Non-Fiction

To my children: if I had to choose between loving you and breathing… I would use my last breath to tell you — I love you…

I wish I could but I can’t fix yesterday, but I promise a better today and an even better tomorrow— it’s all in the blueprints…

I took a week off of writing because the words kept getting in the way.

The tragedies were bleeding into one another— literally and figuratively. My words seemed so small compared to the global grand scale of what was facing me— all of us—

I wanted to make sense of what I was living through for my children, yet I couldn’t find the sense for myself either.

I tried to find what I wanted to say from what I was feeling but it was hard when each day another thing just knocked me down. Funny— no one who knows me would know that inside I was feeling like this because outside I am so put together. It’s true I would never leave the house in PJs — I love a fresh coat of mascara, a linear swipe of kohl eyeliner, good butt jeans, a concert tee, and a wickedly good blow out, but what happens when your soul needs something more? So do my childrens’? They say sometimes the things that breaks our hearts actually rebuild us…

Currently I’m heartbroken and waiting on the blueprints for the rebuild —

I felt a different and profound sadness for my little world and the greater one that surrounds me. A helplessness for the chaos of the climate. The temperature is rising — figuratively and literally.

“Hold on tight” that’s usually the opening line to anything you are about to do that scares you, excites you or gives you that unexpected feeling. Can’t quite put your finger on feeling — Mommyhood and holding on tight isn’t about catch and release but something else entirely different…

It’s not the kind of holding on that doesn’t allow you to let go and let grow. It’s the kind of tightness you need to hang on to when you’re are sure the the sky above you might fall and the ground below you has turned to quicksand simultaneously and you need to find something in your soul and heart to hang on for— for me it’s always my children.

Summer is here— early. Hot, humid and the extra daylight. The sound of the ice cream truck at dinner time that reminds us when all is lost we can always find the ice cream truck on our block at 5:29 PM.

I looked at my children the other day and thought to myself if I close my eyes can I picture them not children anymore — grown up? Now it’s something we secretly pray for. To watch our children grow up.

I had a flashback while on the stands of my older son’s baseball game the other day. I was about his age. My mom was applying dance recital make-up to my young face. I was in sequins and tap shoes and I was going to do the routine I had been practicing for months. I was so little then. I had my whole future ahead of me. Did she wonder about me grown up? Not about my achievements but just growing up when she dropped me off at school, told me she loved me and to have an amazing day…

That kind of holding on tight …

I had no idea the little girl I would grow up to be would be the woman I am now. I still don’t. How so many phases of my life, times I hung on tight, I would be met with many paths on my journey. Time is so forever until it’s not and then it’s just time…

I was waiting at school pick up for my boys the other day and it was a few minutes left in the late afternoon when I am completely alone except for my thoughts. They can be extremely occupying at times. They give me all the feels all at once. They rush past me in that small time that make me feel like I need to look both ways. Past and future. Because the present is a gift we pray for.

I was scrolling through social media when I saw an image on my dear friends grid. It was of a small green bud of a possible bloom of a flower. It was so beautiful and magical— yet so simplistic. It wasn’t yet at its maturity. It reminded me patience is a virtue. Growth is out of our full control. That small green sprout will become the most magical thing in due time. It will grow up. It will blossom. It will transform.

Transformation happens when you’re not in charge. Nature takes its course.

We find out what we become when we let ourselves go and grow— the same goes for our children.

Then the doors opened. Little loud noises filled the warm air. I found my little voice again. Figuratively and literally.

“Hiii Mommy, do you know the difference between fiction and non-fiction?”

My little one asked me on that afternoon. We were on the way to pick up his big brother from elementary school after me just picking him up at his nursery school— it’s the final countdown until next year when they will finally be together in the same school.

I couldn’t get to ask him anything or even about his day. He was too intrenched by his own quest.

By the way he posed the inquiry I wasn’t sure if it was a trick question. Was he asking me or ready to share with me that he already knew the answer? Sometimes I like their explanations for things better than mine. So I wait to see where it’s going to go…

I do know the difference between the two, but now in the wake of the current events, currently and in the last two years, I’m beginning to think the lines are blurred. How can anything we are living through be real?

How can any of this be our reality?

So many feelings in the space between what can’t possibly be true and what really is— there is a overwhelming sensation of being extremely sensitive and desensitized simultaneously.

Most weeks begin like most of the others. And so does the day. That first cup of coffee— hot— I quickly sip and savor. It’s my super power elixir. The hustle and bustle of waking everyone up after multiple five more minutes— for me and for them. Packing backpacks and lunches, tying shoelaces and shuffling the kids to their schools— kissing them goodbye and wishing them an amazing day.

Sometimes I don’t pay too much attention to the events in my day while I’m not with my children. Sometimes they are mundane or predictable. They are the day to day things I have gotten used to doing, I can do with my eyes closed, an involuntary action— those things I do that are ultimately in preparation for everyone else — like even making sure to put on my own seatbelt, but they aren’t always earth shattering and don’t always think that it could be one thing that could change the trajectory of a day. Until something does. Then it does…

Then it’s back to pick up where it all began a few hours earlier.

Our conversations and our connection. Our shares and our stories. It’s my favorite part of the day to hear everything from the hours we’re not together— it’s like catching up with an old best friend. We pick up right where we left off. Sometimes their day was turned bad while we’re apart and from the moment I round the turn into the school parking lot I can almost sense it. I have learned to brace myself and prepare for it. Know when to just listen and when to have the “right thing to say”. The funny thing about the moments when we are reunited are those precious moments we need each other in ways no one else can understand. The unspoken spoken simpatico.

Then the late afternoon of homework and sports into the evening hours of dinner and bedtime books and kisses and sweetest dreams wishes— for me and for them —sunsets and then sunrise it begins again — as it always does.

A lot goes into the day— let alone a week. It’s hard to even put into words the role of a mommy. I would say if anyone knows anything about mommying knows it’s kinda like this— kissing the boo-boos and putting on the extra band-aid of a very hard to find scrape, while cooking the dinner hopefully someone eats, trying to answer a third grade math problem you don’t remember learning in third grade and you have multiple master’s degrees while putting together a Lego structure and playing Roblox, having a impromptu dance party, and then getting everyone in their sports uniforms and remember why you walked into the bathroom (maybe to pee since you woke up) and folding the towels from last weeks laundry and settling a spat between brothers no one should win and saying no to a pre-dinner snack so they hopefully eat their dinner and oh and enjoying every moment, stay hydrated, remember to pee and take a deep breath… it’s being everything to everyone. It’s a long journey of phases you are exiting and entering and hanging on tight to all of it as you ride the ups and downs of the roller coaster.

“Mommy, do you know the difference between fiction and non-fiction?”

He asked me again. Snapped back to the moment. “Yes lovie! Do you?” I decided I needed to ask him back. It’s what he wanted and more importantly needed. We talked for awhile about it. His understanding was magical and beautiful. His knowledge is blooming like that green sprout

Late in the evening I thought about our talk as my mind raced back to reality of the climate of the world and it made me think of all of the phases of Mommyhood I have traveled through and all the phases left. All the milestones I have documented and so much more left…

A few weeks ago while in Target picking up toothpaste, deodorant and seltzer, I walked by a section of the store that I no longer shop in anymore. The baby section. I saw an abundance of onesies, swaddle blankets and tiny socks, wipes and diapers and then there it appeared — the barebones shelves where the formula should be. The nothingness was heartbreaking. I felt a pit in my stomach and pain in my chest. It was a heartbreaking hunger pang of how could this be…

Yes— I was past that phase but I felt so rocked by it. There was a twinge of guilt inside of me from the baby bottles of my yesterdays with leftover ounces I tossed.

As I checked out of the store, I thought to myself how it must feel to be in that phase of mommying where you are already so overwhelmed, your last worry should be if I have the necessities to feed my baby.

I’m in the next phase of Mommyhood. I have little children and my older one is the the middle of his elementary school years and my little one is kindergarten bound. I now have this phase’s wishes and worries. They come with their own overwhelming moments. I am thinking about other things that are this phases necessities I want for my children. Little did I know what I was going to feel as the last weeks progressed…

For the past two years no one outside of the school was allowed into school for health and safety protocols. AKA COVID. And just last week they opened the double doors (the same ones my little one walked through the week prior), and welcomed us parents to be a guest and see our children shine. That day I watched as my son shined, not on zoom, but live. He gave a wonderful social studies presentation. It felt as it should be. I felt as I should be. Filled with joy, pride, love and I could share that live moment with him.

As I kissed him goodbye I didn’t think twice about anything but what I was feeling in that very moment.

The next day I would go back to thinking twice again more than twice …

I remember being a senior in high school when the Columbine shooting happened. Even as a teenager on the cusp of the next chapter of my life, graduation, I understood and felt the tragedy but believed it was still safe to go to school—and it was so far away. I don’t know if I remember thinking it was so far away because I was so far away from that reality or it was far from home. But then, years later, on the cusp of the next chapter of my life, Mommyhood, when the Sandy Hook shooting happened I was now teaching in an elementary school and I was pregnant with my first born and now my older son. That time I told myself that it was still safe to have this job and my unborn baby would never know from this— but was so much closer to home— figuratively and literally.

I don’t know if the adjective to describe these mommy moments of my sons’ education— kindergarten orientation or elementary school class presentations as “safe” because I was filled with other things, joy, love and pride, but somewhere deep down I did feel safe for all of us to be inside school — until I didn’t. Again. Tragedy.

In between the tragedies, I have tried to wrap my head around the conversations mommies have to have. How we are always in explanation mode. Not about why they have to go to bed early on a school night or brush their teeth or no ice cream before dinner, share their toys — etc, but in human decency and inhumane decisions.

Sometimes I don’t know how to explain what I don’t understand anymore.

How loving our children is just the tip of the iceberg. How we can love them an infinite amount in its purest form, but we can’t wholeheartedly keep them safe from the pure evil and random acts of violence. Keeping them safe is the whole glacier. The fear in letting go isn’t in the moments of growth and transitions but now in school drop offs.

There is the blur in fiction vs. non-fiction.

Supply and demand, Gun violence in schools, climate control— literally and figuratively, used to be thought of in the naïveté of stereotypes, demographics, zip codes, and injustice. Now they are colorblind and nonsensical. Our neighborhoods and our neighbors are just as risky and at risk— fear is now in the every day— what’s next?

The phases of Mommyhood cause wishes and worries and blur the lines of fiction and non fiction. But this is when we hang on tight— again— for all of us and look for the somewhere over the rainbow.

As this week comes to a close, and the new season is about to bloom after a long cold winter, I felt compelled to find the right bedtime book for all of us. I wanted to change the narrative— for them and for me.

I looked on the shelves of their bedroom libraries for a story that could end our day with an honest to goodness sweetest dreams wish before I spritzed their rooms with the aroma of the “sweet dreams spray” from my old perfume bottle, which I do every night — night after night.

Tucked behind the board books, concept books and the beginner chapter books was a classic. An old favorite book of Shel Silverstein poetry. The artwork is folky and in a monotone single stroke of a felt pen and the photograph in black and white was edgy. But his poetic words were timeless. I read his hardcover rhymes at bedtime because it was nice to have something “retro” to read to my children.

ATIONS

If we meet and I say, 'Hi,'

That's a salutation.

If you ask me how I feel,

That's a consideration.

If we stop and talk a while,

That's a conversation.

If we understand each other,

That's a communication.

If we argue, scream and fight,

That's an altercation.

If later we apologize,

That's reconciliation.

If we help each other home,

That's a cooperation.

And all these actions added up

Make Civilization.

(And if I say this is a wonderful poem,

Is that exaggeration?)

I can’t fully explain why I picked this poem. I just felt like it spoke for itself. It’s explanation and justification were simple— actions and reactions have an unspoken spoken simpatico, too.

Since sometimes falling apart isn’t about breaking but in restructuring , I only hope we build a better, stronger new creation for tomorrow from the ruins of devastation of yesterday for our future generations— but it’s all in the blueprints…