Archive for

Through Daughter-Colored Glasses

Posted on August 9, 2011

Today did not come gently, it clattered down over me after the riotous exit of the disaster that was yesterday. I vowed not to let myself give into the temptation to be forcefully bitter and resentful. While my fingertips aren’t bloody, they should be for all the clinging to positivity I’ve practiced. I snapped at the girls on the way to the sitter, they were thrusting artwork over the passenger seat as I drove. Fin: “Look’t this one mama.” Ave: “And here’s this one.” Fin: “And look at this one.” Ave: “Mom, grab my shell. My shell! It fell.” Bri: “Hey, Ave that was cool, that rhymed. Did you hear the rhyme, mom? Shell and fell.” Fin: “What shell?” Ave: “My shell! It fell!…

+Read more

Categories: Me

Autumn Beckons

Posted on August 5, 2011

I’m five and heading off to Harris Elementary School to meet Miss. Thompson. I’m eleven and figuring out what separation and divorce really mean. I’m thirteen and poring over Seventeen Magazine, devouring how Jennifer Connelly, fresh off Labyrinth, is mixing plaid and tweed. I’m fifteen with butterflies thinking this is the year I’ll stop being awkward. I’m eighteen and leaving for Spain. It never fails, when autumn blows that first, faint kiss at late summer, my knees go weak, my heart opens wide and I am reminded of how this transition always pulses in a way others don’t. My delight in the first snowfall is sweet, as is my relief when the ice finally melts. Spying the first crocus is exciting, but it’s only…

+Read more

Categories: Random

Empty Box

Posted on August 5, 2011

My 20th high school reunion was last month. Facebook makes things like reunions so different, for our tenth there was some communication, but not the photo-laced threads of remember when and can’t wait until. This time around, there were so many new faces popping up. We’ve aged, or we haven’t. We’ve married people we knew, or didn’t. Some people died, others disappeared and others still took on entirely new attitudes. I didn’t go to either reunion, but this summer something changed. Again, because of Facebook. Acceptance that had been lacking before came to the surface. Friends. Conversation. Common ground. I know it seems silly to 20-years post high school be shocked that people are just people, but I was. I am. I think it…

+Read more

Categories: Me

Tagged: ,

No BlogHer for This Her

Posted on August 2, 2011

I remember packing for my first BlogHer. Finley and I were embarking on our first adventure, she was a little over two months old. It was a revelatory experience, as we surpassed everyone’s expectations (oh, how those people giving me the evil as they saw us boarding the plane changed their tune!) My second BlogHer had me packing a smaller bag and not knowing who would site beside me on the plane as all three girls stayed at home with Sean. Leslie and I locked arms, treked all over beautiful Chicago as talked about every subject under the sun, and those hidden in the cover of night, before searching for a breast pump and spotting the president. Dude, it was, right? It had to…

+Read more

Categories: Me

Tagged:

Birth Day

Posted on August 1, 2011

It got off to an inauspicious start as we woke once again to the reality of my having broken our coffee pot. It really defies description the way a nearly imperceptible tap from the plastic cutting board severed the point of the coffee pot where the side and bottom meet. I kept meaning to go and buy another, but that particular task fell to the bottom of the to-do list day after day. We enjoyed a week of “take-out” coffee, but this morning as Sean tried to deliver coffee in bed, he was hampered by the fact that I’d moved the lighters and that when he decided to deliver the coffee cake sans lit candle, Briar balked. “Dad, no! We need the candle to…

+Read more

Categories: Mama Sap