Apologetic (or Tweet This)

My Dearest Little A,

Bitch slapping your big sister, exclaiming it to be an accident, tossing out a half-assed apology and beating feet in a hasty retreat is clearly not acceptable no matter how cute you are. It just might earn you a bloody nose one day. Love always, Mom.

Lessons Learned

On the way to her play date with her new friend N, E randomly asked me if I had been married once or two times. I answered and waited. The next question was about why Grandma had two husbands and Daddy had two wives. I explained briefly and offered to show her photos of her other Grandpa and Daddy's ex-wife if she wanted to see them. No thank you was the very polite reply. I let it go and turned up the radio. Two songs later we've sang through being too sexy and we knew it, had some apple bottom jeans with the fur going on and she asked if Daddy ever saw his ex any more. I said no, that she wasn't in his life anymore and hadn't been in many years but that he wished her well and hoped her life was everything she wished it to be. We talked a bit and I tried to explain that loving someone meant wanting the best for that person regardless of what it meant for you. She cocked her head and looked up at me. I tried again… doesn’t matter if you agree with someone’s choices, doesn’t matter if you like their decisions, you just want for them what brings joy to their soul and peace to their heart. If she even gets a smidgen of that notion, I’ll be happy.

We arrived at the park and feed a few ducks while we waited for her friend. Once they spotted each other it was game on. Four hours of racing between the carousel, the train ride, and the parachute drop. Hands in the air and screaming on the dragon wagon gave way to furious spinning and giggling through the teacups. They downed hotdogs and sipped soda, chattering like long lost friends. They held each other’s diminutive hands while they fed the ducks and went down the slide headfirst. A friendship developed somewhere in the midst of a great debate over pringles vs. doritos. There are photos, exchanges of email addresses, and addresses, phone numbers and the promise of life long pen pals. I truly believe that they will. I’ve discovered there is a lesson or three in these last four hours… if only one chooses to listen and learn.

She’s a thoughtful child, my firstborn, I don’t know if I shared with you her tooth fairy visit. It was a couple weeks ago, on a Thursday night when I was running late for work, trying to wake up, throwing dinner on the table and packing mine to go. E was wiggling and I finally exasperatedly told her to just yank the darn tooth out. She did. It bled everywhere and I felt bad. It turned out to be fine. I left the details of the tooth fairy pillow, the dollar, the sneakiness of it all to the dad and I left. The next morning after my flight of the bumblebee to make it home in time to walk her to the bus stop she says to me that she’s giving her dollar to her teacher because they need to buy more swings and slides for the play ground. I laugh thinking of how much those things really cost and that her dollar is but a drop in the bucket but I don’t say anything. She really does it. Her teacher emailed me later to tell me how thoughtful my child is and how moved she and the principal were by the generosity exhibited by a six year old on a random Friday. She earns an award in their Character Counts program and I’m bursting with pride. And I know I’ve learned something from this that I’ll carry with me forever.

On a different day A comes home from a visit, the ones that make me nervous, sweaty and jumpy, distracted as all get out for four hours each and every Monday until she comes back to me and I can ensure for myself that my baby is safe and secure, but I digress… she has with her a toy Angry Bird. It’s a stupid video game to begin with…the fact that they make toys from it mystifies me and the idea that her birth person thought it would make an appropriate xmas gift for a little girl boggles my mind. A is hopped up on the sugar of a full liter of soda, the carbs of whatever crap she was fed for her "dinner" and the nerves and anxiety that come with such events. She won’t look me in the eye. She won’t focus. It’s normal. Nothing much changes. She shows up and birth person tries to buy her love and affection. But this time, my baby says to me… Momma, take the mad bird away.. he makes me sad. So I did. And I know there is a lesson to be learned here. Every four-year-olds can tell the difference between genuine love and affection and an show intended to impress someone. The next Monday she asks me to come with her to her visit. I explain that I as much as I would love to, that I cannot and it’s her special time to be with that person. She refuses to dress, eat breakfast and I have to drag her to school. Her logic? If she doesn’t go to school, no one can pick her up for a visit. She’s a smart one my angel.

My parents arrive on Christmas Eve, closely followed by my sister and her husband. A’s birthday is discussed, seeing as how they missed it, and we celebrate it again with presents, desert after dinner etc. A rips into her presents like a birthday champ. She is overjoyed with her Monkey George, her chef’s hat and apron, the tools, her barbies, you name it. This little girl cannot believe that all of these fine things are for her. She asks me more than once if she can keep them. I assure her that she can. I help her name her Monkey. We put him to bed on her bed. We have dinner as a family and allow her to unboggle her mind a bit. When I tuck her and George and half a dozen other stuffies into bed later that night she asks if Santa is really coming tonight. I remind her that we set out the plate of cookies and the glass of milk, we gathered oats, glitter and carrots for the reindeer and yes indeed… they are coming… but not if she peeks. I find her in the morning, face down with her pillow over her head, just in case Santa might think she peeked and leave her lumps of coal. Omg.. how precious.

Christmas morning E is impatient; thrilled, excited and over the moon that Santa brought her an awesome stocking and presents. A is quieter and a little clingy. She has no concept of Christmas morning and all that it entails in a big family. I almost miss it while I’m cooking breakfast for everyone, but my mom walks into the kitchen and puts her hand on my shoulder and tells me that It’ll keep. She nods towards the kids and I get it. One by one, the presents get unwrapped and A’s eyes light up over and over, trying desperately to take it all in. E helps, a bit, distracts more and finally A edges toward her favorite corner of the couch with her favorite stuffie and just settles in a bit, busies herself with her juice and contemplates. You can see the wheels turning in her head. I give her that space because she seems to just need time to process.

At breakfast the next morning – Cracker Barrel, she and E both devoured pancakes with real maple syrup, which might be a first for A. It was a day of firsts… Aunt K and Uncle K took the girls to a movie – A’s first in a theater and first trip in a convertible with the top down, before that we went to Cabella’s to see the aquarium and all the taxidermy animals… yet more firsts. We named them all, talked about the scary ones, discussed which ones could eat you and giggled. I think they both loved every minute of that day. And when they went to bed, so tired they couldn’t keep their respective eyes open another minute, E told me I was the best Mommy ever and A told me that she wanted to change her name to match ours. They both slept well. So did I.. for the first time in weeks.

You know what I've learned from all of this? I know you do.. don't you? I've learned that I have to stop this madness of working all night and sleeping all day. I have to start living again, like a human being, making time for the simple things, the little things that I've given short shrift to this year. I have to spend weekend mornings with my people, cooking pancakes and watching cartoons. I have to enjoy more and stress less. I truly thought I was doing the right things. I know now that I was not and that I've missed more than I care to acknowledge. I have to get back to respecting that inate goofyness and silliness that I was blessed with. The part of me that played in the leaf pile today with the kids and squirted whipped cream in their mouths and oops (up their noses!)... there is something so genuine and amazing about making a forever friend in fifteen minutes and I'm so thrilled that I got to be a part of it. There is something to be said for leaving the dishes in the sink, allowing the laundry to sit another day and just existing in the moment. I know that now.

It’s been an amazing year, this 2011. It didn’t start off that way and it’s had its bumps and bruises along the way. It hasn’t been without it’s drama and stresses but overall I can’t really complain, ya know? So I wanted to say to you the things I said to the rest of my family at Christmas dinner: Thank you for putting up with me through all of my craziness, for supporting my less than conventional lifestyle though I’m sure you’ve had your share of head shaking at my choices. I will forever be grateful for everyone in my life accepting A and loving her as much as I do. She couldn’t have asked for a better extended family to be a part of her "forever." Thank you for holding my hand, offering advice, keeping me sane at times and for always telling me the truth when I needed to hear it most whether I wanted it or not. I am grateful and humbled by each of you and thankful each day that you are in my life.

My wish for 2012 is a little less stress for all of us, a little more peace, and opportunities that bring us new challenges and new joys. May 2012 be the UP year that we’ve all been anxiously awaiting.

"May God grant you always...A sunbeam to warm you, a moonbeam to charm you, a sheltering Angel so nothing can harm you. Laughter to cheer you. Faithful friends near you. And whenever you pray, Heaven to hear you."

Time

Where exactly does time go? Does it fly? Does it creep? Does father time slow the clocks on purpose when you have better things to do than wait or work? Does mother nature speed up the time to get through the beauty of spring and deliver us to the depths of a hellish summer? Tell me pretty please... where does time go?

Six months I've put off writing for another day. I'm too busy. The kids are making me busier. My life is crazy. I need to sleep. Work has gotten in the way. Life happened. So much has changed I think we've come full circle in six months and one week.

Why exactly did I answer that phone long those many months ago? Actually I didn't. Not that it matters much now. I had the handsome husband answer that phone because the damn thing would not stop ringing. Did I know who it was? Oh yeah. My bad. When we met T a year or so ago I shied away. Kind of. She isn't my kind of person. She lies. She's manipulative. Other than motherhood we have nothing in common. I'm not sure we even have that considering I actually wanted my child, took great care to have her healthy and happy. My child is cherished, probably a bit spoiled and very much the center of my world. Her approach to motherhood has been accidental, drug induced, rage filled and booze fueled.

So she got cozy with the husband and worked him. Not in a romantic way - that would almost have been easier to combat. She had his sympathy. She tugged at his heart. Because he has a huge heart and he's a sucker for a woman in distress, especially if she has children. And oh does she ever. That little voice in the back of my head that said run... run fast and run far from this disaster in the making before it has the ability to overtake you. I listened. I however, failed to communicate that gut wrenching, anxious, dreadful feeling to the handsome husband and dammit I know why. Because we are so blessed and we have so much and to be selfish just isn't in me. And I could not tell the sweetest and most honest man who ever lived that I wanted him to walk away from those three people in need. I feared he would think less of me. I know he would.

The spring passed last year and it turned hot. I watched from a far as the children played outside, miserable and filthy, with nothing really to play with on the hard scrabble ground. I watched as they tried to keep cool with a hose, turning the ground into this sort of reddish clay that clung to their skin and muddied their already dirty clothes. Some days T was there, other days not so much. I heard the tales of foraging dumpsters for food, collecting cigarette butts from the ground for a nicotine fix, and I shook my head in disgust and dismay. And then came the days that physically she was there tottering around on unsteady feet and mentally her brain cells were clogged with the drugs that stole her from reality.

I softened a bit over the weeks. Asked the children in for a break from the heat. Into the cool and sometimes dark cave that is our living room, complete with all the trappings of the semi middle class. How foreign it must have been to have computers, big screen tvs, video games and toys at their disposal, abet borrowed ones. I've learned that as they've gone from house to house, crashing on the couch of whomever might allow it, or whomever had the drugs their mother craved, most of their lives were left behind. Pets, clothes, toys, personal possessions were not treated with the respect most of us give our "stuff."

We had dinner together a few times, always just the girls and their mother would stop in for a brief bit. Just long enough to eat, never long enough to face the questions of how she was going to get them to a better place, a better life. Never so long that one of us might make mention of her altered mental state.

And oh the tales we weave when first we set out to deceive. The dread over the looming release date of the ex who had tried to kill them. The despair over having lost a storage unit with all of their things. The missing money. The untrustworthy brother. The wailing and gnashing of teeth over lost jobs, lost family, friends and finally of lost hope. The unwavering belief that every crappy thing that's come to stand in the way of their success as a family is always someone else's fault. True? As I've come to know these last six months and I've repeated over and over until it has become my mantra. I'll believe it when I see it.

The week I started working nights the last phone call from T came. Come visit. Bring food. Let's bbq. Typical, but we did mostly because we wanted to check on the girls. They were stuck in some two-bit non nondescript motel along the highway... waiting she said... never sure what for. Begging for money to be able to stay there each night, picking up an odd job or two when she needed a fix. Such a life for a teenager and a baby. As the night ended, I grew more wary of her stories, her crap and her flair for the dramatic. It just never quite adds up to the truth. We brought home a dog from that visit. T insisted that she found it but could not keep it. Actually she found it for the husband because he'd mentioned some day wanting one and she knew I did not. Yet another attempt to fracture our happy family because if her's wasn't happy no one else should be either. One notion I've overcome resenting ever time I look at the dog. Maggie grows on you, with her cute little black face and semi sad eyes, but seriously dammit... it should have been our decision in our own time to become doggie parents.

Poof... they were gone. A brief text at Christmas from a number I didn't recognize and that was it. I wondered what happened to them once in a while. As we blew out the birthday candles and M turned 5, I thought about little A's 3rd birthday approaching and wondered if there would be presents and a cake, though I knew better. When the wind kicked up in December and I pulled my jacket a little tighter around my neck I said a prayer that T had sense enough to find jackets for the girls. On New Year's Eve as we arrested drunk after drunk after senseless drunk driver I prayed they were safe somewhere... after all it was big A's 15th birthday and a time for celebrating double, though I doubt they did.

January 2011 was a cold one indeed. I took to wearing a jacket daily. Seemed strange to have all this cold and nasty weather. I grew up with this and moved to get away from it. I had forgotten how bitterly cold it could be when there was no humidity. The kind of cold that made it hurt to breathe. The kind of cold that kept you running... from work to the car, from the car to the house and everywhere in between. The kind of cold that kept your head down and your gaze averted lest the wind whip you in the face and the sand scratch your eyeballs.

Time passed... there I ago again with that infernal notion of time. The phone call ended with that plaintiff refrain, "are you willing?" And there was no other answer than "bring them to me." It became a whisper in the wind, trailing off towards the end, "bring them to me." An idea so strange and so bold, so foreign to be asked to raise another woman's children because the powers that be finally got a clue and decided that she could not. I wept that night on the way to work, thinking that the baby with the bright blond curls and the stunning blue eyes that I had fallen in love with last summer, might finally be safe. Even if it was only for a little while.

How little did I know what time had in store for me. How little did I know how much I could give, how much I could love and how much I could learn in seven short months.

"Can you teach me about tomorrow and all the pain and sorry, running free... 'cuz tomorrow's just another day and I don't believe in time."

Like Mother, Like Daughter, Like Grand Daughter

His email was short, to the point, and incredibly supportive in the face of my losing yet another dear fur child.... the eighth since we entered each other's lives going on six years ago. Old age is a cruel and mighty bitch and while you can stave it off for a while with love and good care, it always wins the end. This we both know. "It tears my heart out... I don't know how you do it. Know my heart is with you in this sad moment."

What he didn't expect was the reply and as it came forth from my fingertips clip-clopping against the keyboard, I found that I didn't expect it either.

How do I do it? Sometimes I think not very well at all. I cry a lot. I'm a big baby and a total train wreck for a little while and I've come to believe that it's okay. And other times I think that you taught me well how to handle it. I remember all of the amazingly joyful moments each one gave to me and the wonder and utter delight they brought to my life. The pain of losing them is somehow less than the idea of never having had the opportunity and genuine pleasure of being their Mom.

Time heals... it truly does. You know, you gave me quite the compliment the other day when you said that that your daughter reminds you of me. Honestly I had a conversation with someone at work last week that I've been helping about similar things. She's been using me as a sounding board for her problems and she said to me that she felt sorry for me and all the crazy things that have happened to our family in the last few years. I almost laughed and she must have thought I was nuts.

I explained. Feeling sorry for myself and having other people feel sorry for me is a total waste of time. It is what it is. And I suppose all of this stuff occurs in my life because I am able to get through it with my sanity and hopefully some small measure of grace. I know exactly how your daughter feels. Everything about me is intense. I work hard, I love hard, I play hard and I give life every bit I have and some days it's enough and on the days it isn't I retreat a little, take a few deep breaths and keep on going, because honestly? What choice do I have? I'm certainly not a quitter, I have people and things depending on me and it's certainly not in me to wimp out now. On some level the roller coaster becomes routine. And as you always remind me, consciously or not... I picked it.

It brings to the forefront of my life the notion of strong women. Not physically strong, although that is surely a part of it, but more than that there is a mental toughness and a resilience that comes from being battered about a bit by life and knowing when and how to kick back. My Mother is an incredibly strong woman when I think about it. She's seen my Dad through nearly 50 years of marriage, two children, multiple surgeries and illnesses, business successes and failures, a very late entry into the working world when I was a teenager and hell... let's face it... any high school drop out in her early 20s who looks her baby daughter in the face and then enrolls in night school on no sleep and no time just to finish so her children would be proud of her is one hell of a woman. There was never any question in our young lives as to whether or not we would be successful... just the question of what we would be successful at. The last ten years have seen her retire, face two different cancers bouts, fight the fight of her life and come back swinging. I've rarely seen her cry. I've never seen her panic. I've seen her logically and methodically engineer her life and my father's life down the path they decided upon all those years ago. Bumps in the road and all, she's done it with grace and style. How could I not be just like her? How could I not want my daughter to be just like her?

It's exactly why I don't helicopter my child. I don't lie to her. I don't take her age appropriate choices away from her and I don't sugar coat her tiny little life. Sometimes there are disappointments. They make you stronger. Sometimes you have to scribble that heart attack on paper to understand for yourself why Daddy had one. Sometimes you have to learn to deal with what life throws at you and make the best of it.