Renewal

I've been thinking about my New Year's resolution, even though I don't typically torture myself with those rarely actualized self-promises that ultimately leave me feeling guilty and deflated and rife with self-loathing. But this year, something has to change.

My family is at a crossroads, faced with a difficult truth that comes into focus a bit more sharply every day: It is time to stir some very stagnant waters, specifically financial waters and the waters of bodily health. Our lives simply cannot move forward successfully unless belts tighten in more ways than one. But you know how that is, complacency and denial can place a death grip on the will. That is where we are now, complacently denying the need to DO SOMETHING about what's unhealthy in our lives.

This all boils down to my seemingly very simple New Year's resolution: to return my library books on time in 2008.

See, I've thought about this a good bit lately, and my inability to follow through on the simple task of returning library books represents all the other ways I let things slide in my life. This sloppiness is more than procrastination; there is something psychological behind my refusal to complete certain tasks, some mental block, some imp of the perverse waiting to be defeated.

I have trouble with the concept of "just doing it," which is all any life change requires, really. No need to wring hands and suffer. Just make the changes. Just get in the car and return the library books. There's even book drop parking for heck's sake.

But I need to start small. I need to show myself that I can change a bad habit, even if it's a relatively insignificant one, and prove to myself that change isn't as complicated as I imagine it to be. It's simple, really. Write the due date down. Get the books together on or before that date. Take them to the library. Put them in the slot.

The rest will trickle down, I hope. It really must. We're past due on more than library books, and the fines will only increase the longer we wait.

Happy Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving, I've had my brothers and sisters on my mind. I don't spend much time considering my relationships with them, and I think that's because they've always just been there, and I know that, no matter the arguments that (still) crop up between us, no matter the petty disagreements, our relationships will always bounce back. Their lives are linked to mine permanently, and as those who met you in the womb have a tendency to do, they know me all ways, the good, the bad, and the ugly (and things can get mighty ugly between siblings).

Tonight I'm giving thanks for them by recounting a favorite memory about each one, an obscure memory that I might not have shared with them before.

Kelly
It's an early, early Christmas memory. I think I was 3 or 4, but it was definitely pre-Blair. I got a little table and 4 plastic blue chairs, along with a Fisher Price stove and set of pots, pans, and play food. For some reason, we had Christmas in the den, not the living room, and Mom and Dad had set the little table up in the kitchen. You sat and played with me and my new kitchen set for what seemed like hours. I basked in the rare bliss of having your undivided attention, a sister 8 years older who usually had to be begged to play.

Neal
I was in 9th grade, and you were home on leave from the Navy. We went out cruising in the Malibu. We drove down this winding road near the river and talked and laughed and got a Slurpee, and you gave me a cigarette, which, yes, wasn't the healthiest or most responsible thing to to, but to me it was a gift of pure, unadulterated acceptance. Suddenly you enjoyed my company, and it made me feel mighty big.

Blair

I was 10 or 11, you were 4 or 5. We were lying on the bed in your room, and I was drawing Roxie and Ralphie pictures while you watched over my shoulder. I was telling stories about them (they were imaginary dogs, with an owner named Catherine, usually played by Blair) and drawing the action as I narrated. You were riveted, and I had that feeling (one I still love) of being lost in the game while time unraveled around us and the business of the house stayed on the other side of the bedroom door. I wish I could find those drawings. We had a whole collection of them in a green spiral bound notebook.

I am grateful to have had all of you for brothers and sisters, and I love you all, always.

You are my favorite because

My mom tells a story about my sister Blair once asking her, "Who's your favorite?" The question warmed my mother's heart because she realized that Blair wouldn't have asked unless she thought she was the favorite, and isn't it every mom's wish for each of her children to feel that special?

My favorite part of the story is my mom's answer to the question. She said, "You're my favorite because..." and listed all the reasons Blair was special to her. Then she said, "And Kelly is my favorite because...." and "Neal is my favorite because..." and "Ashley is my favorite because..." And it was an honest answer. She had four favorites, all for different reasons, which was just exactly the right answer and is just exactly how I feel about my own kids.

My very first favorite is turning 6 today, which puts a small lump in my throat. I can still look at him and feel the brand new momma love that filled me to overflowing 6 years ago. The first time I felt that love from head to toe was the morning after Owen was born. I was dozing in my hospital bed, trying to ignore the hot throbbing of my cesarean incision and a bit out of my wits from pain medication. John had spent the night at home and was coming to the hospital early, but he hadn’t arrived yet. I was alone. The room was half-lit with the purple glow of 6:00 AM in November and quiet but for the gasping of some monitor they’d strapped me to. The nurse came in with Owen and told me his body temperature was down. She untied my hospital gown and helped me bear my chest; then she stripped Owen to his diaper and laid him on my breast. “He needs your body heat,” she told me. “I’ll come back in an hour.”

The night before had been long and brutal, a nearly 30 hour labor ending in an unexpected and emotional c-section. I’d been a mess in recovery, shaking and sobbing, and they’d kept me there longer than usual, so I’d had very little time with my baby. The time I did have was bleary and crowded with family who’d come to see. Now the nurse left me alone with this small, warm, breathing boy tucked under my chin. She'd given him to me because I was his mother and it was my body heat he needed. Artificial warming lamps were no match for my blood-warmed body, pulsing with the heat and the love he needed.

I experienced that moment out of time. I’d never felt so exactly in the right place, so content and certain and calm. I think of that hour as my initiation into motherhood. I’d been on the threshold before, but during those minutes alone with Owen for the first time and nurturing him wholly for the first time, I crossed into that realm from which you can never retreat, the realm of mothering and its fulfillment, its love, its fear, its anxiety, its complication, its sadness.

Owen is my favorite because…

He thinks my jokes are funny and he makes jokes that I think are funny.

He loves reading and writing and music.

His dearest birthday wish is a package of dry erase markers.

He hugs his brother and sister goodnight every single day.

He loves school as much as I loved school.

He can’t tell a lie and has the guiltiest conscience of anyone I’ve met.

He taught me to be a mother, and he gave me my first taste of the gorgeous, swooning love of parenthood.

Happy birthday, Snowball!