Emma's birthday is coming up. Nine years since she was the tiny baby in the bed at the hospital. You can grow alot in nine years. You lose alot of teeth. Lather with lots of crying. Rinse by going to Disneyland. (Just went. 5 times on It's a Small World.)
Things happen so fast around here, I'm always looking for something I put down ten seconds ago and has now been sucked into the vortex of Time Gone By, veritably whisked away and I can't find it. No wonder I want to spend more time with the chickens. They don't ask me questions, and they have no arms. As the math gets more complicated that Nathan brings home, I keep wanting to build a ramp for the chickens to get into the little house I'm making for them. In fact, let me cook up some more turkey bacon and we can talk about how my brain is just frying. This kid-raising thing, it's like riding a cork shooting off of a New Years Eve champagne bottle, directly into Times Square. The cork lands in the middle of immigrants who took the subway to smash together and be on TV on New Years Rockin Eve. I will surely be squashed. My point is - there is no mercy. There is in fact, MORE TO DO. I'll have a heaping plate of more, please.
More not in the good way, though, like more wiping the dirty kitchen floor with a rag so that it's not so disgusting, and if I wipe the floor and clean the kitchen, then I have to avert my eyes as I go past the laundry that needs to be taken out, or put away, the baby that needs to be pajamaed and put to bed, the Emma that is reading Harry Potter in bed with Daddy, and another day of Oops, did I spend any time with her, looking into her eyes? And wait, Daddy? Wasn't he an important figure at one point, over there in the corner? I remember him from Critters. Nathan is okay though, because we did actually play basketball tonight. So one good, the rest, a crippling distant loss.
I officially can't keep up, I whispered, surprised, to the kitchen floor tonight, and yet I rage on, I will NOT give up. So what if everything is clean in shifts. So what if it's midnight and I'm writing, or packing snacks for lunch the next day, or looking at the baby chicks sacked out under the lamp in their cage. My life is this series of meticulous events, with nothing getting done in the leisurely Tahitian way that is my birthright.
I started teaching piano to one of Emma's friends. She has a name that rhymes with - well, I always call her Trinitron (to myself). I did her second lesson today. The first lesson all I did was overprepare and then sweat because I'm not a piano teacher. And yet - I am now. When the mom asked me to do it, I said "Um, well, okay." Then I told her I'm not a teacher. She said how much would I charge? I said, Uh, I don't know, $20 bucks. She said, "how bout 30." I said, doubtfully to Trinitron, "Well, you can fire me whenever you want." But the mom said, "No, come to our house, the other kids can play with our other kids while you have your lesson." It was kind of so perfect. And the second lesson, I went back today, and the kid had actually practiced and learned. So I did some more with her (and brought a watch this time, cause time is money), and I think she's doing really well. Plus kids tell you hilarious stories that waste a lot of time. I kept having to say okay, that's interesting, but THE PIANO. Plus she looks alot like my nephew and I kept looking at her and thinking god my brother's a loser.
Anyway. Earlier Lilly and I went to my horse job and I let her ride one of the tiny poines there. Ponies scare me. They are really cute and tubby and this makes you think they're safe, like they could put on an apron and make you some comforting brownies or something, but you know in their mind all they want is to buck of your baby and kick you in the face. They're just biding their time. So I had some mild anxiety putting her on the horse, and luckily she wanted to get off before any injury occured. Then we went and got chicks at the feed store on the way home. Because they're 2 dollars. And we love egg on toast. In June, when they start laying.
When Lilly wouldn't take a nap and I was lying there pretending to sleep while she did pushups on my stomach and sang "It's a Small World" directly into my eye, I did have a sense of humor. It's all a joke, this order and sense. There is just the commitment to life, that's all - the daily leap we all make to conquer the day - not necessarily the mish mash mess that the day makes out of us - but that the day turns into a sort of beautiful, misshapen life... In my case today: piano teacher, writer, mother...all coming from the same messy place - the part that doggedly believes it's all possible.
That's why that chicken ramp is so important. Making a simple little house for simple creatures, out of our old shed. It's like my version of a Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney movie. Simple works for me. After these busy days, I can do simple. The simple heals up the mess.
