I spent a few hours with a dear friend of mine on Sunday. She came over for dinner, along with her husband and their two darling daughters, and we started discussing how quickly childhood goes, and how badly we want to remember all the little bits that seem to get lost in the clutter that is life. She keeps a blog to remember these things – for posterity or blackmail or graduation party slideshows and wedding toasts – and she mentioned that every month she writes down all the things she doesn’t want to forget. The little things that are big things when they happen. Minutia. Celebrations. Hard days. Good days. Smiles and tears. Any and all of it. I liked the idea so much I’ve decided to steal it. I used to be a mom blogger. I used to keep better track of my memories. These girls are growing like...
sister ships, womb fruit, and a whole giant mess of uncertainty
This photograph is nearly two years old now. This is my youngest daughter Stella at six or seven or nine months old, in a dress my mother wore when she was a baby, staring at me as I documented her awkward and determined attempts at learning to crawl. I sat on the hardwood floor of our rented townhome on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, I gazed at this beautiful creature as though I’d never seen a baby before – as though I was a tourist in Papua New Guinea drinking in a new and wonderful and rich and foreign land and its people – and soaked it in. I drank this little girl up, and swallowed hard with the full weight that came with the knowledge that this – that she – would be the last of my babies I would ever watch grow. Today, on the precipice of nothing...
embracing imperfection | a post about mom guilt
It happened the instant Elena was born. The second she was placed on my chest, pink and wrinkled and barely crying, it was there. That nagging, tugging, wretched self-deprecating voice in the back of my mind known as Mom Guilt started speaking. It worsened the day Stella was born. Along with my midsection and my ass, it grew substantially. And like my wobbly bits, it’ll likely be with me for the whole of forever. It, like stretch marks, snot in your hair, the inability to take a shower by yourself, and countless other joys, is simply a part of the parenthood package. And we live in a culture hell bent on making it worse. I read this post on Facebook this morning, and I couldn’t agree with the author more. We as a culture spend so much time criticizing, judging, pointing fingers, name-calling, pigeon-holing, and misunderstanding that we forget to be...
the greatest man I never knew
The thing no one really explains to you when you’re young is that things only exist the way you perceive them. Grown ups spend so much time trying to convince children that things aren’re real, but when you’re a child, real is one of the most basic truths: If you think something exists or is true, it is. This includes the obvious and ubiquitous list of things like monsters, ghosts, unicorns and Santa Claus (and okay, maybe even a tall tale about a legendary northern in your hometown lake). The thing with childhood though, is that it ends. For all of us. Even for those of us that fight it kicking and screaming, there comes a time when we are forced headlong into LIFE. If we’re lucky, the transition is an easy one, and we let go of our adolescent ideologies easily. They fade into the background as we get older and we trade Santa Claus and the tooth fairy for MVP’s, rockstars, or God. Adolescence...
