To LF, World Changer:

Note:  LF is working on a project called "About Me".  One part of the assignment was to ask an adult from your life to reflect on how they came to know you, how you are special, and what important things they might have to say.  This is what I wrote for her:

 To LF, World Changer:

The most special thing about you is that you were a glorious surprise.  You came crashing into our lives at a most unexpected time in a most unexpected way and, quite literally, changed our lives.  Not in the “We’ve had a child and now our life is changed forever” way – I mean, in that way too, yes.  But mostly in the “We were living one life and in the course of 9 months it became something completely different from what we ever expected it could be” way. Your dad was recruiting in IT and playing in a band and I was applying for PhD programs in Native American Literature and performing poetry, pretty convinced I’d never have kids. You very much rocked our world, child. You are my biggest and best surprise. And our life, the one that you gave us, the one that is so very different from what we expected,  is so much better than we ever could imagined.

 

You and I met late at night on November 20^th, 2002.  You were 10 days past your due date, my friend – which is probably what should’ve warned us that we’d have a child who ran on Lilly-time.  The room was crowded when you were born, too. We had two grandmas, my doula, the doctor and my nurses, several NICU nurses and maybe even a partridge in a pear tree. Later that night, after everyone cleared the room and your father drifted off to sleep on the too-small and incredibly uncomfortable couch, I draped my hand over the edge of your hospital bassinet and rested my fingers on your chest.  I could feel your breath and you, suddenly, were so very far away from me. I wasn’t ready to share you, you see.  For nine and a half months, you’d been mine and mine alone but now, suddenly, you were in this world and I knew that this moment was the beginning of something momentous: your own unfurling.  A blooming, I guess. And every step of the way, your blooming has been beautiful and bittersweet.  It is a lovely thing, watching you grow. 

Now, you embark on your journey to middle school (How in the world are you in middle school already?). I know you will continue to unfurl – to bloom – and to leave your mark on the world as you’ve marked your father and I.  I am amazed by your potential and excited to get to know the you you will become.  On the next page, I enclosed a poem I wrote while you were waiting to be born, when our heartbeats were occasionally in sync, and when you very much enjoyed kicking Fergus as he snuggled up to my belly.

I love you, sweet* girl.

* Well, usually sweet. Sometimes sarcastic. Occasionally bitter. Let’s keep that bitterness occasional though, okay, and always, always, always recognize the beauty in this world and you are a part of that beauty

PAGE TWO: 

Dancing

My baby girl dances to poetry.
Still in the womb she swings to the sound
of her mama’s voice wrapped round nouns
like so many sweets.
She’s swept off her feet at strangers’ slow
voice swaggers on slam stages.
 She sucks syllables instead of thumbs
and kisses the fist of every poem punched
in her direction.

Daily she lounges lazy afternoons snoozing
but when prosidy breaks through she’s moving
to wrap sounds round her like scarves.
She’ll not be starved in linguistic deserts
but steeped deep in word love for life.

My baby girl dances to poetry.
It’s no surprise she relishes word sounds
resounding in her small world.
Her father fell for me over poetry,
found his heart somewhere inside the lines of my rhymes
and I tripped over his strings, fell in step with his
lyrical concoctions, lost in his notes.

Now, with musician blood – his
and word blood – mine,
who knows how many dances our girl’s
got to go through to find herself,
to find her rhythm living in every breath
of her body and line of her mind.

My baby girl dances to poetry
and after we wear the marks of her birth,
I’ll wash her in tears, tear her fears from her eyes
and give her one gift:

I’ll swaddle her in word love turned
self-love, turned two feet always moving
to the music of her mind
the poetry of her blood,
the pumping and drumming
and drumming and pumping,
drumming,
drumming.

My baby girl dances to poetry.

On pain and pie. . .

I'm sure it's scientific.  The crust is all carbs and fat and the inside is always something amazing and associated with some childhood memory like cinnamon and grandma's house or fresh tart cherries from the neighbor's tree.

I remember when David died and one evening shortly thereafter I cried to my husband Why are there so many pies here. People keep showing up and saying they're sorry and giving us pie.

Last month, when my grandmother was in the hospital, my uncle ran out for a quick lunch and passed over pie for dessert so he could get back and be with the family.  That night he arrived home to find a fresh apple pie on the counter waiting for him (in small towns, breaking and entering and leaving pie happens, you know).  And in his last night in his mother's home, after they'd buried her and gone through her things and packed away what they could, he dug out from the very back of the fridge, a single piece of pie.

I know. Sweets are awesome and can trigger the feel good chemicals in our bodies.  I understand with my brain that this makes sense.  And I understand with my heart that pie won't make things better, but that also, in some small way, it is an act of love.

It's a time waster, pie. It's pesky and temperamental - crust ingredients must be just so cold before and just so hot in the oven to come out right.  The insides are never as good if they come from a can, so they mean peeling and slicing or carefully pitting apples or peaches or cherries and carefully folding them with just the right amount of sugar.  And the baking.  The baking must be just right. There's a fine line between a perfectly golden crust and one that's gone tough and dry. I'm bad at pie most days because I'm bad at patience, I guess.

Yesterday, a friend told me some rough stuff.  I'm the worst and handling bad news. I clam up and say everything will be okay and tell jokes and act sarcastic and then run away. By the time I got home, I was overwhelmed with a nonsensical desire to make him a pie.  Apple. Cherry. Apricot or peach. Who knows.

My heart hurts for my friend - and yet he's amazing and inspiring and all of those hyperbole words that probably aren't all that hyperbolic when aimed toward the right people. And knowing what I know of him, he probably makes a killer pie.

Anyhow, my hope for my friend is that he has more time to spend as he wishes. And more pie and other acts of love.

What an obituary can't say. . .

Four generations. We are lucky, lucky people.

It can't tell the world how much you are loved or how much you will be missed.  Newspaper readers won't know how you taught me to bake cinnamon rolls, waiting for the big tupperware lid to pop, or how you usually served them when we got together.  They won't know that mom kept a few Bud Lights around for when you visited or how vicious a hand of "May I" can get when the family played late into the night.

It can list the names of your children and even your grandchildren, but strangers won't know how fiercely you loved us all.  And how, in the families that your children and grandchildren created or built over the years, you loved all of us all equally and deeply.  And it can't tell anyone how you always had something to serve us when we stopped by, especially sweets for the kids.

It won't whisper the secrets of your love for your husband but we know what we saw: a woman dedicated to her marriage and family through good years and bad. It definitely won't tell anyone that you sewed over your finger when I was 8 and learning to sew in your living room one summer, or how you put your finger in your mouth and said "It happens" and moved on.

And the word limit will keep us from telling the story of your months-long travel to visit everyone after Grandpa died.  How you stayed at his side in his last days and when he was gone, didn't melt into a shell of yourself but went a goodwill tour of the United States to see the people you loved.

Finally, because I'm stopped by the limitations of time, not a lack of things to say: there is no way for us to say in your obituary that you are here.  That your smile is woven into the fabric of each of us and your eyes shine on through your children and grandchildren and great grandchildren.  That we all aspire to your strength and subtlety.  That we will do everything we can to live the lives you helped give us in a way that honors you and inspires others.

I love you, Grandma.

High/Low

Kind of an old Honeybadger picture, but definitely one for the books.

“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Tonight, while settling Elsa down to sleep (which involves a lengthy ritual interrupted by room break-outs and waking up siblings and sometimes sleeping in a drawer voluntarily or doing some other such day-extending naughtiness), we were snuggled together.  Nose to nose, her head resting on my hand, she said Let's do High/Low. When asked her high, she said school. This is always her answer.  Her low involved choosing the wrong stick for the stick pony she made today.  I'm guessing in a world where that's your low, you're doing pretty well.

Then she asked me mine.

My high was. . . well, it was the first day of the new semester, so seeing fifty fresh faces in the classroom was great. That was my high.  Then I told her my low was when I lost my temper with everyone in the house this afternoon.

Mama she said.

Don't worry, Mama. She said.

I'll help you find it tomorrow, Mama. And then I snuggled her until she drifted off to sleep.

Oh, here's something I do now. . .

Mr.LMTYS has been jogging for several years now. He's addicted, I think. Won't miss a day, really - sleet or snow or terrible sleep doesn't matter. He's out there running. And my friends are runners - like, marathon runners.  And somehow, beyond all reason, I ended up on the board of a running charity. And one of my internet heroes and fellow Sriracha lovers, Matthew Inman, HE always talks about jogging being awesome.  Because I am easily swayed by peer pressure and internet strangers, I thought what the heck. 

Why not. 

So I started last Wednesday.  On Thursday I ran in the lazy river at the pool during the Honeybadger's swim lessons. Friday I ran in the cold.  It was awesome. Did you hear that? It. was. awesome. 

I like to think I look like this.
If you add like 20 lbs and tie dye pants and a bright green hoodie and a stroller and a 7 year old boy talking about Minecraft. 

My goal is to run several R2DG 5ks this summer - and then, maybe, if I'm feeling really spectacular, a half-marathon by age 40.  That sounds impressive, right?