Archive for the ‘Me Myself’ Category
October 27 2011
I needed a shirt to wear.
As most mothers know, however, this isn’t as easy as it sounds. Shirts have a timeline of stains telling the years down the front or have holes in the arm pit of all places. I’m not looking to win a style icon award, just to step into public without being gawked at. Comfortably decent, if you will. I’m really very easy to please.
I know I have something here to wear.
I dug through my drawer, disgusted not only at the mess I was making but at the little options I found. It shouldn’t be this hard to find your standard issue clean shirt.
Then, I came across an army green tee. Not the most attractive option, but an old stand-by. One that has been with me for many, many years. It’s been showing its age, noticeably worn with a few discolored spots, but reliably passable. It would do when the only necessity is to be concealed. I slipped it over my head without a hitch and pulled it down.
But something wasn’t right, I noticed immediately. It gave more than it should. Along with that, there was a draft. I felt shockingly exposed. I looked down, and oh, hello. There was a giant rip stretching around my shirt, making me an unwilling participant in a bad game of peek-a-boob. Well, I can’t go out like that.
It made the arm pit holes not look so bad after all.
Back to square one.
I needed a shirt to wear.
October 05 2011
It catches me off guard. A simple item like a pink make-up brush, sitting innocently in the middle of my kitchen table. Like a time tunnel.
“You still have this?”, I asked my mom, amused at the memories that came flooding back.
“It’s been in my purse. Abby got it out.”
Before I knew it, I was an unsure 17 again. Experimenting with the latest eyeshadow tips out of magazines and applying mascara until it was close enough, though never quite the same as instructed. Wash, repeat, sometimes until my cheeks were red. A sentence of occupying our single bathroom for hours on end, staring at my reflection from multiple angles.
Wishing I was someone else. Who fit in. Who was beautiful and better.
I could see myself, hunched over the bathroom sink, cases of powder and colors around me. It was as if I traveled back 15 years before I was reminded of the now.
“That’s mine!”, my little Abby declared, grabbing the brush out of my hand. And I was back again. “Grandma gave it to me.”
Then as I sat, my daughter, thankfully still far away from uncertainty and self-doubt, positioned herself in front of me and began to sweep the soft bristles over my cheeks. The scent of memories in old make-up held within and familiar, yet forever ago. That girl I once was, who didn’t know then. If I could tell her, I’d say you don’t need magazines or pore-clogging foundation. There is already a strong base to stand on. One day you will be enough. You will fit in and your beauty will shine to those who truly matter.
September 20 2011
It can be more entertaining than television. More suspenseful than the best cinematic drama. With the slightest peek between blinds, from the hidden shadows of a house.
I watch.
They argue, words escalating, until a door slams. I hope they’re alright. Another couple embrace on the front stoop when the wife returns home. How long had she been gone? An older mother and daughter make their daily trek down the street, on with their journey until the faintest dot is out of my line of sight. Where are they going? What are they getting? Kids bicycle past. Men working on their cars. The woman next door tends to her garden. Didn’t she just wear that shirt yesterday? Like I’m really one to judge.
I watch. I wonder.
I wonder about their day. When they wake up. The breakfast they have. The work they go to. Each step they take. Whether wherever it’s lead has guided them to a place of happy, and can I have the directions if so. I wonder about the state of their living room, and how much care they take. A scrub the baseboard type of clean or just comfortable. Does it matter? There is no cookie cutter here. We live so close, yet we’re all so distant.
Do they wonder about me, too? What do they see when I don’t think anyone is looking?
I am a nosy neighbor.
Are you?
July 22 2011
She was coming up behind me, the wheels clickity clacking with the might of it’s bulk, pushing a double seated car cart as if it were a ton-pound boulder. One child was hanging over the edge of the safety bar, the other attempting a death-defying stunt maneuver. I, however, was gloriously alone, though taking up too much aisle for her to pass.
“Excuse me”, she said trying to lumber her way through, “I’m sorry, this thing is just so heavy”.
I nodded my head in knowing agreement as I watched her struggle around the corner and out of sight. I wanted to call out, say I’ve been there, my 3 bundles of gravity are at home. The weight briefly lifted, my shoulders breathing with the break. I may not be bearing down on that cart right now, but I get it. Laboring for every turn. It is heavy.
And the weight only multiplies the farther down the path we tread.
Whether setting rules or a battle of wills. A lost temper. The morning wake up calls at 3 a.m. that never seem to end. Those important topics of teenage discussion that you hesitate to start or breaking up fights over toys to fights over boys. The whys and what-ifs and an expectation that you have all the answers. To a child in the throes of a seasonal cold that want to be nowhere other than held when you have deadlines to meet. Dragging your child kicking and screaming from a playground to the judgmental glare of strangers. Infant carriers and hands to hold steady. Those cumbersome car carts that can’t make it down the aisle without an extra heave-ho in place of dignified grace. Motherhood is heavy, in every sense. And we are each stronger than we seem.
July 15 2011
It is safe to say that no one would mistake me for a gardener. I couldn’t even play one convincingly on TV. The fact that I’ve killed cacti before is proof of just how black my thumb is. But every day recently, I have had to scrub away dirt from under my fingernails.
I’m still not a gardener I can say in all honesty, but I have a new appreciation since I planted seeds in a container near my porch. Late in the season, of course. Because it’s not as if I could know what I was doing. In spite of me, however, my nestlings are thriving. And I’m like a proud parent gushing over how her offspring are already getting so big.
I am anxious to witness the seeds I buried blossom into the petals they will become.
In the meantime, I worry about my sprouts constantly. They are the first thing I check on in the morning and the last at night. I peek out to see how they are in the blistering heat of the summer afternoon. I water and tend. I photograph their development and post pictures online. I’m sure I’d burp and change their diaper if it was needed. Though I’m glad it’s not.
And when it stormed the other day, a flash flood kind of downpour, the elements were braved to protect their fragile stems. I got rain-soaked as I secured a plastic bag over that pot. Then again a few minutes later when that shelter wasn’t keeping them safe enough, until my mind was at ease. That’s part of the since formed mother-creature in me that I can’t turn off, I never stop worrying. Even when I’m babying flowers.
