| Do you see their paws? |
| Gia and Dottie girl. |
| "ballerina bars" |
| "are you here mom? are you here?" |
There are moments that I am blown away that this child, *this child* is my child. That I get to mother her, love her, guide her, learn from her. How has she grown so fast?
Dear Gia, Aiden, and Trace,
I apologize in advance for all the wacky things your mothers have made you do and *will* make you do in the future. It never pans out quite like we hope it will. The painting sessions, the beach trips, the christmas light strolls, movies, games, cookie decorating, zoo, museum, exploring adventures, and on and on. It. never. goes. as. planned.
...but what I just realized is this: things never went as planned for your mothers as well.
All of OUR shopping trips, movies dates, dinners, vacations, club moments, drunken arguments, eye rolling conversations, roommate fun, roommate hell, christmases, birthdays, thanksgivings, plane rides, weddings, baby showers, and births.
you. name. it.
none of those things ever went exactly as we hoped, for better or worse, and there were plenty of meltdowns and tantrums along the way for your mothers as well. We are wild, passionate, women, and with that comes a little bit of crazy. The three of you will love each other without even realizing that that's what it is, because you've always been family, you've always been friends. You will fight, and kick, and scream - and HATE to share sometimes - but you will do it because someone, somewhere, says you should. You will find more humor in sitting on a bench outside Color Me Mine, than you will on the inside painting plates for Santa, just as we found more fun sitting on a bed, laughing, than we ever did that night as we left for who-knows-where. You won't remember the destination, but you will (you will) remember those moments it took you to get there.
You are stuck with the two people who sit beside you. Lucky- and stuck.
I see the similarities in your relationships, and wonder if they will parallel your mothers exactly. It doesn't really matter if they do, but I'm curious all the same.
My point? Be silly. Have fun. Laugh on park benches and giggle while you essentially tell us to f@#k off as we plead for you not to jump in puddles and most definitely, not to sit in them. Love the moments the three of you share that we couldn't possibly understand, because we aren't three or four years old. Because we aren't you. Because we once knew someone just like you, and you and you.
The place I come from is warm in the summer, too warm in fact, and full of bugs, flies and sunblock. In the winter, the rain and fog are dominant fixtures as are layers of fat and clothes. We invested in hoodies and coats that repelled rain when I was younger. It wasn't until I moved to Napa/ Oakland/ Alameda/ Emeryville that I truly invested my cash into a fine coat(or 5). It was chilly a lot of the time and I had a new found respect for clothing and style. $200 on a coat was a small price to pay for the feelings I got out of wearing it.
FastForward>> to 2011, where I sit typing this in a pair of vans that peek out from underneath jeans, which sit closer to my belly button than they used to, and hid under a simple tee. My Pièce de résistance? A stupid plain, gray hoodie (thin) from Old Navy. Classy. Comfy. Non-give-a-fucky.
My style - or lack of - isn't the point. Well, I guess its sort of the point.
I tossed out a lot of the contents of my closet the other day and Im feeling a little sentimental. There were jeans hanging inside my closet that were ones I wore while dating Gia's father Oakland. Do I need those? Am I that size? Will I even want to touch those things with a ten foot pole once I find myself able to fit in them or will I run out and buy a pair of kick-ass jeans instead? The latter Im guessing. So I tossed them. I got rid of the things I wore when I lived in a rad-jacket sort of place and kept the things that take me out of the house everyday. I've been weeding out clothes here and there for a while now but this last batch of material-goodbyes was the finale.
old shirts from even older ex-boyfriends? gone*
skimpy "girls night in" clothing? *absolutely gone*
super high heels ? gone*
books-stuffed animals- odds and ends from men I no longer love or like? gone* gone* gone-and-gone*
The only thing left hanging around are my jackets. I can't part with those bad girls. They were my superman capes and invisible shields.
and now they're gone.
good.
I have more room for things I love and use.....like etsy-inspired banners and ribbons, boxes, bows, props, suitcases, camera lenses, blankets, sheets and sheets (because I'm a moron and I decided to go with WHITE bedding, and I have a toddler who loves red crayons, chalk and slipping up with the potty training on MY bed as well as getting a nightly shot that sometimes causes bleeding, so I need 4,378,890 sets of sheets. and nerves. of. steel).
It just seems like everytime I think Im fully into my new stage of being, something else comes along to remind me that Im trying to hide out with pieces of my past (ie. stupid clothing). Perhaps I liked the memories. Perhaps. I've got photos of the things I really want to remember so away those things go.
Anything in your closet you just CANT part with? How long has it been there?
Ray Charles once passionately sang a little song titled “Night time” and part of it went a little something like this:
You know the night time, darling
(night and day)
Is the right time
(night and day)
To be
(night and day)
With the one you love, now
(night and day)
True? Absolutely. The one I love is 40.4 pounds of pure beauty cuddling up to me at night, sticking knees in my thigh and rubbing her face into my neck like she’s a baby kitten looking for warmth and protection. We read stories, unless – like a bad mother – I’m just too tired for a formal handheld book and I try to make up something witty to rattle off to her. When I’m done reading, or making up fantastically horrible tales, I turn to face my little love and kiss her lightly on the nose. She giggles and blinks like a cupie doll.
“Gia, I love you to the moon and ….” I start to say.
She cuts me of and leaps head first into creativity, telling me “…… Annnnnnnnnd Dinosaurs!”
From that night on I’ve refused to love her to the moon and stars, or to the moon and back again. Instead, at her request, I love her to the moon and dinosaurs.
I've decided to take this saying, this personal exchange that the two of us share each night (and more often, throughout the day) and build a website on it. I want to change a blog for it. Things are moving so quickly in our lives and I feel like I owe it to Gia and myself to embrace my need for change in order to move on happily. New colors, titles, hobbies, and people propel into the future, and I need that right now. Change. There are so many things I can't change, but this? This, I can.
Enjoy- and stay tuned for a new blog up-do!
C+..... that's what the top of my ******* midterm test paper says. It looks polite enough, sitting on my paper with perfect curvature and light blue-black ink. It's not scorning me in crimson ink with hasty penmanship. No, no, it looks nice. Somehow though, I feel the grade sitting heavier in my mind than I feel my peers do their papers. I look around and see thrilled faces that there is a "D" on the top of their midterm, and not an "F." Some are grinning like psychopaths after a fresh kill, because their lined college-ruled paper has a "B."
I'm not happy. I'm not going to be happy unless I question the incorrectness of it all and find my way to a better grade. If this had been an essay that I wrote because I was told to, and I had no connection to its content, then I would have more than likely accepted the graded spanking. This topic was one that I wanted. This was the one question out of the five presented, that I wanted, and was lucky enough to have been assigned to. The words came out like projectile vomit. I couldn't stop them from flowing. There was an ease with which my hand scribbled down the words as fast as I thought of them.
C+
Fat chance. I'm not okay with settling for something so mediocre. Look at its shape. It looks like a hand that curves and allows its fingers to almost touch their tips together. It looks like it wants to be a circle but didn't quite get there. It's an almost circle. C is an almost. It is almost good, or almost bad. The plus is just a personal F-you that let's me know just how close I am to the former.
For seventy-five minutes I sat in my class and wondered how I would be able to get through asking why I received this grade, and more importantly, what the comments written all over my paper meant. Some, I felt, were unjust. I ignored my class lecture today and devoted the duration of class to the examination of each comment, its validity, and my possible error. Some were right, some remained wrong. I spent seventy-five minutes training myself not to cry. I repeated it.
I made a mantra:
"don't cry while talking to Dr. ***
don't cry while talking to Dr. ***
don't cry while talking to Dr. ***"
When I am passionate about something-
when I feel frustrated and angered over things that I believe -with every ounce of my fat ass- are true, I find that I forget to blink. My eyes well up with tears, and then I become angered that Im angry and tearing up.
Mantra. Mantra. Mantra.
My points were well received and my grade has been changed to a better one - a happy compromise. What I can't shake is this realization that I am now a student who fights for what is right for my education. I cry when I fear I am running out of time for an assignment. I beg for extra credit. I loathe the slackers in class. My bookcase is filled with highlighted papers and practice tests that are done until they're right. Im right. five times. I study, and study and study.
I cry over C+'s and tape A's to the fridge.
In 2010 I participated in a Flickr inspired 365 day photo project and chronicled GiGi for a year. One photo, every single day, for a year. There were times that I felt annoyed with the tediousness of having to edit, post and share. It wasn't until I had gotten to the end of the year and began to edit my photos that I realized how perfect each and every one of them were, because of the subject. I found the week, the exact week, where GiGi started to become this little girl. I spent every day with her (with the exception of a weekend for my birthday and another - which still, by the way - had pictures that the sister helped me with) and if I had not done this project I would have never been able to tell you which month it was that her hair seemed longer, or that her face became thinner and her legs hung closer to the ground when she sat upon a park bench. August. August is the month her face morphed into a little girl and shed the image of a teeny toddler.
The 365 Project taught me a lot about my daughter and myself as a parent. I learned about this craft, this photography. There were times that I felt bored with the types of images that were taken, because there were indeed times when her sleeping face, perched upon a pillow were all I could snap before the clock struck midnight and my camera turned into a pumpkin. I hated that for days on end I would have to decide on whether or not to use the photo I had taken of her with my cell phone while she was brushing her teeth/ smacking the TV/ having a tantrum in time-out town was better than the one of her sleeping that I snapped with Nina Nikon. I loathed that those were my choices. So I put them off. I put off editing those photos and posting them until I had a pile of images to sort through.
When I looked at my set of photos and the last one read "day 211/365" I nearly pissed myself. Collecting images and sorting through my various eJournal entries in my Word Docs and figuring out how to mash them together without my head exploding was proving to be a massive challenge. Alas, I did it. I put on my big girl pants and followed through on a project I had so much fun doing at times, and whose final product I was sure, positive, I would love. Looking through the folders clearly marked with the date the image was taken proved to be a lot easier, and A LOT more time consuming that I had initially imagined, but it was doable.
I found the folders, one day after the next, with a mere 4 or 5 photos in each one, 3 out of those 5 blurry or over exposed and began to see the bigger picture. She was asleep in those photos, but on the other side of her little hands clasped together was a mound of textbooks. I didn't take her out and create some set/stage for a mini photo shoot because I was studying. I was in school. I fell asleep before I finished my online geography assignment, or wrote a paper on violence in the media. What I captured in those images wasn't just a little girl growing up, but myself growing with her. Those images reflect what *our* life was like in 2010, not just hers. Sometimes life was sloppy and tired and forgetful. Other times, our life was organized and blissful. There were days when I couldn't express (in words) to someone - or myself - how much loved her and a photo was the only choice I had left. The photos splashed humor and talent all over the place and punched me in the gut with irony sometimes. They captured firsts. They shut the door on lasts.
I love my kid. I love her more than anyone on the planet and I feel so lucky to have a record of what each day was like with her, for one entire year.
...and I want that feeling again.
This year, my 365 day project has gotten off to a mediocre start. At least, I thought this year had started that way, but yesterday I had a moment of clarity with regards to this whole thing. I knew that I wanted a challenge, something that I could push myself to do - raise the bar. So I've decided that while having a set of print for myself is an amazing gift, I want Gia to have a set as well. Whether there is any improvement in vision or not, I'm confident that large print may be a reading option in her life. I'm hopeful. Even if I'm completely wrong there is always the option to have things Brailled for her. This year, I've begun to make each image representative of how our day went sot hat I can look back and remember it. For GiGi, I've decided to tailor my entries to her, and her alone, and include what the image looks like so that she will have a better understanding of the photo.
I'm excited. Thrilled, really, to finally know how to get into this years project. I won't beat myself up for not posting every day, because chances are, I *won't* post every single day. I have school, and homework, and the park, and dinner...and story time, and a million other things to do and sometimes I won't make it to editing or writing and posting each day. It doesn't mean that I didn't capture a moment and that I don't have something brilliantly personal to share with my daughter. The pressure stays at bay this way. I'll try to give myself a short term goal of having a month unprocessed at a time and no more, but with today's date being February 3, 2011, I suppose I've already slipped up. Que sera, that's what this weekend is for.
... so with that, let the project commence!
(a visual sneak peek...)
It's 12:01 am and like a child who waits up for their Santa Claus or Easter Bunny to arrive and bring them a surprise; I too wait up for something. I've anticipated this moment for the past year. I've dreaded it, loathed it, loved it, tried to lose weight for it, planned a party for it, stopped planning a party for it, and waited up for it.
I'm not quite sure what I'm looking for today.
It is October 31, 2010, and I am officially thirty years old.
For some odd reason I had half expected to turn into something at this magical midnight, but much to my amazement it feels like New Years Eve 1999. Do you remember that year? Everyone sat around and anticipated the end of the world at the stroke of midnight, but nothing happened. People stayed the same. The weather stayed just as it was 13 seconds prior to the time changing from 1-9-9-9 to 2-0-0-0. Just as I sat and watched the clock on that new Years Eve - preparing in my mind for a potential doomsday, but neglecting to lift a finger to change it - I sit in my pajamas, wipe Gia's drool off of my arm, and wait while the clock ticks still, and doomsday never comes.
I am thirty, and I can't stop saying it.
Some people make lists of things they want to do before their fateful thirty arrives. I hadn't really thought of it all that much until now. Do I have a list of things I feel that I should have accomplished before thirty?
*I wish my ass wouldn't have brought me into this age bracket at this size.
*I wish I would've been stronger, sooner.
-There are things however, that I am happy to have done. Places that I am happy to have traveled and people that move me all the time.
+My daughter, as most people say about their little ones, has changed my life.
+The family I have, though trying, and stressful as we all may be in our interactions at times - loves me, and I them - no matter what.
+I have made three of the very best friends a girl could ever want or deserve to have.
+I've seen more bands than my 16 year old hands could have ever prayed for in those days.
+I've met a legend.
+I've fallen in love.
+My book has begun ...metaphorically and physically.
+I'm committed to school.
+I've suffered.
+I learn something, every. single. day.
+My passport has been used.
+I've done things to make my parents blush.
+I've given.
I am done with my twenties and thank-my-stars, I have taken enough photos to remember the best times and retrace my steps of the even better times.
When Gia turned one I cried because my little girl was finished being a baby. I cried a few minutes ago for reasons quite similar. I wasn't upset that she was growing into someone new and older, but there was something heartbreaking about having to say goodbye to a time she'll never get back. My twenties are the same. I'm trying not to be completely bummed that they are over, because the events that occurred in those years were the events that established who I am and who I love at this very moment in time. Still, I feel like there is some apprehension to turning thirty. Maybe the reason that so many of us (please, please let me be right - that there are MANY of "us" and that I am not imagining all of this)are frightened by this particular age is because of the responsibility it brings with it. I'm no longer in my twenties, thus I am required to be more focused and stable than I've ever been in my life, because who wants to watch a thirty-something fuck-up left and right? No one. People look past the mishaps in your twenties and write off the stupidity to acts of capricious youth. In your thirties, people just write you off as a fuck-up. That's a lot of pressure in my book.
If you're reading this and you think that I should shut up and eat cake, then high-5. I wish I didn't over analyze things sometimes, but I do. That is me.
It's 12:40am and I'm 40 minutes into being thirty years old. It's 12:40 am and I've "seen Santa" and "checked out what the Easter Bunny left me," and if it's all right with you, I'm going to cozy up to a little girl who held my hand today and called me "Mommy." I promise to spend this birthday both lamenting my twenties and saying Cheers! to my thirties.
Thirty will be easier to handle with sweet little breath on my cheek and a finger in my eye. Thirty will be more interesting with 3 am trips to the potty with Gia to pee, instead drunken twenty something nights filled with 3 am trips to the potty to puke.
-m
Dear Political Science,
These types of conversations are never easy so it might be best for you to just sit there and take it like a subject.
I think the inevitable is here and we should probably break up. When Im with you, I think of other things like English and that sexy new guy Math. I know, I know, I said I was really into you, but I think the honeymoon is over. Sure, we have great times here and there, like yesterday when we locked eyes during the discussion of the tenth amendment and the courts giving states their rights again. There was also the time that we shared a video on the subject of how the federal government nationalized the Alabama National Guard, so that two African American students could attend the University of Alabama. Maybe it was the Bobby Kennedy or JFK on the big screen that really put that *spark* there, but it was magical nonetheless. I still don't understand why the State national guard had to receive executive orders to be a NATIONAL state nat'l guard, and you talk yourself in circles when explaining.
The bottom line is that you are smothering me. Every night when I get home from hanging out with Geog, and Eng, and Algebra, you're like, "What the f*ck? Where have you been? I have so many things to explain to you right now. In fact, I wrote them down and I want you to check out sixty pages worth..of my feelings, of what makes me...ME." *yawn* I think we need to have more of a "closed book" relationship if you know what I mean. You're so emotional and long winded.
When you talk, I'm listening to other people.
When you quiz me on what you've just said, I freeze up because halfway through reading your letters (it seems like you write books, not letters), I start thinking about other more important things. Chips. M&M's. Bad breath. The new season of Brothers & Sisters. My daughter.
That's another thing. You don't care about my child. I mean, I thought when I entered into this relationship with you, that things would be intense, but I had no idea that you would suck the life out of me. Let's face it, Gia comes first and at this point you are trying to push against that. Unacceptable.
There is something else I need to tell you. Last night, after I put my pajamas on and let my hair down, and you crawled into bed beside me and opened up your book looking for a little action.... I was secretly reading an In Touch magazine while you stared up at me with your big blue words. I'm not even ashamed. Sure, this is an awful venue to say things like this, but had you made it a little more exciting in those moments where my guard was down and your book was open, maybe I wouldn't have had to balance the checkbook or read magazines while you were...well, you know what you were doing. (by the way, seeing how many 'post-its' you could hang from your index, stopped being funny/cute weeks ago.)
While I'm confessing, last week - while you were away in my backpack - I logged into online algebra and spent the night doing it until we fell asleep. That's not all. Last Thursday, when I told you we would spend time together, and then at the last minute I said I was tired....? The truth is, I hammered out a quickie English paper. it was fast, and good, and it turns out, I got an A. Maybe that's the problem. I'm more of an English kind of girl - creative and spontaneous - and you are more of a fly by the seat of bookshelf kind of ...whatever. I'd say person, but you're so stiff its like you're not human.
We've been doing this dance for some time, and I think that it might be best to ride it out, just until our little semester, Fall 2010, grows up and spreads its own wings. After all, we need to set a good example. When our semester is gone, I'm going to clean its things out of the house and put a gym in its place like other mama-students with empty nest syndrome do. Who knows, maybe I will adopt another semester. One from a foreign country. A friend of mine says that a lot of little classes are homeless and I would like to open my home to a whole semester if I can. French 25, Spanish 101....
So, I will try to see you as little as possible until December 16th. Maybe We can just keep our conversation to minimum and have that Professor on campus be our mediator.
Always,
Megg