Archive for the ‘life’ Tag
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?
September 16 2011
The first day I took the boys to the bus stop in the morning, some weeks ago, there was another man there waiting with his son when along emerged a carful of kids just as the bus approached. Included in the car was a little girl who was clearly having a very bad start to her day. She stormed from the backseat and took off in the opposite direction from the bus, stomping, crying, and furiously throwing objects in her path.
It was a scene.
After she left, and the bus rolled on with our kids on board, the man who had been waiting with his son, a man who lives just a few doors down from us, turned to me. “Did you see that little girl? No way. Nuh-uh!”, he exclaimed. “If I ever acted like that, my mama would have whacked me upside the head.”
I nodded, “Tell me about it. I would never hit my kids, but they know better than to act like that.”
This, right there. Do you see that? That’s where I eat my words.
Yesterday, my daughter and I took a stroll around the neighborhood. As we neared home, however, it dawned on her where she was and it was not where she wanted to be. Abby didn’t want to go inside like I explained we needed to do. Her voice raised in sheer defiance, the rocks she had been saving in her hand were lobbed like angry baseballs. It was a scene. Right in front of that man’s house.
Um, well, my daughter will know better. Eventually. After she gets done being 3.
September 09 2011
No, Paper
It seems simple enough. My 3 year old daughter wants paper. There’s a stack of lined sheets that I put on the table, along with the blue marker she had previously opened. Except, it’s not right. She doesn’t want this paper, but I don’t know what she does want. I leave the paper on the table anyway, where my daughter then proceeds to throw a full-blown, 20 minute, queen of all tantrum.
“No paper! No paper! No! No! No paper!”, she screams repeatedly, crying from her steadfast position in the corner of the room.
Ear-piercing. She was adamant.
Yes, Paper
After so long, with not a break to be seen in the tantrum, I gathered the paper as she railed to put away. Except that was no longer right, either. No sooner did I have it together in my hands than her mind changed. Oh, for heaven’s sake.
“Paper! Paper! Paper! Give me that paper! PAPER!” she screamed and cried, still refusing to budge from the corner of the room.
Ear-piercing. She was adamant.
Who the hell knows anymore about the paper?
What I do know? 3 year olds are utterly mind-boggling and confusing. I sometimes feel so lost with her, at this age. But it seems like a lot of time and aggravation and eardrums we could have saved ourselves, here.
September 02 2011
The morning sprung up on me with a bang and a migraine as I lumbered out of bed a half an hour before the alarm was to ring. I always hate when that happens. As I stumbled groggily and with a pounding head into the bathroom to grab some medicine, I could hear Jedi shuffle his feet against the blankets of his bed.
He was awake, as well.
I knew he wouldn’t rise early intentionally, though. It was a school day, and as great as he does when there, his preference to stay home is no secret. He pleads and fakes sick, making his plight as pitiful as possible. The tricks are all familiar, however, as I perfected them myself during my own school years.
Well, most of them.
A bout of ventriloquism was a first.
I tiptoed about, head still pounding, until the clock struck quarter after seven, when it was time to take upon the task of dragging unwilling weight out of their more enticing comfort. Leaving Jedi for last, as he’s always the worst, I walked in to find that he had slid down to the foot bed, submerged as a ball of limbs under the covers.
“Come on, Jedi! I know you’re awake, I’ve heard you moving around in here”, I informed him. Except I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.
“Whoever this Jedi is you speak of, he’s not here”, the lump muttered in a muffle from under the covers. “This is the bed talking.”
Nice try. Very creative. But you still have to do better than that.
August 03 2011
Some mornings, they call for something just a little wacky. Out of the ordinary, but not too far. Because I can only take so much, really. But a stretch in the orange light.
Some mornings call for stripping out of your pajamas on the open front stoop of your house.
And then dressing yourself there, as well.
It’s not as if I had a choice, entirely. She pulled her flowery pajama shirt over her head faster than I could say stop. Her belly button bared. My free spirit. Before I knew it, she was down to her diaper, flaunting it for all the neighbors at a time too early to shake anyone else. Unless they had kids who were doing the same, too.
Abby then vanished back inside for a moment, after demanding me to stay. “Don’t move,” she instructed, “I’ll be right back”. I did as told as she gathered a pile of mismatched clothes and spread each article in a clump on the small step right beyond our front door. From there, we pulled on two pairs of socks for each foot and the out of season outfit she chose herself. Because it isn’t like her to correlate her fashion sense with the heat warning we would experience later into the afternoon.
But then, in that moment, it was a wake up. A spirited touch, brighter even than the orange, warm light.
Some mornings, they simply call for a new approach.
