Hour Glass

I have these jeans.
They are my favorite jeans.
They are so forgiving, and soft, and they look good all the time.
When I gain a few pounds, they still fit.
When I lose a few pounds, I wash them and they fit again.

I love these jeans.

But then my daughter wore them and put a hole in the knee.

I think she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,
but I was still not very happy,
because these jeans have been with me for years.

I knew they were getting old, but hadn't been able to find them in any store,
and that hole propelled me to call the 800 number for Levi's.

The nice woman on the phone said yes they still make them,
and she would send me a pair with no shipping fee.

When they arrived I pulled them right on, right out of the package,
and ahhhh.....they are just the best jeans ever.
And they get softer every year.

Until they wear out.

I stood there in my new jeans, pondering this.

I thought, "One of these days they are going to stop making these jeans."

And then I had the brainstorm of ordering enough jeans to last me the rest of my life!

I thought how great it would be to pull on a fresh pair of my favorite jeans when I am
in my eighties.

So then of course I had to do some math in my head, to figure out how many pairs of jeans I would need to order.

And then I had another thought.

I pictured this tall, orderly pile of plastic-wrapped jeans on the shelf in my closet.

I imagined myself, every few years, pulling out a fresh pair.

And every few years, seeing the pile get a little bit smaller.

So then of course I imagined myself being very protective of my jeans,
carefully preserving each pair, making them last as long as possible,
trying to tweak a few extra months here or there along the way.

And then I thought about how I would feel when I opened up that last pair of jeans.

The last pair.

They will be horribly out of style by then.
But they will be soft and they will still fit.

And I hope that I will wear them out.
Literally.
I hope I finish up that last pair with a huge hole in the knee.

*

Sometimes My Life is a Movie

This morning on the way to school I think we were all a little tired.
I was thinking of all the stuff I have to do this week,
and regretting shoving my slipper-socked feet into the toes of
Twin Girl's silver princess ballet flats on the way out the door.

In the back of my mind I was thinking as we turned onto Main,
that usually at this point in the drive on a Monday
I am giving a little positive pep talk to everybody,
so that the week starts out right.

But this morning my toes were crunched into those shoes
and my mind was on the busy week ahead, and I felt no inspiration,
no words of encouragement came to me.

Just then, and I promise I am not making this up,
Twin Boy started singing "Don't Stop Believin'",
really softly until he didn't know the words anymore.

Then there was a pause and somebody else started in on the verse,
and everybody gradually joined in, with hushed, sleepy voices,
one picking up the words of the verses where somebody else left off,
until we were all joined together on the chorus:

Don't stop, believin,
Hold on to the feelin!

I dropped them off as the song dwindled out.

Okay, that will do.

*

Picky

"Depending on the taste, I may or may not ask you to buy these tortillas again."

The Teenager just said this to me while fixing his bean burrito in the kitchen.
I tried a new brand of tortilla and he was suspiciously hopeful.

The Teenager doesn't talk very much, and most certainly not about food.
If he comments about food at all, it is to say that he hates it,
or he just gives a thumbs up while chewing.

These are the things he will eat:

Ramen Noodles (chicken flavor)
Cheerios
Macaroni and Cheese from a box
Bananas
Bean Burritos
Pizza
and Toast

Anyway, from the kitchen he just yelled the above comment and my ears perked up.

"They're really big!" he called out.

Then he said, taking his burrito to the table to eat it,

"It's been an honor working with this tortilla.
It is a fine tortilla.
But it really all comes down to taste."

A connoisseur of fine foods in my midst.

*

Starry

photo courtesy of Kelle Hampton Photography

My cousin is a star.
No, she really is.
She wrote an amazing birth story (here)
and her blog became almost instantly famous around the world.

Although the story is compelling and gut-wrenching and honest and beautiful,
I think people are coming back to the blog
because they have read further into it,
and found that she is just about the most honest girl they've met in a long time.

She kinda lives life starry-eyed.
Expecting the best.
And she takes everything that happens,
and she looks at it from all angles,
until she sees it's best side.
And then she chooses that.

Kelle has always just wanted to live life to the fullest,
whatever it brings her,
and her words inspire the people around her to stop racing through life
and instead,
to remember to celebrate the moments that they have here, now.

I realize, when I read her words, that I really do have what she has - Love.
And it makes me think that I can live it better.
Live my love better.

Love you Kelle.
Can't wait to see you on CNN this Tuesday.
Just smile if you can't think of what to say.
The whole world will smile back.

*

Needed: Brain

One day earlier this year, when I stumbled late out of bed,
I realized that they were all ready for school.

They had eaten and brushed and tied things without me.
I was no longer needed!

So I began to sleep in until the blissful hour of 7:30am.
I have grown quite wonderfully lazy.

But this morning, when I jammed my feet into boots
and staggered out the front door at 7:35,
fumbling for my keys and blinking my way down the driveway
in the early morning darkness,
slowing my car to match the speed of my pre-coffee brain,

I arrived at the high school, the first drop-off point,
where I was supposed to let two of them out of the car.

And only one got out.

I checked the back seat and scowled.

There were two imps grinning at me and pointing at the empty spot
where number 3 should have been.

They live for this stuff.

*

Closure

Some things need to be let go, eventually.

Sometimes you know it's leading that way because things get all out of kilter,
and there is wrestling, and letting go, and taking back up again.

And pieces of the puzzle that have fit before
don't fit anymore.
They can't be jammed back into their spaces.
No matter how hard you jam.

I know that as my children grow up,
all of the skirmishes, the discipline, the laughter, the coddling,
leads to this moment of letting go.

And I see it in my oldest, I can see it happening.

He is seventeen years old and wanting to be free,
but not ready yet,
squirming in his ill-fitting childhood clothes,
wrestling with his status,
clinging to infancy in some ways,
doffing it so completely in others.

"Me do it!"
he would say, at age 2.

And I would step back
and let him do it,
so clumsily and independently
and beautifully.

Like I am now.

*

Going Back

It's funny how lives twist and turn and get tangled up into each other.

When I was four, my daddy built a church in Jackson
and I remember going to Sunday School there,
sitting in the tiny chairs,
putting together Jesus puzzles in the basement cinder block room
just for preschoolers.

I remember having a tantrum in the narthex,
the staggered stained glass windows built into wood paneling,
wrinkled, smiling faces,
the half-doors of the nursery.

Later we moved to Dearborn, and that's where I grew up.

I met Cyndi in the ninth grade.
My earliest memory is of
making homemade flip-books with her,
on the sly, behind our notebooks
in the back row of English-French.

Stick figures danced their way through conditional tenses
and Parisien architecture,
sometimes bordering on the burlesque,
but mostly dwelling on the silly,
entertaining two naughty girls
and passing the time.

Passing the time.

Many, many years later
I attend her funeral, back at that old Jackson church.

It's funny how things circle around.

Because my brother eventually married her sister,
and Cyndi graduated from college,
found out she had Huntington's Disease,
had a baby,
ran away sometimes,
came back home,
remembered church and friends,
lived in a series of adult foster care homes until
she ended up in Jackson.

And the last nine years of her life she attended
the church that my daddy built,
and that's where they said the final prayers over her today.

So after most had left I walked down into the old basement of that church again,
the old section,
the part that holds up all the new remodeled parts.
And I stood in my old preschool classroom and I looked at those tiny chairs,
and I smelled that good old smell of glue and waxy crayons and faint mildew.

And I had the thought that maybe everything
always, eventually comes back around.

Stick figures dancing,
we pass the time from childhood on.

Our paths criss-crossing,
in pain and in joy,
touching each other sometimes
only so very lightly.

But touching each other just the same.

*

I Thee Wed

I do not like this pairing up of children who are age 11 into girlfriends and boyfriends.
The drama, the ridiculousness, the peer pressure.
But Twin Boy has loved Erin since the 1st grade when they used to kiss each other behind the cubbies.
Both sets of parents were alarmed until we realized that "kissing" meant smacking their hands and then planting it on the other's cheek. We said that was enough of that, but apparently the love of two 6 year olds has survived five years worth of our parental prudishness.

On the way to school this morning,
Twin Boy, Twin Girl and I had the following conversation:

Me: TwinGirl, why are you taking the cell phone to school?

TwinGirl: To take pictures

TwinBoy (interrupting): Oh yeah! Mom! I forgot to tell you that we're having a wedding today!

Me: A wedding?

TwinBoy: I'm marrying Erin! At second recess.

TwinGirl: But don't worry mom it's just for pretend.

Me: Oh, phew, yeah because I was worried...

TwinBoy: And instead of "You may kiss the bride", Isaac's gonna say, "You may hug the bride."

Me: Phew again!

pause.

Me: Um, is this something you have to dress up for? (eyeing his shirt...)

TwinGirl: I have a tie.

TwinBoy: You do?

TwinGirl: In my backpack.

TwinBoy: Oh. Thanks.

TwinGirl: Mom and after school today there's a safety patrol party but it's going to be SO BORING because all they do is turn off the lights in the gym and put out balls and stuff. And then they play football and I just CAN'T STAND football.

TwinBoy: I was thinking maybe I'd join football this year.

TwinGirl: No.

TwinBoy: Yeah I'm probably not going to join football this year.

After school I got the update:

TwinGirl: Mom! (breathless, on the cell phone) This was the weirdest day of school!

Me: Tell me.

TwinGirl: Well first, Mrs. Slater (principal) found out about the wedding. And she took them into the multipurpose room and she told them that they could have it as long as there was NO kissing, NO hugging, NO even high-fives!

Me: Alright Mrs. Slater!

TwinGirl: She said all they could do was a fist bump. But then Erin was crying, and Leo Fuller was going to be best man but now he couldn't, and James was sad.

Me: So, the wedding's off?

TwinGirl: I guess. But that's not the weird part! We were in Mrs. Perry's class and Mrs. Slater came to the door and she said she needed to speak to both of us and I was so freaked out! I thought I did something wrong. But she said that she had an honor for us, because she has known us since Kindergarten, and also because we are her favorite twins, and also because TwinBoy wore a tie today. She said she had chosen us to ring the bell a hundred times for Hundreds Day! And then everybody was crowded around us, and Leo was saying, "I wore a tie, I can't help it if I'm not a twin, why can't I ring the bell??" and we got to ring the bell a hundred times and it was so great, and I was so happy.

So of course then I was so happy too.

And I relayed the story to Middle Child who sighed a deep, excruciating sigh right from the depths of her fake Converse tennis shoes.

She attends middle school inside the high school that is right across the street from the elementary school. We only have around 600 students K-12 in our little country school.

Which I love.

So Middle Child sighed again and says,

"Yeah I was in band and Mr. Franks looked at the clock and he saw it was 1:50 and he said, 'Aw, I'm gonna miss the wedding!' I just put my hands over my face, Mom. Apparently in elementary band today all the boys came in to class with ties on and Mr. Franks asked what was going on and they told him about the wedding..So then he told everybody in my class about TwinBoy getting married at second recess and I just covered my face I was so embarassed."

I really love my life.

*

$3.50 Well Spent

I have this phobia/resistance/avoidance thing going on with things like birthdays and other special holidays.

Christmas I can handle.

Let me rephrase that.

Christmas is about all I can handle.

I have so many people in my life that I deeply care for.

And so many opportunities to forget about special days,
and hurt all of their feelings.

There are SO MANY areas of my life where I just can't seem to get it all together,
and remembering special days is just too overwhelming for me.

So I try not to think about them.
But I secretly fear them.
They dog me.
They hover and remain, even though I ignore them.

This morning I was at the grocery store after early morning
rehearsal at the church,
standing with two other middle aged guys,
staring at the slim pickings in the Valentine aisle.

We never looked at each other,
but one guy, hands in pockets, sorta slumped over,
spoke up,

"I'm kind of last minute,"
he said, embarassed.

I kept looking straight ahead at the cards,
but I said,
"Yeah but we're here with ya, buddy."

It made us all feel better,
last-minute strangers,
sharing our shame in gentle camraderie.

Peace, man.

*

Comfy

On Saturday afternoon I found a great shirt for Twin Boy at the Goodwill.
$1.99 - yeah!

I brought it home just as he was leaving for an overnighter.
Spotting it, he tore off his shirt and put it right on.
It smelled a little like fabric softener so I let it go - hopefully it was clean.

We picked him up in the morning on the way to church,
and he appeared at the truck door in the same shirt, but what can you do.

Right after church we drove to the in-laws for lunch and spent the day loafing there.

I wasn't feeling particularly well, and woke this morning with a terrible cold.
I waited until the last possible moment to get up,
then threw some clothes on and hustled everybody out the door to school.

Just now I looked over and realized that it's the first time I've properly looked at him today.

And yes.

"You're still wearing that shirt?" I asked -
it was one of those questions you already know the answer to but you ask anyway.

"I love this shirt!" he says.


ApparentLY.

*

Keeping An Eye On The Situation

Twin girl got a necklace from Nick the other day.

A gift.

Her friends informed her that
"those diamonds aren't real".


Really now.


Twin boy's take on the subtleties of
courtship:

"If a boy teases you,
that means he likes you.

And if a girl asks you to chase her,
that means she likes you."

This pretty much sums up love in the 5th grade.

And yet apparently Nick seems not so subtle.

hm.

*

Matthew 7:1-5

When Middle Child argued that Twin Girl could NOT be hungry
because she just ate "like a half hour ago",
Twin Girl spun on her heel with her nose in the air and retorted,

"Don't judge my hungerness."

I love that.

And while you're at it,
don't judge my domesticness,
or my hairstyleishness,
or my faithness
or my heartness.

*

Cold Snap

I was trying to think of something good about this weather
and the only think I could think of was:

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't love Springtime so much,
if Winter weren't so long and bitter.

Something New

I started playing with a little jazz group this summer
and last Friday we spent the day in the studio,
making a demo CD.

The recording guy said that a photographer was stopping by
to take pictures for an online magazine that was doing a feature
on his studio and would we mind if he caught us in action?
I said fine but I would have combed my hair and worn something cool had I known.

The singer chick Abigail and our band leader Keith:


Ed the drummer:


Randy on keys and me with apparently no makeup on.


All of us:


Listening to a rough mix in the control room -
You can see my shoes, I'm sitting on the couch exhausted,
eyes closed, with my head back.
This is a typical posture for me. :-)


Home by 5, had my pajamas on by 5:15, in bed by 9 that night.
It felt like a good day's work.

*

Making A Point

I've been getting this simple joy
from picking up everyone's water glasses that they keep leaving around
and emptying them into the Christmas tree stand.

Nobody is noticing
and it's sort of ruining the whole thing for me.

*

It Takes A Village

The husband was quizzing Middle Child for her American History test.

I was only vaguely listening as he hammered away at the questions,
spitting them out in a merciless staccato
while Middle Child murmured her answers with her head down on the table,
tired and bored of memorizing words.

"What was the French and Indian war,
who fought in it,
where did it occur,
who won it,
and was the indian in the Village People an actual native american?"

She sat up and blinked.

He cracks me up.

*

Jessica Watson

This girl inspires me.
I read her blog every day,
and every day it does the same thing to me.

It gives me hope.

She is sixteen years old,
and she is sailing, unassisted,
around the world.

Why would this make me hopeful?

I think that I just need to see her succeed at this.
I think the world really needs it too.

Read about her here.
Her blog is here.

Sail on!!

*

Amazin'

I just love Amazon.com.
It saves me at Christmas.
Free shipping on orders of $25 or less,
and great prices.

It makes me want to buy and buy and buy and buy...

Okay maybe "it saves me at Christmas" is not the right phrase.

But it sure saves me time and gas.

Today just for fun I searched "stocking stuffers".
Not because I'm going to buy any of course,
that's Santa's job.

And the number one item listed?


The Pull-My-Finger Fart Pen, $1.99

Followed by:


Slingshot Flying Chicken with Cockadoodle Scream Sound, $5.10

I especially like the suggestion of:


Meatball Flavored Bubble Gum Balls, $8.95

Yum!

Last but not least?

Bacon Bandages, $3.50

Ho Ho Ho!!

*

Day

2am-8am - be awake
8am - get children to school
8-ish to noon - learn music
noon-1 - attend rehearsal for concert
1-2 - rest head
2-3 - transport child to community college, back to pick up the rest.
3:30-6:30 - students
7pm - concert

That's how my day looked yesterday,
and things were going well until I went out to start the car
at 11:55am,
because of course I left myself only 5 minutes to get to the rehearsal.

Battery dead.

I pulled a stocking cap down over my ears and zipped my coat up to my neck.
I balanced my notebook of music on the handlebars of my bike
and rode it through the winter cold,
with tires slightly flat,
up to the school.

Breathless, I pedaled up to the back door where a custodian was unloading chairs
in preparation for the concert.

"Can I leave my bike out here? Do you think anyone will steal it?" I asked him.

I should say that my bike is a beauty to behold.
It is huge, and red, and completely rusted by being left out in the rain too often.
It is a Pee-wee Herman style one-speed bike,
with wide handle bars and big round tires and a big, big comfy seat.

The custodian looked over and sort of laughed,
"No, I don't think so."

After the rehearsal, I came outside and sure enough, it had not been stolen.
The fifth graders were lining up outside the building and one called out to me,

"Sweet ride, Mrs. K," in a dead-pan voice.

I saluted her and pedaled off to the wonder of my own two fifth graders,
who didn't have the information about the car,
and just took it in stride that on that freezing day their mother decided to ride
her bike to school.

On the way home after school, in a car the husband had jumped back to life,
I found out that girl twin won the Student Council election,
and boy twin had been given the threat, "You're dead meat" on the playground,
53 times by the same kid, because he counted.

In response to my questions regarding this information,
they pummeled each other in the backseat yelling, "Slug bug! No slug bug back!" over and over,
while middle child sighed in the front and rolled her eyes.

I drove home with a steady hand,
checked off the remaining items on the list for the day,
and marveled at the end of it
that everything turned out okay.

*

Sleepless

It happens sometimes.

Went to bed at 10, woke up at 2 this morning, with a gasp,
remembering a particularly painful moment from yesterday.

In the middle of the night it's hard to let it go, you know?

Had a first gig with a new little band and for the most part it went well.
If I can look at the overall picture, it was a good first time.

But there were a few train wreck moments courtesy of me,
and in the middle of the night, the big picture fades away,
the spotlight zooms in,
and my heart starts banging around.

Today will be particularly challenging.

A rehearsal at noon, a piano gig tonight.

In between those, there is a child transportation issue,
and several students.

I've been taking things one day at a time,
and it has been working,
but the sleepless night means that one day
is sort of
bleeding into the next.

You know?

*