:Naiahdot

There is something I am looking for, just what I don’t know. Maybe it’s validation, maybe just something different to think about for a little while. Whatever it is, again and again, I find myself in this mode of seeking. My inner type-A cringes at the idea of being on a quest whose goal is unknown. Am I so disconnected from myself that I really think I can find the missing pieces here? I don’t know, but when that mindset sets in, I’ve learned to get real. How do you find the way back to yourself, when you are already there and yet not there? I am Jack’s Schroedinger’s boxed soul.

I check my email too much. Maybe I am looking for love letters. I have old love letters. My husband has loved me forever, since I was 14 and hideous. I have a broken piece of logic on that score that I need to fix. Too often the age and enduring nature of his love in my warped mind discredits itself. I look back on who I was, and I do not like her. He, having loved her, gives me pause when I consider the possibility of sanity behind his love.

He tells me I am beautiful now, and now I think I am. He told me I was beautiful then, but too many others told me otherwise. Even now, when I am uncertain of my appearance, and he offers encouragement or praise, I sweep it away with hardly a thought. You loved me then, I think, you wanted me then, when I was broken and ugly.

The storybooks say that I should cherish his love above all others, as he loved my ugly duckling self when no one else would. For once, I think the storybooks may be on to something. It’s a surreal moment when you find yourself looking to fairy tales to set your logic straight. There is no logic in love, and it is silly to try to apply it, broken though it may be, or to fix it.

There are no facts in love only volumes of seeming. Trust can always be broken, and that is a sad fact. What is love but to open yourself fully to someone, and afford them the trust of allowing yourself to really believe their words. Yes, we have to take people at their word, but when such weighty matters as eternity are at stake, forgive me if I am skeptical.

I have right and reason to be. I can remember a day when I was 8 or 9, when I was standing at the outer corner of the schoolyard, looking toward the church, wondering to myself if I would ever feel love again. I thought of my dad, and my brothers, and there was nothing. It was as if when my mother left when I was seven, she crashed my heart and it’s never quite rebooted right since.

I could not feel love. I could not feel that unmistakable something, the lift in the spirits, the sense of loyalty, the fear of goodbye, nothing. There was just nothing then. My love was broken. Maybe it still is. I do not know. I love my children more intensely than I would say I have ever loved anyone in my life. The love I felt for my daughter when she was born overpowered and put in perspective every emotion, especially the one that I had been calling love.

When my husband holds me, I feel that same intensity spark and flare, and it seems so out of place and so uncomfortable for me being out of place. I want to keep him at arms’ distance, in the box that I grew up calling love, but I simply can’t. “I love you, damnit.” has become my standard way of expressing the intensity of my quandary. Very affectionate, I know. It’s even better when he’s holding me, and all I say is “damnit”, and he replies “I love you, too.” He’s found his way in, even if I didn’t know how to put him there.

He bewitched me as a child, and even now I resist him. I am a selfish brat for such adoration to leave me wanting. We are fed the line–from the fairy tales no less–that true love will never leave us wanting for anything…and still I find myself seeking. What is it? Answer me that one.

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I have decided that I need a mentor, someone to help me grow, to see my nutshell and help me transcend it, lest I begin to count myself a king of infinite space. I would give anything within reason to find my old English teacher from prep school, Joe Johnston. (Alas, google has been no help.)

He was an amazing mentor and instructor, and I am who I am today largely due to his influence. I remember the night that he showed our class the movie Kafka. He started the video and then quietly left. After it was over, I veritably flew across campus and knocked on his front door. He took one look at me, nearly vibrating out of my own skin, and simply said, “It’s like a drug, isn’t it?”

He took the obscure, and made it cool to me. He gave knowledge itself a life for me. Oh, and he never let me get away with anything less than the best I had to offer. He spoke often of the great tragedy of the B+-ness of society, and I took that to heart. His teaching has left me, even all these years later, with a distaste for mediocrity. I want to be better.

Yes, on here I write, and unlike the livejournal that I left behind, I am not writing a catalog of my housework or bitching about a hangnail. I am taking care to write in a voice universal enough that a stranger could wander by and I would not be embarrassed to know that they had read what I had written, and yet, I am not writing anything truly crafted. I see what I have hammered out, consider it good enough, and hit ‘publish’. I am able to see that I can do better, though.

There’s been a lot of talk in my life about me writing professionally once the children are both in school. If I am taking this warm-up period before I launch into that seriously, then I need to set to and work at it. I need to burn out the cobwebs and rebuild. I am honest enough to admit that I can’t do that alone.

Rather than email individuals, consider this an open call to any who may have an interest in being a coach, a mentor, a source of both criticism and encouragement. As for other writers in need of the same, I am considering a peer-review email list for those of us who want to take it up a notch in any of our various creative pursuits.

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My nomination of him was met with some baffled looks, and I had to back it up with an assurance that I’d really rather be first officer. Oh, how I’d love to be his Number One, and, oh yes, that thought went through my head so dizzyingly sweetly in that moment. I just knew he must feel all the affection, lust, and longing behind my selfless act. He had to! I was throwing every possible girlie-signal I could think of his way. Never underestimate the potential of the adolescent geekboy at missing girlie-signals. Never.

Suffice it to say that, my motion carried, and, with a glance around the group I was able to secure the nomination for First Officer, hands down. After everyone else was settled in with ranks and posts, he did it. He turned to me and said, “Well done, Number One!”

I suppose, if I were the swooning type back then, that would have made me swoon. As it was, I think I just wrapped my arms across my chest all the tighter, and hunched my shoulders yet another fraction of an inch before springing to attention, saying “Yes, Sir!” with just a touch too much exuberance. My mild spaz-out went unnoted as anything out of the ordinary by my classmates crewmates, and anyway, we had to run to fifth period.

Life at our school was busy. Just about every minute of every day is scheduled out or spoken for by assignments. Needless to say, we were all swept along by our various commitments. I don’t think the Star Trek fan club ever held any formal meetings, but I do remember our marathon, our trip to LagrangeCon, and Star Trek Cards. Yeah, Star Treak cards were a Big Deal. Anytime one of us had spare cash, it meant a dash off-campus during a free period to the Rockwellesque drugstore on the town square a few blocks away.

We collected them, traded them, and stored them safe in baseball card boxes and binders. I even got Gates McFadden to sign my Beverly Crusher card on that convention trip. There was more than a little pressure to get them ALL, and we begged each others’ doubles, or offered each other great deals on trades. There was lots of “Oh, do you remember that one?!?!?” when we’d go through the episode cards together. We couldn’t get enough of them. They gave us a great common hobby, and even the-geek-who-didn’t-want-to-be was in on it, albeit making fewer trips to the drugstore than the rest of us.

In addition to being the Captain of the STFC, he was also on Student Council, in the club that ran the student center, and probably a couple other things that I’ve forgotten. Being on student council was important, as it was student council who planned the school dances. There was one coming up, and it was Sadie Hawkins; that meant the girls got to ask. I, of course, made my move. As I recall, there was someone else that he was hoping would ask him, and he was politely direct about it. I agreed to wait and see, but when word got around (as it always does) that said girl had asked someone else, he said, “sure, ok.”

This was going to be it, my big play for him. I was going to go to that dance looking legendary, and I did. I was an incredibly low-maintenance girl, still am, mostly. On most days, all I needed was a shower and a comb. Not that night. I had gone and found myself a dress to die for. I got some professional makeup advice, and even a curling iron and some hairspray. Did I mention the dress was to die for? Oh yeah. Strapless, black velvet, cut to enhance every curve of my young, ripening body, and I wore it WELL. Especially that night.

The whole package came together just right. My hair, which was still blonde in those days, was full and loosely curled. My makeup was striking without being overdone–sultry, down to my fire-engine red lipstick. The dress made me look and feel like Marilyn Monroe. Oh, and I was sure to wear flats, so as not to be (too much) taller than him. For being only fifteen, I had managed a mature, alluring, sexy, sophisticated, and dazzling look. We had to arrive early so that he could meet his student council responsibilities of standing around and looking important while the dj set up.

The dj was ready, of course, well before the dance was slated to begin. He could see how I looked, and not just my appearance. I’m certain the dj could see how I looked at the-geek-who-didn’t-want-to-be. I don’t know what he was thinking, but he put on a song for just the two of us. “Lady in Red” rang out, full volume on a dance floor empty save for the two of us, and the dreamy streamers and balloons. I don’t know which of us that dj thought he was helping out. At the time I thought it was me, but looking back, I can’t help but laugh at how it must have looked to him.

He sees this scrawny guy with bad hair and a worse suit, wearing red Christmas-themed socks of some kind, being followed around by a girl whose self-conscious posture aside, was clearly dressed to kill. I might have looked like a golden chance for that boy, from the dj’s perspective, and thus the song.

We assumed the standard position and swayed. Being a dance student, I attempted to move at least somewhat to the music. Alas, no such luck, and to make matters worse, every time the refrain came around, the-geek-who-didn’t-want-to-be shouted out “It’s BLACK! She’s wearing black!” Sure, my dress was black, but my lips were red. So very, very red, even under the lipstick. Boys can be so blind.

In time, more people trickled in, and the spell took hold. There is a special magic to teenage dances, and it’s probably the only part of adolescence that I’d willingly live over again. I spent a good deal of time helping out the photography teacher with the pictures, but I managed a dance or two, just enough to carry out a little of the biochemical signature of the pheromone-laden dance floor with me.

Like they always do, the dance eventually wound down. He had to stay and supervise the cleanup, but was kind enough to walk me back to my dormitory. Vibrating, walking on air, none of these expressions even touch my mood. I was high, on puppy love, on life, on, well, probably on just those pheromones. We reached the front steps of my dorm, and suddenly he grew awkward. Awkward? He’s getting awkward? That mean’s he’s gonna kiss me! So, there I stood, doing the best I could to remain vertical while my legs did anything but hold still. “Yeah, it was fun,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“I, uh, had something I wanted to ask you,” he kind of stammered.

I thrilled to the words. This is was it. “Mmmm-hmm,” I managed.

“Do you have any Star Trek Card doubles that I could have?”

(To be continued…)

Just kidding:
My indignance quickly gave rise to feelings of foolishness, and, without so much as looking at him, I spat out the word “yes” and ran as fast as I could up four stories’ worth of stairs, clacking my flats as loudly as I could the whole way. I opened the drawer where they were kept, grabbed my clear plastic box of doubles, ran all the way back downstairs, shoved it at him, and ran back inside.

I remember a conversation with him shortly after that, where he told me, point-blank that I was not popular enough for him, and as hurt as I was, I felt sorrier for him. He was a geek whose long-term geekout was to find a way to not be a geek. Wherever you go, there you are, y’know?

I’m not sure if he got his wish or not, yet. Last I saw about him was in the alumni magazine after our 10th reunion last year, which I missed. He is now head of greek life at some college in Ohio, and I’ll bet he finally has a pocket of students who count him as one of the cool guys. For all that I bet he got his wish, I cannot help but feel sorry that he ever had such a wish. If he’d put that same energy into, well, ANYTHING else, he’d have been a great whatever-it-would-have-been geek.

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There’s a serious outbreak of contagious nostalgia running through the blogosphere. I credit my case to Shane Nickerson & Magazine Man’s recent cliffhanger-laden reminiscences. If you’re up for another good story when you’re done with mine, I recommend starting here [SN] & here [MM].

The news hit my ears hard. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t keep it to myself. People had to be told. And so, there was a morning my sophomore year in prep school when I stood up during the announcements at morning meeting only to say before the full student body and faculty, “’Space, the final frontier.’ These are words with which we are all familiar…” and so forth, informing my classmates that Gene Roddenberry had passed away.

I realized but a fraction of a second too late just how humiliatingly awful what I had done was. The sniggers rippled almost instantly through the chapel. I still stood, and finished my brief eulogy, ignoring the burning that began at the tips of my toes, and was quickly engulfing my face. By the time I had finished, even the top of my head had an unusual, tingly sensation. My bottom hit that pew with the surety of knowing that I had a new answer whenever anyone asked about my most embarrassing moment.

From that act of fandom & sorrow came the creation of the Star Trek fan club at my school.

The membership of the club was basically our regular little nerd herd that had already been hanging out together. You had me (the token geek chick), the one who spent all his free time at the public library on IRC, the cartoonist, my ‘little brother’ (the tiny guy with big glasses), and the geek-who-didn’t-want-to-be. A couple others may have been in or around there, but you get the idea. Being that it was my folly that landed us all together in an actual club with a faculty advisor and all, I was pretty much the unanimous choice to be nominated for Captain.

Almost everyone in the club had each told me that, as our ‘ship’s crew’ took shape, they hoped I would get Captain. I was thinkin’ I could use four pips; yup, that would have suited me just fine. Then, I ran into the geek-who-didn’t-want-to-be. He, on the other hand, knowing my pull with the rest of the ‘crew,’ asked if I would nominate him. He flattered me, saying that he knew they would follow my lead. Again: he knew that they would follow my lead. Yes, the irony is thick, in retrospect, isn’t it?

We all knew that he was a potential turncoat. Sure, each of us had our moments when we got fed up with the name calling, the snickers, insults, pranks, and the other countless little rejections we endured on a daily basis, but the rest of us had simply reached a level of acceptance with it all, one that he never found. We had no hopes of transcending our ‘sentence’. Why would we want to? We did our thing, and it suited us. Not him.

He saw power-grabbing in clubs as his way to climb out of geekdom, and damnit he was gonna do it, even if all it usually meant is that he did all the work for the other clubs while the cool kids went and hung out without him. Did I mention that I was head-over-heels for this guy? No? Sorry. Clearly I was still blocking that part out. Yeah, so I was totally crushed out on the geek-who-didn’t-want-to-be. Crisis.

Well, the day came for the ‘election.’ We had all just eaten lunch, at our usual teacher’s table, all together, of course, but, then, as we strode toward the common room at the other end of the dining hall, something changed. We were no longer simple students, we were about to be commissioned as Starfleet Officers. With each step closer to that common room, and the meeting about to be held there, we each walked just a little taller, our stride a little longer. Side-by-side down the central aisle of the dining hall, we walked, chests out, arms swinging, every step weighted with the paradox of anticipation, at the same time an instant and an eternity.

I’m sure the rest of the school wondered what was up with the geeks, but they hadn’t joined the club, and so they wouldn’t get to find out. It was ours, and we were loving it. Elevated from the lowly nerd herd comprised of castoffs, we were now a Club. The pride of that carried us, so very aware of our collective presence down that aisle, like astronauts down a gantry. We had a mission. Ok, so that mission was to host a Star Trek marathon in the student center & maybe visit a convention together, but it was a mission.

We arrived, at last, at the little cluster of chairs and couches, and it was time. Everyone was looking at me, smiling. In a way, I was proud of myself in the moment. An embarassing act before the whole school had become a polarizing event, and here we were, about to make it official. It was time for the nominations to begin. It was going to be me; we were so sure.

Except I knew, though, that the-geek-who-didn’t-want-to-be *really* wanted to be Captain.

I don’t remember who it was, but I heard the intake of breath as someone was about to speak, and my heart began to thunder in my chest. Adrenaline and puppy love surged through my veins. I heard that breath, and I knew it meant a nomination for me that would be instantly seconded and carried by every member of the club–except one. In the thousandth of a second that it took to weigh my own desire to be captain against my desire to be his girlfriend, I managed to speak first.

(To be continued…)

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I had the most unexpected, amazing experience today. Just about 9:30 or so this morning, I chased Bobbie as he ran out onto the front porch, hoping to catch him and put some clothes on his little body. He hopped right onto his bike, naked except for his diaper. Just then, a bright blue car turned the corner. I noticed that the driver seemed to be looking intently at the house, but went right back to what I was doing. A moment later, the driver of the car was at my front gate, and he called out “Hello!” After a sunny “hi” back from me, he came back with “I grew up here!” He is Jim Holmes, I learned as we made our introductions. He was in town for his high school reunion (class of 1950), and thought he’d stop by and get a look at the old house.

It turns out that his parents owned our house from the late 30’s through the late 60’s. To my absolute delight, he happened to have his laptop with him, and was able to show me all sorts of old pictures of the house. The most striking of which was a CG painting that he had done, purely from memory, as he didn’t have a picture of the whole house itself. Every detail was perfect. By profession, he had worked in the electronics industry, but on the side he’s been a computer artist. He showed me pieces that he had done way-back-when, pixel-by-pixel on the Amiga. Of course, his recent work is all in Photoshop & Illustrator.

He was such an affable and kind person. His loving nature was evident in everything from his glances around the house to the inflection in his voice as he spoke about his acquired family. Jim never did marry, but he is hardly alone. He has a ‘foster son’ whom he met through the Big Brothers program, who is now in his 40’s with kids of his own and a fiancee. His fiancee has three kids, as well. Add in a smattering of dogs and cats, and you get all the faces on the ornaments on one of the CG Xmas cards he showed me.

It was great to see and hear from him about all the changes the house had gone through while they owned it, the evidence of many of which is still visible. The mid-twentieth century was a wild slipstream of new technology for the home. As fast as computers and televisions become obsolete these days, it is nothing compared to the drastic changes, veritable paradigm shifts, in modes of day to day living and home appliances and fixtures.

Over the years that they had the house, it sounded as if there had been a never-ending series of remodels and replacements. The woodshed came and went. The heat was from a wood burning furnace in the basement and drifted up through a grate in the floor. They added in an oil-burning stove. The refrigerator was here. The washer was there. Move the electric stove over to there. So many fixtures came and went. Now, we have moved in, and have so far not remodeled anything. There has been no revolutionary new way invented to do anything that we do here at home, and I doubt there will be in my years as a housewife. No need to cut one machine out to make room for another.

He was able to tell me about growing up here, and show me pictures of his family. It was an absolutely delightful way to spend the day. I took all sorts of notes, but quickly realized that I should be taping the conversation. Alas, my dictophone was nowhere to be found, and so we agreed to do it again sometime. He’s promised to send me email with the scanned photos of the house, as well as some of his CG artwork.

At one point, while we were talking, Bobbie, who had been laying on my lap, accidentally kicked his arm, and I said “No kick, ok?” Bobbie answered back, “Sorry, Pa Pa.” That is his name for his grandfather. I said, “Beebee, that’s not Pa Pa,” and I kid you not, he said “That one’s Pa Pa, too.” I don’t know if we’ll get to adopt and extra grandpa, but I do hope that we get a chance to have Jim over again, and listen to more of the story of our, as in all of ours’, home. So much of what he said, I could already feel resonating in the walls. This is, and has been for a long, long time, a happy home.

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I am alone. All alone. Ain’t nobody here but me. Home alone. The luxury. The absolutely decadent luxury. Oh no, I’m not taking a bubble bath, or downing flutes of champagne. I am indulging in that rarest of maternal luxuries, quiet, open, private headspace. My thoughts are my own, and I am relishing every second. This is my second day of this indulgence. Katy is still in Idaho, and Bobbie is off at Microsoft childcare for the day. This is a day to write, a day to paint, a day to think. Yesterday I used my unexpected solitude to run errands, get a heavenly massage, and catch up on some housework. Today, today is not for such concrete pursuits. I’m tripping off into my mind, and it so good.

One of those errands yesterday was to register Katy for public school. After an hour or so of filling out various forms about everything from her family structure to her immunizations to her primary language, it hit me. I had just signed a baby away. Yes, she’s been to preschools since she was three. Somehow, the great, wide halls & big yellow busses held an ominous tone for me.

This was it–her ‘first step into a larger world.’ Up until now, it has been the cozy confines of our sweet home, and gentle, caring preschools full of kindly staff who look on teaching more like mothering. No more. It’s time for spelling words, pop quizzes, playground contests, and gym class. For the next 12 years she will do her best to cram in whatever they offer her and serve it up in a way that helps her make the grade.

The secretaries in the office were so sweet when I turned in her forms and teared up, assuring me that it happens all the time. I felt like I couldn’t hardly breathe. There is an unavoidable sense of a threshold being crossed, and my place as the sweet mamma center of her life was left in that last room. She IS strong and smart and good, and growing moreso every day.

As much as it will be a new chapter of her life experiences, it’ll be a new one for me as a mother. Instead of witnessing almost all of her daily activities, my knowledge of most of her daily life will be confined to what she chooses to tell me about. It may just be first grade, but she will have to live her own life and make her own choices, and I can’t be there to help nudge her or keep her safe. She’ll have friends to deal with, conflict to sort out, academic choices to make. Not. A. Baby. *So* not a baby.

Meanwhile, Bobbie and I will have much more 1:1 time over the coming months. Come January when he starts preschool, I’ll have a couple days like this one every week, which will be nice. That will be a tough threshold for me, though. No babies at home. It’ll be time to really find my footing and reengage the world as an individual.

I get to dabble at that now and then (like on days like today), but all too often, my role as mamma overrides all. I have hopes and aspirations for myself as a writer, things I’d like to make as an artist. Even more immediate to me, I’d like to take the house and yard up a notch. these are all things that, by nature of my role, too often go to back burners and beyond, that suddenly I will be able to prioritize and plan.

At the advent of that new time, though, I will have to say good bye to my sweet days of herding babies. My babies are hardly babies anymore anyway, and less so every day. Days like this are delightful now, in moderation, as a treat, but I can’t help but be a little melancholy at the thought of our daily mode of sweet chaos passing into the past for good. I love being a mamma–for all that it costs me and then some.

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Nina Ruchirat & Amie Hood of Two Hearts Photography before our shoot last tuesday.

Nights like this just scream for a glass of beer, and I’m not talking no paper cup. I mean a glass of beer. I’m having milk and cookies. That about sums things up. Ok, scratch that, I now have a beer. La Fin du Monde, in a frosty glass fresh out of my freezer, no doubt. Much better. Sometimes, I don’t know whether my life is softcore porn or PBS Kids. Clearly I haven’t been drinking enough beer lately, it’s making me all sleepy-sweet. My battery indicator says I have 24 minutes to do this. So here the fuck goes.

Fuck that, I want to eat some toast. It is so fucking muggy I’m about ready to drown in the oxygen-forsaken air. Puget Sound has said “fuck this between the banks thing” and just swollen up and engulfed the entire land. If I would fit, I’d stick myself in the silica gel chamber I keep my hearing aids in at night. I want to dry out. Dry. The. Fuck. Out. The whole fucking world feels like a tepid bath these days. Not hot enough to be called balmy, but neurosis-driving in its own right.

My son keeps saying “more beer. more beer,” and is now attempting to pour my husband, well, more beer. Now, he has a sharpie in his hands. Fuck. Retrieved. My husband is working on confidential specs for some component of the Hypervisor. I think that’s sexy. Almost as sexy as the day he brought home top secret internal documentation of–wtf? reserve battery power??? Nice 24 minutes. Yeah right. Ok, got the cord. Fucking timers never know shit.–technologies from OTHER companies. Of course, I can’t say which ones, but we’re talking books that have your ID# watermarked onto every page so that they know whom to crucify if it’s leaked. That was seriously fucking kewl.

Yeah, so life marches on. An hour ago, my husband was holding me up with my legs wrapped around him in the middle of the kitchen. Then it was bathtime for the wee one. I really miss my other wee one. She’s in the desert; it’s not muggy there.

I love how my definition of muggy has changed. Back in Ohio, muggy is the fucking sky laughing maniacally as it spits down the back of your neck. Here, it really is as if the entire atmosphere suddenly takes on the qualities of a bath already used by five other people that’s gone piss warm but not cold. Yuck.

So, I had a photo shoot last week scheduled with Nina Ruchirat. As luck would have it, her wife, Amie Hood, was able to shoot me, too. (Don’t follow those links too deeply if you’re uncomfortable seeing me in, well, very NWS shots.) That’s them in the photo on this entry. The shoot went really well. I think I need to just own up to the fact that I’m a fucking twit when it comes to hair and makeup and just find a stylist I like to work with. Bleh.

I spent the evening flipping through the Lakeshore Learning Store catalog for fun educational toys, and cheap art paper for my kids. I highly recommend it to you other moms out there.

I love my life in all it’s demented beauty. I’m going to fuck my husband silly when he finally logs out and the baby finally goes to sleep, but you might not have needed to know that. HA! I typed it anyway.

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Every time my daughter leaves with her father for a trip to Idaho to see his family, I weep. Yes, I weep because I will miss her. Never mind that I start missing her days before she has even gone. That’s not the only reason, though. I weep for the family that I broke when I divorced her father. I am so very lucky that it was an amicable break, and that Michael and I are still dear, close friends.

I can’t imagine my life without him in it. He is a phenomenal co-parent, even at a distance. We talk daily, and confer with each other not just on matters pertaining to Katy, but our lives in general. We are good, good friends, and we function as such every day. When the two of them head for Idaho, I can’t help but look back on our time there as a family with some measure of wistfulness. Oh, I have not forgotten the reasons I left, but our life there did have it’s own share of sweetness.

It is only at these times that I find myself with the urge to question my decision of three years ago. It takes only a moment’s thought to recall the whys of it all, and I rest assured in the sweetness of our present family and my enduring love for my husband. We’re a family of five: Mike, Katy, Me, Bobbie, and my husband Rob. Rob and Mike both get along just fine, to the point that Michael actually stays here with us at our house on the weekends for his time with Katy, in stead of driving her the three hours to his home. Katy and Bobbie both refer to the guys as “Daddy Michael” and “Daddy Robby,” regardless of birth order or biology.

I don’t know how we’ve struck this magical chord of peace, but we have. It has lasted us three years now. I wish I knew how to convey it to others. I was just explaining to Katy today that most divorced couples can’t interact kindly like her father and I do. It made me so sad (her, too). So many couples divorce to alleviate the ongoing suffering of a love gone lost, and then, unfortunately go on spending the rest of their lives cooking up new suffering for each other, whether it be out of jealousy, revenge, or something else.

When Katy was little, we often joked about her being “a go baby.” As she made her various efforts to walk, ride, eat, whatever, we (Michael and I) would chant, “Go, baby. Go, baby. Go, baby. Go!” She always struck us as a babe in a hurry to grow up. At six-and-a-half years old, she is still that way. This past year, after being told not to do something on the playground at school, she said to her kindergarten teacher “It’s ok, Miss Judy. I’m almost a teenager; I know what I’m doing.”

Like so many mothers, I stand amazed at just how quickly she has gone from this sweet, tiny creature whose entire concept of reality encompassed just the space within the circle of her family’s hearts to not only knowing that there’s a great, wide world out there but already seeking to take her place in it.

Today, she left for a family trip to Idaho. Just a snap beyond that, she will start first grade. If the next six-and-a-half (can’t forget the half!) years pass in the fractional flash that her life has seemed, before I can even consider the implications, she will be that teenager, and her world focus will shift to primarily outside that circle of hearts that would guard her so closely. Babies go. They really do.

Certainly, I understand that going. I tell my children everyday to be “strong and smart and good.” When they no longer live under my wing, I cannot imagine a situation in which a balance of those three qualities will not see them through well. As Katy grows to be all three, I celebrate who she is becoming, and I miss who she has been. The experience of raising children is endlessly fascinating.

More tears.

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As my migration to Naiahdot nears completion, I find myself wandering the blogs that I’ve kept for the last few years (only some of which I’ll own up to publicly ). I came across this snippet of a short story, written by request for a friend (a friend who really needs to find this girl, if she exists). It was supposed to be continued, but I never got back to it. Now that I’ve found it, I might kick it around a little more, but here it is, as it was originally published (typos, –tech–, and all) on November 14, 2003:

Mood Lighting

“It’s too damn bright. That’s it; I’m just finally going to do it,”

Joe flips off the offending light switch and grabs his jacket and keys. Mumbling to himself as he walks to the car he says, “It’s a fireplace. It’s supposed to be comfortable! Mood lighting, y’know?” He suddenly realizes that he is talking to himself, and looks around to see if any of the neighbors saw him. He sighs a quick relief as the coast is clear, and he gets into his car.

Driving along, Joe starts thinking about different kinds of dimmer switches, and he finds himself thinking about the right oportunity to show the whole deal off. Seriously, his family room is really shaping up–great tv, great furniture, fireplace, and soon mood lighting. Chicks are gonna love this. Well, except that one who just doesn’t get it about fireplaces. “Oh well,” Joe thinks as he turns into the Menard’s parking lot. Getting out of his car, he says “Man, I love this place,” and almost instantly finds himself, yet again, speaking his thoughts out loud. “I have been way too alone, lately,” he thinks. He shrugs it off and heads inside.

The aisles and aisles of sweet home improvement products would be enough to snap any homeowner out of it. Joe happily wanders the aisles, looking for future projects. Wandering amongst the grills, he happens to glance at his watch and notices that he’s been there for an hour-and-a-half. “Time flies…” he thinks as he heads for the lighting aisle.

“Okay…Here we go…” Joe starts out as the wall of dimmer switches stares him in the face. Luckily, they have demos of all of them. Flip, twist, slide, Joes takes him time trying them all out. Finally he narrows it down to two and pulls one of each off the rack. “Ok, so I could go with the traditional dial or these new slide ones. So, the round one would be good, because people would know what it was, and they’re pretty durable–but…this switch-style one looks so much more modern. I don’t know, though, Ilike it better, but it just doesn’t seem as strong. I don’t kn–”

“They seem to hold up just as well. I installed one in my house a few months ago.”

Joe, with a start, realizes that he is not alone…and that he’d been talking to himself again. He turns around, only to be met with another surprise–there, giving him advice on dimmer switches was just about the cutest girl he’d ever met. Her crinkly blonde hair gave her a quirky kind of beauty, only enhanced by her cat’s eye glasses. “I, uh, I was, umm,”

“looking for a dimmer switch?”

“Yeah, for, uh, my family room.” As her warm personality became apparent, Joe’s words came more freely…”I have really been putting together a great space there, but the lighting”

“is just too harsh?”

“Yeah.”

“fireplace there?”

“How’d you know?”

“I don’t know, just a guess. You seem like a cozy kind of guy,” she smiled sweetly, and it’s a good thing that Joe didn’t speak his thought at that moment.

“You said you installed one of these?”

“Yeah!

“How…”

“Answer me this, have you ever done any wiring before?”

“Only computers.”

“Doesn’t count–no {tech tech tech tech tech] here–what?”

“What what?”

“You are actually biting your lip–hard!”

Joe blushed, “I’m sorry, it’s just that I wanted to make sure I didn’t–nevermind, uh, sorry, go on…” He smiled, and his gaze found her eyes. There was a brief exchange.

“Oh, yeah, I guess you don’t meet a lot of girls who used to work as sysamdins–”

“–and can install dimmer switches! Listen, this is crazy; I don’t even know your name, but I, uh, I’d really like a chance–”

“to show me your family room?” she giggled “Ok. First,” she said as she pointed to the rather large, rather obvious tag with her name on it in the front of her [blue vest/orange apron...?] And you are?”

“Joe.”

“Well, Joe, it’s friday night. The store is closing. What say you we go install a dimmer switch?”

“Are you serious?”

“Of course I am…I can follow you in my car, help you with the switch, and we can test out the ambiance in the room.”

“Um, ok?” the baffled Joe managed to say. Chicks hadn’t exactly been falling into his lap like this lately.

Next thing he knows, he’s been through the checkout, walked out to his car, and is driving home with her following him. The absolute unexpected randomness of the situation has him a little floored, but he convinces himself to just be himself.

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