Wrap your head with this material...

At bedtime last night, my 10 year-old asked me to stay extra long in his room. He was teary and said he couldn't stop thinking about dying. He couldn't stop thinking that, at the end of his life, he'd feel like it had all gone by so fast that when he died it would all mean nothing. Can you imagine? 10 years old. Full existential crisis. So I held him and stayed extra long. I could tell you the things I said to him, and they were good and they helped. But the truth is, he's got a point. It's one that I don't subscribe to, but I do think his observations are astute and more well-reasoned than a 10-year-old should have to face. His view is a fair one albeit bleak. And the idea that he grapples with it definitely put a large crack in my heart last night.

 Monday I went to pick up our mail at the post office. The postal worker was blocking the path to my box with a giant blue roller bin of packages she was putting into the center aisle lockers so I joked, "if that's blocking the path to my box, does that mean I get a ride in it?" She popped up from behind it and smiled, rolling it out of my way. "I don't see why not," she joked back. I grabbed my mail then looked at the roller bin, looked at her, looked at the roller bin, and jumped on. She pushed me to the end of the aisle and stopped. I giggled away, running into someone I work with on the way to the line to retrieve packages. "Who says the post office can't be fun?"

 I used to always think the best thing I had to offer was fun. I'm a shitton of fun. During quarantine, I had students make sock puppets and do a lipsynch battle. I once let my kids sit on the roof of the car while I pulled up the driveway. I sing loud even at stoplights with the windows down. I am always thinking of games, texting funny pictures, saying weird stuff to make people laugh. I make myself happy nearly every day with silliness. But once when I said that was the best thing I have to offer, my husband disagreed. I didn't know what to make of it. I thought he was wrong. I was kinda mad actually. Why didn't he think the best thing about me was the best thing about me? Maybe he didn't get me.  But more than a year later, I don't think that's it at all. I'm not actually sure what he thinks it is and I'm still not sure if he's right. The fun part is pretty uniquely me and I really like it about myself. But maybe the fun part is the part that...

At the end of the first day of school, I was in a 2nd grade classroom where the teacher asked each child "What makes you shine, what makes you glow, what makes you special, what makes you unique?" One kid yells out, "I was born with a tail."

One of my sons sprained his wrist, the other broke his. One cast. One brace. I nearly cried about the lost swimming time at the end of the summer. We haven't even been to Waterworld yet! Unheard of. I bet my son ice cream that he wouldn't need a cast. I knew he probably would. I didn't want to win a bet so much as to cushion the frustrations and disappointments of spending the rest of summer in a cast. And let's be honest, I wanted to go out for ice cream. Win, win. He wasn't even all that upset in the end. He said that at least we still get to spend time together and at least we spent so much time on the river earlier in the summer and that it's really not so bad. He's usually the reactive one and I'm usually the positive sweep. I'm proud that there's nothing wrong with his broom. We also bought them Nintendo Sports to play with one hand. It's really pretty fun. Especially once my younger son figured out that he could take it outside and pla...

I wonder about the capillary action of our lives, which actions taken in small micromotions that move a nutrient or two here or there add up to be an entire system of goodness delivery. Noticing the house finch's shadow when it passes, feeling the pellets of cold rain on your face and running anyway, the wink at a bored toddler in her stroller, the moment to squeal about a former coworker's baby instead of saying you have a meeting. The way the feeling of participation is like the blood flow that travels into our tissues, simply diffusing itself into smaller and smaller pathways. Connecting our tissues to each other. It is in actions. Is it these small ones?  I judge people on whether they pick up trash as they walk or if they look at it, and choose to leave it. Though perhaps judge isn't the word. I judge outright littering. But picking up the litter of others, I notice. The people who never litter, who pick things up and put them away even when they don't have to, it...

 Yesterday while pumping up watercraft to go paddling, my husband pointed out a girl on a inner tube box and was like, "When I was 9, I would've been like, "I hope she's gonna teach me how to swim.""  I wondered if our 10 year old liked girls and my husband was like, "he sure isn't going to tell us if he does, but probably." Taking matters into my own dumb voice, I was like, "hey, do you get all nervous and excited and like girls like the girl on this box?" He mostly avoided eye contact or glared so I further clarified, "I mean, I'm just curious if you like girls, you know, like, like them-like them?" And he goes, "your curiosities are my insecurities." 

 Theoretically, you can cook a chicken by slapping it. Yes, my 10 year-old started me down an internet rabbit hole looking into that and it turns out to be true. 

 I'm always trying to remember to be awesome, to do awesome things. The main awesome thing I do regularly is ski. But I come up with other ideas too and some of them I even do.  Today the kids and I went and picked out pictures from the thrift store we planned to paint partly over or ink marker into our own designs. One kid picked a leopard lounging and made the background the word "hug" repeated in various shades of purple all over.  My other son picked out a watercolor of teddy bears he intended to makeover as creepy bears. It's been a pretty fun afternoon of it. Alcohol ink and markers everywhere. I drag a waterproof mattress pad over the table for this kind of activity and there's something about spreading out ideas on the large, protected table that gives me a sense of plenty. And it's less about the product and more about carrying out an idea. In my very long dryspell of not writing much, and publishing exactly nothing, I'm finding a creative lifelin...