds of times in my parents’ house, slamming my bedroom door, turning the music up loud, but I don’t remember starting this young. I know for sure my mother never blogged about it.

So I thought about shutting this blog down today, saying, “Closed for repairs” or just “Closed.” I still might; I may need to. But not today.

I stood there with my little girl’s picture in my hand and I stuck it to the inside cover of my journal – because if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past nine years watching my baby grow, it’s this: When I focus on her, eventually I know what to do. Because – shhhhhh! – don’t tell her – but when it comes down to it, for better or for worse, my little girl’s raising me, too.

So I don’t know why and I don’t know how, but looking at her, I know I must write every week to keep myself sane. To be the best mom I can be. To untangle the knots of the week gone by. To find balance. To remain honest.

And maybe sometimes: To find out if any one of you has been here, too.

For Mother’s Day

Stories, stories, stories, stories, stories – I am full to bursting with stories – mine and everyone else’s – yet I reach for time to write them down and come up empty. I need to decide about Sunday, Mother’s Day. I browse the world wide web in the fifteen minutes I have to spare this week, and discover this fabulously scathing perspective from Liz at Rebellious Magazine, a recent cast-mate of mine in the Listen to Your Mother show. Mother’s Day is complicated for so many of the people I love.

Here is what will make me happy this Mother’s Day. Most of it, you won’t find on any shelf:

• Listen to what I say. Offer me love, warmth, food, and kind words.
• Do not rush me out the door.
• Do not try to persuade me into seeing things only from your point of view.
• Share your truth. Yours. Tell me it is yours. Own it. Understand that my truth may mirror yours. Or it may not.
• Do not force me into too-small spaces.
• Defend me to people who wish to attack.
• Offer to be strong. Leave room for me to be strong, too.
• Hear me – not only my words, but my gestures and the feeling behind them, too.
• Hot coffee. Good strong hot coffee. Stand-your-spoon-in-it coffee. Drinking this coffee with sunlight streaming across my face.
• A pen, paper, and a place to write – even if only for 3 minutes. Or 5.
• Hugs. As many as possible, please.
• A finished basement.
• One thing sometime in the day to organize or make right – laundry to fold, dishes to wash, boxes to stack – something with a beginning, a middle and an end. So I can feel satisfied when I’m through. Yes, it’s Mother’s Day and it’s my choice to feel a sense of completion.
• Fresh air. Trees. A walk in the woods.
• Food. Real food – like eggs, granola, yogurt, fresh fruit, soup, or spinach.
• Bedtime with my not-so-little girl. One-on-on time with a book or a journal. Or a foot massage.
• Belly laughs.
• Time away from electronics.
• Hearing your story. Hearing you tell it. From any angle. Whether or not it’s about moms.

And you? What would really float your boat this Mother’s Day?

An Unmarked Anniversary

I thought I would make it through April unscathed.

March, with spring break and family birthdays, came off swimmingly – and I entered April giddy about stepping into the spotlight for my five minutes of Listen to Your Mother fame on May 5th. My stepdaughter decided to come home for the show. She’s never seen me on stage. My mother had airline reservations for the first time in seven years, right on the heels of her quick jaunt to Vegas and her selling of my childhood home. And the sunflowers we planted from seed were beginning to poke out of their little environmentally friendly pot in our sunny back office.

Then, during a long weekend away, the sunflowers wilted and cracked on our windowsill.

And on the afternoon of the second-to-last day of April, the birds chirped while my youngest handled her homework outdoors — lighthearted, focused, remembering 7-times-6 without pause.

And ten minutes later, I, without warning, flew out of my house in a sudden temper with the dog on a makeshift leash, abandoning the half-done school project after my daughter ripped her paper to shreds and poked her palm with a pencil.

How quickly things turn on their head.

But I’ve handled that before. That temper. Her temper. Mine. She didn’t break the skin. I’ve responded calmly before. I’ve banned her to her room. I’ve taken sharp objects out of her reach. Yet, not this time. This time, I fled. (Yes, my partner was home when I made my escape.) Yelling my way out the door.

Why did I leave this time?

For twenty-eight years, without fail, I have lost my mind during the month of April. It is not rational, but it is predictable. And yet each April, I have fresh hope. So MUCH hope that I didn’t even warn anybody this year.

And I nearly made it. Really. I nearly did.

Then came April 29th, the day we all ate dinner on our Midwestern patios and posted pictures of our feasts on Facebook, neglected jackets, and smiled simply to be in the sun. I had one day left of this crazy month. I could feel it! I was high-fiving myself in the mirror – elated, you might even say.

Never mind that our basement flooded and all our downstairs belongings – including every single item of adult clothing and 95% of my daughter’s diversions and toys – were under dusty plastic tarps to protect them from the fix-it work underway.

Never mind that my mom, who hasn’t visited in seven years and might not come again for another seven, would miss the beauty of our basement guest space.

Never mind the health scare of a family member whose call caused my heart to skip a beat. Maybe two beats. Although said-family-member will really, truly be okay.

I was on the verge of exiting April without damaging anything but a tiny trio of sunflowers and for that, I was truly, deeply, wonderfully proud.

It would have been the first April since my mom’s attempts on her own life nearly three decades ago that I had not lost my mind. Crazy-me used to stay two or three weeks. This year, she hung out for twelve hours. Maybe fifteen. Twenty at the most. Progress. Right?

Here’s the thing: My mom’s good. She’s fine. She’s delightful. She went to VEGAS, for heaven’s sake. She’s selling a gorgeous house in Silicon Valley so she can move in with her partner. They dote on our kids, adore our family, and they’re coming to see us – in fact, they’re here right now.

It’s just that the aftershocks simply.won’t.go.away. No matter how hard I push back. No matter how many times I lock the door.

After twenty-eight years, therapy, writing, and professional success, after climbing back into the spotlight and managing homework and projects and behaviors and moods – so many moods – in my home for so long – I still snap. Over nothing!

When I came home, my little girl, who is really my heart walking around outside my body (I heard this somewhere and can’t get it out of my head) approached me warily and said to me right away, “You were gone a long time.”

“I was, Honey,” I replied. “I was gone a long time.” She read me the paragraph she’d been working on, and gave me a big long hug. “I didn’t know how to handle myself,” I admitted quietly. She nodded, but she was concerned.

I was back, but still shaky.

Next year, I may want to light a candle. Or release butterflies. Or something. To mark spring – to mark the month of April – to invite Crazy-me in, where I can dance with her and make her tea instead of pushing her out into the cold, giving her blisters, making her sad. If she’s coming anyway, I might as well make her feel at home. Don’t you think?

*  *  *

Dedicated to those who mark an anniversary which is not cause for celebration.

*  *  *

Again with the dog?

Yup. It’s darn hard working towards 30 new poems in 30 days – gotta work with what I know best, and right now? It’s dogs.

Dachshund Dreams

When my dachshund dreams

– green field running dreams, leaping

in the air dreams, squirrel-chasing,

tongue lolling, going on a tear dreams –

When my big-eared, brown-eyed,

funny-toothed dog dreams –

snarling a ferocious warning,

growling at a burglar, a workman, the

mail carrier coming up our front steps –

she kicks me

again and again and again

and I wake.

*

She doesn’t mean to,

but big dreams are for kicking,

she tells me. They are.

*

Big dreams, strong dreams,

gotta love dog dreams.

I could use a few of my own.

I’ll fall asleep again soon,

I know,

witness magnolias bloom

and so

I let my sleeping dog lie.

*

Big dreams are for kicking

wide open, undisturbed.

I’ll give her that, my

short-legged, big-hearted girl.

*   *   *   *   *

National Poetry Writing Month:

30 poems in 30 days.

Dog Days

Sprinkled in sunlight
(the first time in months),
I sit on my in-laws’ front porch.
One dog lies down here;
the other eats grass
to prepare for the long ride home.

*   *   *   *   *

National Poetry Writing Month:

30 poems in 30 days.

Choices

It’s because I wrote about pen and paper last week, isn’t it? … that today I am starting right here on the screen. Just writing. Whatever it is that comes to mind. Untangling . . .

Like this cat. I want to be this cat.

Today, I am the cat.

Cats don’t premeditate. Cats don’t plan. Cats pounce. Cats hunt. Cats eat and drink and cover their business with a whole lot of sand. Or not. Cats lay in the sunniest spot, licking their fur. Each moment is new. Immediate. Definitive. Hungry? Thirsty? Playful? Bam.

I had a director once who gave me what she called “one freebie” during the run of each show. She gave me a freebie so when I had an off-night, missing cues or failing to connect with my fellow actors once or twice or many times, I wouldn’t spiral through the next few nights wallowing, pondering, willing myself to go back through each choice until I’d fixed it in my mind – as I am prone to do – but rather, I’d shrug it off and say, “Well, there’s my one.” And move on.

I’m prone to ponder. That’s the truth. Why? Too many . . .

Choices

Date night or blogging?

Alone or together?

Chocolate or licorice? (Read our LTYM Chicago spotlight posts to learn who chose which.)

Sleep or watch TV?

Comma or semicolon?

Boys or girls?

Install drain tile in the basement, or wait-and-see ’til it rains again?

Domestic or international?

Chocolate espresso beans, or spicy salty pretzel mix?

Pick-up or let it ring?

The chicken or the egg?

Ice cold white wine or mellow red?

Wash first, or wear it straight from the rack?

Ice cream or cake?

Pink or black?

Left or right?

Plastic or paper?

Walk or drive?

Hands on the podium, hands by my side, hands on my hips, or arms outstretched?

Every day, every nano-second, something new to decide.

But not today!

Today, I am the cat, batting dust particles around in this one shard of sunlight.

Unhurried. Immediate. Instinctive.

Slowly closing my eyes. Opening them again.

This is the life. My cat life. Mine.

It is delicious.

while time waits

Time waits at night sometimes

with our books open side-by-side,

my reading glasses perched

partway down my nose,

my daughter absorbed

in the adventures of Greek gods

and goddesses and humor.

*

Time waits at night with

bookmarks firmly placed

between our pages.

*

Time waits tonight

while I sink into pillows.

She lays her head

next to mine. It’s been

months now since she chose

to lay this way with me.

Usually, I sit briefly

in her pink chair

while she settles in.

I’m lucky if she allows me a kiss

before I go.

*

Tonight, she reaches for my hand

and holds it between hers.

“Am I perfect? Am I

The kid you wanted?”

she asked me earlier.

“You ARE the kid I want.

I can’t even remember

what I wanted way back when

because I have you, and

YOU are the kid I want every day,”

I told her. We are both quiet now.

*

Time waits tonight

while she holds my hand

to her cheek

long enough

for both of us

to settle in

and then

she allows me a kiss,

blows me one in return

even, as I stand.

*

And so the night,

this deep sleeping night,

begins. While time waits.

*   *   *   *   *

National Poetry Writing Month:

30 poems in 30 days.