Blobs of Happy Familiar

I was putting them to bed tonight, all 3, since Barry wasn't home. So that means big Nathan on the left, smaller yet competitively biggish Emma on the right and Lilly the runty one directly on my stomach. We can't figure out how to put them to bed at the same time in different rooms, so almost 11 years in and we're still piling them all in one convenient location and then inviting sleep to come at a group rate.

Putting them to bed is the one time of day I'm just focused on one thing. I can actually think at bedtime, and I can look at them and actually see them. Touch their hair, or snuggle. The daytime is like a relay race that we're always, always losing, or a breath away from losing. I want to do everything - I want to look at Harry Potter shirts with Emma on Ebay, I want to rebuild the rabbit cage with Nathan, I want to sit at Lilly's pretend barbecue table and eat plastic food. But I can never keep up. Today I did the rabbit cage, and Nathan rewarded me for my time spent with him by stepping on a rusty nail. So now I'm hoping that booster he had at 4 years old is still hanging on, otherwise we're in for a long and boring day of getting shots at a horrible little clinic in Glendale.

We did go on a bike ride up to Hansen (Handsome) Dam which Emma enjoyed enough to get a sore back and aching feet. We tossed rocks into the dam. Which was very big for having really just a toilet's flush of water in it. Then we went to wander at Target where summer is apparently over because we got lots of beach toys at half off. We just started summer like 2 weeks ago. Did they cancel summer? No one told us.

Anyway, all along the dam I kept thinking about Poppa, Barry's dad, who had fallen earlier in the week and just hasn't come all the way back from it. It was like he was himself, always, every day, no wavering, the 95 year old patriarch who loves Oreos and ordering his sons around, and then he slipped on a bathroom rug and now everything's different. I just kept thinking about him and why do things have to change like that?

Putting the kids to bed, there was a black blanket bunched up at the bottom of the bed and I kept thinking it was the dog, Owen. Because of the shape of it. Then Owen wandered into the room and I realized he wasn't there at all, it was a blanket. I thought about our old dog Maisie, we just put her to sleep a few weeks ago, and we still sort of expect to see her or hear her, we were used to her. She was a shape bumping around here that we cared about.

I don't see the details of everything because my life is innundated with details. I deal in generalities - big slabs of food delivered to small mouths, every few hours. Bathing of people, clothing of people, entertaining of people. I see blobs of things, basic shapes. I meet the most pressing needs and the rest is just blobs of happy/familiar that I warm my hands with. Those shapes keep me grounded, I recognize my life by those shapes, the shapes aren't always focused on, but they're everything. I didn't know it.

The kids fell off to sleep, one by one. From our kamikaze day. I am nestled in this baby bird nest.

I'm missing the shape of Poppa.