two years later

Today's the second anniversary of the day I had a craniotomy to remove a meningioma from my frontal-parietal lobe. It's still a hugely hard thing to wrap my mind around (no pun intended); there was less than a month between my diagnosis and the surgery, and then ten days after I was out of the hospital, I went back to work and school. I still remember driving to school that first day back -- what was I thinking DRIVING two weeks after having my head drilled open?!?! -- and having the entire left side of my body go numb as I went up the 290 exit ramp to Morgan. It was one of many focal seizures I had over the course of a few weeks, and it was horrifying, trying to steer with a hand that couldn't feel anything while I shifted gears and parked the car.

In retrospect, I have no idea how I managed. I don't know how I listened (without screaming) to the assistant department head tell me I'd only be able to take two weeks off of school or else I'd lose my funding and have to drop out of graduate school. I don't know how I walked around my neighborhood with a cane and a shaved head and a clearly visible scar the day after I got home from the hospital (four days post-op). I don't know how I went back to grading papers and making lesson plans and taking three classes. I don't know how I was able to be a mom during those weeks after surgery, when my energy levels were depleted severely.

Actually, I do know how I did it: with the help of the hip mamas, who came together to bring me food and watch the boys and generally help me through the process. There were some glitches along the way -- which at the time I felt resentful about -- but, looking back, I would have never been able to get back to work and school so quickly if not for my mama friends. (And I'm going out to celebrate tonight with many of them. Yay!)

The reason I mention this: as I talk more to L. and go to more meetings and think more about my past, reality is setting in. I've been through a lot, and while maybe that's obvious, all along I've thought, I'm living through it, I'm coping, I'm managing, so it mustn't be all that bad. Well, it was. And it is. And I haven't been doing that great of a job managing. And I never have. All of a sudden, all of the things I've always thought as proof that I could handle the world and manage the stress and cope with disaster are reconceptualized as instances of what the hell was I thinking?

As I get work done so I'll have the time to go out tonight with my friends to celebrate my anniversary, I'm grateful things tanked with D., because I'd otherwise never talked with A. about the program. And if I'd never met A., I'd never have met L., and I'd never have come to the place where I am now. I guess that means I'm grateful for serendipity. As we should all be.

following my inner p(l)ath

There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. (Sylvia Plath)

Running my bath last night, I used up the bubbles I bought in July, when I'd just come back from New York City and couldn't remember how to fit back into life in Chicago. Drinking at the Red Line Tap with V. and J., with invitations from both P. and D. to hang out, all I could do was decline both a second beer and my choice of companions and head to Walgreens, where I spent too much time shopping for razor blades and bubble bath, postponing going home to an empty apartment, where I would be alone not because I was unwanted but because I was dissatisfied with everyone who wanted me.

***

The bottle is empty now, faint traces of lavender and roses and a layer of thick purple liquid coating its insides that might be enough for yet another soak in the tub if I had the patience to set it upside down and wait a day or two to see what's left. But any sense of perseverance I might have had is gone, and the bottle sits next to the garbage can in the kitchen, where it will remain until I take out the trash and it becomes someone else's problem.

***

It's only been since I've lived in this apartment that I've grown to love baths as an adult. Maybe it's the extra-deep clawfoot tub, or the ledge that holds candles that shimmer against the frosted windows when I turn out the lights to meditate, or the way my cat settles into the corner and hops up to bat at my feet after I close my eyes. I know I never liked them in the past; when A. and I first started dating, he'd draw me a bath and make me Cosmopolitans and have them both waiting for me when I came home from work, and my response was always, thanks for the vodka, but what's up with the bubbles? And the last time he ran a bath for me, I yelled at him because he'd forgotten to meet me at Red Lobster for dinner, and at the time a bath -- with candles and Cosmos and rose petals! -- didn't matter as much as dinners and cheese biscuits and a boyfriend who remembered where to go, and when. I remember, better than most things from that time, just how angrily he vowed to never draw me a bath again. And he never did.

***

Memories of the good times in Texas always involve flashbacks to the farm house in the middle of the cotton fields. After days spent climbing cedar trees with T. and running with the dogs and reading Trixie Belden with the feel of the sun on my arms, there were two things I loved about the evenings after dinner: sweeping away the dust that covered the floors because we had no air conditioning and left the doors and windows wide open all day, and stripping down to take a bath. The best time was during winter; even though it wasn't cold by Chicago standards, there was a chill to the air, and the bathroom was home to an old radiator that gave off a sweet oily smell. I'd soak in the tub until my toes wrinkled and the water grew cold, and my mother would bang on the door, wanting to know what the hell was taking so long. I wonder if the bath then wasn't what the bath is now: escape and relief and rejuvenation and forgiveness and, simply put, self-love.

***

It's nine weeks since I've come back from New York City, 63 days that feel more like a roller coaster flown off its tracks than anything resembling my life. If my walls could talk, they'd tell nothing I haven't said already; if my bath could tell the pain I've let loose within its confines, there's no telling what would happen.

***

Back in May, when D. left me alone with all sorts of troubles, M. sent me advice:

I’d suggest taking a long hot bath by candlelight. Shower first to get all clean; exfoliate, scrub, cut your nails, get off any old junk. Then fill a tub with hot water and a generous handful of sea salt. The salt will extract toxins from your skin, rebalance the salinity of your cells, and neutralize the out of whack vibrations you’ve picked up or created in the past few days/weeks. Basically it sets you back to zero - clears your system and spirit. Don’t think about anything during the bath, but before hand, as you slip under the water (til just your face is out), drop the question into your head of what you really want to do. Don’t try to answer it - just soak with it and let something rise to the surface. Usually by the time you get out the answer is peacefully clear to you. Sometimes you go to sleep and either dream the answer, or wake up knowing it. That’s the first thing I recommend, to get right with yourself, balanced and be sure.

In the space between D. disappearing (the first time) and the events of the beginning of June, I took a number of those baths, always expecting answers to float to the surface, hoping I'd figure something out while pulling my body from the water, hearing the gurgle of the draining tub, drying off with a warm towel, feeling the strength in my arms and legs as I smoothed baby oil into my skin. Explicit clarity always eluded me, but I gained something more valuable than definitive answers to nebulous questions: a mechanism for letting go of negativity, confusion, and pain.

***

The perfect bath reminds me of sex: too cold, and I won't be able to get the release I need. Too hot, and the energy gets sucked out of me before I can relax. But that in-between temperature, the one that's probably hotter than most can stand, well... it's an orgasm and a massage and a good cry and an adrenaline rush and a burst of love all at once. To say it's the epitome of letting go would be an understatement.

***

I've taken a lot of baths in the past 63 days, sometimes for ten minutes and other times until the water grew cold and I found myself shivering. And as I took this last bath with the bubbles, I thought about the first with them: the night I shaved my legs with fresh razor blades and inhaled a new scent and tried to put pieces of my life into perspective. Things were ending with P., beginning to begin again with D., and I was reeling with forcing myself to push aside an intuition I had when the plane landed at Midway: to delete both P. and D. from my cell phone and refuse their calls and ignore their texts. But then I second-guessed myself, felt too harsh, wondered what was wrong with me, and I settled back into, well, settling.

***

Not that settling was all bad. What often remains unspoken -- in spirit if not in fact -- is that there were good times with D., times I thought things could have worked out, if only we had been less dysfunctional. Meditations in the bath haven't always been about releasing pain and frustration; they've also been about restoring my faith in the goodness of people, cultivating a deeper sense of compassion, opening myself up to love and hope and the possibility of happiness. Even now, thinking of D., I remember that he was never a bad person or intentionally hurtful or deceitful*; he was (and still is) struggling with issues deeper than either of us (but especially me) could bear. Despite being happy with my decision to leave, this breakup isn't easy: the process of sorting out what I should hold on to is unfamiliar territory that grows terrifying at times. But deep soaks in lavender scented water act as a sieve through which I can filter what stays and what goes, what I want to release and what I want to keep, and bit by bit I'm figuring out how to emerge from it as a whole person who makes healthy choices out of self-respect and dignity rather than fear and desperation.

***

Back to letting go: the bath last night was not only the end of a 28 fl.oz. bottle of bubbles but also the start of embracing my fundamental need to love myself. Call it release, call it acceptance, call it surrender -- whatever its name, there was more than just water and a soapy film left behind when I crawled out of the tub. Today, or maybe tomorrow, but definitely by the end of the week, I'll head to Walgreens for a new bottle of bubbles. This time, I think I'll get the strawberry ones. I'm ready for something just a bit more frivolous.

* I'm not so sure about this anymore.

tuesday, part two

Tonight: Canceled group therapy. Went grocery shopping, did the dishes, goofed off with the boys, chatted with V., made soy cheese bagel pizzas, watched The Unit, talked with A. about it a bit after, watched SVU, walked to The Grind, chatted with R. about her show Sunday (and told her I put her song up on this blog), ordered a hazelnut latte, walked half-way to Laurie's before deciding I didn't want to go, walked home instead, stopping for a bit before the rock shop to peek at their calendar, got home, made tentative plans to stay with D. when I visit NYC, checked out airfare. Now: running a bath, drinking Pellegrino, feeling happy.

What I didn't do: see Metric, because upon further examination of my motives, I didn't want to go; I wanted to prove I was strong enough to go without D., but who am I kidding? I already know I'm strong enough. So I sold the tickets on Craigslist to a kid from Evanston whose girlfriend wanted to see the band.

Et cetera: I am following the breakup ground rules (which seemed silly a week ago, but not so much now) and the three don'ts (though, honestly, I'm not tempted to 'do' any of the 'don'ts'). I am acting in positive ways borne out of my own needs, feelings, and boundaries, and not in reaction or anticipation of anything anyone else -- least of all, D. -- does. And I am, in ten minutes, going to take a bath. Good night.

2 things 4 sunday

As promised, I was asleep by midnight but also wide awake by 7:30am. Them's the breaks, I suppose. It's time for me to catch up on all the things I've been too stressed to contemplate for the past week, but I've got a couple of cultural recommendations for folks:

• Watch I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With. If you have ComCast, it's available via On Demand. If you don't, it's in the theatres now, and it's funny enough to make you laugh, sweet enough to make you believe in the goodness of people, and honest enough to make you feel as though you're watching a story about one of your neighbors or a friend or the random people you pass every day walking through the world.
• Check out AgentXPQ, whose Tales of Mere Existence display an uncanny understanding of living in a postmodern world filled with both hope and confusion. I especially enjoyed I Have to Get Ready, Saturday, and Procrastination (remind you of someone?), but they are all good.

And if you're free this evening, swing by The Hideout. I'll be there with N. (and possibly Mr. Big) to see Rachel Ries at the CD release party for her latest album. Yay! A new week begins... well, now.

every day's a saturday

My headache is back -- no thanks to the excessive screeching in this afternoon's press opening of The Crucible at The Steppenwolf -- and this evening marks the first time all week I've eaten more than a bagel for dinner. I've lost ten pounds in two weeks, and I woke up this morning with a huge zit (perfect, considering I had an eyebrow appointment). I'm tired and unmotivated and completely drained of any impetus to do anything but watch While You Were Out outtakes on TLC.

When N. asked me how I was doing today, what I came up with was completely spent and totally exhausted. And he pointed out that at least I am not lonely, depressed, desperate, angry, spiteful, or otherwise overwhelmed with negative energy. And he is right about that. It's time for me to be kind to myself, starting with tonight: turning off my computer and watching a Netflix movie and falling asleep by midnight for the first time in many weeks. Of course I'm tired -- and that's a good sign.

green thoughts

you remind me of texas. not the cowboys and rodeos. but more-so the view looking out my window and the tipping of the hats of strangers. the antique wallpaper coming loose in the kitchen & the music played in the backgrounds of fairytales on cassette tapes. (comment from a fan on Midlake's MySpace page)

There's a certain mythology about Texas I've never fully understood: a state filled with braggarts and bigots, women whom feminism left behind, bare-assed redneck children, run-down trailer parks, rabid dogs. There's an idea that the Lone Star State represents things we find unappealing: Southern drawls, laziness, a certain sluggishness in thought and demeanor. And I suppose all of that is true; I bear the marks -- both hidden and visible -- of trailer parks and dogs and intolerance as well as anyone who's lived there for any length of time, in poverty no less.

But there are also times I miss Texas in the way I imagine amputees feel phantom limbs and mothers mourn lost children and old men wonder what happened to fellow soldiers from war. It's something I can't explain and few can understand, but it's the sort of feeling that gets under your skin from riding bikes through the Hill Country during the summer or drinking Pepsi from dusty bottles in Gruene Hall or watching the sun set from the top of the Canyon Lake Dam. It's the way I come back from Austin with a bit of a drawl or feel a twinge of jealousy when my brother leaves to go back home or smile when I visit New York City and learn about a Texas BBQ place opening up in midtown Manhattan. It's the smell of a springtime rain and the way algae clings to rocks in the river and the thought that saying Texas to some people might mean more than years spent in bed with a lover. It's all sorts of things that can be listed and none of the things that can be counted, and there are days when I just want to go home. Today is one of them.

year of the rat

I only wanted to be wonderful, and wonderful is true. In truth, I only really wanted to be wanted by you.
(Damien Rice, "The Rat Within the Grain")

It's days, now, that The Rat Within the Grain has been the song on my MySpace page. At first, it was a description of how I've been feeling the past few weeks. But after listening to its lyrics hundreds of times at this point, it's taken on a decided ambiguity, and the more I meditate on the words, the more I think about their import and meaning, and the more I realize it's not a song about a situation I'm in; it's a song about my life. And it goes far beyond simple disappointment, all the way to a narrative of an entire life spent wanting one thing: acceptance.

***

I wonder what it must be like to love someone who is able to offer empathy, compassion, and kindness in the face of adversity and conflict. It occurs to me that I've been seeking out people who are unable to give me those things, perhaps out of habit and routine, perhaps because I hope that I can heal myself as an adult in ways inaccessible to children, but always with the same result: I get stuck in patterns in which I desperately seek out acceptance from people who can barely accept themselves.

***

What would it be like to walk away when people treat you badly? asks my new therapist, about half an hour into our first session on Monday. I've tried, I say. I have panic attacks. My instinct is to explain myself, argue why I deserve to be loved. She pushes: Can you imagine what it would feel like to assume you deserve it, to own the decision to walk away if you don't get it? And I cannot. I can't even fathom the idea of not being loved and thinking, Ah, well, too bad. I'll keep looking until I find someone who can meet my eminently reasonable needs as a human being. This, of course, is a huge fucking problem.

***

Something else of concern: there's a reason I have an affinity for Wonder Woman, the arbiter of both feminine strength and feminist justice. If in reality I have neither the will nor the gumption to take anyone to task for their bad behavior, in spirit I find myself wanting to whomp them up-side the head. I want to call people to task, force responsibility upon them, take their lies and their smokescreens and their complete abdication and shove it down their throats until they are mute or, at the very least, stop spewing hate and negativity.

But that's just a fantasy, and not a very healthy one, at that -- the only anger I'll let myself feel while I wander through an implicitly unjust world making excuses for everyone else and heaping piles of guilt upon my own back. The tattoo of Atlas shrugging that I got in 1999 was supposed to symbolize my refusal to carry those burdens anymore, but in retrospect it seems I'd just grown used to the weight of that world lodged firmly between my shoulder blades. I'm tired of carrying all that shit, but living without it leaves me feeling as though I'll float away without a burden pushing me down.

***

I keep coming back to letting go. I can do what I've always done -- become master at explaining myself in a misguided belief that if I only tell the story the right way, the people who say they love me will change and they will want to take care of me, but that's a lie. And it's a lie of the most insidious sort, because it all but guarantees my powerlessness.

***

I've been listening to that Damien Rice song incessantly, hitting the left arrow key on my iPod as the music streams, again and again, through my car's stereo speakers. I understand, in a way I've never quite grasped, the power of a mantra. It's stupid, it's silly, it's pedestrian, the idea that a song could have the power to exact a shift in consciousness, but it's happening. I think. It's forcing me to come to terms with all of the things I've tried to do -- with a good heart, with good intentions, with all the naivete I could muster -- simply because I wanted to be loved. And something else, too: it's helping me to let go, a little bit at a time, of the idea that my wanting to be loved has anything to do with someone else's ability to love me. I need to disconnect those two things in my mind -- my self-worth and comfort from strangers -- and place my faith in the realization that I deserve to be loved, and I shouldn't have to beg for it. In the mean time, though, I'm having one hell of a panic attack.

annual picnic, two years later

The tables were empty when we arrived, food in plastic containers and wrapped in tin foil carefully laid out across assorted tablecloths, the untouched scene of a party waiting to be set in motion. Everyone else was on the nature hike, and I didn't really feel like going, but I also didn't want to sit alone with B., where my mind surely would wander toward thoughts best left unthunk. So I sighed and chose to embrace that which makes me uncomfortable.

***

When B. and D. are together, they profess their love for each other and promise to be best friends forever. I didn't much walk with them on the hike -- I hung back, talking and commiserating with V., vocalizing feelings usually left unsaid -- but I did make sure to keep them in my sights... two little boys, walking and running and smiling hand in hand, never entirely letting go of each other, while I wondered, at what point does it become more comfortable to run alone rather than hold on to someone you love?

***

Seeing all the children today was jarring. Everyone's getting so big so fast. The ones who were babies at my pre-brain surgery Hair Party (where I quite ceremoniously shaved my head) are toddlers now, waddling through high grass, talking in sentences, looking at earthworms, scooping up handfuls of creature-filled dirt with newly nimble fingers. The ones who were toddlers then are all in school now, growing up and making best friends and falling in love in the ways they know how. I wonder how it's possibly been two years since I wrote ethical wills, telling the boys goodbye, in case I didn't live through surgery. The last time I was at one of these picnics, I'd just found out about the tumor living in my head, and no one quite knew what to say. This time, when I mention the anniversary is coming up, I decide we need to celebrate.

***

Everything in my life comes in small doses lately. A little bit of work here, a bit more there. An hour or two with the boys, time to myself, finite spaces filled with too-hot bubble baths, noncommittal dinners in front of the TV, my iPod on shuffle, movies on demand, ten-minute walks to The Grind and back for coffee. And other things, too: weekly therapy, a three-week support group, hour-long meetings, a series of steps I'm supposed to work through. Those steps, though: I keep getting stuck on the first one. Admitting I'm powerless? It overwhelms everything and I don't know the way from A to B, the path between realizing what needs to be done and, well, just letting go.

***

I send out an Evite for my anniversary party, dubbing it The "Goodbye Tony the Tumor" Reunion Tour 2007. We'll be celebrating at the Green Mill's weekly poetry slam. With the moral support of friends who have helped me live through things I never would have imagined, maybe I'll be brave enough to read my own work. Or perhaps a couple of martinis will tip me over that edge. Either way, I can't believe how good it feels to have friends around when I actively choose to do something that involves a high risk of falling flat on my face.

***

At the picnic -- at the table filled with the mamas who are troubled in love -- I explain how I feel as though I'm sitting on the middle of a seesaw. At one end is the desire to (re)claim myself, stick to a bottom line, hold out until I get what I deserve; at the other is the tendency to make sure everyone else is OK before taking care of myself. I'm running back and forth, trying to keep both ends from flying off into the air or banging hard into the ground, losing sight of the only fact that matters: if I don't take care of myself, I'm no use to anyone else, either.

***

I freaked out today when a bug landed on me -- jumping up, dancing around, spilling my "adult" O.J. -- and the hip mamas laughed with me. With anyone else, it might have been a chance to make me feel bad for my idiosyncrasies, tease me for being skittish, give me cause to take pause and be self-conscious and timid and embarrassed. But these women are the ones who pulled me through brain surgery and recovery when I needed a cane to walk and couldn't feel the left side of my body, the ones who listen to me at 2am when I can't sleep and need to talk or just have someone listen to me cry, the ones who validate both my hopes and my fears and tell me it's OK not to have everything figured out and even make mistakes sometimes, the ones who accompany me to difficult places and hold my hand through unthinkable things. And while none of us are four-year-old boys skipping and laughing our way through the world, not wanting to let go, what we have is better: hands outstretched, warm and waiting, for the moments when all we need is someone who can walk with us on the journey, just for a little while, until it's safe to let go.

LISTENING TO: The Battle for Everything (Five for Fighting)

short end of the wit

I can't say breaking down and sobbing at the doctor's office was one of my finer moments, but I suppose it was inevitable. After waiting four hours for a nurse to call me back about my Headache Questions yesterday, I was told NOT to go to the ER but, instead, to see the doctor today. And I get to the doctor today and not only did they refuse to accept the auto insurance as payment for my visit -- no, I have to file that claim myself -- but they then all but refused to see me, saying that I needed a CT scan and the nurse yesterday should have just told me to go to the ER after all. I started crying, and then I just walked out, back to the parking garage, out onto Maxwell Street, all the way home, still crying, stopping only to call A. to calm my nerves.

It was all too much to take -- this headache I've had for the better part of a week, the car accident, emotional stress... I just want to put a stop to all of this. I'm tired of shitty things happening, and I am tired of dealing with people who are more concerned about bureaucracy than helping me. I'm tired of working really fucking hard to be responsible and it doesn't even matter. I'm in so much pain and I feel like I'm the ping-pong ball in a game of table tennis.

my heart has officially melted

It's no secret that one of my favorite procrastination moves is reading through Missed Connections on Craigslist. It's now 1:48am on a Friday morning, and I teach class beginning in seven hours and thirteen minutes, but it's been DAYS since I've caught up on the ol'MCs, and this one struck me as incredibly sweet:

women should not buy their own flowers
m4w - 36
i was in line behind you on sunday and you had a full grocery cart with flowers on top. i took the flowers off your cart and bought them for you saying that women should never buy their own flowers. i wish i had said more but with friends around did not want to say more and have them make it a scene. hope you enjoyed the flowers and next time i will say hello. enjoy the rest of your week lady

Perhaps it's my romantic streak, but can you imagine being the woman standing in line at at the grocery store who has that happen to her? Now maybe it's just a guy trying to have sex with some woman he met at Dominicks, but I refuse to be cynical when I'm still in the afterglow of finding something that touched me. (No snarky comments about how pathetic it is to be sitting at home, now at 1:54am, reading CL ads in order to be touched. Fuck you.)

burning thoughts

The Big Rig Jig at Burning Man

Burning Man is a concept that eludes me. I've never been, and those I know who have make it sound like a glorified art-school version of Rainbow Gatherings combined with the chaos of an anarchist club. I detest anarchists, and I didn't get my Rainbow Gathering name at any of the half-dozen gatherings I attended but, instead, at the 2007 SW/TX PCA/ACA conference, where a rather adorable Welsh man named Rick dubbed me "Ultimate Bad" in the middle of a pot smoke-filled hotel suite. It sure doesn't seem like any festival in the middle of the desert filled with thousands of unshowered radical artists is for me. And the fact that my mother has been twice makes me even more skeptical.

But then I come across pictures like the one above, and I wonder why I haven't at least given it a shot -- maybe it has something to do with being born in Berwyn (home of Spindle, aka the car kebab), but I am tickled pink by almost anything unusual that involves Things With Wheels. And my friend Nick went this year, and all he could say when I talked to him over the weekend was, I can't even begin to describe it in a phone call. It's best done in person. With alcohol involved. So now I'm curious: have I been mistakenly avoiding Burning Man, thinking that it's filled with pot and patchouli (both of which I abhor) and not much else? Tell me, dear readers: am I missing out?

PS - For those concerned... I still have a headache and my appetite is a little off, but overall I am, well, fair-to-middling after The Car Accident of 2007. I'm considering visiting the hospital tonight because my headache is lingering, but everything I've read online says it's not unusual to have a headache stay for two or three days after an accident, and such things only become troubling when they (a) don't respond to medication (mine does), (b) take a turn for the excruciating, or (c) involve other symptoms, including disorientation, confusion, lack of concentration, etc. I assure you I am no more disoriented, confused, or addled than average, and, quite frankly, I have better things to do than sit in the waiting room at Swedish Covenant Hospital for four hours this evening. (But if someone wanted to, oh, send a box of chocolates because they were very concerned I wasn't recovering quickly enough, I wouldn't refuse...)

the poor woman's spa

...no thinking for a little while, let's not try to figure out everything at once... (The National, "Fake Empire")

Last night's headache permeated my dreams, though they had all dissipated by the time I awoke at 5:30am and couldn't get back to sleep. And the dull ache is still there, along with constant nausea, making me think that the stress in my life is finally taking root in my body. And I've decided to let a lot of it go, at least for today.

Yes, I am behind on my work, and I have papers to grade, and my house is a mess, and I need to go grocery shopping, and I haven't done laundry for almost two weeks, and I've been up for five hours and still haven't showered. Maybe I don't think I can afford to spent my day lying on the couch in a robe watching movies and bad television shows, but at this point I can't afford not to. Heck, I'd go to the spa if I weren't overdrawn at the bank with only $19 cash and payday four days away. I'm trying to tell myself it's the poor woman's version of flying to Ojai for a massage and pedicure.

at least that's what you said

from Wilco...

When I sat down on the bed next to you
You started to cry
I said, maybe if I leave, you'll want me
To come back home
Or maybe all you mean, is leave me alone
At least that's what you said

You're irresistible when you get mad
Isn't it sad, I'm immune
I thought it was cute
For you to kiss
My purple black eye
Even though I caught it from you
I still think we're serious
At least that's what you said

holding each other

For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out. (James Baldwin)

The summer is ending, but the shift feels like more than just the weather. I can't wait until winter, B. tells me on our way to the video store, so I can build a snowman with you in the park. His black-and-pink skater shoes skim jagged patches of grass meeting the sidewalk as he tries to balance along sharp edges, stopping to jump over cracks in the concrete. The sunlight glints off the hair on his legs, tiny shards of silken glass on limbs that were still curled up inside my womb five years ago. I think of his older brother at this age. I remember and repeat all the marveling: this wonder I feel at what it must be like to be a child, perched on the precipice between one-ness with the world and the unease that comes with self-consciousness.

***

I'm not ready for the boys to start school on Tuesday. It's easy to talk about how the end is relatively near, how it's nice to have a ten-year-old in 6th grade and (gasp!) a four-year-old in 2nd grade, but it's hard sending them off into classrooms where those words are no longer an abstraction. I ask B. the color of his uniform shirt. He says dark mauve, and I want to know how the boy who wasn't even born when his brother was his age learned what mauve is and where I was when that happened.

***

In Giddings Plaza, hearing an accordionist, B. has a revelation. Aha! I've got it! he declares. I want to be a musician when I grow up! Any other child would leave it at that, but B. goes on: Just a minute ago, I had no idea what I wanted to be. Now that I know, I can get on with my life. It occurs to me not only that my children have been seamlessly and silently going about with growing up -- was I ever paying attention? -- but also that they might know themselves better than I ever have known myself.

***

It's more than the trite how did they grow up so fast when I wasn't willing to slow down?, but I don't know how to write that.