Happy Valentines Day

Today is another Valentines Day in the course of my life. My 23rd. I love Valentines Day. I know most people don't, they feel like it's a made up holiday, or just another day to feel depressed about being single, but I have always loved this damn holiday. I love special days. Days that come with little habits, rituals and special traditions. Days that just have an air of magic and memory to them. Valentines day is the day of love and togetherness. What could be better than that?! It's the day when you tell everyone you love that you love them. So what if you're single?? Tell your kids, tell your friends, your parents, your siblings, whoever it is you love, tell them so today. Do something small and special because they're special to you and you want them to know!

Incidentally this is my first Valentines Day that I have spent as a single person since the 3rd grade when Billy Swanson held my hand on the playground, and gave me a red heart valentine that said "I luv U" in pencil. From that moments, until exactly 48 hours later, we were an item. And I had a Valentine every year after that. Except this one. It is weird experiencing this holiday alone for the first time. No roses, no wine, no over priced dinner and no reason to wear high heels. I am right now, sitting on my bed in yoga pants and a t-shirt, with mismatched socks like always, blogging about my aloneness with my hair in messy pigtail braids and my kids in the other room brushing their teeth. I didn't put on makeup today. I had a meeting with a client, did some grocery shopping and made dinner. I chatted online with my friend in California like I do every night. Nothing special. No one asked me out. I asked someone to dinner, but like I assumed he would, he declined my invitation. I will go to bed tonight by myself, and wonder what next Valentines Day will bring. I can't decide if I am sad or not. I thought I was earlier, until I picked my kids up from school.

Lainie ran up to me with a handmade valentine on purple construction paper with flowers and hearts that said "Happy Valentines Day Mommy" and Jack ran to me, holding out a half eaten sugar cookie on which was scrawled "Moom" in smeared blue icing. He had eaten the first cookie he decorated for me, then half of the second one. But I got half of a cookie and I couldn't have felt more loved.

Love is everywhere, big and small. My kids run to me when I pick them up every day, and they yell my name. My friends text me when I don't feel good and babysit when they can so I can go out. My dad thinks of me, in his own whimsical way and texts me every few days to say he loves me. Love is there, whether you're single or not. Whether it's valentines day or not.

Happy Valentines Day anyway.

I want to be a midwife

I am doing it again. Having a crisis of destiny. Not the kind where you doubt that what you're doing is really your destiny, but the kind where you know what your destiny is, you know how close you are to it, but you cannot for whatever reason, reach out and grasp it. I know my destiny.

I want to be a home birth midwife.

I want it more than anything in the world. I have wanted it since I was a kid. Right now I work as a doula, I teach childbirth classes and I love it. I absolutely love it. But I want more. I want to be a midwife. For the most part I know that this goal is down the road somewhere, and will be possible once some other things have worked out. However that doesn't stop me from having nights like this where I am up late (its 1:30 in the morning) reading birth blogs, looking at midwifery websites and envying the lives of others. I am panicking. I feel like my dream with never come true. I am stressing out over something that I haven't even started TRYING to do, will never be done. Ridiculous, I know, but real all the same. I am heartbroken that it hasn't happened already. This feeling is temporary, I know that too. Tomorrow or the next day or maybe next week, I will feel better and remember that I am working some other details out first. That it hasn't happened yet because I haven't made it happen yet, and that one day I will be a midwife. But tonight is still tonight and my angst is still my angst.

At least I know what I want. People that don't know what they want tell me I'm ahead of the game. But I think the people who are DOING what they want are ahead of me. So I'm not sure how ahead I am. I think I am somewhere in the advanced section of the middle. Which is ok for now, but tonight it bugs the shit out of me.

Fallen

Though I've tried, I've fallen

I have sunk so low

I've messed up

Better I should know

So don't come around here, and tell me I told you so....

-Sarah McLachlan

All the things we loved together

Meet me in California

Where I will have become the crashing waves and swooping birds we loved so much

The things we loved together

Meet me where the shoreline is frayed with the salt water spray and the fog clings to the cliffs all morning long

Meet me there, where we felt small and silent

All our words smothered in our chests by the hush of the sea

You will be cold in the morning air

Standing with your bare feet buried in the sand

And as you shiver and wait for the sun to rise behind you

Look a little further down the shore and you will find me

Building castles and cathedrals

Chasing the waves with wild things in my hair

And you will know me

You will know me from your past and all your dreams

You will know me for what I was, and for everything I alw

ays wanted to be

You will know that I am not gone, I am just someplace else.

Someplace where there is always fog and salt water

Always amber and rose sunrises and a place that feels like home

Meet me in California and I will remind you

That I haven't left for good, I am only waiting

Waiting for the day
When all our chores and tasks are done

And you come home.

Come home to only me, and all the things we loved together.