When words fail, music speaks.

Music is a language we share in my house. My kids mostly listen to vastly different music than I do, but that doesn't ever stop us from having a random dance party in the kitchen when something randomly plays, and demands us to play, too. It's The Go Go's, or Taylor Swift, or even Emenim. We've sung along in the car together to Imogen Heap, and U2, and Jack Johnson, and Coldplay. The other day my daughter shared a song with me, and I followed it up with a song new to her. I raised a boy who played the trumpet in band, and the younger two want drums. Give us things to bang on loudly, they ask. And I'm kind of excited about that.

No, don't get me wrong; I'm absolutely not looking forward to those first painful few months where it all always sounds like an endless river of noise made specifically to drown out every last bit of sanity in my brain that I will cling to in hopes of not tossing those drums onto the bonfire in the back yard one sunny afternoon. I'm not looking forward at all to the eventual competition it will surely turn into; who can drive mom crazy first; best; longest without being threatened with bodily harm. And then, the competition will turn against each other--who's playing better. Because their first critics are always going to be each other. And they spare no criticism, as siblings do, I guess.

What I am looking forward to, though, is seeing the language of music expanded in our home. To see them pick up an entirely different level of sophistication in the pronunciation of this thing that moves our hearts, our feet, our mouths. To share the rhythm of their learning and to see the doors in their lives opening, music leading the way. I don't expect them to be musicians, but to appreciate yet another universal language, like math, that connects their lives to the rest of the giant world they have yet to discover.

Sorry, neighbors.
(We're also planning on getting a piano.)
;)

A love letter

I haven't seen her in a long time, but I remember still, "my therapist says" that sometimes you have to accept that some people in your life that are very important to you are never going to have the relationship with you that you expect, or need. That you either accept that they are flawed, just like you, and love them anyway, or you cut them loose. Either option seems to take a colossal amount of strength. When you're sitting across the table from this person that you love, will always love with your whole being, and  are faced with this excruciating dillema, it's all too easy to try your very best to hold on; to eat all the garbage they dish out despite the health warnings; to declare that unconditional love means loving through the hurt and unfairness. Because, afterall, you aren't without your flaws, too, right? And aren't they showinging you the same measure of unconditional love?

What are they showing you when they use slurs to your face, and make you feel inadequate as a person capable of caring for another living being, and less than, and doomed? Is that what unconditional love is? "You are all of these really horrible things, and I want you to feel every second of loathing, but I love you, too." Is that the gist of it? Is there some primer to the varying levels of unconditional love that I perhaps missed the day they handed them out? Yes; no?

Because, as a mother, I have a very different idea of what that all is supposed to mean. Things like: you may choose a path that is completely unexpected, but I am absolutely going to be there to cheer you on, to pull you up when you fall, to be the ear you need to listen, to be the arms you need to hug, to tell you how amazing you are, to learn from you the things you want to teach me, to share with you the things I think are important, and to understand that you are not an extension of me. You are your own person. That to help you grow to be confident in yourself, I am confident in myself enough to know that when you don't agree with me, it isn't a rejection of ME, but a step toward your own independence and happiness and truth. That I won't fixate on our differences, and instead celebrate them as much as our similarities, for you are my love letter to life, and I hope to be a part of yours. Rather than some abstract eternity, the stories you tell of me to your children, to your grandchildren, to your great-grandchildren, are how I plan to live on, and so those stories must be exceptional and full of love, and heartfelt, for how else will they know of the great love that they have descended from and are a part of? There is no one else's opinion that matters to me more than yours, no matter who you love, or what career has chosen you, or what clothes you wear, or what shade your skin is, or what your tattoos look like, or what music you listen to, or what your favorite movie is. You are forever my love letter to the universe. Unconditionally.

So I don't understand love labled as "unconditional" if that isn't it.

Because, as I mentioned an entry or two ago, I still very much feel like a kid. My not so average Joe had to go before I was ready to loosen my grip, and I still need as much unconditional love from the rest of my family as I can get, regardless of who, where, what, when, and why my life takes me; I, too, am deserving of truly unconditional love. It has taken my whole life up to this point, a therapist or two, amazing friends and my best friend slash heroic husband, and exactly two glasses of wine, to realize that I deserve it, too. I have an entire lifetime of memories to remind me of what I don't deserve, or want, or need in my life. I don't want to be "a good girl," and I don't need to go pick a switch off the orange tree, or ask you if you're done yet after I feel the welts rise on my legs from a metal coat hanger, or wonder why there is no one on God's entire green earth that I can talk to when I am hurt. I need someone to tell me that I don't have to try to keep the peace, to hold all of the grown up relationships together at the expense of my own safety and sanity. That I don't have to get in the car with my drunk biological father and scream at the oncoming lights as he swerves into the other lane of traffic, or be the one to make all the phone calls to try to get him to interact with me, or anyone else in my family that leaves it up to me, to hear them say they just don't have time for me, or to have to hear about how much you still find them handsome, or fun, or that I should give them a call, yet again. I don't need to hear that I have to try to shove myself into the door of one more church after years of hearing that no matter what I do, and even though Jesus made me too, I'm going to burn in hell because I love one too many genders.

I am enough. I am my own person, and I matter, and I have written my love letters across the ethos of the world, and they will carry me through an eternity of unconditional love. And. It feels. Pretty. Damned. Good. I hope you wake up in time to scawl your post script.

Love, Me.
Love me.
Love=Me.

(Yeah, it's all the same.)

Surviving The Storm

The phone rang at 6:07 on Friday morning. I was in bed, and the phone was in the other room; I let it ring while I snuggled deeper under the blankets, and try to let sleep enfold me again. I figure that it's the school's robot calling to say there was no reason to get up out of bed that early to get the kids off to school - there was a snow storm coming; hell, it was already here. I always find it frustrating that they would call that early to wake you up and tell you not to bother waking up. I guess most people would be about to wake up for the day at that time, anyway; I am not most people though, and the irony isn't lost on me. I distantly hear my children stumbling around the kitchen about 30 minutes later; a while after that, I hear our car pulling into the driveway - my husband returning from work. At some point, I feel him snuggle into bed with me, and I drift off to sleep again.

Dirt and Destruction

I survived the week.

I started cleaning last weekend in preparation for my guests arriving for Thanksgiving. Somehow, my house managed to get filthy since the last time we cleaned it in earnest; places and things you generally tend to overlook during the day, or perhaps you might actually look at it every day, but the filth becomes sort of mundane instead of openly repulsive. Dust bunnies and smeary fingerprints, little crayola scribbles via the two small feral children you share your home with. All of these things must be hunted down and erradicated when company is coming, including the wild streak your children have cultured in their small beings.

Eat, drink, and be merry; for tomorrow you die.

It is said to be the philosophy of Epicureans; it is also an amalgamation of scriptures from The Bible. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die." Surely this quote is also an apt descriptor for America's first Thanksgiving Day, and every Thanksgiving Day that has followed, with much thanks to the joys of the dysfunctional family. We gather to break bread, and end up wanting to break someones neck; snap it like the wishbone on the turkey. Happy holidays! Well, that's another oxymoron for another time.