circle

i hide from the dark.

it seeks me out and
i shut my eyes to
its creeping shadow.
i turn my face from
its sharpened claws.
i blot the darkness with
muffled giggles and
sunny days.

still it comes.

i drop into exhausted
sleep to busy the dark
from my head.
but once i stop to
rest, it flows around me
seeping into the cracks
upon my soul.
it weighs me down
bleeding into my dreams and
splintering happy memories
until i spill the dark in
wet tracks down my cheeks.

then it begins anew and
i hide
from the dark
once again.

(insert expletives. they work best.)

we've all had baby-making sex. obviously. the "headboard-shaking, fall off the bed and keep going, don't answer the phone, if the neighbors heard that they need to shut the windows, oh my god more more more" sex. yeah. i thought you'd remember that. and when we were finished, we had to have something to eat. we always went to denny's for moons over my hammy and a chocolate shake. 3am, 5pm, noon, whenever. for me, that is a vague shadow of a memory from 11 years ago.

after we have kids, it comes down to "shhhhh for god's sake i just got them to sleep will you tone it down and just get it done" sex. at least mine did. for many many many years. i mean, things don't fit the same way after having a baby anyway, right? let alone four. i have no idea how it is for you-all, but i need a lift or tuck or a rubber band or something. i get a good hard shag still; we wouldn't be married if it wasn't good enough. it's not that. i just want the really good stuff back again.....now that i can appreciate it. i just want to come away (how punny) from every encounter, screaming his name like the chicks in my stories do. please? is it that much to ask?

well, i've been trying to figure out how to do just that. i have been asking questions of sex goddess gurus on a few different mommy sites, reading up on tips and techniques and experimenting. dh is loving this, let me tell you. he aids and abets my sex-quest with all due haste and no complaints. too bad i can't figure out how to get the dishes done at the same time. but i digress.

a fellow mom and sexpert mentioned to me to keep trying, that "you'll know it when you get there. you won't be able to miss it. when you do it just right it will curl your toes." no kidding. i've read the smut that goes, "she screamed in ecstasy" or whatever, and i think about how exaggerated that sounds. well, we figured it out last night. it curled not only my toes but everything in the vicinity, as well as the curtains in the next-door neighbor's dining room. i shit you not. it was all about "oh my god i can't put my knees together anymore, i don't care if i knocked over the water it will eventually evaporate, no i can't stop wiggling that's your fault i'm still shaking like that so good job already....." damn. we can't go to denny's; who's gonna watch the kids?? and i really really needed a hot sandwich on grilled sourdough with a chocolate shake chaser. i made do with a bowl of chicken noodle soup. at 1am.

oh, and i haven't stopped smiling yet today.

i got my boots knocked. bring it!

cornflower blues

for lars

i look into your eyes, boy,
and see in them reflections
of cornflower skies
of a hundred yesterdays
pooled into the blinking blues
that rest above your smile.

all the hopes and promises
that gather in your eyes
predict a future full of wonder,
captured happiness,
and a set of cornflower blues
of your own to gaze upon.

august musings

a number of years ago my grandmother died. i’m sure if i thought really hard or called my own mom i could hit upon the exact date, but i can’t be troubled. all i know is that she was born in the same month in which both of my daughters were born. i was never close with my grandmother. and although my mom would be heartbroken to hear that, i’m sure my grandmother would agree with it, and be satisfied with that statement.

you see, i learned at a very early age that my grandmother had Money. when i misbehaved while visiting or did something embarrassing at church (like all kids do), my mom would sit me down and tell me how i needed to behave so we wouldn’t be Written out of the Will. whatever that meant. i remember being so proud to show my grandparents that i could do a somersault on my own in the midst of all the oohing and aaahing over the baby learning to crawl. i bumped into a statue that was situated at the top of the stairs and down it went, losing its head. we left at once under the cold stare of my grandmother and my mom cried the whole drive home. we didn’t see them again until christmas, even though we only lived a few miles apart.

i learned to bring a book, say my polite hellos, answer the standard questions about school and retreat quietly out of the way, preferably far from anything breakable, which was rather difficult to do in her home. most of the time i spent outside on the deck or smushed into a chair in the family room in the basement. in other words, as far out of sight as possible.

christmases were much different. one night a year i was allowed to be excited, allowed to be a kid and jump around, eating chocolates and banging away on the piano keys. that one night each year was like stepping into someone else’s grandmother’s house. i remember the christmases fondly, if only because they were what should have been normal, i suppose.

when my grandmother died, we had just moved cross country from texas to maryland for the first time. we stopped along the way to visit and took a four generations picture with my infant daughter. she spoke to me more in that visit than she had in the previous twenty years of my life. apparently now that i was not planning on knocking the statue down the stairs, i was good enough to talk to. or perhaps she knew it would be the last time i saw her alive. i had just begun a job and we had no money to fly back to the midwest for a funeral. i didn’t even cry when i heard the news. she had been sick and she didn’t die unexpectedly. i didn’t feel a deep void; if anything i felt relief that i could no longer screw up bad enough to get kicked out of the will.

at some point i must have redeemed myself over the statue incident because she did leave a few things to me. i have a pair each of plain gold, diamond, and pearl earring studs and enough plastic costume clip-on earrings to start my own store, along with a pretty black hills gold pin and matching necklace. i think of her when i see the jewelry in its place in the box and my mom asked me recently why i don’t wear them. i couldn’t give her an answer at the time, but now i think i know why.

those trinkets really mean nothing to me. a woman whose love for her own daughters was so cold that any perceived slight would leave them cast out of the family to fend for themselves was no real family to me. a mother who could not stomach more than a brusque peck on the cheek and would brush away even the slightest signs of affection with a look of disdain similar to that of watching a drowned rat drip on the carpeting never could hold onto the love of a child. i acknowledge my kinship, as she did to me. that’s all that should be expected. buying my undying affection with a few earrings after a lifetime of sour looks seems cheap and wrong. and it plain didn’t work.

i plan to have the pearl and diamond studs made into rings or necklaces, whichever the wearer prefers. my sons will get the diamonds to present to their wives-to-be. my daughters will get the pearls on the eves of their engagements, and i will turn the black hills gold pin into a second necklace so that each girl has a piece of that as well, leaving me with nothing but the plain gold studs. after all, that seems more fitting for the plain, stark, no nonsense relationship i shared with my foremother.

set the night on fire

We dig on New and Exciting. The only problem with that is, New and Exciting is most often not Free; most of the time it is Downright Expensive. Imagine my surprise then, one Friday afternoon, when I stumbled across the information that a meteor shower would be taking place that very weekend. Not just any run-of-the-mill meteor shower, either. The Perseid shower of 2007 promised to have the best viewing in quite a number of years, due to the fact that the new moon would not detract from the meteors with the long, bright, multi-colored tails AND early morning viewers (around 4 am, to be precise) would be able to watch the rise of red Mars in addition to all the other technicolor mayhem in the atmosphere. Brilliant. And Free.

Nine pm Sunday evening was clear and not as hot as it could have been. After a dessert of ice cream bars, we gathered the Neat Sheet ™, a stack of inflatable ReadyBeds ™, citronella candles and a firestick, bug repellent, water bottles, a long tether for the dog, and the guitar and loaded up the minivan. Destination: the baseball fields behind the elementary school. It was the only open place we could think of that would be relatively darkened, but close enough to get home at a decent hour. The kids were excited at the prospect of “camping out” under the stars on this beautiful clear night and I had planned on telling them all about the meteors and how to spot them as the night grew dark enough.

Setting up in the almost pitch-black was harder than we expected, having only 2 citronella candles to use for light. Of all the things I thought of, “lantern” never once sprung to mind. Oh well. All the kids settled noisily onto their little inner-tube beds and squeaking and giggling, intently watching the sky and asking, “where are the comets?” literally every ten seconds.

The littlest little pointed “Hey the school’s on fire!” and I gullibly turned in the direction of the school reassuring her with a “No it isn’t silly, that’s just our cand- Oh, shit.” I was on my feet and dialing 911 on the cell phone before the rest of the kids had even turned to look. Running across three baseball diamonds (and their subsequent outfields) as well as the soccer field, I could see the lone silhouette of someone near the second grade wing. The school wasn’t just on fire, someone was setting it on fire. On purpose.

The blaze was half the height of the school. As I got closer, the flames fizzled out, but I kept an eye on the person walking the perimeter of the back of the school now. I still hadn’t crossed the soccer field and into the playground, but I was close enough to see the person was carrying a red gas can and pouring some kind of liquid onto the ground by the school. I could not yet smell what it was. I relayed all this information to the 911 operator, including my fuzzy and darkened description of what I could see of the person, which admittedly wasn’t much. I didn’t want to get too close, not knowing if he also had a weapon, so I stayed back far enough, holding my cell phone flat against my cheek to block the light and hoping he wouldn’t see me.

The Fire Department arrived first with one short blast of siren. Dude jumped ten feet into the air, dropped the gas can, and quickly walked towards the parking lot, doubled back and headed in the direction of the nearest trees. Right where I was standing. Then he saw me and took off. I ran to the fire truck, still on the phone with the police telling them which direction Dude was running. I showed the fire fighters the gas can and the scorch marks on the sidewalk and up the side of the school. They called in an Arson Investigation team and asked if I would stay and give a statement. The police called me back on my cell and asked me to meet them around the corner to ID someone. Damn I was tired of running, but away I went.

I didn’t think I could ID him. The clothes partially matched the description I gave, but I had told them I thought he was wearing a hat, because it looked like his hair was sticking out of the bottom of it. Dude here had a curly mop fringe going around the bottom edge of his hair…..could be him, but I never got closer than 50 yards. He was caught sprinting out of the trees right near where I lost sight of him though, really nervous and sweating like a pig from running. Dude claimed he was with two friends and they all split up because they thought they were being chased by a dog. While they were taking his info down, lo and behold, there went a meteor. I was asked to go back to the school to meet with the Arson team at that point. Man, can’t I get a ride with one of y’all????

I got permission to go let my husband know I was OK and that I would be up by the school for a little while longer. Then I sat and answered questions from the Arson team for a while. When no one was talking to me I had my eyes on the sky. Dammit, I was missing the show! You know, the meteors I actually came out here to see?? At some point, a call came through on the police scanner that a neighbor near the school saw a lot of activity going on behind the school and was worried someone might be vandalizing it back there. Ummmm, it was us. We all had a laugh at the caller who had just noticed that an investigation had been going on for an hour. Nigh about 10:30, the police finally got into contact with the two friends Dude said he’d been with all night. They hadn’t seen him since school let out. The police booked him.

I stumbled back one more time across the black fields in search of my family. I called “Marco?” several times, before hearing my husband’s return “Polo.” Both of the boys had already fallen asleep, the girls were hysterically exhausted and my dear darling abandoned husband was about ready to choke everyone, including himself in frustration. No they never saw a meteor, not even the bright one that I’d seen. They spent the whole time asking questions and fighting while Daddy tried to answer them. He tried to sing them songs and play guitar to pass the time and they kept shushing each other to the point that there was no point in continuing to play the guitar. He was tired, the dog was wired and we still had to wake the boys and drag them and all our stuff back to the car…..across three baseball fields, the soccer field and the playground. OK, so it wasn’t such a great place to choose after all.

But would the school have been damaged if we’d not been there? Possibly. Would the little bastard setting my school on fire have been caught? Most likely not. I just heard that we might be able to catch a glimpse of the last remnants of the shower next Monday morning. I’ll set an alarm and watch them myself this time. Too much New-ness and Excitement can be a bad thing.

i think i need a new t-shirt

I think I'll go shirt hunting when I'm finished here. A new-found confidence has been lit in me and I just had to share. And yes, I'm bragging. Nyah.

If we're lucky, we catch a man who loves us whether we're dressed to the nines or sitting in a dirty spit-up-stained three-day old t-shirt and sobbing over a seventh poopy diaper in an hour. If we're lucky. And those awesome co-procreators take a minute of each day to devote a comment on our beauty before kissing us on the way out the door. And that beauty consists of skunk-poop-morning breath, pre-shower and definitely pre-coffee rumpled in the bedsheets with the lights off. But they know what they see. Or they will compliment a less-than-stellar dinner because they appreciate the level of difficulty maintaining order in the chaos that is homework in the dining room while preparing dinner and getting ready for scouts. If we're really lucky, half of us get one of those guys with stars in their eyes, still seeing their blushing bride reflected in the cataracts and blue perms hunched over a walker 60 years later. I am one of those. And I am truly grateful for the outpouring of love my man has thrust upon me me in the past decade. At times though, it was more like one of those mustard yellow jumbo team thermoses of ice water being dumped on my head, but it was there and I clung to the fact that at least one person on the planet thought I looked nice enough, even when I put no effort into it whatsoever.

Entering the period of time known as the "thirty-somethings" has changed this perspective, only slightly. Dude, I just realized that I have spent the last decade in frump-mode and while my other female counterparts were perfecting the art of going out in public, I simply made do by not leaving the confines of my home for days on end. I have since decided to make myself look presentable, so that my tweenager doesn't gasp at the sweatpants and ratty t-shirt I wore the last time we went to the mall two weeks ago. Because, yeah, everyone will notice and think that's the only outfit I have. Yeah, uh, right. I'm doing it so I don't, um, embarrass her. *ahem* Slowly over the past two years I have been getting new jeans and cutesy shirts, I bought something besides running shoes for my feets, and I fired my ponytail. I have been walking, running and biking with the dog every night for two months. In other words, I declare myself suitable for the public eye.

And apparently they've noticed my efforts. Last night I was walking my faithful exercise-enducing canine surrounded by all four of my offspring when a car full of guys drove by, apparently went around the block and made a second, slower pass and they all yelled "MILF!!!!" and honked. I waved back as they sped up, a grin literally splitting my face. There's the love of your life telling you that you're beautiful when you think you're not, and then there's a car full of strangers agreeing with him. That feels a little different. So yeah, I need a new shirt, one that proclaims that yes, indeed, I am a Mother You'd Like to Ffffff...fjord.