willow

I kept an ear tuned to the backseat as we drove.. happy to listen to the smart, witty, insightful musings of my eldest:

"Mom, how much longer till I"m a teenager?"

??!!

"How do you know which pedals to push and when? Do they teach you that in driving school?"
"When I'm in driving school I want a woman teacher."

"Mom, I think from now on you should start buying things instead of renting them."

?

"Like cd's, dvd's, movies, books, you know; that stuff. So you don't have to give them back. Cuz, you forget most of the time. So it would be smarter to buy the stuff."

I think about Charlotte's Web 2, and the letter I received from the video store..after several months..and I have the nagging suspicion that it would be cheaper to buy the DVD than to return it at this point..

I thank her for the unsolicited(heartily deserved) input, and agree to consider her suggested course of action.

"Mom, Abby has the Robert Frost poem-book. Stopping By
Snowy Woods? And I read the whole thing to her. By myself."

I smile for a long time. She's about to turn seven, and I know in a year she'll be astounding me even more, though it's hard to imagine. I wish everyone had a Willow.

ginger

On the way home after a long weekend apart, she delighted me with her expressions, exclamations, and finally, her tired ramblings:

"Mom, I'm so sleepy..but I don't want to sleep and the music will make me so turn it off please...and I'm SO hungry((for her second supper))..I'm so hungry I may eat your car."

I asked her to leave me the steering wheel and pedals(we were only halfway home).

"Don't worry, Mom..I'll only eat the middle of the car. If I eat more than that I'll get you a new one."

I missed her voice so much this time.

stones

This blog used to be much more personal. I started it as a way to keep in touch with far away family and friends, but also(and even mainly) to help me work through a difficult period in my life during which anxiety and fear pretty much paralyzed me.
I remember when I first started writing here, I felt surprised by the freedom of words..how quickly the thoughts from my head ended up travelling through my fingers, and (sometimes thoughtlessly) told stories without much self-censorship.
Over time you realize that people actually read these things. And careless or incomplete thoughts can cause hurt feelings. Soon you start second-guessing whether everything you write is going to be 'OK' for the people you care about.
And "poof". The fun, healing, cathartic(and often selfish) freedom of blogging is replaced by a sense of Responsibility.
Around that same time a lot of things in my life blew up at once..and it became damn near impossible to blog at all. Or have normal "how-are-you-doing" conversations in person. Not because there was less to say; but because there was *so* much to say. And the stakes(hurting the feelings of people who had been hurt enough already by the fallout from my life, over burdening people with the heaviness surrounding me) seemed dauntingly high.
Just when I started feeling excited about telling stories..and hoping to become a more skilled storyteller..I became an impotent one. Posts months apart. Bland suburban updates(attempts at reassuring everyone that we were going to be alright) and occasional pictures. Holding the world at arm's length through a medium which by nature serves the opposite purpose(or does it?).
There's another reason I kept writing, specifically through this blog. I have always struggled to remember details of the past. Much of my childhood and teen years, and now, even the first years of Willow's life, are washed in gradient layers of hazy uncertainty.
It has become increasingly important for me to find ways of laying a trail. I need stones on the path to remind me that I was Here once. And that *this* is how things were...for me, for the girls, this is the way the world looked and smelled and sounded..
There have been some really painful aspects of my past, the details of which I am willing to lose. But the good stuff; the things that give life meaning, I want desperately to retain.

I think some people who read this post may think something like,"What is she talking about? If this is an *impersonal* year of blogging, what would a *personal* one look like? Sounds scary."

But I think that the people who know me best are well aware that there's much left unsaid.

In some ways, I think that has been good. Over-sharing unnecessarily has long been a prominent flaw of mine. And I feel good about the path which continues leading me to a place where I need the approval of others(or to be fully understood) less.
Still, blogging was more fun before inhibition set in. More useful for pulling creative stuff out of me(and I must always find ways to get the stuff going on inside me to the outside..all Creatives must. If we leave things dormant, untouched, our insides start to destroy us)..
So while there are some aspects of my daily experience and the ways I see the world which will not be discussed here, I am going to make a much stronger effort to record them *somewhere*.

And the things I do feel like discussing here, I will - hopefully without nearly as much caution and deliberation(which really is kind of just an attempt to manage the way others see me.. a hamster's wheel I am trying to jump down from after 27 yrs of excercise).

Part of what has gotten me all stirred up about this has been the fact that lately, my life has been impossibly wonderful. For complex reasons this wonderful-ness has been one of those things censored to a large extent. Mostly, I think the omissions have been my best attempt at expressing kindness to some of the people who read here(people that I care about deeply) and respect their experience of the past several months,which has been so different from my own.

I'm in love with Daniel. He evokes something in me that, until now, I've only experienced in the forest through nature. I swear when I'm near him it's a little like being surrounded by tall evergreens and ferns and moss. Like he's a bit..sylvan. I've never met anyone at once so familiar and surprising.

I'm going to be talking about some things more openly from now on, especially things that matter most to me. The girls have always brought the purest kind of happiness..and now so do Daniel, Isaac & Will. Life is happening in a really beautiful way at present.. and this blog will serve as one stone along the path to someday help my hazy brain remember What It Was Like Here/Now..

I am here to tell you that there is nothing in this world more disgusting than the experience of flushing two quarts of rotten Cashew Carrot Ginger soup down the toilet.
Sweet lord forgive me, but I didn't know where else to put it.
And now, where I'd most like to put it is: out of my memory.
eeegggh.

"What a Grunchy thing we have"

Willow found the long, stick-like box which had earlier delivered some gifts for the girls. Now the box held only packing peanuts. And potential.

First she folded each end and paraded around the living room with her "didgeridoo"(which sounded believable but lacked the instruments 'eeriness')

Next she theorised about poking holes in the tower-like box and fashioning evergreen branches out of construction paper that could be secured through the holes(because her mother didn't own tape)

Then she was quiet for a while until I heard this casual(and very 'grown-up' sounding) voice behind me: "Well, look what we have here. What a Grunchy Thing we have. That old Grinch has a Christmas tree after all."
I turned to find the plain brown box standing tall like a tree with no branches, and for the star, a dirty sock drooped over the top.

I saw a gleam in Willow's eye and knew that SHE knew how funny I would think this was. She was right - I was helpless with laughter.

And finally, tonight she spent at least an hour meticulously wrapping(and taping, thank you) sheets of white copy paper over every inch of this box. Now from the other room I hear lengthy deliberation between two farmers(with constantly changing names) concerning the display location for the finished package.

No money for your thoughts?(because that's how much the writers are making for many of theirs..)

A friend of mine is a part of the writer's strike as a longtime member of the Writer's Guild. He has been dividing his time between walking the line with fellow strikers and helping the WGA strike newspaper through writing and photography. The paper gets distributed three days per week to help those involved with the strike to stay informed about the issues they face..and also to boost their spirits as the weeks wear on.

I'll be helping him with a piece about Midwestern perceptions of the strike. So tomorrow I'll be asking anyone who will listen questions like: What have you heard about the writer's strike? Why are the writers striking? How does greed affect this situation? What do you think should happen?
What's at stake?

If any readers of this blog have thoughts and would be willing to be quoted(if you're not comfortable having your name printed, just initials and city will suffice), I'm interested in hearing from you.

More information about what's happening can be found at www.unitedhollywood.com

In the past 24 hours

Not once, but twice, I have become stuck in my winter coat.
Helpless. Last night I thought I would have to sleep in it. But a kind Gloria rescued me from that fate.
Foolishly this morning I zipped it to my chin on the way out the door with the girls.
And have just gotten it off after ten minutes of wrestling.