Brandi Carlile has a new album. My favorite song is Wherever Is Your Heart. Please forgive my mind, she sings. Please forgive my mind. I listened to it a few minutes ago and started to cry. Maybe because my mind, if allowed, is on a mission to destroy. I have been working hard in the midst of medical scares, divorce, sobriety, and every new and different thing, to stop my mind. Stop. Just stop. Almost every last thing is a thing I cannot control, so to think on these things is only torture. Thinking can be like a drug. A control drug. Because maybe if I think long and hard enough, I will things into being better, or however I imagine is best, and I’m probably wrong. So I stop. I try to stop thinking. I do the things I need the courage to do and I try to stop my mind. Please forgive my […]
The clinic called yesterday to remind me of Elsie’s pre-op appointment. That was good because I had forgotten which day it was, and only wrote it on one calendar, instead of the kind inside my phone and computer that reminds me of stuff. It matters a lot to me, but there sure are a lot of things up in the ol’ noggin these days. Starting on Friday, it’s spring break, and it lasts through next week. Elsie will have her tonsils and adenoids out on Tuesday. I just started to think through this, after the reminder call, and wondered if her recovery is going to be harder with everyone at home. A flutter of stress flew through my chest and belly and then I decided that it will be good. Just as it is already planned. Stay out of the way, Heather. There will be no running to and from school and there will be little helpers […]
We walked down the street to get the mail, no coats on. The sun shined and smiled on us all weekend and we soaked in the vitamin D, the fresh air, the soft breeze, every moment. We did nothing, which is everything, isn’t it? It is so hard to pout or fuss when the sun is smiling on you. Especially when you have lived many dark months, so much cold isolation. Elsie ate an apple as we walked, her mud boots clomping, her teeth chomping. She looked up and smiled, turned around to look at her brothers and neighbor friends playing. She said, “We’re getting furder and furder….” (further and further) Yes, we are, I said. Yes, we are. We just keep going, and we get there. The mailbox held nothing much to be desired, as per usual. But Elsie thought it was the best trip down the street ever anyway. Our house sits […]
She tells me she wants to have two tomorrows, one for what I am saying we need to do the next day, and one for what she would rather do the next day. She is three, and easily believes she has a right to demand a double day. Of course, I can’t grant this wish, it’s like telling her I can paint an extra moon in tonight’s sky. Her first days on Earth are vivid in my cluttered unfocused brain because they were so awful. Thankfully, I also remember them well because I fell in love with her, which I realize is not the immediate experience of every mother. Sometimes falling in love takes time. Someone should tell us that. My Elsie Jane did not arrive after 40 weeks on my insides, she came a little early. In grand Elsie style, she kicked the nurse on her way out, causing said seasoned OB […]
I made them pick up all the Legos, again. They thought it would be way too hard, again, and threw UGHHHH at me. One asked me why I always make that terrible threat, that I will sell them. (The Legos, not the children.) I don’t know, I said. I guess I just figure that if you can’t clean them up, I don’t want them here. But you’re right, threats are kind of lame. From downstairs I could hear the clanking of the plastic, the distinct Lego sound. The boys found a system, of scooping with a plastic bin’s lid, like a dustpan. Then one of them appeared next to the couch, hopping up and down and asking for food. His brother was right behind him, asking to play the XBox. Their little sister abruptly stopped playing to ask to watch a movie, if her brothers were playing XBox. I looked at all three […]
