Thursday Confessions

I can't wait to sneak bites of her chocolate bunny.

The History of my Sense of Humor

It was seventh grade. JoAnna was "going with" Jason who was smart and had really blue eyes, and it was Valentine's Day. Or maybe it wasn't Valentine's Day, but it was some special day, and we're all sitting in the cafeteria sucking on chocolate milk and waiting for school to start, and Jason brings in this book, and on the front of it, it says "What I Know about JoAnna," and we're all like, oh wow, how romantic, thinking it would talk about the way she keeps her eyes half-opened when she kisses or how maybe she's still afraid of the dark or how when she grows up she wants to move to the beach, but then we open it, and it's empty. Completely empty.

And we start laughing. Hysterically. It's a joke, we say, he knows nothing about you. Get it? Nothing. I think I laughed for about two weeks.

Sometimes now, when someone who is a complete enigma to me says something like, "You don't know me," I think, yep, you're so right, I've got a book at home about how well I know you; I've got a whole stack that people give me for the holidays! And then I kind of laugh, but the sky does that weird tipping thing and the bizarre-o ukulele music starts playing, and then I'm not laughing anymore. I'm just sitting there with my empty book, wondering yet again if the trees will ever bloom.

Home Sick, Day 4

Also known as that Monday when it kept raining and friends brought by trashy magazines and daffodils and juice which we took through the mail slot; the day of the aspirator and the thermometer; the day the bird's cry was heartbreakingly weak because her throat was so sore; the day I tried to bag up my maternity clothes but instead left them in sheepish piles all over the house; the day I wrapped a hot dog in a paper towel, microwaved it for thirty seconds and called it lunch; the day the bird couldn't eat because she couldn't breathe; the day we cried, read poems, put away the poems and went back to the trashy magazines; the day of pale skin and Kleenexes and little eyedroppers of infant Tylenol; the day with all its mama-loves-her-little-bird songs and rain-rain-go-away songs and mama-promises-May-will-come-soon-and-bring-jillions-of--pink-blooms songs, all its feel-better and sleep-now and I'm-sorry songs, song after song keeping time with the beat of the rain.

I Am Mommy

Mommy, mommy, mommy. Mommy this and mommy that, mommy tit for mommy tat. Mommy red and mommy blue, mommy left her brain in a shoe. Mommy squeals and mommy squawks, this is the way that mommy talks. Mommy wide and mommy deep, mommy forgot to get some sleep! Mommy's sick and mommy's tired, mommy's feeling a little wired. Mommy might go on all night, but, uhm, that would probably get really old.

On Sand Dollars...

Unrequited love & autism.

New post up at Painted Bride Quarterly!
Read it:
here.

Grace

Bagged Dinner

I emptied half a bag of lettuce onto a plate and threw pulled-off pieces of already-cooked chicken on top of it. Dinner, I told my husband. It had been a hundred years since I had slept. My hair was dirty; my eyes, old. This was last night.

We have to decide what kind of parents we want to be, I said. Do we just lay her in her bed and let her scream bloody murder until she's asleep or do we coddlecoddlecoddle her and end up with a teenager in OUR bed and never have any time for ourselves again?

I licked chicken carcass off my fingers; the same old jazz poured from our kitchen speakers. I might be losing my mind, I said.

Might? He smiled. I waved the knife in the air, a small, sharp one that we received for a wedding gift.

On the other side of the room, Eva slept soundlessly, which she again did, after being fed and bathed and read to, all through the night, until the sun eeked in, and with a full night's sleep in me, I held her. My mind, it seems, has returned. Now, if I can just get around to washing my hair.