Man, you get a person for 19 years you kinda miss them when they're living the life of a beauty queen lottery winner in her corner apartment with the view of the ocean sunset in Santa Barbara. Who knew math could bring you someplace beautiful. I guess the math among us must also be rewarded. They must know shit that we don't know. Don't tell me, though man, I'm happy just to be standing next to Double 5 super math genius while knowing not one thing that she does.
I was happy to have her get her back handspring in the back yard when she was 10 and come screeching running in to show us. I got to make a LOT of ice cream cones. There was a christmas parade where she vaulted all the way down a main street in Montrose while singing.
I got every minute and now we had to go leave her in her future with its selfish sea air fingers holding her at that exquisite place she certainly deserves. She deserves like a BIGGER apartment building with a limousine helicopter and her own chef that she can spank if her eggs aren't perfect. Just, I quietly beg you Emma, don't leave your pajama pants that I have to find in the laundry and then fold and pretend it's not terrible you aren't here.
We raised you to keep you forever. So we're not liking that quiet hole that is your room by the kitchen. I thought you were nuts to want the room by the kitchen, where it's noisiest and the least private. But now I know it was your only way to make sure everyone noticed you. Middle children are pretty needy aren't we. Also we're just good at knowing what we want, and getting what we want. Even if it changes constantly.
So now the house is down to one, short haired and quiet mouse. I hope Eve comes back quick. She's pretty entertaining. The last night before she left she came and climbed into the bed next to me in the closet cage goldilocks bed between my bed and mom's bed. We held hands through the loft ladder bars. We talked about how much time we spent at the thrift store that doesn't exist anymore all those years she was growing up. We knew every inch of that place. It had horrible dirty carpets and a break room that smelled like hot macaroni. But we talked about the whole back room full of furniture and the shelves of pillows she would bury herself in, and the toy section that was like Santa's toyroom spilled out into a toy ocean. She swam in there for years.
The dumbest things matter huh. The things like cheap clothes that seem like just surviving life are actually the things that are your whole life. When you look back, holding hands at night.
I hung up all her clothes at school and was laughing because she only wanted her tshirts hung up and these shirts were like remember Build a Bear? Tiny t-shirts that could only fit on a teddy bear and I said to her ummm the hangers are like Jack and the Beanstalk and these shirts are like Barbie's little sister's Hawaiian wardrobe. She said to stretch them on anyway so I wrestled on her tiny shirts and hung them up thinking good luck getting those off when you're late to anything and then I was laughing thinking someday she was gonna be the fat lady hanging up the college girl's tiny shirts.
She'll be good at that too. I think thank god for B, because between the two of us we taught her how to worship her kids, when she has them. We taught all the kids by accident from our own busting hearts.
