Like your pulse

I have to be careful about the music I listen to sometimes.

I have to pick exactly the right songs.

When I miss you, some melodies are just too harsh.

Too crashing, to jangling, too rambling and loud.

When I miss you I need something soft, 

As the palm of your hand

The flesh of your lip

The beat of your pulse

I need something slow

Like the way you sometimes looked at me

The pause between "I love you"

The days between seeing you

I need something that tinkles, like a bell, and the thinnest strings of a guitar

Something that whispers and sounds like tiny strings of lights

And feels like the way your words ricocheted off every bone in my body, 

When you whispered them in my ear.

To my father, on his 57th birthday.

When I was little and it was your birthday, I would wander through the garage, the carport, the backyard, looking for things I could give you.

I'd collect nuts and bolts and screws from the ground, the floor, under the seats of all the cars in our yard, and fill a jar with them. I'd put a bow on it and feel nervous, and hopeful that you would be happy.

Sometimes I'm still that girl.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

Small Moments

I don't ask you to come here, to stay, to not go

Because I am desperate and pathetic and cannot be alone.

I don't ask you to hold me, stay with me, come to the grocery store with me

Because I am scared, or a child, or too needy.

I just would like you to be here for the small moments in life.

I would like to browse the shelves of bookstores with you

Shop for cucumbers

Get the car washed

I would like to share the silence of a Sunday afternoon where we both do different things in the same room, and occasionally look up to smile at each other.

I would like to watch movies in bed with you when you're sick.

Roll my eyes with you while we sneak sips of whiskey out of the bottle when our teenagers are going crazy, and laugh because we don't feel old enough to have crazy teenagers.

I want a 

Sleep in

Watch you get ready for work

Hug you when you come home

Share the last bowl of ice cream with you

Kind of life.

Kind of story.

Kind of love.

I would like to be sure of you.

To know, when we're in different room, different parts of the house, different moods, 

That you're there, 

Somewhere

And that I'm home.

I was right.

People used to ask me why I didn't leave.

Why when we fought so much, and carried on like children sometimes

When you said ugly things and I did ugly things

And we looked at each other and it was like pressing on a bruise to see if it still hurt.

I don't answer.

I tell a joke.

I make something up.

I lie.

I don't tell them, because they don't really want to know.

They just want more gory details. More secrets.

But I save the best secrets only for myself.

So I don't tell them that there is magic in you.

That your rib cage seems to hold it like the gilded cage of ravens, and your eyes seems colored with it.

I don't tell them that I stayed 

Because there was something in you

That I was afraid I'd never find in anyone else.

And I knew then

Like I know now

I was right.

Three things that are good right now

1. This song:
 
Part hood, part good.

2. Gifts of Challah bread from people that love me, so I can have challah bread banana french toast, with strawberries and syrup and a little powdered sugar. My favorite.

3. This video:



So maybe it was a rough week.
But we carry on.
There's always hope that there's good news around the corner...or at the very least, pizza.

How do you sleep?

My entire life I've struggled with my sleep schedule.

I am a night owl. I always have been, and I am afraid, I always will be.

I come alive at 9 pm, and am happy to be awake through all of the nighttime hours. 

No matter how much sleep I get, I hate being woken up in the early morning.

I also seem to need many more hours of sleep than most people deem appropriate.

My mother's mother always was a short sleeper. 

She would go to sleep around midnight, and was up at 4 or 5 am every day to see my grandfather off to work. She didn't go back to bed after he left, and she never took naps, claiming that this was all the sleep she needed.

I, however, am able to sleep like it's my job - and I am employee of the year.

I can easily sleep 10 - 12 hours, no problem, and also stay up for 18 - 22+ hours easily as well.

If I were a childless artist, this wouldn't be a problem. 

Unfortunately I live in the real world, and have two kids who have to be up, dressed, washed, fed, and out the door to school at a very specific time ever. damn. day. 

I am on a first name basis with the attendance secretary at their school.

Why are we late? Again?

Because...because..because we JUST ARE, OK?!

There was a study done - I forget where and I forget by who because I'm bad at sourcing my facts - that essentially isolated a group of people, and allowed them to sleep and be awake 100% on their own schedule, so long as certain tasks were completed within a 24 hour period. In the beginning of the study, almost everyone stayed on their current sleep routine - going to bed around 10 or 11 pm, rising between 6 and 8 am. The majority of people though, were very sluggish and unproductive in these early morning hours. 

As the study went on, the group broke off into three main sleep schedules:

People who stayed up late, were highly productive at night, and slept through most of the daylight hours, and for longer stretches of time. 

People who went to bed very early, rose very early, and were productive on an off through out the day, with several naps at various intervals. 

And last, people who slept for a few hours at a time, were awake for an almost equal few hours, and then went back to sleep for another chunk of time. This group typically experienced a larger chunk of wakefulness in the late morning/early afternoon, where they were also the most productive. 

The study basically showed that there is no set amount of sleep that each person needs, nor is there a "right" or "wrong" time of day to be awake, and productive.

Still though, I feel like a total loser for staying up until 3 or 4 in the morning, and then sleeping until noon. Or, going to bed at 10 or 11 at night, and sleeping until 9 or 10 the next day. 

I feel like an order to be a "responsible" adult, or a productive member of society, I have to be awake by 8 am, productive all day, and in bed by 10. 

I'm not sure it will ever happen, so if you ever need someone to talk to and make tater tots with at 2 am, you know who to call. 

Summer then, Summer now.

When my siblings and I were growing up, we - and all of our friends - had a lot of freedom during the summer.

Although we were mainly confined to our own neighborhood, from the time we woke up in the morning, until the sun set at night, we were free to roam about and play with our friends, pretty much for as long as we wanted.

Nobody we knew had a video game system, with the exception of maybe a Nintendo that the whole family shared, and nobody had their own tv in their room, so it was rare that you had the luxury of spending entire days sprawled on the couch playing video games, or watching tv or movies. 

Outside was pretty much our only thing to do.

I think when I was a kid, and probably for most of the generations before me, parents didn't see entertaining their kids or doing a lot of "play" as their responsibility. They handled your basic care, spent time talking with you or doing things together as a family, but when it came to most of your imaginative or creative free-play, you and your siblings and your friends were on your own.

My sisters and I were lucky enough to almost always live in neighborhoods with lots of kids. {Shout out to the ghetto always having lots of babies}. So every summer, as soon as we woke up we'd hurry to do our chores, and then dash outside to be with our friends.

In an attempt to stay outside - and effectively away from parental supervision - for as much of the day as we could, we found creative ways to occupy ourselves.

We played marathon games of Uno, Gin, Rummy, Poker, 21, and BS. 

By the end of the summer our decks of cards were soft as soap lather, and permanently bent almost in half. 

We hopped on our bikes - or on someone's handle bars if you didn't have a bike - and rode down to the elementary school or the baseball field or even the public pool. 

We'd go watch community league baseball games for free, and then stay after everyone was gone to play kickball or baseball on the empty diamonds. 

Almost every night, the park filled up with kids, and sometimes their parents, for pick-up basketball, volleyball, or soccer games. 

We were sunburned, freckled, tanned, wild-haired, and free. 

When our parents finally did call us in, we'd all stay in one bedroom together so we could keep playing until exhaustion over came us. 

We would do almost anything we could think of to stay entertained, but surprisingly we never really did anything too stupid. 

Sure, we built skateboard and bicycle ramps in the drive way, or climbed up on the roof to hang out, or took off to McDonald's without telling anyone, but none of us were smoking, or drinking, or having sex. There wasn't any drugs, and aside from the time we jumped the back wall of a neighbor we knew was out of town to take advantage of their pool, we never really broke the law. 

There was always a huge group of us, ranging from my age to my sisters' ages, and summer was two straight months of freedom and comradery. 

I wouldn't dream now of letting my two kids do half the shit we were allowed to do when we were younger. 

Leave the house the WHOLE DAY, with no cell phones, no pagers, and be allowed to be anywhere in the neighborhood at any time? Nope. You can go outside, but for the love of Jesus when I come out to check on you I better be able to see you. 

Stay out from the time you get up, until nightfall without checking in? 

NOPE. 

If you're going to be outside that long, you best come check in every couple hours at least.

Get on your bike at barely 10 years old, and ride it all the way to the nearest intersection to get McDonalds?! 

ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY?! 

I don't buy into the idea that it's any more dangerous in the world now than it was then, really. 

I know there are more people in the world now, and the city gets vastly bigger every day it seems like, and neighborhoods aren't as tightly knit as they used to be, but every generation says "It's not safe now like it was when I was little", and I just don't think that's true. 

I think the biggest reason why we can't let our kids have the freedom that I had as a kid, and that my parents had as kids, is because being over-protective has become the norm. 

Children aren't allowed to hang out in groups and pretty much do their thing, from the time they're pretty young, so long as they all stuck together, so it's gotten to a point where kids don't know how to look out for themselves and for each other until older and older ages.

When we were little, kids stayed home alone after school at 7 or 8 years old, and during the summer it was you and your friends, and you could go all day without even seeing your parents.

We were raised with the expectation that when your parents aren't around, you look out for yourself, and more importantly, you look out for each other. 

The responsibility of independence was given to us much earlier, and it was that way with almost everyone you knew, except for the kid we all felt sorry for whose mother never ever ever let him out to play without a parent there to watch. 

Whatever the reason is that things are so different, I wish my kids could have a summer like the ones that I had when I was little. 

I tell them all the time that if I had a time machine, I would take them back to the summer I was 10, and leave them there for the whole thing. When summer ended I'd bring them back, and see which they preferred: now, having computers and tv's and internet and video games, but much less freedom to be outside with their friends and explore and roam, or then, with no tv of their own, no computer, no internet, no cell phone, no video games, but a huge group of friends, and a whole neighborhood to explore and call home. 

I think they would choose then, in a heart beat.