Lost Things

Today I am no longer blue.
I just returned from Kohl's where I lost my Kohl's credit card.
I had it in my hand, and then I didn't have it in my hand.

I rifled through my bags, my pockets, my purse.
Nothing.

I stood in line at Customer Service, with things to return,
and explained what happened to the nice lady at the counter.
She perkily asked for my last name,
and said she'd check but if I had just lost it, it probably wouldn't be back there yet.
Then she reached into the secret lost-but-found things drawer
and pulled it out.

"Today is your lucky day!" she said.

I couldn't believe it, and said,
"Wow, somebody was really honest to return that."

She said, "Oh yes, they usually do get turned in."

Lost things, returned by strangers.

I needed to hear that good news.

Blue

The children are usually the ones who have the day-after blues,
but this year I caught it somehow.

Might be partly because we dropped the teenager off at grandma's yesterday,
and coming home without him is never quite right.
Might be because now the middle child is a teenager too,
turning thirteen on Christmas Day.
Might be how I grossed myself out today by eating a fast food burger.
(I say I'm flexible as a vegetarian, but whenever I flex...I quease.)
Might be that picture of twin girl with what I highly suspect may be the
Last Baby Doll Of Christmas.

The night before Christmas, it is all potential.
The day of Christmas, it is all realized.
The day after, it is all over.

Now we live in the limbo of Not Christmas Anymore,
and Not The New Year Yet.

It's cold and I'm blue.


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Lookin' Good

I was pushing my cart down the canned goods aisle,
when I thought to call home and ask if we were out of waxed paper.

I was feeling good,
purposeful,
baseball cap on,
there to get the job done.

Then I remembered that my cell phone was not in my coat pocket,
but in my sock,
because my clothes had no pockets today,
and it just worked out to keep it there.

So I hitched up one leg of my pants,
and suddenly I felt sort of cool.
I actually had the thought - fleeting, ridiculous -
that I hoped nobody would become frightened if they saw what I was doing.

Like maybe I was pulling a gun or a knife out of my cool,
concealed leg-holster.

Of course I was wearing big clompy boots,
pushing a cart full of groceries,
clutching a list written on a well-worn spiral notebook
with "Writing Journal" scrawled in a child's handwriting across the front.
And I had a purple washable marker that I was crossing stuff off with.

Yeah I looked pretty dangerous.

Anyway, the illusion was shattered when I reached into my sock
and tugged only half of my phone out, since the back panel had come off and,
inexplicably, adhered itself to my calf.

I peeled the rest of my phone off of my leg,
slid it back together and made the phone call.

Unperturbed.
Uber-cool.
Lookin' Good.

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SNOW DAY

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twin boy
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middle girl
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twin girl
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School Daze

Taking a breath for a snappy comment over my shoulder
to the children in the backseat,
I realize I have already dropped them off.

sheez, I'm either talking to them when they're not here,
or we're circling the backstreets around the school
because I can't remember what I have driven into town for.

*

Stitches

They stitched him.
He tripped over the rug at Wendy's,
and banged his head against the trash can.

Nope, no germs to worry about there....

Anyway, today was the big Jiffy Mix field trip.
It's really cool.
They show you a slide show (I think it's an actual slide show),
and they give you a cookie and juice,
and then you walk between the red lines to see all the machinery
and the workers,
and you get to wear a hair net.

But the thing the twins have been talking about
for five days is the trip to Wendy's afterwards.

That's where he earned two stitches.

Funny thing about boy twin,
we always knew he'd end up with a few stitches,
the way he
careens,
cavorts,
caroms
through life.

We lost him once on a cruise ship,
and once at a Target,
and once at a petting zoo.

He was okay those times,
and he is okay this time too.

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It's A Feeble Request....

...when you hand a ten-year-old a 20 dollar bill for Santa's Secret Shop
and ask her to,

Bring back some change.

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I Can Take You

That's what I said to the teenager.
Although he is taller than I am now, I still outweigh him by a good ten pounds.
So I thought I could take him.

Now we are not a violent family.
We don't hit each other, even in play.
The worst fight anybody has ever had here
was a spit-fight in the way back of the van years ago
between the twins.

We try to touch each other gently.

But yesterday I was feeling sort of itchy
and I challenged him.
I think I just wanted to get him out of the chair
where he resides with his ever-present book,
slouched and slack.

C'mon, fight me.

He grinned and unfolded his body,
and proceeded to pin me to the floor.
He gave a running commentary to his delighted siblings,
a la The Dog Whisperer.

"See," he says while kneeling on my chest,
"this is what we call the submissive pose."

For my part, I could not stop laughing.
I had no strength whatsoever up against those dimples,
that curly hair, that wiseacre mouth.

There is something so startling,
magical,
and utterly incapacitating,
about the idea of my baby,
growing up.

Yes, I think the paralyzing laughter was why I lost this time.
I think I can still take him.

*

Numbers

His eyes were red and puffy and he appeared past bedtime.

"Ohhhh, come here," I said, pulling him into the chair.

He sank into my lap.

"I was just thinking about how I only have a few more hours left to be nine,"
he spoke into my shoulder.

"Ohhhh, shhhh, it's gonna be alright."

"But these 9 years went by so fast,
and now I'm going to be 10 and I just don't want to be."

I never knew a child who loves to be a child as much as this one.

He added,

"And I don't really know how many numbers I have left."

I thought about that.

I said,

"You are special, because you know how to enjoy the Now.
Most kids just can't wait to be older.
But you, you are living every minute with all you have.
It's going to be okay.

And I think you will have lots of numbers."

He sniffed, and nodded, and left my arms for bed.


I wonder...

Do I love my Now like that?

Alive

The teenager says that he feels uncomfortable
when they are all having their television show
and I run in and dance through their field of vision
and then run out again.

He thinks it's weird.

I said I am not here to make things comfortable for him.

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Squeaks and Miracles

Today I wore my squeaky shoe to church.
For some reason last year, the right one started squeaking and it's awesome.

I always announce that I'm wearing my squeaky shoe to the family.
They make no reaction whatsoever to my announcement,
but I'm strangely pleased about it anyway.

When I wear my squeaky shoe to church, I have to walk up to the front to play.
We all try to go up as quietly and unobtrusively as possible, but my shoe squeaks every other step and I think it's hilarious.

It's like I have this really funny joke inside of me that NOBODY else gets.

I was smiling all morning.

Right before we were to start playing, a really special person came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder and told me that her father's brain tumor just disappeared. It's completely gone.

I kissed her right on the face.

What else can you do?

Good things all around me.

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Looking for Something Good

I feel like I just opened a really really good fortune cookie.

My aunt called with a message of peace and love for me.
She told me to look for something good this Christmas season.
She has a sense of something positive that is coming.
She's feeling good vibrations...

Now I am too.

There's a saying that goes, "You find what you're looking for."

So thanks to my aunt, I am making it my goal to spend this season...

Looking For Something Good.

Join me?

The Last Santa

There comes a time in all of our lives, when we make that last visit to Santa.

I don't actually remember my last visit, but the year that I didn't go up to him is still vivid in my mind. I remember being in the department store, and being surprised by someone's suggestion that I go sit on Santa's lap. I remember a slow burn traveling up my cheeks as I wrestled with the truth of the matter...that in other's eyes I still seemed young enough for Santa....that I felt incredibly uncomfortable with this perception....but that secretly, deep down, I wished I were still brave enough to go up. I don't remember how old I was, but that startling knowledge - that through merely the passage of time, Santa had emerged one year as a stranger instead of a friend - left me unsteady, disgruntled.

Today we visited the mall ahead of the crowds and only twin boy eagerly said he'd like to visit Santa. But when we got there, he looked abashed...like a big boy in the nursery. We stood behind the fake trees, and twin girl joined us, uncertainly interested all of a sudden. A Santa's helper peered kindly through the trees and said, "Do you want to visit Santa? Come right in! Come on! You should come!"

So they trudged forward, feet dragging. Something pulled them forward, something pulled them back.
But they smiled politely and spoke their words of request with plastered smiles, with stiff necks.

We all laughed as we gathered up our things.
I said to the husband, "The Last Santa."
He agreed with a rueful smile.
Then all six of us walked away together, arms looped, smiles real again.

But leaving something behind.

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What is Good

So I am sitting on the couch with my bass, just holding it.
And it's all dark here and everyone is in bed.
And I'm listening to Richard Bona sing,
and his face looks like an angel.
And I think to myself,

"I want to be good inside.
So that whatever comes out of me

is beautiful."


Here is some Peace and Love.

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Alarms and Things

Tonight I found five dollars in my shoe.

LOVE when that happens.

And this morning I realized
that when you're not used to setting a clock radio,
the sound level of the radio station at 6am
is way WAY louder than it seemed the night before when you set it.

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We're All In This Together

There is an "I Voted" sticker stuck, face-up, to the bottom of the inside of my washing machine.
It's starting to get faded.

But I'm leaving it there for awhile.

I sense this wave of optimism in our country, from "both sides" - something that I don't remember feeling in a very long time.

I know that I am a naive and hopeful person, and tend towards the dreamy side, which is why I leave the worrying and the politics to the practical people most of the time.

When there is voting to be done, I read alot, look at things from as many sides as I can figure, and go with my gut.

Then I sort of...leave it in the hands of God and those more capable than me.

But this time I am loathe to let it go.
This time I voted, and I sat forward instead of sitting back.
I am, admittedly, naive and hopeful.
Honestly I really like this about myself.

Whoever we voted for, we are a part of the process, and a part of the results.
I'm trying to hang on to this feeling of newness and oneness we have as a country.
I don't want it to fade.

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Weird Girl

Weird things happen to me.

Today, I was stung by a bee.

That's not so weird, but consider this:

I was standing in my bathroom, blow-drying my hair,
and suddenly a bee stung my blow-drying hand.

Who gets stung by a bee in their own bathroom?

And yet...
that bee had to figure out how to enter the house,
make its way upstairs into my bathroom,
and then fight its way past flying hair and gale-force winds
in order to sting me.

I give him some creds.

The Bee Who Lasted Until November.

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Cars and Me

This morning I got my arm caught in the steering wheel,
up to my elbow.

I actually veered onto the grass, and had to stop the car completely
before I could unwind the wheel and get my arm out of it.


And this was just while navigating the driveway.

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Yum

Does anybody remember Wrapples???

Take an apple....add a Wrapple....wrap the Wrapple round the apple, add a stick....

I want one.

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Math Facts

Those timed tests are a real struggle for twin girl, just like they were for me.

So we got her some glitter glue pens, and she started working on making flashcards.

After about two were done, she discovered that if you fold the flash cards in half before the glue dries,
it makes a really cool pattern when you open it back up.



Can't figure out why those timed tests are so hard for this one, no siree....

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