Love.

1.13.11

How long has it been since I spent a day at home, with no place to be, nothing that has to be done, except the ever pressing cobwebs on the ceiling, the cracker crumbs in the couch cushions, the piles of  laundry and the dust bunnies in the corner? It is a good day to just sit and bask in the knowledge that just sitting and basking won’t get me any farther behind than I am already. To the contrary. Any movement at this point might just make more mess, cause me to spend more money or otherwise rock the boat of perfect contentment that I am floating in for a few minutes. The bank account is not overdrawn. The homework is not behind. The bills are (mostly) paid. Bailey just escorted Truck up to Aspen’s bed for a warm afternoon nap in the sometimes sunshine through the southern window. The wind is shaking the house and blowing away the mean gray clouds of rain faster than they can stake their claim on my sky. Even the muddy paw marks on the window in front of me, the ache in my back and the dishes in the sink aren’t enough to make me unsettled. A new song from Scooter. A sweet reassurance that my good friend HAsh will be allright. The comfort that having real people with big hearts in my life. All of these are reasons to love today. I don’t have tomorrow sewn up, or any day in the future, but today is good. I have a cat that talks, a house that tells stories and crazy wonderful kids that try for all they’re worth to prove me the best momma in the world. What more could I want? My favorite jeans and a new Sallie Ford T-shirt? A thick pair of pink socks that my kids gave me for Christmas (favorite present, y’all)? Ain’t too much to ask. Done, done and Done. I don’t have a nanny or a job or a man to rub my shoulders and tell me everything will be ok, but I got my girls, my pals, and the food for my soul that music and sunshine and a warm fire are. I might be the luckiest girl alive today. 

2010 and the Injustice of Life (1.6.11)

2010. How many colossal failures and disappointments does it take for a person to come to the end of cynicism and begin to hope and believe again? How many teeny tiny glimpses of light does it take to start to believe that this life isn’t just a huge waste of time? Can one swift act of paying it forward , a man in a grocery store covering the bill of an elderly couple, an old man bringing two carts to the front of the store, a little girl singing her guts out in adoration of her parent, can any of these be the impetus for a whole change of perspective and worldview, or even a change of luck and destiny? The last year was one of the worst on record for me. So many terrible, unmentionable things happened throughout 2010 that it made even 2009 look okay. Which is wasn’t. I started two weeks ago, looking back over the year for the good things, the things that made it worth living. I see flashes of kids in the back of the Tahoe, singing, pouting, hitting each other. Driving for miles and sitting on a stage in a casino. I see Halle bouncing off walls of a dark and cold cave, waiting for the perfect opportunity to spring from behind a stalagmite and terrify her sisters. I see ridiculous themed snowmen. I see the arms of my Avett friends and family wrapped around me, singing from our souls the words we know and love together. I see my family, rallied for one of the worst and dark times we have faced, but watch my youngest brother suddenly become a man. An uncle, a brother, a soldier. I am curious to hear from the years to come whether it was basic training with the navy or Emily’s wreck in 2010 that changed him most of all. I see wee morning hours leaning on the bar of the Whitebird, long closed, with my sweet sweet friend. I see miles and miles of sun soaked highway stretching out before my Tahoe, my arm flying in the wind out of my window, the mountains all around me, and the music feeding my soul. I see people fall in love. Grow to love more deeply, and realize the importance of the love they share. I see people smile in the face of my cynicism and run headlong into the unpredictable arms of affection and marriage. I see nets spread out underneath me like a blossoming flower just the minute that I lose my grip on the last thread of stability. One job ends, another catches me on my fall down. Insurmountable deficits in my bank account magically disappear and are replaced by a lazy float down the Deschutes river, tied to 4 floating and fighting girls, some are shivering and some are trying intently to pretend they have no association with the bobbing island of hot pink and bungy cords. I see beer of every glistening shade and color, frosting up big pint glasses and little tasters. New friends that are like old siblings, teasing and sharing and relentlessly egging each other on to bigger and better adventures. I see my dog, sleeping, always. But like a big wrinkly sun bear just waiting to be annoyed. For all of the terrible things that happened this year, I have only two regrets: as ridiculous as it sounds, they are that I didn’t go to Merlefest when I was supposed to and took a $400 loss on the ticket, and worse yet, an immeasurable loss on the experience; and that I didn’t go to Pickathon, again, an immense loss. But these regrets steel my resolve to make sure that the things that make the year glow in my memory are priorities. That they take precedence over looking good in someone’s eyes, or being “financially prudent” in a world that has no remedy for the financial woes I face. Money comes and goes, but experiences stay with us and make us the rich and interesting people that we are. If I teach my girls anything, I hope they learn this. Would we be any worse off now financially if I had gone to the shows I missed, on the trips I cancelled? Heck no. We’d still be scraping by. I have made countless poor decisions in recent years. I will continue to do so. To the person who doesn’t: god bless your simple and regretless life. I don’t really envy you. I plan to go ahead into 2011 expecting love. Expecting the joy that staying one step ahead of survival brings. Expecting good things. Sure the bad things will come and beat me down, just like in 2009 and 2010, but the man in the grocery store has reminded me that it doesn’t matter. For all the bad, there is some good still. I hope that when I find myself with $45 in my bank account I will gladly put it toward the bill of someone who simply can’t pay. Lord knows I have been that person many times, putting things back on the shelf from the cart, rationing drops of gas. Paying for milk with nickels and pennies. Which I stole from my 7 year old. I know desperation. Maybe desperation makes us better people. More empathetic. More sympathetic. I have wondered often how I can work so frigging hard and still be desperate. It seems so unfair. I blame the kids, or god, or my ex or my parents, but really, it’s life. Life is to blame for the injustice. Life is unfair. The beauty of life is that the injustice swings both ways. From time to time we get unfairly blessed. Where you were born, or to whom, or where in the birth order you lie; the opportunities presented to you and the courage you have to accept them: these are all numbers in the roulette wheel we call life. Having the wit and the tenacity to tag the right numbers is only part of the game. But it’s a big part. I intend to keep playing. At least for now. 

01.9.11

Seven year old rockstar. Aspen. The pantsless wonder. No matter how many pairs of jeans I buy her, without fail, every morning it is the same pitiful cry that she has no pants. Finally, after what seems like hours of endless back and forth trans-story hollering, she emerges downstairs with what appear to be more holes than clothing on her bottom half. How can such a small child make such large holes? Or sometimes it’s a whisp of tulle vaguely masked in the guise of a tutu, over the remnants of what must have been once a pair of tights, but have obviously lived through one too many easter egg hunts before they crawled out of Grandma Donna’s basement and into Aspen’s undie drawer. The odd swirls of grass stains and mud and what is questionably some sort of melted candy can almost pass for tie dye. But not quite. Every few days I go upstairs to the wreck that is a bedroom and see if I can find something for her to wear before I am overtaken by the chaos. I can usually retrieve two or three pairs of at least semi clean pants off of the floor from underneath Kizzie’s pee-chee collection or a contraband stack of cups that have been missing from the kitchen for three months. I stuff as many salvageable articles of clothing as I can in her drawers and reemerge for air. This is the child that I knew would never walk out my door. The one who goes to school with a rat’s nest on the back of her head exactly where her pillow was stuck when she woke up that morning. The one with last night’s chocolate ice cream high on her cheekbone, obviously from the rim when one licks the bottom of the bowl, still worn proudly on the bus the next day. The child that I wake up in the middle of the night in a panicked sweat, realizing that it has been at least two weeks since I last asked her if she has showered lately. It breaks my heart at times, because she’s such a pretty little thing, even with her missing teeth and raggedy clothes, to know that people look at her and shed a little tear for her sad parentlessness. This poor child. I remember in my early days of parenting, when everything would be sunlight and roses and my children would always have combed hair and color coordinated outfits. Now my youngest in conveniently coordinated with all of the furniture, draperies and the 8 foot braided rag rug on my living room floor. And she did it herself. I couldn’t be prouder. All the ideals of the fairy tale life that I was to have. The shining princesses and dreamy castle like home that is now a silly jerry rigged little hovel that Halle delights in because of it’s similarity to the Weasley’s Bourough, if you will excuse the HP reference. I have relinquished all visions of sparkling windows and fluffy pillows and bury my head in the cleanest bedding I can find to catch enough sleep so I can face another day of missing the mark. Days like this when I have a head cold and feel like I can’t pull my brain out of the fire safe that it’s locked in are extra hard. Just getting out of bed at 6 20 something to get the girls on the bus is confusing. Getting clothes on myself and remembering where I am supposed to be is extra tricky. Yesterday I was standing in a store staring blankly at an aisle of something, when slowly I turned my head to see a clock on the wall come rushing up at my face and crowing loudly at me that it was 20 minutes after I was supposed to be at work. In the five minutes it took me to process this reality, I think I must have stumbled out of the store (hopefully with no unpurchased items, but I don’t remember) and called one of my supervisors. I must have made up a semi-passable excuse because nobody yelled at me later. These are days when my kids are lucky that they get to eat, if I remember dinner. In this case it was apples and peanut butter and popcorn, which they gallantly made themselves when they realized I was a total basketcase and probably not gonna get around to it until the next morning sometime. They are troopers, these girls. They don’t have the worst life ever, but it isn’t cake. I watch the younger ones eat up any one on one attention they can find and feel bad that the hours I have to give to them are poor quality and unfocused. But they’re doing alright. They have their little niches and they keep plugging away. And so do I. and we keep on forging our little world of mayhem and color. And Aspen still has no pants.