Chocolate

I had a tiny baby today.

I was a tiny baby, I was 33. I had been wanting a Nathan since I was 22. Started trying for a Nathan around 27. 

Then in Florida, surrounded by green fields and alligators, there he was. He had a big bump on his head. I was no longer a person. I was a superinflated superhero. I was just a mom.

My body got to do what it was supposed to do, feed and nurture the wee one. So I spent my days and nights with tiny diapers and tiny flailing legs and a tiny face the size of silver dollar pancake. 

I was the richest person I ever met.

I got even richer of course. Because Emma demanded to be born as soon as possible, she was scratching the walls in there. And then little Bess was dozing, she was pretty content to be just where she was I had to coax her out with hot cheeto puffs but she slid out later, into last place. In fact she told me yesterday, this is the last baby talking about college when we were coming back from a killer day surfing at the beach, she said "oh yeah I signed up at the latest time possible to move in to the dorms. 4pm." 

I actually love just watching how they pick things, how they run their lives, what they value, what their speed is, what they notice, how slow they are (or sometimes quick) to deem someone worthy.

This is what I've gotten out of 25 years of being someone's mom. Can I scream it with fierceness and what's the word for supreme happiness? Is it chocolate? Then I scream CHOCOLATE!! To anyone who can hear me. 

For all the birthday parties and stressful cleaning beforehand, for all the little shoes, for a garage full of memories, for dogs sleeping in beds, for bunk beds, for golf carts, for car seats, for onesies, for swimming at two weeks, two years, four years old, for noticing holes in the ground and yelling into them, for knocking over blocks in kindergarten and getting a terse note home from the teacher (Nathan was right tho, Shelby was a pain in the ass, knock her blocks over!), for talent shows and following them to the piano teacher's house, for following them to bathrooms, piling on the beds, being on the toboggan in Switzerland, all the lemon drinks on Italian amtrack

All the time I have spent in the company of such wizardry has stitched me a fat life of belonging to some unprecedented people

It all started on this day, Nattan, with your tiny face and they put you on my chest and you were covered in goo and all squished up and dad was crying and you were easily the greatest gift of my life.  I hope when you have kids you will see how they blow a hole through your heart and fill it with candy and unicorns and serious serious mattering. A smattering of mattering, overspread on thick.

There's no way to write it. My heart is a balloon. Like the blimp kind. Like bigger than anything, bigger than Steve Jobs. Or even bigger than the original BMW plant in Germany which is probably where you want to live or at least go to worship. Or maybe the Laker practice arena wherever that is. That seems like pretty holy ground to an Opper.

You seriously could have been an ax murderer and I would have been like but look. Look at his hair. 

Thanks for yelling MERDE down to french people on the river Seine from that bridge. Thanks for locking people in that room in the Tower of London and then videoing them being confused. Thanks for always getting Waba when we can't figure out what to eat. Thanks for always saying it's okay mom.

Thanks for being our baby, huge and hairy or small and new. No one can take that from us. You started a trend that has a made a life full of tiny cars and bikes all roped together into a train that you pulled, usually naked, outside. 

You made our life a fabric, and you don't even mind. 

love they neighbor

We're getting to be that age, my neighbor told me. 

She told me this while I had just dragged 50 million pound shitfilled trashcans  out to the curb and shut the gate so she stood outside the gate with the fat part of the top of the gate exactly crossing across her eyes so I in fact was just talking to an eyeless neighbor.

I guess people are sick or dying, she was trying to say, and I guess this happens at our age. But I thought sick and dying is kind of a universal thing or maybe it has better distribution maybe it's managed by Sony Pictures. 

I looked at the parts of her face that I could see and her closed toed shoes even though it was August and the temperature of Mercury and only 9 am. Who wears closed toes shoes in the summer man. Also who wears closed shoes ever we live in California. That's why our brothers fought the revolutionary war, I'm pretty sure. Our rights to any crazy footwear at any season.

She kept talking even though the story she was telling was a better 30 second ad. I started to feel the heat from dragging those trashcans, better to just keep going and not stop when heavy lifting, then you get back inside before you realize your body is signaling uhheyyy, we're teetering here. As she talked about our other mean neighbor being in the hospital I started feeling sick and weak. Not because of the mean neighbor, that neighbor is one of the most awful people I've ever met. When I heard she had sepsis and was maybe dying a few days ago I was like you know what? good   But out in this heat with the sun jabbing a busted burnt hot dog finger directly into my sweatglands I felt myself faltering. 

that sun at full blast is uninspiring

She finally stopped talking after I found a pause long enough to start backing away politely. I felt woozy so I climbed back into my mom's cool secret den of dementia into the bed near hers and lay back down just for a minute in the shade of indoors. Who gets back in bed is this a thing

it's so nice 

I hold my phone so I have a friend with me and slowly my body starts to right itself the way it has my whole life so far. Emergency vehicles dispatched to all parts and tiny workers repair whatever's struggling in there. Really it's just heat, exertion and eyeless neighbors talking about mean neighbors dying in hospitals. She coulda been talking about horse supplements, it was all just too much. Don't people know I am here to observe and dispatch my knowledge in this little computer box, it is too much to be conversational also and the faking compassion is also a heavy burden apparently.

I wish I could have said look. That neighbor when the ball went over the fence and the kids were little and dewy eyed we would go over to her house and tentatively knock and say ohhh our ball I'm sorry and she would snap if it comes over again I'm KEEPING IT! like a no-lie, witch. And her equally mean sister when I was walking behind my horse training it she yelled I hope you get kicked in the head!

Both instances we looked up at these sisters with big confused eyes you hope what, now?

I had the most beautiful, kind, serene children. And these witches, they shoveled fury. Into a furnace we never even once lit for any reason. 

They just liked shoveling, man.

I say be careful, nurses, at that hospital. You are handling the devil. Also can we tear down your house, I need an arena right there. You're gonna be fine, basking by the hot lava lake in your natural habitat, hell.

I started to feel better and require bacon. So I got back up from bedded bliss and shuffled back out through the whiteblurred sun to the fan-laden kitchen where B worked quietly in Emma's room/now his office.

How ya doin, he called out.

I've had some thoughts, I said.

this is barry

B thinks that he's the guy who went to africa. He thinks he's the guy whose cousin died at 22. He thinks he's from Chicago, he's short, he's jewish, he ran a theater. He raised a son at 40 with some weirdo whom he now takes care of. He sits in an office and listens to the 40 year old son who is now the age he was when he got the son, that son is yelling you are not my father. you are a terrible father. 

This is not barry

B thinks he is the guy who took all the kids to palm springs so he could golf for cheap in the hot and the kids could make marshmallows and rice krispies and smoke and frolic in pools the temperature of lava, and he is the guy who made a few tv shows and some movies and he likes to eat at phillipes and go to a seder and talk about everyone in the car on the way home and not trash them but dissect them, with a loving tweezer, like what if we put this part over HERE. Do you see how this person wants to be loved

this is not barry

he had a dog named dog and he lived through riots and uprisings and he was in the middle of smoky haze from police teargas and he believed in not fighting in wars and in not hurting people and in people taking care of other people even when that person is yelling at you that you are the worst ever. You can hate me all you want I will still love you. I am shaken but I will still love you

this is barry

He is the guy who listens to all of us blow up and feel shattered in a million pieces and he stands there and lets it all fall down like confetti and settle on the floor and he still stands there sort of looking at the whole scene and then he says I'm gonna go sit in the sun for a minute or he says you know what, the sun is formidable. Or he pokes a finger right at the heart of everything, he will bend down and pick up one fleck of the confetti and say here's your problem right here.

It's only this.

Then he will say there is nothing to eat

Then he will watch thoughtful news and learn everything that is going on in the world so he can understand what is going on and wonder why people are acting the way that they are and not believing what the first person tells him but listening to all the sides and then making his own decision about who is acting justly and then not telling anyone what he thinks really because he's just doing it to make it right in his MIND, he wants to know and wants to figure, and then wants to rest and wants to take action but also in a world where your actions are swallowed up as inaction, he waits

this is barry

He was there from minute ONE with each of his kids and he reached out his hands. He never once not once said no to any kid's hand. He hoisted them up and he sang

this is barry

this is barry 

this is barry

He walked them, he rocked them, he sang summertime, he sang you weary hobo, he said look at that do you see that amazing thing  look at that living being smiling at us and needing us

He said it's okay to break apart. It's okay to not know anything. It's okay to ask for help. It's okay to chew loudly. It's okay to question authority. It's okay to try scary things. It's good to fail. It's good to play basketball. It's good to like black people. It's good to say black people. It's not racist to say black people or africa. 

I met him when I was just a kid too. He was the only person who ever said anything to me about ideas that were radical. He has been there for all the greatest moments of my life. I have always run away from barry. I have never left but I have run away a bunch. Because Barry is unlike anyone I have ever met. He is unreal. He does require food that has alot of oil in it. He might be a car. He is someone I don't understand completely. I hate barry sometimes. Because he is so important to me and I could not lose him. This makes him very scary. It would be like losing my own skin. I have not treated him the way he has always treated me. He makes it look easy and I feel like everything is hard. I feel like being vulnerable is the single hardest thing to do on a real level. I can do it on a fake level. I'm a valedictorian in that, and it runs in my family. We've lettered in it.

But I can't master Barry. I like every way he is in the world. I admire so much all the ways he has taught me to not grasp something so hard you choke it to death. He says always loosen your grip  man. You're okay. He has always been okay. He lives in a hot tub of self love. Not on purpose. He just grew himself there, because he was so excited about the world and his place in it. He has so much to tell us about who you can become. 

That's why his son is wrong, and we know he is sick. It has nothing to do with b. B can't be stripped of himself even though it hurts his fatherhood stitching. He is still stitched in tight. That's why it hurts so much. You can't scrape that badge off as bad as his son is trying. He needs b but mostly he needs himself. made by b. to believe in that self. Once he's gotten a doctor's help. He will remember his self.

B gave me a job and then gave me a lifetime pass to learning him.  He is so interesting. I am not ever bored. Sometimes I wish he would be outside more. But I wish everyone would. Aside from the couch, I don't see a purpose in inside.

There is no way I would have been the mother I am and raised the kids with hearts intact the way they are without the bear that is barry. He is the mammoth behind us all. He is the matterhorn, without the jew hating alpine music. He is the guy who opens the door, says let me get that. He looks at you and knows you. 

then he talks about you in the car

He is a thinker and a feeler and a radical and he loves movies and music genres and his children and all children and dogs. He sees his place in the world and he wishes more people saw him

I see you b

this is barry 

happy bday b

 

Tear Jungle

I was lying in bed with my mom crying last night. I only got in because I figured it had been awhile since she had human lying on touch, and she said she always told the families of patients at her convalescent center to not be afraid to get in bed with your people. They're your people.

My mom had seemed so distant and off lately and I worry the next day is the day she flies off to the universe's open arms on a boat ride I don't have a ticket for, so I got in bed but it is so sad when your mom is broken but her body is here, this body you loved who loved you.

I told B later, I just miss my mom. I miss someone who is hollow and just there for me that I can demand attention from and who will always scratch my back. You need a person you can take for granted who will always be there for you like 911. That is such a luxury.

When I was crying I had to make friends with the crying why does crying feel like the stripper of feelings. Like you feel like you shouldn't look but someone is taking off their clothes and the loud music makes you think it's a party. Crying isn't wanting to be shushed. It's just wiper fluid. It needs to squeak out and be replaced.

Anyway once my crying snuffled out I was lying there feeling marooned, with my mom's bony beautiful hand on my arm, I thought there's no bright spot then right away I saw the jungle.

That same day, in the morning I had been ankle deep in the muddy leafy jungle on a new trail with Mags and Jane. Every year the rain changes all the trails down in the creek, wiping out old familiar ones and making new ones to hack through. I was on an old one that used to be easy and now it was full of tsunami-ed branches and water. I got to the big lake we used to call the Jungle Cruise like at disneyland and there was a huge log like the size of a huge log blocking the lake and the normal way across. I sat on Mags, holding Jane on the rope, and we looked at that log. It looked way too massive to step over, and I was afraid if Mags got halfway over and it was too tall for her stomach we'd be stuck there forever like on a fat horse teeter totter. I had to find another way.

I wanted to get through it because on the other side up the hill is a sunny lengthy lofty arena where I could set loose Jane to have the biggest run of her young life since I got her last October. It's so close.

We turned around and I saw to the side someone had cut away some branches through the leafy forest but it still looked all brambly. I was riding one horse and ponying another barge of a horse and I wasn't sure I could wrangle all three of us through an unknown puzzle of trees.

I got off Mags and judged their moods to see if I could let go of their ropes to go do some recon around these trees to see if Mags and Jane and I could wrestle around in here without death, broken legs or decapitation. 

This is the exact spot that leapt into my head in bed with a mom all cried on. This tangled path of bush, water, trapped air, leaves, horses happy foraging wild plants, ropes dropped, me on the ground momentarily stumped looking for a new safe path. 

I always want someone to be there to show me the way but I am always it seems in shorts with scraped up legs, breaking all the branches to make the way for ourselves.

Horses are such good reasons to fight for path clarity, like physically while you fight, they stand there eating and trusting you while you hack a path for the three of you. 

This is the jumbled happy watery place that reminded me of my worth when I was sad with my mom. My brain nudged me with my mom (creatorofme), in my arms. Leg draped over hers, balanced precariously on the too small hospital bed like Brendan Fraser in The Whale. Which was just as good as Encino Man.

In the sad with her there beached on her bed was the watery jungle and the leaves all reaching for me remember this? This was today too

I led Mags through the jagged hole I had foraged, and Jane dutifully followed, psyched to see and feel everything. There were some little creek inlets to cross and I almost got on but first time through a tight space, better safely with wet boots on the ground. Maggie will go wherever I point her. If she's a bitch it's just because she's picky who she's friends with. She trusts me. Even though it's been ten years, I'm still learning to trust her. People take alot longer to overcome wariness than horses. We get around to the other side of the hidden lake and the fat log. I stare at it. We made it. I find a way to climb back on to the horse without scratching my face off on branches and we keep going toward the arena up ahead through the thicket where it waits up the hill in the sunshine.

As we're clomping through the water all the anxiety of the brain mechanics it required to safely maneuver brush trees animals and the fear your body holds of Can We Make It Through flakes down my body into the water washing away and I feel it going and I think ok I'm definitely not coming back this way.

And then after the arena I go back exactly the same way. Because what are you talking about, I made a path now.

Victory is Sweaty

The kids used to have parties at 11 am. Because then we'd be all done in time for nap.

The kids are having parties at 8pm now. And I have to ask them to turn down the music at 1 am because the neighbors man

I open the back fridge and there are jello shots in there and it smells like my mom's fridge when I was 20. It smells like the beginning of my little brother's alcoholism. Those were good times though. You know? Those were times I can appreciate because my mom just did everything unapologetically all wrong. I learned how to be a mom by opening that fridge and having that time back then and leaving it there. Smells make you think things are worse than they are. They shrink you backwards and you have to wait for it to pass like a huge ocean wave and then you bob back up and say oh wait it's okay. It's all smooth here. 

It's just a memory.

I see my daughter working hard though to make it nice for people. For this party. She worries about how people feel. She checks on me. I should have told her last night go and have a good time. Fuck worrying about anyone. That's why you needed this party to stop everything for a minute. She works hard. She needs some time off and love. I hope she finds some good arms to squeeze her. She's got everything anyone could ever want. She's got a full heart.

B and I went to a movie and let the kids have the house so they could act like normal kids in their 20s for a second. It's funny when we come back and stand in the doorway looking out at a busting patio that has become our party house now briefly and really we just look. All the kids are so big and they're happy, it looks like. They're growing into real people who can take care of themselves, even Dylan. We hadn't seen Dylan since he punched Nathan in the face and broke a bone in his eye. Now he shows up in our backyard looking like Jesus and still calls us mom and dad. He once threw a dart and it missed the dartboard and shattered the glass door for $600 dollars. $600 dollars and a broken eye, and holding his arms out for a hug now, sure you little rascal, get in here. 

He could run, man. He was a hurdler in high school. He was really talented. He needs some dental work. His gramma died yesterday. The ocean washed him ashore, okay, grab his arms, at least for a ten minute conversation.

These parties are easier cause there's no food. The chickens are out there now in the morning aftermath, they're like dudes all that noise and there's ABSOLUTELY NOTHING here on the ground. The kids cleaned up everything. It looks vacuumed out there. 

I wish I didn't get overwhelmed but when I start cleaning I have to do everything. Why do a little when you see a mess everywhere. I was sweating like in the movies, where it drips off the runner at the end of a marathon. Emma was worried I would hate her but really, stuff needed to be cleaned. It's okay. I want the kids to have what they need and I want them to be home and happy. I love them at every age. Even dumbass Dylan and dumber ass Rayleen. These poor kids with no education and a handful of skills, and they're spilling it all like grabbing dry sand. My kids are so flush. Their handfuls are solid clay.

I did that. I cleaned the toilet sweating washed rugs vacuumed mopped then stood in the doorway and listened to the music and saw kids laughing.

It's all one thing. 

Disorientation

At Santa Barbara orientation for Bess's college, the family caboose big enough to step into the spacewalk that is a college life, and to have to hear about it for two days like it's a real thing that is going to happen 

There was so much going on, just getting out of town, someone had to watch the horses, and then I had to leave B and Nathan to take care of my mom which I had never done because it requires wiping and hoisting on a lift and tending with water and food. And we'd just gotten back from Palm Springs which had already kicked our asses caring for her in that unhospitally environment.

But we got out, just me and the girls, drove at night getting to SB, a Motel 6 at 10 pm after visiting a Taco Bell and we open the door to our room where the door basically opens onto the bed there's no luxury of floor or any wasted space at all where you can maybe turn your body sideways while standing up. But at least there's three of us and some bags.

We do think it's funny and we try and settle in because we have to be up at 6:30 to be there at 7:30.

In the morning we're all kind of tossing and turning but Emma finally gets up and checks her phone and says OH SHIT MY ALARM IS ON SILENT. It's 7:37 NOW!! 

We get up like rockets blasting off.

At the orientation area we don't have time to pick up bagels like we planned but we get in the long line for nametags and wristbands for free meals which I only paid for two of us. Because it was like $200 dollars each. Our shoebox motel room cost less than that. 

Once I get the two wristbands and Bess gets her packet and we're waiting for the leaders to come tell us where to go next, I'm looking at the pile of wristbands over there in the side booth and I say wait we need to get one for Emma. She has to eat too. We wrestle with how to finesse this and finally I just say okay lemme do it. So I walk over to the area and there's the girl who gave me mine and the yellow wristbands are like all exploded all over the table and there's a young guy there next to the $200 dollar wristbands and he apparently knows nothing about their worth and he sees me looking and I say Hi can  I -- and he says oh do you need another one? And I stare at him and just say YES

And he hands me another one and I say thank you and run out of there as fast as I can and then hide me and the girls behind other people in case they realize how stupid they are and look around for us. Now Emma has free meals. 

We go off on a campus tour even though Emma gave us one a few months ago or last year when we looked through this her old campus, and there's a girl walking alone near us (I think she's a girl anyway), she looks like Hayley Mills in The Parent Trap and I say hey are you alone? And then I introduce us and she's a swimmer and I say where are you from and she says a place in California and I say where is that and she says I don't really know. Then she says I don't even know the 50 states. So then I'm feeling really good about Bess because I taught her WHOLE CLASS that song in 5th grade so she knows the 50 states alphabetically and if this is the caliber of people here then Bess is going to be on the very fucking top. I text Kurt about this 50 states girl and he writes me back wait there's 50 states?

I'm nervous about orientation because who gets good at orientation, if you've only ever been to your own, and now this one. Nathan went to his by himself and Emma didn't have one because of Covid. I want Bess to have friends so I'm talking to all the people that look like not weirdos walking near us. This is also a good way to see which kids are morons, which kids are self sufficient and which kids are heading to sororities. There seem to be alot of those kind of girls, which Bess comes to tell us at lunch her reaction which is I hate girls

Except she does find one kind of decent one.

By the end of the first day we walk on the beach at sunset with Emma trying to help Bess prepare for her class picking the next day, and Bess missing most of the sunset because she's looking at her phone figuring out which classes to put in her cart. It's all so jumbled. There's all this beauty but there's all this massive stress like getting an applesauce spoon jammed in your face by a mean gramma and you're just trying to look at the sunset man. You were walking ALL DAY LISTENING TO PEOPLE TELL YOU ABOUT YOUR FUTURE when you were already so happy just being a kid skipping along up to now. Why they gotta try and take your kids away. Even this incredible place, on this cliffs of this massive ocean, isn't as good as my little house with my family in it. It's a fucking tragedy.  

I know they talk about helicopter parenting but I think mine was more Santa's sleigh flying over yelling ho ho ho and tossing down presents. I only got more hovery as Bess got meaner and quieter in the teenage years, from worry. Before I was downright jolly, man. 

Bess is tired and kind of wants to be done with the day and go back to the hotel with us but we tell her to stay for the 9pm games because this is where you might have fun and meet people. Her eyes are bleary and I want her to come with us too but I want her to not just have the business but the fun of the school too. She has a bunk and a roommate in the dorm, to spend one night and see what it's like, what her future could be like in her dorm. So we leave her at the beach. And pretend it's okay.

That night Emma and I go back to crawl into the rabbit hole and we're on our phones and reading and wondering how she's doing and she tells us it was very fun and she's going to sleep there.

And we spend our first night away from Bess. 

The next day she has to pick her classes by the end of the day and this is the nightmare part, getting a laptop to do the job since she didn't have one to bring. What if she doesn't get the classes. She doesn't want to eat much at 7 am. How are we going to get through another day of walking and listening. We don't wanna talk to anyone anymore. She eats with her friends she made but they are girlier than her and the swimmer who doesn't know the 50 states walks by me looking the other way. I try to make friends with an english muffin with peanut butter and jelly because all the desserts taste like old paint here. Emma has work meetings in the morning and I go to different meetings and Bess goes to different ones too.

Then suddenly it's lunch again. 

Behind the barrier in the dining hall courtyard I saw my daughter leaving me. It's a glass barrier because it's UCSB so you want to see through every wall cause every wall shows you the wild ocean. The ocean just right over there, inches from you at all times, throwing you remember me bursts of fresh air and seagulls. We gulped all the air lobbed at us because well we had no choice. It was offered.

I was trapped in the dining hall courtyard by cheapness. This free food we got for this last baby at this watery dream school. If I left the courtyard I couldn't get back in and there was a buffet behind me. The all you can eat and stuff in your bag, kind. 

Emma was on her way to meet us and Bess had to run out early to her group. If I left to help Bess then Emma'd be inside the barrier and I would be outside. It's that "mom of many" problem, where to meet one kid's need you break the other kid's heart. Except the youngest kid is 18 with a pretty full heart. She's a solid 10/10 on the scale of Almost Finished.  

My problem wasn't that I was trapped, it was that there was this glass wall and me looking at my baby, the one I left at preschool for the first time, and the one I left at elementary school trusting those teachers and the one who flailed emotionally through high school after spending middle school in her room on a computer. There's my baby, right there. In her baggy jean shorts, and her nice camisole top and her casual shirt on top for color and to catch the wind. She put those perfect clothes together herself. She doesn't have any friends here yet. She needs a laptop to get her classes, we've been worrying, she's about to sign up for her classes and they're supposed to give her a laptop what if she doesn't have a laptop. That's why she had to run out early. She turns to look at me once and gives me the thumbs up. She's got the laptop secured. That means.

So now I can only watch because they're gathering there only the students as they call them, but that is my baby, and she was just on my lap while I typed up articles, nursing or sleeping as I wrote. On my body. Connected to me.

Her leader holding the blue sign is yelling something and then starts walking away with her crowd including my baby, with her long blond hair and my eyes are filling up because she is relaxed and laughing with someone in the group and she doesn't look back at me because she is ok. That is when you know you did your job right. When there's tears in your whole torso because she's walking away like a normal person and you are still the head cheerleader and wanting everything for her and not quite done ever.

I go back to Emma at the table now who has shown up from her meeting and is eating the sandwich I got for her and she's hearing about how everything went since I saw her at breakfast. This orientation has made us WALKING BITCHES, we've done Disneyland walking, mybrother. Bess can barely move one of her legs and my feet are shot like someone actually shot them off with a shotgun and then hotglued the shattered parts back on all wrong. Emma went to this school already and is already off to her next school, but home for the summer so she came along to help and has been like the alternately magic amazing genie and impatient motherfucker with us as Bess and I stumble around listening to her but stupid like we're in a bad glitching 80's videogame. I feel nothing but compassion for her at our bumbling.

Emma says it feels like so long since I did all this but I want to do it all again, she says and I say I feel the same way, and imagine it's been even LONGER for me. But I want to do it all again too. It makes you take inventory of your life.

After lunch I sit in more lecture halls and learn about more stuff to help Bess and at the same time I clean all the hay and receipts and old frozen yogurt spoons out of my wallet because I finally am sitting down and having the time to properly attend to my wallet. But listening to these people talk about navigating school and how we can help our students I'm thinking damn. 

Now I have to think about real life?

School at 18 was one of the most unsafe places for me. I was 18 and mentally 16 and emotionally 9 in New York City, stepping over bums on Broadway and 10th Street to get to class and here is Bess in this oasis by the sea with TWO members of her family orbiting around her. Helping her feel safe. I felt alone in everything, not scared, but out of my element. Being in a new place and in a school you've never been to, to live, is a strange sudden environment. I'm not sure anyone feels like they are in the right place because it hasn't spoken to you yet or invited you in. You just kinda landed there, fresh from your mom's alcoholism. Ok that was just me. But we all come from some specific shit man.

And then when I finished school I majored in auditioning in a variety of beds over the years but never really giving myself to any of the parts, totally. Even the one I ended up in. It's been a long running show but I always had one foot wedged in the door because I don't like a place without a door open a crack. What if I smothered. I'm only now, as in about 15 minutes ago, getting the feeling that I might be in my actual life. It's just - there's been so much going on    I forgot it might matter

The weird part about being a mom for so long is your life doesn't matter anymore. It melted away to make room because you had beautiful people to raise. But then here it is, your life still surges back up, like here it is. Like Emma said when we were at the beach listening to the noise of it and the ocean got quiet for a second. She said the ocean forgets to speak sometimes. It forgets its words.

I did that. I just put all my talking into these creatures, and now here is this last one, walking and talking and laughing and signing up for classes and forgetting a laptop and not knowing what she's doing and having adventures like rolling down a grassy hill last night with a girl she met for fun.

I go to the meetings until she gets her classes and she texts me that she got all the classes she wanted and this was the reason we came here, she miraculously got off the waiting list to get into this college, this one by the sea that is only an hour and a half from home, now she will belong in two places, now she is forming herself into herself and her shoes are walking away.

And I'm still behind that barrier with the free food still grabbing all I can to feed everyone but I don't have to now what do I do with these hard wired skills from years of mom I'm hungry what is there

It would be weird if I wasn't here still doing the scrounging I've always been doing at book fairs and teacher appreciation and science projects and dioramas and basketball games and gymnastics meets birthday parties beach trips and I'm actually so tired and my back doesn't hold me up very well anymore but what do I have to do next why do I have to do something else now when I was perfectly happy doing 

these three kids

I just sit down in this weird courtyard with a tuna sandwich wrapped in napkins on top of a bag of bagels I bought when I passed that place and the bread smells so good. I smell the bread everywhere I go the rest of the day because indeed I will be carrying it all the way home. I remember when things are on overload like on days you are following your daughter at orientation and there are heavy schedules in foreign buildings with everyone new and groups of faces talking to you that this is being immersed in life, and you are too busy to do anything but hold all the bags and keep following the girls' feet as they're scampering to the next thing and seeing their faces for tiredness or hunger or disappointment to try and soothe their needs that's what I am made to do

this has been a big job. Way bigger than college. College is nothing. The love I grew from these kids could wrap all around this college and tie it all up in a sack and it would only use a teaspoon of what they gave me, and what I have. With them, I am infinite.

When I get home and Bess collapses into bed like herself again but now a bigger self made for the outside world, we actually just PLANNED HER LIFE with people concerned with SCHEDULES and FUTURES. And I put my mom to bed and swam and then took the young horses over to Double D's to run and the sun is going down and I let the horses loose and Double D is digging a hole for her tree she is planting and she never had kids and she says to me how did it go and I look at her, a few years older than me and no kids ever not even one birthday party and I look at her and what did Columbus say when he saw a whole new land a whole huge continent and he looked back at the Queen of Spain wide eyed what could he say shrugging, the whole thing, raising these people (heart fed by 3 kids, the size of  what's the biggest planet, Jupiter? 36,000 Jupiters exploding) what was it like?

it was unprecedented

Vacation

Like Franklin, the mouse who tells stories in that kid book, I gather all the sights and then I barf them back onto here so you don't have to go on vacation with us and live through the reality. 

The good parts of vacation

all the voices in the next room when you wake up. Especially voices that are muffled with some laughs and the sounds of pots and pans so you know you're getting up to some food already half made. There's a gramma's house quality to that sound where you know you're cared for yet your toes are still horizontal and rubbed against each other in gentle glee.

The other good part is all the kids. Kids eating cereal. Kids on the couch. Kids playing pretend bar and serving you milk with mayonnaise in it. Kids playing water volleyball and basketball and pickleball. Some of those kids are your actual kids that you slaved over to make them into these viable, loveable kind beasts. Some of these kids are rentals that are the cousins and so you have no worries about filling their stomachs, someone else is on that. They are for filler and for comic relief. They're funny and interesting and they fatten out a lively nest.

The hard part about vacation is all the people. 

At some point in a big house with your whole extended family or most of them on one side of your family anyway, at some point there is a level reached where you can't be in the middle of the pond anymore too many ducks quacking. So you go outside with a book and float in the pool for about 20 hours because the pool is so warm and the sun nice and you have a new hat from the thrift store that you're hoping has no lice but you gotta take some risks in this life.

Then you can have your break from having to function. 

Some of the fam like B can sit in the shady porch area and command conversation for all day as the people come and go from the lazing couches. He's either reading, having a relaxed thoughtful conversation or cooking. This isn't a bad side of him. I've never seen or heard so much from him since the 70s and I met him in '91.

The hard part is hauling dementia mom from the bed to the chair in the morning and vice versa at night. It takes three of us and a sling under her. It's like hauling mechanical Jaws out of the water who is broken and rigid rubber and needs fixing. But no special effects guys. 

I am glad she's there but I am sad she's less herself than ever. Her presence is there and as the only surviving daughter (there was only ever me) I still expect her to turn back into herself. As a kid of a mom you always always think your mom is going to be there for you and come back. I see that feeling and I have no control over that feeling. It is just genuine belief. Like Santa. Which I still have.

An unchangeable real feeling of faith, and a good thing.

The bad things are being annoyed by weird personality quirks that in the long run, on the car ride home on flying tires, those minor opinions that clash with your own, well, they're in the right place, back with the people who own them. You are safe in your car with your way of seeing the world and back in your dreamy gloved life, feeling around for your own truth and sometimes hitting gold. That's all we can do.

We're so lucky, really. I like those voices in the next room.

I love coming home to the horses and the slow routines of regular days. Even though when you come home and your house doesn't look like an unlived in immaculate air bnb you momentarily have a heart squeeze. Look at how much work there is just to maintain this level of lived in. This takes alot of work.

But then B is sleeping in a chair he's so tired and the girls are passed out on the couch and the tv is on some show they are loving right now but no one is awake and I haven't been on my phone for 4 days except to take pictures and I sit looking at stupid shit and wondering simultaneously why watching people do stupid shit on my phone matters at all. I think it's how cavemen looked at the fire. It's just flickering. It's like intermission.

On this trip there was some pool talk about marriages and babies. This seems foreign. My kids are the babies. But I listen. Because I guess this is the ocean talking, coming forward to bring new things, washing back to tell the rest of the water. What they saw.

It is good to give yourself to a group no matter how many quirks there are. Take a library book, especially one about a fat australian comedic singing actress that you don't even love, a memoir about trying to have a baby and liking boys and girls and also being fat and having that cool accent. What's not to like. It's so fun to read the story of a life and think about your life, while floating in water while someone else cooks. 

She hit on all the things that matter. Food, especially sugar, babies, hollywood, love, figuring out what matters, traveling and innocence. 

Just like the whole vacation.

Come On Eileen, You Forthed Us

We had a big fight yesterday because I spilled water in the back of Emma's car.

It wasn't a fight but it wasn't a birthday party I'll tell you that. There was crying so I always think that means fight but really it was about being muzzled and being tired of being criticized.

The problem with having a fight is you have to listen to OTHER PEOPLE'S versions of you and I don't even want to hear MY version of me because there's no way we can ever live up to or satisfy other people totally.

And it was YESTERDAY, July 4th, and it was the first year we were not at Mike and Eileen's wonderhouse watching fireworks from the expanse of their yard because Eileen had to go and have a stroke two years ago and ruin the parties for us. And also her brain, and her life and the life of her own family but come ON EILEEN

WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO US

So we went to the movies instead because Bess wanted to see Scarlett Blowhandjob (she is beautiful) in a Jurassic Park movie which turned out to be hilarious and in the parking lot we were walking to the car and I said in a voice that I use as my own voice, I think Scarlett Blowhandjob is looking asian these days. And Emma told me I can't say that

that that's racist

And I'm getting in the car and looking at her 23 year old face and I'm like I didn't say I don't like asians. I said she looked asian

She said I don't understand what you mean

and then Bess just agreed that I wasn't allowed to say that and then I felt like wait what the fuck is going on and then I tipped the popcorn over a bit trying to find my seatbelt and Emma flipped out looking for the ten pieces of popcorn and then when we got home I tried to pick everything up I was carrying and tipped my water over spilling about one and three eighths inches of water drops in her car

WATER DROPS IN HER CAR ON A HOT DAY SOON TO BE ABSORBED WITH NO TRACE

and I saw her crumbling and looking at me like I was the biggest retard

so when I got in the house I said I'm allowed to say that I think Scarlett Johansson is looking asian!

she said not in a parking lot!

I said Saying she looks asian is not MEAN TO ASIANS!!! 

Then I said ALSO (here it goes) I think it's okay to spill water in car you got FOR FREE from our FAMILY when it is WATER and it's a HOT DAY

and she said you are always spilling everything

and I said (I'm tired of doing italics so) maybe because I am CARRYING TOO MUCH!! I'm carrying everything! I don't mind carrying everything, I'm a mom! 

She said I've been trying to help you carry things

I say I know but eventually (I start crying) because I say I HOPE you get to the point in your life where you have had the luxury to raise your beautiful kids and give everything to them and to be exhuasted by cleaning up and fixing and that YOU TOO will be carrying EVERY FUCKING THING and you will not keep as neat a house as you did when you were single because I WAS SINGLE AND MY HOUSE could fit in my car at that time!! I WAS YOU!! But I am GRATEFUL (cue crying here while still holding all the stuff) that I GOT THE CHANCE to carry all the stuff and spill all the stuff because I got to raise three beautiful amazing children! Who are all leaving! Bess leaving this very next few months!

And I HOPE you get to where I have gotten in my life!! Where you LOVE YOUR LIFE CARRYING EVERYTHING SO MUCH you can't keep up totally and your kids think you're stupid and slow and messy and I am there following behind them holding everything with a water bottle that CLEARLY NEEDS A LID all I need is a LID ON THIS MOTHERFUCKER

You CAN keep everything perfect, it's awesome but real life is not how clean you keep your car or if you recycle or if your clothes match, all of that is REALLY COOL and maybe you will have success as a content creator on tiktok or you'll look really good on your ID badge at work or whatever but for ME

I want to talk about NOT LIKING SUBTITLES in movies and how movies are an art form where as a WRITER I don't want to be reading the words while I'm watching a movie, I want the words to be a texture, a part of the image and the sound and the feel and the faces and the WHOLE not written so that I have to read it

And I yelled about how mean everyone was on moments of our Maryland trip and how it felt to be criticized and how I want people to FOR SURE grow up and move forward but also not be afraid to break apart and most of all TELL US when you're scared and to feel SAFE

It is weird though to have to yell and cry to understand how you're feeling, and then stand there with everyone still there, on your living room rug that is still lying there quietly like it's no big deal to say things out loud. Sometimes it takes a little volume and some eye water to startle the ducks off the lake of your life. We all want that calm lake and no one wants to look inside at what problems they're causing in their family or if their personality sucks or have I gotten this far and this deep and STILL NOT be worthy of the tremendous love created here

Or does love just take every fucking thing thrown into it to keep building it to keep nurturing it

Clearly there are some issues here that could be easily solved by ice cream

Maybe I NEED people to be fucked up so I can keep wading out deep into them with my bucket of popcorn and spilling it everywhere as I eat it and looking all around my legs for those dreaded Maryland sea nettles but I LOVE the water and the maze of human feelings, I LIKE not knowing everything and wanting to know more, I LIKE being weird and imperfect and moronic, I just wish my family

thought I was cool

is all

just as I am

Anyway. So we stood there in the living room with everyone crying a little and B saying the most sensible things as usual, the coolheaded B who says the core of everything like he's shopping at 7-11, like it's all easy, he's says we're all getting older

We're all bewildered, going through tumultuous changes and trying to understand what we need and we're all looking for peace

this was our fireworks on the 4th this year. Inside the house and no chinese gunpowder. Yes chinese because fireworks are MADE IN CHINA by CHINESE

I blame Eileen for this. You ruined our 4th. Your forthed us into having a conversation because we had to go to a movie with a white yet asian ish movie star that was subtitled and then get in a hot car

We missed our normal 4th. We might be bored of it but that didn't mean we wanted it to ever END. It was our tradition, since the kids were born. We need our traditions. They are our little rivers we float on. We loved your house, and the lack of food, we brought all our own food. We grilled it all. We baked the cakes. We loved your gentle face and your autistic son and your recluse husband, and the kids and the pool and the grass and the mountain view. We wish you were better. Fuck strokes man. 

Traditions go down hard, with a fight.

I Mother

I wrote this awhile ago but I'll post it now so I can think about what I want to write next.

If anyone wants a how to, after 25 years raising kids and the last one just graduating last night, I thought I'd write some things down about how to make a successful kid/make a kid ready for the world, helpful to others and secure in themselves. Since one of the high school teachers (who loves all our kids) said "you're good at raising kids. You should write a book" and Emma said "she did"

Things I've taught my kids

Ping pong

how to navigate disneyland efficiently

beach trips once a week in summer

taking them out of school twice a year for the fair in the fall and Disneyland in the winter

the backpack fairy

all fairies

how to pick out a puppy

grades are important

talk about things when you can

sit on people

find the laugh

grades aren't always important

road trips

how to swim before 4 years old

darts

board games

volunteering in school

bathing suit drawer

taking care of old people

how to make fried chicken

how to make rice krispy treats

how to make cream of wheat

raising chickens

raising horses

raising bunnies

from b: be honest    be true to your word   be brave   don't box anyone, allow change

Things my kids have taught me

if you see something on the street that's free that you like, drag it home

how to make a golf cart run

it's ok to be scared

math appreciation

dedication to a sport or a study

being part of a team makes you feel safe

how to trust people

how to have a party

how to do homework until midnight

enjoying shows about retarded people

car appreciation

surfing

water polo

basketball

dance

gymnastics

skateboarding

how my phone works

how to navigate shitty friends

slang

what I'm not sure how to teach them:

how to love someone

whether life will always work out

crying is important

I can't imagine my life with three raised kids. Even though I'm still learning how to grow up from my own parents still at 58. I feel to be able to get here, to having these kids 18, 23, 24. I hope I have them always, pushing me forward, reminding me to stay open to everything, even when things don't always seem to be flowing in the right direction

I am lucky to have gotten my dream and lived it almost every single second in the role I wanted as writer and mother, to be able to watch them. Soak them in, and talk about it. Maybe I can't do complex math problems, but I can sit next to the girl driving in the car to go pick up nandy and listen to her boulder experience, her people, and the study she is ardent about, with her blonde face and cheery eyes. I can listen to Nathan on the way to fix my phone when he talks to his friend Carson about cars (yes you read that right) and what they're going to do next, and how at the graduation for Bess, the teacher that said maybe Nathan could come there to teach AP Psych, or better yet he could use Nathan to tell his problems to for an hour. And watching Bess the Caboose navigate shitty friends and still know she is solidly good inside and has given everything, all while listening to a Billie soundtrack. This is inspiring to remind me to believe in myself and my goodness.

Also I want to do a shoutout to the universe. The last few days have been really hard with our new dementia patient Nandy needing daily care while we figure out her level of sickness, added on top of my mom, and our regular kid family. I keep relearning how to fight from an exhausted place which feels scratchy and empty and yet people rally to help. Yesterday I had two hospice people call me to say they will help do anything to make it easier for my mom to keep her equipment and get care, one lady was helping me who had a son graduating from high school that same night as I was having Bess graduate, and it was her youngest of three also, and we talked about how hey, we are at the exact same spot on the same day and what happens now? After the Hunger Games are fought, do we rest in The Victor's Village? Then a guy called just now about Medicaid benefits for my mom and I listened and then said really my mom can't use vision or dental or any extra care I'm just keeping her comfortable and out in the sun as long as possible and she can only use one arm and he said he lost his mom in covid, in a nursing home, and he was so sad and so glad that my mom had me and that I was helping her. Josh, a voice on the phone. Missed his mom.

Or Patrick last night after the graduation where we ate at like 10pm and then we're standing in the living room at midnight and he's crying a bit about the conversation he had with his mom where he felt alone and scared to be a new dad, and his mom apologized for not being there for him growing up, and how she wants to be better now as a gramma and he said he just sat there silent and crying because he couldn't believe his mom finally talked about letting him down when he was young and needed her. The words made him crumble after trying so hard to overcome everything these years. 

I like humans who share troubles and feel their lives. We try to survive so hard without bothering anyone or sharing and I think maybe we're here to be bothered, and snuggled. 

I think that's what a mom is for. I wear the shredded with love badge I earned. I mother, and I will never stop needing mothering.

Refresh

If you ever want to know how your family is doing, rent too small a rental car on a family vacation.

We're a good family. We get along pretty well. When we crammed into a midsize sedan outside the Maryland airport in 100% humidity in a building surrounded by a jungle of trees and what looked like a prison exercise yard, the minute sweaty arms hit other sweaty arms it was like the Battle of Gettysburg. Which happened not too far from here.

This may be why we fought for freedom in our country. Just to have more legroom.

The added good news is, we spent alot more time in this car than we thought we were going to. Turns out kids who are old have to do things like work on zoom when they're on vacation, and since we were staying with Uncle Wayne who lives where they haven't invented wifi yet, we had to keep driving up to the center of a very small town to experience the pleasures of a modern life.

Not having wifi made for some fun other things. Like looking around the attic and finding a secret door. Like finding a book on sex and aging amidst a ton of christmas decorations and then reading it for the next five nights. Aunt Janet's attic is like a throw pillow of disorder, I guess it's her loft actually, but there's two twin beds up there, one that Bess slept on that felt like the door Rose was floating on in Titanic, another one that had pillows for your head that were flat as pieces of copy paper, and then the bed we made of the floor for Emma which was good if she only went up to her knees, I didn't have enough blankets to make a full sized Emma floor bed. 

Not having wifi meant we could wake up in the morning the first time someone started talking in the kitchen because you can hear everything like they're yelling right in your ear. But we liked this feeling, to wake up belonging somewhere, in a comfortable lived in house, where you could picture making order out of the disorder but then not do any of it because you are on vacation and this is the best feeling in the world. Just hearing people's voices not in a hurry, saying things cheerfully like good morning sunshine

Not having wifi meant we could rest on the weather beaten dock and cast lines for fish. We could wipe worm guts on our bathing suits as we baited our lines. We could lower ourselves carefully off a ladder we dropped into the water into the waiting kayaks and then sail heartily for the distant shore. Scanning terrified for sea nettles and then splashing water all over ourselves, and stopping directly in the middle of the wide river and listening to nothing. 

We saw three bald eagles. We saw a cardinal. Not the religious kind, the bright red kind. We saw Aunt Janet hang up her bird feeders everyday. We saw a duck meander over to lay on her eggs. We felt the air heavy like wool blankets. 

All we did was sit on the porch and then get up to swim. Or kayak. Or fish. Or go to the Amish Market. 

When you're crammed in the car with trees and deer all surrounding you on the path to town, and your daughters are making fun of you for videoing too much or talking too much or being yourself too much, it feels like being shrunken, like the last one asked to dance at a party. But then if you say that they say you're being too "pick me". So you can't even say hey that hurts. But then we pass a carnival in a field or a friend comes to visit or we get ice cream and a hot pretzel served to us by someone in a bonnet in the year 2025 and my life feels refreshed. I bought Amish biscuits and licorice and chicken salad and kept hitting refresh.

It is not easy to travel with all the personalities you made and the extra ones they made for themselves all crammed into an overpriced midsize that we didn't get the extra insurance on. And then Barry turns too quickly in the car and we all fall over in the back like dominoes he says What so much that they started counting how many times he said What

Because he asks a question and then doesn't listen to the answer and then has to ask What again.

I like that he doesn't really want to know the answer to any question, I actually respect this new technique. It's really only the question that matters. Who actually needs to know the answer

when there's deer out the window, and you can pick up frogs and scare Nathan

When you have to put on bug spray at 6pm or be eaten by a hundred mosquitos by 8. When you sit on the porch at sunset because the whole world turns orange pink and blue

and there's the silhouette of your babies out on the dock, on the grassy expanse, throwing out one last fishing line, restfully tired, hoping for a bit of luck

A special outfit and a gathering

whaddya do when you're done

I feel like I never finished anything in my life. I try to never finish anything because then there's still more. 

But with this last one, getting to the end of 18 years, today the graduation, 25 years of motherhood, all of them successfully navigating the lausd school system and living to tell about it

what the heck

was I there all those minutes?  Did I make any mistakes? Did I do things I wish I hadn't

surely

 shirley

I watched time pass

I watched time pass in tiny legs that turned into running legs that turned into feet running away from me. They don't seem to run far in this family. We've only gone as far as the midwest so far. We seem to still like each other

I mean we have our moments

We have rage

We have screaming and disbelief and utter sadness

We have shocks and surprises

We had the tiny feet though

Three sets of tiny feet, one at a time. Now the caboose is loose. Little Bessie is chugging on her own track. She still won't let me take a picture of her or hug her all the way. But she did lay on me the other day, unprovoked. I think I might just stay open

 

Keep watching time pass

Still enjoy the three sets of feet we made

These graduations confuse you

They make you notice the milestone because there is a special outfit and a gathering

But it's only a milestone. It's not what's beyond it. It's celebrating what we already did, what is now dead to us, cause we're only looking forward. It's a memoriam for what we already did, and a leaping off place for what is ahead

The vast ocean

in this case, the one near Santa Barbara. All our kids decide on Ventura as their next destination after high school. Then Nathan came back, Emma went to Boulder and Lilly, well let's see what the next four years aims her toward.

We'll be here still cleaning up and remembering the tiny feet.