Posts from the “Mama Sap” Category

Can you cut them?

Posted on June 17, 2014

It was a simple enough question, “Mom, can you cut these for shorts for me?” Finely stood beside me, her hair irresistibly akimbo from going to bed immediately after her bath. I touched the raised, white polka dots and let the memories come. Three sets of legs walking around in these pants. I’d bought them on one of my many shopping excursions powered by a firm belief that kids should be encouraged to mix patterns. Soon enough they’ll have rules to follow, shapes to dress for, and other loads of shit that detract from just dressing to please yourself and suit your activities. She waited patiently, perfectly accustomed to my tendency toward glazed-eye reflection. “Cut them?” I asked softly. “Uh-huh, I don’t have anymore…

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Categories: Mama Sap

The Ones That Stick

Posted on June 3, 2014

I am guilty, from time to time, of trying to be an architect of memories, thinking that if I arrange the art project just so or if I plan the adventure out with care, then I can slip moments in time in each girl’s heart that they’ll remember for the rest of their lives. I work at creating these moments like a puzzle, turning ideas in my mind, sorting options, and then putting my head down until I make the pieces fit. The weight of wanting, needing, to nurture memories can be tremendous. Every once in a while something happens and I am completely awestruck by how the girls are memory tenders themselves. “Hey mom, can you wake me up early to work on the…

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Categories: Love, Mama Sap

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Just Perfect

Posted on May 7, 2014

I had a preoccupation as a little girl that people around me would die. Actually, it wasn’t about people around me, it was my mom; I actively worried that I would lose her. There are moments when the pangs of fear that I would feel come back to me, not as fear of losing her now, but that very raw feeling of being 8 and afraid that she’d be swallowed up by something and be out of reach to me. I think it was in that time, in those moments in our house on the hill, the twists of brown and gold rug beneath my feet and the weight of fearing my mom’s death all around me, that I developed my tendency to say…

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Categories: Mama Sap, Me, Random

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A New Dance

Posted on April 23, 2014

  We were sitting in my living room while the girls sprinted around the house.  My mom leaned over to me and whispered, “We took care of the Easter Bunny.” My stomach dropped, I’d completely forgotten. The next sensation was embarrassment, had they handled Easter because they saw that I wasn’t? I searched her face. The “we” tickled at me, confusing me. She hadn’t been out alone with Papa to do a shop. The look on her face was foreign, a little bit of guilt, maybe excitement, and something else, a kind of sympathetic pain, maybe. “Briar,” she said it so softly. The familiar sound rocked me. Briar. I mouthed the word back to her. Briar. She nodded. “We were driving along and she said,…

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Categories: Mama Sap, Random

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The Talk

Posted on April 8, 2014

Finley and Avery were tucked in their beds, so sleepy that they’d drifted off to sleep before I’d crossed the threshold. Briar was waiting for me in her room. I slipped beneath the covers and rubbed noses with her. We talked for a few minutes before she sprang the baby question on me. It wasn’t like other times, she wasn’t casually wondering. How does it happen? Who does what? How does it feel? The questions came at me so fast that I had no time for doubt. The volley of question and answer went on for about fifteen minutes, until she changed the conversation like a right hand turn. “I think I found my library book.” I kissed her goodnight and stroked her forehead…

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Categories: Mama Sap