This week I'm well on my way to being organized. I have almost finished Full Dark, No Stars and a Revlon Creme Gloss in cherry tart. The kids and I decorated cupcakes and made some plans for spring break and I've been to a birthday party, parenting mediation and a tsunami warning.
I think this weekend we may go out for Chinese food and see Battle: Los Angeles, which I keep calling The Battle of Los Angeles as if it's a Rage Against the Machine album title (it isn't, just close).
I printed out reams of concert tickets too. Rush and Switchfoot, to name a couple. It's going to be as good a spring for shows as it is for films (Suckerpunch, Fast Five, Thor, Super 8, Circo and that's just for a start).
I have stifled memories, burst into laughter and held my tongue, hanging on for dear life, sitting on it, tucking the bits back inside that threaten to stay out, shoving, sweating, pushing and swearing and throwing latches as quickly as I can catch air. That's hard for me. I am stubborn, but sometimes waiting them out is the only way to travel light.
I have listened to the lawyers when they told me not to write about the devil, because the devil stands to burn everything I know and love down to cinders and the only thing left will be a faded poster still flapping against a power pole in town, held fast by a single rusted staple.
I have tucked myself under Ben's arm as he sleeps unaware, putting my head down against his heart, wishing he had forty-two hours in the day instead of twenty-four, and I have memorized his heart beat so I can play it through my skull when I miss him, even though we have grown fresh skin over the raw open wounds of a year ago, skin that stretches uneasily and bends to accommodate his long days and my penchant for using proximity as a emotional weapon in taking one too many hugs from Lochlan. Too frequent and too long in duration, too close. Enough time to match breathing patterns and unlock muscle tension. Enough time to forget that aching wedge with its twenty-five years of moss, rain and circus flyers stacked up, making the weight unbearable.
I have dutifully sat in the desks of Ruth and Henry's classrooms and listened carefully as their teachers assure me they are doing well. I have exclaimed with delight as their marks have risen dramatically since last term and they both are labeled voracious readers and creative writers. I beam with pride. I can't ask for more from them and yet, this is nurture, not nature. Nature does not beget small humans of this caliber and I can lie awake at night wondering if my choices and my behavior stunt their emotions or perhaps set the stage for decades of therapy when they join adulthood and for now, I am content that so far things working out very well, which means I will earn a temporary reprieve from Caleb's ever-present threat of English boarding schools.
I have admitted to Sam that I really don't want the stress with Caleb's company and he arranged for the decisions to be revisited in the fall, on my behalf. I booked Nolan on a flight here for Easter and I spent a small fortune on new umbrellas. Good umbrellas, because when you pay $25 for a single umbrella it works better and doesn't fall apart within days and I can get on board with that, even though sometimes the boys tell me I am cheaper than a tin can in a one dollar grocery.
Hear it with a soft, slight Scottish accent and it sounds better, believe me.
I have made decisions about things I want. Bucket list stuff. Stuff I really wanted to do before I turned forty or maybe just before I die but no one's listening while they decide what I should do instead so sometimes I wait out my own life with the patience of the sphinx. Only I still have my nose. The rest of me is disintegrating in the elements and across the street is a Pizza Hut. It's a tourist wasteland. Come and visit, always remember.
And I'm melodramatic without even trying, as I'm actually rather content right now.
*rolls eyes*
I don't have a coffee craving or a imminent narcoleptic event brewing and the boys are beginning to trickle home in a slow river of beards and total utter decompression disguised in flannel and denim and tattoo ink, resplendent in the knowledge that I still have my shit together. Something I somehow manage to do better than most people, even when I can't string together the simplest of words.
