(by Talon)

photo credit

Never pick the berries the birds don’t touch
you told me long ago
and I remembered your words
when I saw the red berries
glistening in the snow
and I didn’t touch them
because the birds ignored them
leaving the fruit to the muse of winter

Never make a wish on a waning gibbous
you told me long ago
for you said the wish became magic
under a waxing crescent
the new would herald beginnings
with endings tucked inside
and when I saw the moon near full
I stilled my secret

{by Jenny from The Bloggess}

My friend (Sunny) is an artist. She writes and paints and makes beautiful, whimsical dresses out of found objects and magic. One of my favorite dresses of hers is the red poppy dress and I wanted it the first time I saw it but I knew I’d never get it. For one thing, it’s not sensible. It’s impractical. It’s bright red and vibrant and shocking and “inappropriate for a woman my age”. And I have no shoes to go with it. And I have no place to wear it.

And I want it.

I want, just once, to wear a bright red, strapless ball gown with no apologies. I want to be shocking, and vivid and wear a dress as intensely amazing as the person I so want to be. And the more I thought about it the more I realized how often we deny ourselves that red dress and all the other capricious, ridiculous, overindulgent and silly things that we desperately want but never let ourselves have because they are simply “not sensible”. Things like flying lessons, and ballet shoes, and breaking into spontaneous song, and building a train set, and crawling onto the roof just to see the stars better. Things like cartwheels and learning how to box and painting encouraging words on your body to remind yourself that you’re worth it.

And I am worth it.

And last week…?

…I got my red dress.

{by Heather, of the former Queen of Shake-Shake}

Last Friday was Field Day at the boys’ school. Two hours each of Go-Fish, bouncy houses and terrible carnival-type food. Ages seven and nine now, Payton & Parker don’t need me there. They run off and leave me as soon as we get to the field. I’m simply there to hold their drinks, trinkets, and sand art jars. This is perfect because just the other day my arms and hands were telling me how very bored they were. Thanks goodness I had children so I would have random shit to hold for approximately 18 years!

So while I stood around like some kind of humanoid storage facility, I chatted with other moms who also resembled humanoid storage facilities. I was introduced to another 3rd grade mom and I have such awesome social skills that I couldn’t remember her name 30 seconds later. But this nameless mom said something I found very interesting….

“Isn’t it funny how the kids will be friends with one person this week, or for a month, and then someone else will be their best friend the next week? Kids are just so funny that way!”

They are?

They do?

Is this what “normal” kids do to friends? Shit, and they think my kid is weird? That’s rich.

Neither of my boys do that, even my very typical Parker, so maybe it’s girls? Or the future generation of shallow backstabbers?

I think of Parker and his favorite playmate. He’s been the favorite since they were, I don’t know, three? Four? When they were placed in separate 1st grade classes (after pre-K & kindergarten together) I thought surely Parker would move on to another “best” friend. He’s just so social, after all.

Not so, though he does have other more casual friendships. They still play together every day at P.E. and Parker is very worried they won’t have class or P.E. together next year.

I think of Payton and his one best friend. They’ve been close for three years now. Of course, Payton is my kid who could possibly be called “socially delayed,” but shit, the other kids flutter friend to friend, week to week. I don’t know, it seems my kid actually knows more about quality of friendship over quantity. Who’s delayed again?

_____________________________________________________________

Two hours earlier

I’m in between Parker’s field day time slot and Payton’s, waiting in Payton’s classroom as they prepare to go outside.

I don’t know what it is, but every time I come into Payton’s classroom there are three girls who gravitate towards me. Maybe it’s my hair. Or my cookies. Do I permanently smell like home-baked cookies? I can’t figure out why I’m like a magnet to these girls. I don’t think I exude liking for other people’s kids.

Of course, Payton’s best friend is in this group. We shall give her the blog name Macy.

As soon as I find a seat in his room, I’m overwhelmed by Payton and his scientific questions. As usual. He sees me, throws his hands in the air, yells “MOM!” and then shoves a nonfiction book in my face. This is how he greets me nine times out of ten. (Just so you know, the tenth time is a very unexcited and distracted “hi. Apparently if I’m not good for shoving a book in my face, I’m not that important.”)

With Parker, it’s “Mama!” and smiles and sweet, little boy hugs. But with Payton, it’s “Mom!” with hands in the air (sometimes jumping is included), science book in the face, and serious queries only.

Friday’s question was whether you pronounce the Tachina Fly as ta-key-na or ta-chi-na.

by Elizabeth of Boy Crazy [Clarity-Chaos]

For reasons unknown or unanalyzed, an old friend popped into my mind today.

My friend J was a quiet guy. He was an artist and a musician. In high school, these attributes do not necessarily make you the coolest of kids. But he was smart and sweet and funny and shy, and when I took his arm and played his date at stage right in a musical with a name I can’t recall, I crushed hard for J. I always liked the uncool kids. (They were always the coolest.)

I, a boy crazy sophomore, was the first kiss for this shy senior boy. He, all kindness and blue eyes, was the nicest, sweetest boy I had ever kissed.

But this was highschool, where fickleness and frivolity reign. And after he ended one of our dates with a run through Taco Bell drivethru, sending me shrinking to the far side of his parent’s giant blue station wagon in angst over how bad his breath would be when he walked me to my front door, it was over.

And the next week when I introduced my dad to G, who sat on our livingroom couch, arm slung around my shoulders, my father summed it up just right when he humiliated me in his befuddlement, “G? What happened to J? What is this – boyfriend of the week??!”

And it was. It was how I rolled, nothing personal, J.

But I always felt badly about how abruptly I ended things. The poor guy had no clue it was just about the Taco Bell, no idea about the fickleness, the frivolity of teenage girls. He let it end without drama, and he stepped quietly aside as I finished out the school year as G’s girl.

He was such a nice guy and I was the only girl he ever kissed.

A couple of years later I bumped into J at a summer concert in our hometown. He was home from college, and I was genuinely excited to see him. We laughed that War was headlining the show, twenty years past their peak; and we chatted for a while. After rocking out to Low Rider, I gave him another big hug and told him that it was really, really good to see him again and that I was so glad he was doing well. He stayed at the stage and I ran off with my friends. I turned back and waved goodbye one more time. He was smiling.

One week later J died of an asthma attack. He was 21 years old.

At his funeral, a college friend brought along a letter J had mailed him just that week. In it, J had written how he had bumped into a girl he used to date…

{Originally published on Sgt. and Mrs. Hub}

Last night a big group of us friends got together for a delicious taco salad dinner with chocolate cake for dessert. What a great time we had!

I laughed so hard and so much I was afraid my face was going to fall off.

But, that’s the best part, isn’t it?

I was worried that Daniel and I were never going to make friends after we moved here. It was touch and go for awhile. We had tons of people over for barbecues but we just weren’t finding “our type of people.” You know, the good kind. The kind that when your face falls off from laughing so hard, they’ll help you pick it up and stick it back on.

Thankfully, we found them. Or did they find us? I don’t know and I don’t care. I’m happy now.

Here is a glimpse into our fun time last night. You can find more on Flickr.

This is Miss Sydney and her Mama, Kelly. Isn’t she gorgeous?

{Originally published on The Sister Project.}

Winter 2008—five years after we donned our white caps and gowns at Tanglewood—four out of my six best friends from high school are finding themselves in the same sleepy Berkshire town where we grew up.

In honor of this momentous homecoming, I’d like to share an essay I wrote shortly after we graduated. I haven’t touched it since then (except to change some names), and it is a strong representation of the kinds of reflections I was having about my high school experience at that time. Meet me after Bio to get high in the parking lot…

‘Picking at Scabs’

WHEN WE HEARD Brooke throwing up on Katelyn’s 18th birthday, the seven of us skipped a beat. Our spoons, heaped with chocolate sauce and ice cream, paused in midair before reluctantly arriving at our lips. Gator’s hand ticked for a split second as she sliced through creamy frosting and into birthday cake. No one said anything. We just listened. My mind wandered up the air vent to the cool blue tiled floor where I know Brooke knelt with watering eyes and a runny nose—her bony fingers brushing the back of her throat, coaxing and begging for release.

These girls are the closest things that I have to sisters. We are not fused with blood but with bruises and Band-Aids—our mutual growing pains. Our insecurities have bonded us together with can’t-live-without-you love. I watched the girls shift uncomfortably eyeing the caloric catastrophe that lay before us, sprawled across the kitchen counter. Our throats began to close around the clumps of cake and ice cream. We ate fast. We ate to get rid of it. Behind us, Justin sang Senorita through the kitchen speakers. Above us, Brooke coughed and spat. It was an eternity cruelly crammed into a split second.

{Originally posted on P E N S I E V E}

In its 15th and final season, hospital drama ER resurrected the dead: Anthony Edwards reprised his role as Dr. Mark Green last week in a series of flashbacks by Angela Bassett’s character, Cate Banfield.

When ER debuted in the Fall of ’94, I had an infant and a two-year-old, and I’m sure escaping into TV melodrama was a welcome respite from the “storms” my little ones ravaged. I remember lying on our sofa nursing my son–right side, left side, right side, left–through ER, the news and then late nights with Leno and Letterman.

During the episodes leading up to his death, Dr. Green takes his daughter to Hawaii, to teach her “important” life lessons–how to drive, how to surf…I really don’t recall much else.

Except a last admonishment to her, one that has haunted me in the ensuing years.

“Be generous. Always.”

It struck me as odd, then, that a parent’s dying words would speak to generosity. It was unsettling for some reason; I judged those words as somehow falling short. In my mind, as a believer, I felt like he should have offered some great spiritual insight, something with eternal value, something … more. Of course, I realized it was television after all, and the series had never before offered anything substantively spiritually enlightening; but still, I saw it as missed opportunity.

Originally posted on Mommy’s Martini.

One of my most vivid childhood memories is sitting in the dark, on the screened-in porch of my next-door-neighbor’s house, and listening to the grown-ups talking. In the moist, heavy heat of a Georgia summer, the little ceiling fan on the porch would force a breeze, and the crickets would begin to chirp as night fell. The puffs of wind beyond the screens carried the faint scent of magnolia blossoms, and the asphalt twinkled with embedded sparkles in the pools of golden streetlamp light where hard-shelled Junebugs gathered. There was no light on the porch, so as to avoid attracting insects, and as the darkness gathered closer and enclosed our little room, I felt cocooned in an almost magical place.

We lived in a house on a horseshoe shaped block of homes that had been built for returning GIs after WWII. Every single house on our street had the same front bathroom (what had once been the only bathroom), with the identical pattern of black-and-white tile on the floor and walls. You know the pattern; it’s very like the “retro” one you can buy at big box home DIY stores now, except there is something different, a bit glossier, and better, about the original. We all had the original.

These were small houses — two front rooms, a kitchen, bath, two bedrooms — that had been added onto over time so that by the time we lived there in the early 1980s, they all had a slightly different footprint. Except for three things: that central black-and-white bathroom, the wide front stoop, and the porch. Some houses (like ours) had enclosed the porch. But not next door.

Originally published on Family Clay, Smushed Together and titled Koson’s Lesson.

This is a long one, but stick with it. It’ll be worth it. I promise.

It was a Thursday night in the fall of 1982; I was fourteen years old. I remember the day of the week because in our soccer league, Thursday nights were game nights. My father was our coach, and on this night we’d just lost to a bigger, more skilled team. After the loss I was walking back to the parking lot with my teammates (dad was trailing far behind, talking with some of the other parents) when somebody from our team must’ve said something to some members of the other team about how hard they sucked or how big their mommas were. The three largest guys on their team were pretty sure I’d said it and wanted to show me how much they didn’t appreciate it. As I turned to see what was going on (at this point I had no clue), I saw the three (much) larger kids coming my way.

At the time I stood about 5?10? and was pretty skinny. But I had a big
mouth, and it sometimes got me into more trouble than my 160 pound body
could get me out of. And while I hadn’t said anything to these guys, I
wasn’t planning on backing down.

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