The very last bit

When all the meat is gone
and there's nothing left
but dry white bone,
you can still break it to pieces
and make a wish.

How I'm Doing these Dark Days

I've filled my living room with fairy lights.
I've filled my studio with music. 
I've filled myself with healthful food.
I've filled my calendar with family and friends.

Here I Am Again - Noting this Day.

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The kid made me a beautiful poem and illustration and he saved it up for Thanksgiving each day bursting at the seems with the news he had something for me that I could see on Thanksgiving Day.  I really needed that this week. This kid!  <3 br="">
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I'm rediscovering Kurt Elling today. I'd forgotten how much I liked him.

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I'm in a weird little fragile place in life these days. But hopeful.

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All the Music was too big

Yesterday I woke up with big feelings. It was one of those days where the sky seemed extra blue and the heartbreaks of the world cut extra deep.  I made coffee and put music on and every song had notes that traveled through me, words that swam and around in my head reminding me of something and there I was standing in the kitchen next to the microwave with my eyes leaking happiness. 

I exclaimed to my internet "all the music is too big today" knowing I couldn't keep crying all day with every song.  Sure enough ya'll came through with a some things that sufficed, my favorite being the "Brian Eno - Thursday Afternoon the 61 minute version."  I ran it through twice, providing a beautiful background to get lost in illustrating and no particular sentiment to magnify. The day went on fast and fun with kids and mom at the studio making clay things and I'd forgotten how soft and squishy my insides were until we landed at the Sinnissippi Bandshell sitting among the populace waiting for the Phantom Regiment to take the stage.

You see, I grew up on the south side of Rockford near the Park-it-mark-it on Kishwaukee and some summer nights, while standing in the front yard one could hear the Phantom Regiment drum line practicing in the distance. And on one of those trips to the grocery with my mom where we begged her for candy, I instead begged for a grocery store toy and procured a sparkly white baton with rubber ends and I remember standing in the front yard pretending to be a majorette.  I'm sure I put on my shortest  shorts, tallest boots, and tied my grubby summer t-shirt in a knot at the belly and marched around twirling my grocery store baton occasionally catching myself in the shin with the end.  I think I spent a whole summer, maybe two, dreaming about marching in a parade.

I try to explain all of this nostalgia to my eight year as we wait for the band to take the stage.  He is extremely uninterested and wants nothing more than to run around the playground pretending to be Spider man. I beckon him nearer the stage with ice cream sandwiches so I can feel the drum line in my chest, the whole while poking the kid telling him he can play drums like that if he keeps up his lessons. He was nodding and looking wistfully back towards the playground.

For a day that started with me exclaiming all the music was too big, it seemed sort of funny to be watching a 150 piece band play my favorite memories so loud neighbors can hear it for miles. My eyes leaked again when we finally made it to the playground at the end of the concert and the kids clamored all over themselves for a turn on one of the three playground xylophones, each kid, including mine, trying to mimic the fast arms of the Regiment Xylophonists who played in the front of the band.  Well done Rockford, well done.

I'm no longer the caretaker of these things...

I was on the floor of the kitchen cleaning out the very back on the cupboard when a switch flipped in my brain. I've been telling myself I am not my things and if I toss something with sentimental value it doesn't toss the memory just the thing. It's something I struggle with as a collector of art and books, I could easily grow a hoard of curiosities as large as a car pretty quickly, in fact right this minute there's a 12 foot light up stuffed jellyfish sculpture in my basement, but I digress.  So, I'm on the floor with paper towels and a vacuum after months of telling myself "I am not my things" and I'm throwing out old lunch boxes and cake mixes that we'll never make and my brain says:

"I'm no longer the caretaker of these things... My things should care-take me."

And then in this 45th year of my life... I had to come write it down.

 
via GIPHY

Possibly the moment I've been waiting for

Last night I read some of the entries from when Dannie (Ella) was a tiny kid out loud while Dannie and Jack listened.  They were wondering about when they were little and people no longer have a family photo album sitting around the house - we have a hard drive filled with a million images nobody will see unless they know what file to look for or what old blog to google.  Jack's been asking me at night to tell him a story, "a short and exciting personal narrative please" and I never know what story to tell.  I forgot that I used to write this stuff down every day, before I thought life got to painful to share. I suppose that's when one should share the most but I'm not one who wants to spread my personal awful across a piece of toast so that it's thinner on my bite. I'd just rather swallow it whole and share the dry toast. Turns out awful things can be funny too.  I'd forgotten because I was too close to it and all up in it. 

There was a text book split up in my marriage and a divorce and a move and then series of small silly things that seemed big in the move and just the fresh struggles of a single mom.  Then of course Thomas had a heart surgery and I broke my leg and all the other weird and scary health things that I'm not even going to give words to. The struggle of a new business and loosing a pet and  buying a house.  Those are all big scary things I just couldn't process or share in any productive way and so I set them aside.  And that was the chunk not written about very much here. 

At some point the kids asked me not to post that on the internet and I thought "dang - their lives are their own stories to tell and I shouldn't be putting it out here on the internet forever - for future employers or voters or spouses to find."  Though last night reminded me why I started - it's a log for my memory, and theirs and now I think I can try to find a balance of sharing my life and our family stories without invading privacy.  I hope.  Here goes. I mean it is also my story to tell and that's what I get in return for raising children and for living on this planet - we get our experiences to tell about.

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Dannie cleaned their room and brought down a giant bag of garbage that I hauled out the curb on Wednesday.  As I hauled it I'm pretty sure I heard dishes in there.  Like dishes that had things growing in them because they'd sat too long on a dresser or on the nightstand without being washed.  I decided I was not digging through the garbage to save a couple nasty bowls and then I realized that if I wasn't willing to do that then I was being as lazy as the 15 year old who threw them out. With that realization I shrugged my shoulders and knew I could not be upset with the teenager and put the clinking bag on the curb, clapped my hands like a blackjack dealer and walked away.

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Jack showed me a game they made up at school with the four square set up on the pavement, it's a pretty cleaver game and my favorite part was when he explained that if you went outside of the square "You're out of bounce" I know it's not his fault he doesn't hear so well and so he mixes the way he hears things even in the third grade - but my goodness I find it adorable.  Seriously. (I gotta write this stuff down more)

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Here's something I drew that I really like