nudle

Dear Han,

I am going to write this very fast so I can go write. Someday your mom is going to have a book on the shelves! I'm rolling a new project around in my head, and it's uncomfortable. So I'd better get to work!

But first...

It's been a long time since I wrote to you about you. You've grown about a foot and more into your sassy, headstrong, loving, observant self. When you're mad at me you shout, "I'm rude at you!" or "You're stupid at me!" But yesterday I did something to make you really mad, like insist that you get dressed before you ate breakfast, and you ran to the sofa, crying, and screamed, "I hate you, Mom! I hate hate hate you!" 

I don't hold that against you. It happens. 

You ended up completely missing breakfast, so it's lucky your preschool always has food on the table when we get there. You ate three bowls of granola and a lot of banana slices, and then you were your normal, non-demonic self again.

You only ever want to wear short-sleeved t-shirts, shorts and the checkered Vans you chose all by yourself when we went shoe shopping. You stick your hands in your pockets when you walk. You're missing your two front teeth and one on the bottom. It gives you a scrappy look. Plus, you need a haircut.

You love gum.

You notice everything! You're quick to smile and what you seem to want most (besides gum and love) is to make people laugh. You've discovered that the words "poop" and "toilet" and "butt" get laughs, so you use them frequently even though they earn you frowns from me. 

Lately, you've started role playing with your toys, using voices and creating worlds and characters. Iona did this at your age. (She still does it, I suspect, but don't tell anyone.) I love listening to you play by yourself in this way.

At school, you have friends you play with a lot, particularly Leo and Cormack. Cormack is missing a tooth, but Leo is the one who walked up to me the other day and announced, "I'm Toothless!" I was taken aback until he explained Toothless is a character in the movie, "How to Train Your Dragon."

You are the most curious person I know, and by that I mean you want to know everything, not that you're odd or strange. Yesterday the young tattooed philosopher window washer who was here at our house all day noticed how inquisitive you are. "That's good," he said. I agree.

I love you, Hanster Monster, to infinity and beyond!

Mom

There is a cafe close to school that we visit on our way home sometimes. Usually it's when Iona's had a bad day, so we can get her a chocolate chip cookie. Han gets something, too, and sometimes I even get a scone or biscotti. They are nice. It's an old house with an aura of friendliness and neighborhoodiness. The people smile and recognize us. All these are good when you weren't asked to play soccer at lunch recess and even if you hate soccer, it would have been nice to be asked, and you would have even played, had you been asked. So when we found ourselves standing outside the glass front yesterday, I realized that my wallet was sitting uselessly at home and all I had was my checkbook. We went in anyway. I hate asking for favors which is a weakness of mine but I am able to overcome it in a lunch-recess-no-soccer-invitation emergency, which is a strength. So I asked if they'd take a check. The woman said, "How about if you just bring the money in tomorrow and take the cookies now. Would that be okay?" It was okay. So today maybe we'll go back, take money, and buy more cookies.

What goes around comes around.

There is so much tumbling around in my brain that I don't know where to begin. First, this neglected blog. I am considering shutting it down, though I honestly don't know how. I remember starting it all those years ago in 2006 (wasn't that only last year?). I was excited and scared. Who was I to think I could have my own blog? Now I look at that woman and say to myself, who was that person? I've moved forward, which is a great feeling. Now I need to stop asking, who am I to think I can write books, get an agent, have my books published? To that end, I am slowly laying the groundwork for a professional writer's site, including a professional blog. The blog is where I'll start, since I have yet to be published. This is mortifying to admit, but I have yet to actually SUBMIT anything I've written. So I guess that 2006 woman is still living still, in this almost-2013 body. So is my ten-year-old self, full of yearning, and my fourteen-year-old self, full of anticipation and new power. And there is still the twenty-year-old party girl in there and also the twenty-two-year-old adventurer, chomping at the bit.

This morning I remembered the past self who was unable to effectively manage her time. She was the forty-three-year old me. Forty-three was when I decided I'd change my way of being loose in the world. Not really planning my weeks, my days, not having a plan for my life wasn't working for me any more with two kids, with a baby again--though he was really a baby-toddler when we brought him home. A boddler? Anyway, he was already nearly on the run, getting into everything, demanding EVERYTHING. Such a precious, adorable child whom I could not appreciate, because I was blindsided by feelings of being completely overwhelmed. I will always be full of sorrow for both Han and me during those first couple of years. This morning I woke after one of those wonderful, long, rare uninterrupted sleeps and I heard the familiar soft pad, pad, pad of feet on stairs. "Snuggle with me, please, Mommmy!" he pleaded, even though it was after seven and past time to get up. Because my time management issues aren't completely gone, I got back in bed with him and we did snuggle for a few minutes. Man, oh man, do I love that boy now. It took a long time, but he has grown my heart sooo big! (Thanks, Theodore Geisel, for the Grinchly visual.) There is a book in there, something about the boy with three mommies, and it will come when it's ready. But anyway, my being overwhelmed thing that got in the way of the growing the heart thing? It was partly a lack of time management and general organization.

So move from that tender, loving moment to 8:21 today and I was using my voice as a deadly weapon against my daughter, who had once again left a major school project to the very last minute. It's due today, and Tuesday we parents got a reminder about the deadline from her teacher in the weekly letter. Iona's chosen deliverable is a PowerPoint defining most of the Greek gods and goddesses. Okay, she had done some drawings, ready to scan except they were in light pencil, which required some serious Photoshop level-setting by yours truly. Okay, it took a couple hours, but I did it and Iona was effusively grateful, through all my grumbling about how we were NEVER, NEVER, NEVER waiting 'til the la-hast minute. (Thanks, Taylor Swift, for the song now running through my head without mercy.) Okay, so she got pretty much right on it again yesterday after school. I grumbled about how was she going to do a PowerPoint when she had never used it before, and it had to all be done in one night, and I struggled with whether or not I should put together a template for her. Was this overstepping bounds of letting her do her own work? I decided it was, yes. So I gave her a few PowerPointers and set her loose, occasionally helping out if she got stuck.

The thing is, she did it. Not only did she teach herself how to do those cool (horrible! awful!) transitions between slides, she completely changed the template and made all her own design decisions. My daughter taught herself how to use PowerPoint in about two hours. "You know how Dad does all those charts?" she said to me. "That's right here. I bet I could do charts."

The thing she didn't do was put the finished presentation on the flash drive until 8:21 this morning, and then the flash drive didn't work, and her hair wasn't brushed and neither were her teeth, and I saw the big glaring evidence that through genetics and behavioral modeling I had passed my Big, Ugly Flaw on to her. Being organized matters in today's world, because if you're not, even if you're talented and smart, you'll never produce anything and get it out in the world if you can't lay out the tasks and meet the deadlines, or just FINISH SOMETHING. You'll never be able to make a living. And here's where the circle goes round and round like those wheels on the bus Han is always singing about. And who was I really yelling at? I know who.

I apologized to both kids for polluting the morning with my mad yelling, but I knew it could have been worse. I've been worse. And while Iona looked a little wan and her eyes were a little pink around the edges when I sent her off to fifth grade with her late slip, she's got to be very aware that she's a bit of a genius for conquering PowerPoint and the Gods and Goddesses, because I told her that too. But honey, pulling things out at the last minute is not a lifelong recipe for success. So learn it now.

And the question is, does that ever work? Do we ever learn life lessons because someone tells us to? Or do we learn them when we're ready, or when the choice is so clear as to be like a gun to our head?

What I love* today:

Coffee. 

Robert Horton, a principled, drily funny man of movies and comic books. I try not to miss him Wednesdays on Steve Scher's Weekday and I usually do miss him.

My kids, duh. (The 'duh' is a tribute to Iona. Yesterday when I picked her up from school late, she glared. I asked if it was an accusatory look. "Yes!" "But I'm only four minutes late." "Duh, that's a long time when it's raining, Mom!")

Corn chips, specifically the ones from the brand Late July.

Getting a good night's sleep after several nights of not getting a good night's sleep. Han is newly sleeping in a big-boy bed, and though he is excited and proud, he's afraid. Like we're all afraid of change. Afraid when relationships change, afraid when we change, and afraid when the bars are taken off the bed. Afraid enough to yell for Mom at three in the morning several nights in a row. Then Mom's afraid enough of lots of things that she doesn't go back to sleep. And talk about scary, try sleep-deprived Mom. 

Escaping all connected devices (this is what I'm doing next) to go write in the other house, AKA the guest room over our garage, AKA MY STUDIO!

. . . . . . . . . .

* I try not to use the word 'love' in a casual way. But I don't want to replace it with 'like a lot' right this moment; I need to get to the studio and write. I am translating the book into first person for draft #3. And, at some point, I need to sign up for swim lessons for scaredy-cat swimmers (fills me with dread), partly as research (MC is afraid of water) and partly because I'd like to make up with water someday and be able to have fun in it, with my family. That'll be a future blog post, or series of them. Also, when am I going to start that professional writer's blog? What shall I call it? How am I going to execute it? Now is when I wish I knew how to make a web site. Who wants to make me a web site? If only my best designer friend wasn't so busy making a movie. Okay, enough of this. Gotta go.

Just after I throw in random photos of a recent nice day, taken with iPhone because my camera is broken again.

  

Dear Iona,

As I write, you're on your way to spend the night at a farm to see how pioneers lived. Except you'll put M&Ms and marshmallows on your homemade ice cream, and I'm pretty sure pioneers didn't have M&Ms or marshmallows. 

The thing is, I miss you. Most days when you're at school, I'm grateful for the time to work. You'll have a great time. I can't wait to hear the stories. Will you and that particularly prickly friend of yours make up? Will you come back asking to play with someone new? Maybe you'll want to show us how to make ice cream, or weave our own cloth, or you'll ask if we can get some livestock.

When I came into your classroom to say goodbye, you let me kiss you on the cheek without embarrassment. I *think* you're not embarrassed, anyway. Wouldn't you tell me? You showed me the math worksheet you'd just finished, upon which you'd written your name in 3-D block letters and drawn some tiny illustrations. You whispered, "Mom. Big Ben made it into the seven wonders of the world." Mentally, I pumped my fist. You triumphed. You wrote a report a while back in which you made your case for Big Ben.Your report convinced the librarian that Big Ben should be in the top seven. Most important, you had that proud look I love to see. You've come far in the last two years.

I'm glad the sun is out for you. Your convoy is on the road, headed for Puyallup, where you'll stop for lunch. 

My ten-year-old girl. Be safe.

I love you to infinity and beyond,

Mom

Han has been waking at all hours, usually way too early in the morning, and yelling, moaning and crying. Since he is three and a half, I'm not convinced I should let him cry it out, but I don't know what else to do. So I'm letting him cry it out. This morning he commenced crying at 4:30, then 5:15, then 6:30. When I did sleep in between bouts I had horrible dreams about lice and flies buzzing in my ear. Then I dreamed that Han drowned in a swimming pool because I wasn't watching him, and someone took his body out and left it on the side. It was a horrific dream, and I woke to that feeling of great relief after such a nightmare.

When I finally got out of bed this morning I felt limp and soggy. I returned home after taking kids to school feeling blue. I forced myself to go for a run, and as I was tackling my first hill a guy on a bicycle stopped to let me cross the street. "Lookin' good," he said. "Keep it up." That simple thing, encouragement from a stranger, lifted my spirits immensely.

In other happy news, Iona doggedly finished a whole book in a day. Saturday night as she went to bed she broke down in tears, confessing that she had not read the book assigned to her class. Book group discussion for the book is today, and I am one of the facilitators. Yesterday I lectured her about responsibility and telling the truth. She picked up the almost 200-page novel and managed to read nearly the whole thing in between doing homework, being pestered by her brother and accompanying me on a three-hour outing. This morning she finished the book. I could tell she was proud of herself.

And finally, also in the good news department, it looks like Han has embraced the potty!

I really have no reason to be blue, do I?

Encouragement.

Dear Iona,

You are growing up! Eight has come too soon for me. Last night you were reading chapter ten in Mandy, and you worked out nevertheless on your own. You still have trouble falling asleep by yourself and are recently plagued by nightmares at that point just between waking and slumber. Last night, zombies and kidnapping. I am sorry that I was too irritable to be the one to put you back to bed; luckily, Dad was home. He came back upstairs and said, "I didn't mention the shape shifters that come up through the floor." He was trying to snap me out of my mood, and it worked. 

You are a little anxious about going to your new school in September, but you are excited too. You are independent and confident, and are willing to try anything. That's why I'm surprised when you actually need me, but occasionally you do. A couple weeks ago you got homesick when sleeping over at Aunt Kathy's. A couple days later, the first day of boating camp, you needed to come home early because you were having a bad day. The next day you stuck it out and had a great time, kayaking and rowing and sailing and paddle-boarding and jumping into the lake.

You love to run fast and chase and be chased by your friends. Yesterday evening I watched you and five girls run after each other and shout, barely stopping to pay attention to the cranky lady who admonished you to be quiet. 

A minute ago you came upstairs tousled and long-legged in your yellow pajamas with pink, blue and green butterflies. You were sniffing and rubbing your nose red. You still refuse to blow your nose, as you have forever. You drank a glass of water, shuffled to the green armchair and picked up The Adventures of Daniel Boom, Loud Boy. I asked you what it was about and you read the inside flap about an evil doctor who wants to rid the world of all children, or at least force them to be well-mannered. Horrors! As you read you waved those animal toes at me, the ones you inherited from your father. 

And of course, as always, I love you,

Mom

Dear Han,

One week ago today (it feels like five minutes) we all, with Grandma and Granddad and Kathy and Delaney, went to family court. Finally, our union is done! In the eyes of the world, we are a family. Our lawyer was efficient and funny, supplying a running patter that was part instruction, part explanation and part humorous commentary. He has helped with five thousand adoptions! One of his families had forty family members and friends in the courtroom. He said, "The judges love it. It's the only happy thing they see in family court." Then, addressing you and pointing down the hall at a shackled, orange-jump-suited man being led into a courtroom he said, "And you want to avoid that look if you can, son. Now congratulations, go celebrate, eat junk food."

You want so badly to talk these days! When, in a book, you see a cat (or a fox or tiger or bat) you yell, "Cat! Cat! Cat!" You have a lot of words, including beer. When you fall or hit your head on something you tearfully reenact it for me, pointing to the offending piece of floor or furniture and saying, "There! There!" You occasionally throw mini-tantrums, kicking your feet and making your mouth into an O as you cry and lie down. You are not a fan of costumed children or adults. But you love to celebrate everything, hoisting your schooner of milk and crying, "Coo!" 

Coo to all of us, Hanster Monster.

Love,
Mom

   

Writing poetry!

On Saturday, Iona and I attended a poetry workshop at her school. I was a little hung over from my birthday outing the night before so, though I really wanted to attend, it was an effort. I wasn't sure I would have the energy.

The ultra-cool, talented Kat Vellos ran the first workshop Iona and I attended, and Kat was so kind, so open, that I should not have worried. The words flowed easily, though (embarrassingly) I cried as I wrote my first poem. The group shouted out random words: shoes, fold, orange. We had about one minute to write anything.

-----------
FOR IONA

My shoes get me there

So I can fold you into my life

The glow you give me is

Orange, a rosy feeling

Inside my chest.
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The next words were: island, shirt, beetle, top

My island is tiny

Easy to care for

I sit under the lone tree

Watch a beetle crawl up my shirt

I make plans

I don't do anything

I watch the beetle

Make its way up my torso

Until it gets to the top

I say, "Hello."
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The next workshop was inspired by William Carlos Williams' poem, "This Is Just To Say," and was facilitated by Suzanne Edison, a Renaissance woman (and friend of mine) who just finished her own chapbook of poems, Stunned with Flowers. She had us write apology, or confessional, poems. I could feel my tears still close to the surface, so I knew I had to tread lightly. No poems for Han. Keep it light. (Maybe poems for you later, Hanster.)

Iona gave me the idea to write a poem to the tiny black ants I've been battling of late. Here is her poem on that subject:

-----------
 Sorry Ants that live in our house

Forgive me please for flicking you

All your friends and you

All the way across the room

Maybe it was fun flicking the bum

But maybe it hurt flicking the blurt but

Please forgive me ants that live in our house

Please do

Please do
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Here is mine:

TO THE ANTS IN THE PANTRY

I was not sorry at the time

When I rubbed and scrubbed

Your little bodies into dust

(Or maybe I did feel something;

Small regret, mixed with annoyance.)

Allow me to explain my murderous impulse:

Seeing you swarming over crumbs

Made me feel like a bad mom;

A terrible keeper of the house.

I had to destroy the evidence, and

You were the collateral damage.

ANT REBUTTAL

Dear Giant Killer Lady

We are now dust

In your house

Being breathed in

By your children, husband, cat.

Breathed in by you.

We stick to the bottoms

Of all your twelve bare feet

And mix into your dinner.

HA.
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So then Iona wrote her own ant rebuttal:

Dear Flicking Ant Child

We had an incident with your mom

So you're breathing us in and out

But with you, we can

Forgive you after all.
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Iona wrote a nice riddle poem:

I am as silver as can ever be.

(When I'm new.)

Or even gold.

As hard as a brick

Inside and out.

I have lines vertical and diagonal

Sometimes, even zig-zag.

I have a hole in the top.

I am as thin as a leaf.

(A Key)
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This workshop was the most inspiring thing I have attended in a very long time. Thank you, Iona's school, Kat, Suzanne, Sheba, Bookman and Talena.