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Freezing the Frames

Posted on August 14, 2009

Lately it’s felt a bit as if I am suspended in some sort of alternate reality wherein I am unable to get anywhere. I cannot seem to gain purchase at work or at home, at play or asleep. Or just being. I am fretting over what will inevitably (please, please) be some little thing or another rather than the dark foreboding thing my mind makes it. My worry is quiet and under the surface, but coincides perfectly with an abiding obsession for Briar and Avery with death. “Mama, please you promise you won’t go to heaven?” I tried for a while to dance around it and make like I’d never go to heaven, but then I worried about jinxes and let downs. “Honey, it’s…

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Loops

Posted on August 13, 2009

I find the moments lately to be like tiny pulls in a sweater, as the even surface of my life shifts. The girls are growing faster than my heart and mind can bear— first days of school, thank you’s from a baby and the burgeoning countenance of a young woman. I trace my finger over the pulls, the once taut weave of helpless and able now loosened, ability mounting and futility rising. I want to hold things back, keep the teeth from springing, the strides from lengthening. It’s hard not to feel them pulling ever closer to the day when they’ll parent their own children, turn doting eyes upon lovers rather than parents. I watch the lines upon my face, the smudges of age…

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Living in Sugar Land

Posted on August 10, 2009

Sean and I sat up watching a 2 year old Sugarland concert on Palladia the other night. At first I just smiled, loving the delicious oblivion of cuddling and softly singing along as the girls slept. I’m not sure when the shift happened, but I felt the tug, that unmistakable tightening in your chest and jaw as the tears begin their march from inside to out. There was no hiding, no turning back. I allowed the tears to come in waves as I watched the lead singer, luminous and irresistible in her exhilaration. I found myself wondering her age, imagining her provenance— middle child? small southern town? parents still married? It was silly, but as she sang the anthem of little girls emerging from…

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The smell of then

Posted on August 6, 2009

When my grandfather died, I found that I could visit him by peeking my face into the antique cabinet that holds his books. I’d take the delicate handle between my fingers and slip my face between the rough edges of the door. The smell of old paper, gnarly leather and grandpa. I could hear the rustle that used to travel to my room as he read the morning’s paper, or the way his whisker whooshed against my face as I pecked him on the cheek. Even as he reached the end, those whiskers and that smell stayed. I find the same poignancy of time with my face buried in a towel. Sometimes I can go back, my hair behind me long and sun bleached…

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H2Fun

Posted on August 1, 2009

Yesterday was my birthday, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was a bit dubious about the idea of spending a good deal of it on a raft in the Hudson. The Tramps were shooting a commercial for SOC during a white water rafting trip. Ever game, I went along, biting back a bit of whining about the weather. Because, seriously, it was chilly. And wet. I chatted up the guide as we waited for the bus. Yes, a bus. We go high glamour for birthdays ’round these parts. We paddled, floated and then swam. The water, as it turns out, was perfect. I slipped out of the raft and into the river, my pfd tightly cinched and doing its job I bobbed…

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