{by Nicole of 60piggies}

Put yr right hand on the nape of the neck and glide it up upwards to the back of the head.
Open yr hand wide, fingers lacing between hair or gliding on soft bald skin.
Direct eye contact always. Keep a distance between yr bodies but lean in ever so slightly.
Tilt yr head and let yr lips part. Move yr eyes up and down in tiny glances.
Let yr pupils dilate and stare swoony onwards.

{By Laurie of Laurie Writes}

I’m sitting in the bookstore trying to grab ahold of the words before they leave me. The game club of Maryland is gathered here, and the bookish men and women at the table next to me are playing a card name whose name I can’t remember, even though I recognize it on sight. I once sat across the table from someone and learned to play it myself, wondering why I was there when it made no sense to be, beyond the fact that I have a tendency to put myself in risky places when I stubbornly and often stupidly feel it’s worth it.

Names dance across my screen – words and facts and possibilities that I’m trying to file alphabetically under what makes sense, whittling them down into a decision that lets me sleep at night, even if I have to sell my car or walk strange city streets alone and mostly unafraid to do it. Sometimes I don’t think I can, that I’ll just let the waves of the next thing wash over me until I’m that half mile down the beach that you float before you even realize it, when all of a sudden the familiar umbrella and your people are specks down the shore, waving you back if you choose to pay attention.

When Virginia Woolf walked into the water of the River Ourse and didn’t emerge, the stones weighing down her pockets, I can’t imagine that no one saw, but maybe that’s just because someone has usually been watching me – not known to be a strong swimmer. Still, I’ve never been truly afraid of the ocean, and can spend more time than you’d believe floating on my back, finding the mellow spot past the breakers where it’s warm, going up and over the tiny waves, chasing the sun on the tops of my legs and my chest and my face.

On that same odd trip to the beach when a truly very sweet man and I played that card game, I took a photograph of an exceptional sunset. When I finally made it to the sand the next day, I was alone. It was cold out, walking into the water out of the question, except dipping my toes in to say I touched the ocean, a personal ritual regardless of the season or temperature. I sat on the sand with a notebook on that cold March day, and there was no one around for a good distance. It occurred to me that at that moment, temperature aside, I could walk into the water and just not stop, nothing on the other side but China – a concept we’d been taught as children digging holes for sand castles. We ignored the barrier of Europe and Africa beyond the Atlantic, even the idea of the Far East as ephemeral as air then.

I remember writing this idea of immersion down that day, feeling guilty for even thinking about it, knowing I’d never do it, knowing as sure as I sat there that later that day I’d be getting in a car and heading home, gazing out the window and wishing things different, but far away from this idea and the ocean itself. Still when I thought it, I wondered if, miles or just yards away as it happened that people who cared about me were, would they feel it? Was there an imperceptible shift in the air around the people close to them when people did things like walk into rivers not intending to emerge? Especially when they succeeded? There had to be, I thought – at least a palpitation or a whisper of an itch. But maybe not.

{by TKW of The Kitchen Witch}

Three weeks before her third birthday, Miss D. starts seeing monsters. My fierce warrior child, who fears nothing, now cowers in corners and under covers. Monsters usually appear around 3am. I wake with my heart pounding in my throat, hot with the strength of her scream.

“Monsters! Help me Mommy! I scared!”

I fumble for lights, footing and child simultaneously in the night and realize that I’m just as scared as she is.

**

I was almost in my third trimester with Miss D. when the newspaper was late. This drives my part-German self crazy. I need coffee and the paper to make me human in the morning; without them I am foul. Sourly, I resorted to the television. Mornings suck hard enough without some perky anchor with teeth too good to be true telling you what traffic’s like Out There.

I flicked the screen on just in time to see the second tower of The World Trade Center descend into rubble and smoke.

I thought it was a joke at first, or some weird movie stunt. Everybody did. You just don’t believe things like that can happen, particularly if you’re my age and have missed most of the good tragedies like JFK and World Wars and even Lennon, who I was too little to know.

I spent the rest of September 11 like most Americans did, grotesquely tuned-in. I channel-surfed maniacally, looking for answers or truth or the latest horrible picture, but it was a one-handed quest. The other hand was glued to my swollen belly,and I remember looking down at it and and thinking, “What on Earth have I done?”

{by Melody at Brave Girls Club}

After a dear friend telling me about a hurtful experience she’d had this week…..I began thinking again about a story I have told a few times….a story that my children will tell to their children, and maybe even beyond that… because it was such a learning experience in our family….maybe even a turning point…it’s a story that I think about often because we were the main characters in it 3 or 4 years ago, and even though it was something that lasted less than 15 minutes….it changed all of us….and now I see others differently, especially when it seems that they might be main characters in the same story…or one a lot like it. I used to be too embarrassed to tell this story….but I am not anymore. This is a human story that everyone needs to hear, I truly believe this…I hope you will stay with it, it’s kinda long.

{by Brittany from Barefoot Foodie}

I’ve been places, people.

I’ve seen things.

24 hours ago…I could not describe to you the inside of the room someone would need to go into to produce a sample to test to see if their vasectomy worked or not.

Now I can.

I didn’t start out there. I started out in the car. With three kids. Eating donuts and waiting for daddy to come out.

But, he was taking forever. The natives were restless.

So we went inside.

All of us.

And, after I out-mean faced the lady at the desk (yeah lady, I do have all three kids with me, here, in the hallway of jack-off rooms, I’ve had a morning, get off my shit) she gave me his room number, and we crept down to Collection Room B.

It was quiet. I don’t know what I expected. Moans maybe? Lots of shifting around?

Nothing.

tap. tap. tap.

Me: Hunny, listen, are you done yet because we still have to go to the party store?

Um…no?

Me: Right, no rush, but the boys are getting super restless. Oh, and we went through Tim Horton’s and got donuts, we saved you some, they are in the car. I had a bagel, though. I think the cream cheese was bad, it smelled like vagina. *baby giggle, baby giggle* Oh listen hun, the baby is saying hi! Hi papa. Hi daddy. Hurry up papa, mama’s got a super busy day planned today, and she has to go to the party store to find some Jesus-y stuff for the Baptism.

…

Me: She is just adorable. I could eat her up. Yeah, so anyways, as soon as we are done here, I have to zoom over to order the cake and get some decorations. Do you think a crucifix pinata would be weird? I mean, I think the boys would have a good time with it, but is it tacky to beat Jesus on a Cross with an old broom stick handle? I feel super awkward about it.