Mrs. Bright I'm still here.

You should have seen what I saw this morning, Mrs. Bright. It was an old woman - well, not old old - but her face was long and folded into onionskin wrinkles, layers of years - and she had long, frosted hair feathered back from her face, and large sunglasses. But what really caught my eye was her skirt! It was short and it billowed out just so, and it was white and it sparkled like someone's best dream in the fall morning. She had on white tights and white shoes and a white blazer, and she looked like a picture from a magazine. Just like a picture from a magazine. And her face was so out of place in all that white and billow and sparkle, and -

- I forgot to mention she was on a bike, Mrs. Bright! It was a white bike, I don't know the kind, but she wasn't riding it. She was balancing on it, trying to ride it, I think. I only got a glimpse of her because I was driving by her on my way to work, but what I saw was a frown of concentration, and her papery face, and I had that moment you get where your mind tries to add up something that doesn't quite make sense in the first place. I mean, she couldn't ride that bike! It was like she was learning to ride it for the first time this Thursday morning in her fancy outfit, face all serious and studied. You would have loved to see it, Mrs. Bright. It was really something.

I drove on to work with this woman in my mind, and I thought of you. I thought you might have told me: You should have stopped! You should have gotten that story. You should have at least watched her for a moment. I'd be lying if I said the thought didn't occur to me. Of course it did, but it was 7:58 and it takes me five minutes to get to work from where I saw her, so you can see why I didn't stop. Right? I mean, I couldn't have stopped anyway on that cramped street. And there was nowhere for me to turn.

I'm glad I didn't see that in a magazine. I'm glad I got the opportunity to see it in real life, a moment tearing itself out of time for just a moment, something for me to save forever. I hope I remember this forever, Mrs. Bright.

Okay. It's not just the woman on the bicycle. I have a stack of these moments! Yesterday at the craft store I heard a plump black woman tell another plump black woman that she can quilt. And sew, and cross-stitch. "I can do all that stuff," she said, and I sneaked a peek over at her, but not too long, and saw she had these lovely, elegant fingers. She was buying buttons. "Does your mom know?" asked the other woman, and the crafty one said in all seriousness, "No, and you can't tell her. You can't tell anyone I can do that stuff. Nobody knows but you."

That's strange, isn't it? I wanted to know the story. I wanted to follow them around and pluck their words and shove them into my pockets, but I was on my lunch break and I needed to get back to work. So I took just those words, and the image of her hands, hands so obviously built for sewing and crafting, and I put those in my pockets. And it's enough, I guess. Is it, Mrs. Bright?

There's another thing. I was getting my hair cut at the salon and a woman came in who was obviously friends with my hair guy, and she had this enormous tattoo of an owl stretched across her back, two giant eyes peering at me from between the straps of her brown tank top. She seemed a little bedraggled as she came in, plopping tiredly down on the couch to wait her turn for a hair cut. "Hey, Mello," he said to her, and she said, "Hey, B," and he asked how her new baby was doing. And the Asian woman doing the genteel Texas woman's nails in the corner watched in interest. And I think the genteel Texas woman in the white button up shirt and carefully coiffed black hair knew this Mello person. Everyone knew everyone, I think, except me, so I peered down at my magazine and stole glances at everyone as they talked.

Mello went on and on about her home birth and how wonderfully organic it all was, and beautiful, and how it was when her baby boy slipped out between her legs and into the pool of water. She explained to the genteel Texan about doulas and midwives and the evils of hospital births. I had two hospital births, Mrs. Bright -- did I ever tell you that? -- but what Mello was saying didn't bother me at all. I want to believe in the beauty of a woman who finds a center from which to bring her child into the world, completely in the moment and in the comfort of her own home. I imagine she squeezed her eyes shut and tamped the pain down into a small, manageable nugget, and pressed and pressed until that pain was a glittering diamond, and pressed it some more until it was dust, and pressed more until it was nothing but cells and atoms and nuclei floating in the water around her with blood and placenta and her new baby boy. I can believe in that. In diamonds of pain, and the screaming mess of new life in the world.

This woman, this Mello with the large owl tattoo, exuded a persona. Like someone with a finger plugged into some outlet of nature, and she was electrified with it. She spoke of her boyfriend who was so wonderful and so present at the birth and such a dedicated father already, but later she sighed heavily and said that he was carrying around the darkest energy since he became a father. A blackness. They were going to have to give him some kind of cleansing. He needed time away. "Take all the time you need," she told him. And to B and the genteel Texan and the Asian manicurist she said, "This is what we have to do. It's not good for the baby to be around that darkness."

I don't know, Mrs. Bright. Is there such thing as someone who carries dark energy, and who can be a dedicated father but also need to be away from the baby to clear that dark energy? Who am I to judge that, anyway? Who am I to judge someone who knows firsthand that pain can be tamped into diamonds? Someone who has held that diamond in her fists.

The world is so weird sometimes. I saw Mello at the grocery store with that new baby a few weeks later. She was buying landfill-friendly disposable diapers and a pound of organic bacon. I was buying lavender bubble bath and pecan smoked sausage. This is significant, I thought as I stared down at the items in my basket. Somehow, it is.

It is, isn't it? It has to be. Old women in white sparkly skirts on bikes and secret crafting and diamond pain and dark energy and pecan smoked sausage. I don't know. I guess all I mean to say, Mrs. Bright, is that I'm still here. I'd write that I miss you but you've already figured that out.

I'll eat you up I love you so.

"I have nothing now but praise for my life. I'm not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more. ... What I dread is the isolation. ... There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready."

"I'm a happy old man, but I will cry all my way to the grave."

-- Maurice Sendak

Listen to the fascinating, heartbreaking interview on NPR.

Oh my lands. "Where the Wild Things Are" is so lovely. Maurice Sendak is lovely. That is all.

Not very lovely.

Looking back at pictures from just a year ago, I think: I was happier then. We were happier then. I look at old blog posts from last year and think: I was so optimistic. I had hopes and some clear eye for bigger things. I look at where things are right now. I am grateful for my job; I know it's a good one, but I am not content in it. I am apathetic. I spend too much time away from my family. I neglect the house. My husband has not yet secured a teaching job, so he's working second shift at his regular job and subbing at least two days a week, usually more, and we never see each other. I feel like we are scrambling to pay our bills and do little else, so that we can save money, except we never actually save. Our house needs work, our yards (front and back) are shabby, and nothing is really very clean or organized. I spend evenings searching for lost things: I can find one shoe but not the other, Mad's school library book is missing, I can't find Violet's blanket, and there are no clean towels. I feel a terrible urge to just upend everything, to quit my job, to run away from home, to set the house on fire. I feel smaller wishes: I wish I would get a cold, just so I can spend a day at home and sleep the whole time. How sad. How stupid.

What has changed? What is the thing that put me in this place, where I feel small and confined and resigned to this life of tugging stress and a deficit of time, always struggling to reach something that is just nothing, nothing that excites or inflames me. Nothing that gets me excited about living.

A year ago I had these feelings, but I also had hope. A year ago I had plans and a belief that everything would be fine. That I would conquer the nasty pull of inertia, that I could be more and do more in my life than what I am doing right now. But inertia is an insidious, awful thing. It's worse, really, it's quicksand. I'm shrinking down into it.

There is a sign I posted next to my computer that says "Bloom where you are planted," and I am failing at that. My roots have thinned and stretched out, gasping for water. My leaves have browned. I am hunkering down for a long winter. I guess under this metaphor I need to tend the soil, to strengthen my roots so that I can grow, bloom, cast seeds and grow in other places.

But I don't know what that means. I don't know what my soil needs.

I don't mean to make it sound like I am walking around in a perpetual haze of sadness and depression; I'm not. We have our walks and the evenings I spend with the girls are (usually) very lovely. We manage to squeeze fun into the weekends and I have little hobbies that fulfill me: I read voraciously, I taught myself how to sew these simple fabric flowers, I discovered I don't totally suck at water coloring, I take pictures of nature that make me happy to be alive, just to see these things.

But even with those things I look at the big picture of how we spend our time, what we focus on more often than not, and I think: we're missing the point of life. Somehow. Because whatever it's meant to be, it can't be this.

To be silly.

Nobody wanted to wear the crocodile pajama shirt. It's a crocodile dribbling a basketball; what's not to like? But no.

They weren't just against it, mind you, they were loudly, almost-violently against it. Both girls stared at the shirt like their hearts were splintering at the mere thought of having to wear it to bed.

I felt this hurling sensation that barreled straight from my throat down into my chest, this bottled up, boiling sense of frustration. Violet wanted a pink pajama shirt, or a Lightning McQueen pajama shirt like her sister's, and I knew from the search I had made just a few minutes ago that neither was available. It was foolish of me, really. I knew the crocodile shirt wouldn't fly but it's roomy and soft and has a wide enough neck to fit over Violet's gigantic noggin, and it was the right shirt, darn it. It was.

Try and argue that with a 4-year-old.

It was late. The girls should have been dressed and in their rooms already. We should have been nestled on the bean bags, reading bedtime stories. My mind traveled the short length across the hall into the girls' bedroom, which was strewn with toys and stuffed animals they had dragged in from the playroom. That bottled frustration simmered almost to boiling, and with supreme effort, I unclenched the crocodile shirt from my fist and held it out to Violet. "Just wear the shirt," I said to her in a rush of breath.

"No!" Violet shouted, this ridiculous, wide, desperate look in her eyes. I could see her getting ready to fight this -- the tears were shining in her eyes and her lip carefully formed that downward turn that precedes an epic meltdown. I wanted to shove the thing over her head, let her cry it out, and my mind followed that path a little bit, too, the long, slow recovery from the tears, the nasty pall it would cast over the already-rushed and frazzled evening.

So I said, "Fine. I'll wear it." And I pulled the shirt over my head (told you it was roomy) and somehow wedged my arms into the sleeves, and the thing stretched just to its limits around my shoulders. My arms were immobile, my upper body squished and contorted. I could see my reflection in the bathroom mirror and I looked ridiculous. I looked at the girls, who were grinning at me, little lights shining in their eyes. "I don't think it fits," I said. They giggled at me. I pretended to struggle to get it off. "I think it's stuck," I said. Madeleine laughed loud and Violet continued her giggling as I continued to struggle with the shirt, eventually pulling it off.

Once it was off, Violet's quavery frown was back. "I don't want to wear it," she said again, urgently. "I don't LIKE it!"

Exasperation came flooding back to me. "I don't like it," I said back at her in a high pitched voice, but with a smile so she would know I was kidding.

"I WANT. TO WEAR. LIGHTNING," Violet said, enunciating carefully, forcefully.

"I want. To wear. Lightning," I said back to her in the same voice, smiling and making eye contact with the girls. Madeleine's eyes were bright and happy. "You're just having fun with us!" She said.

"You're just having fun with us!" I copied.

Both girls were laughing and dancing in happy little circles in our tiny bathroom, throwing out things for me to copy in my silly voice, and I felt that tense weight in my chest lighten immeasurably. I had a fleeting second there in the bathroom where I was not so keenly aware of the crushing weight of time, not fleeing ahead of its forceful march (lest I be trampled by it). A recognition that yes, this is how it's supposed to be, and I resolved to find it, that place where time is not the enemy and all you do is make goofy faces at it, and force it into silly pajamas, and laugh and laugh and laugh.

You fall, you bleed, you get up, you carry on.

First, this video is awesome. It makes me feel like an utter waste of flesh, but it's also so very inspiring. I love it. I showed it to the girls and Mad said, "I want to go on that trail!" Violet said, "Because sometimes owies are cool."


This video features one of the girls in the above video, talking about her longboarding experience. She's beautiful, her locale is gorgeous, and her attitude is totally rad. When she says, "This is just like life: you fall, you bleed, you get up, you carry on. And since we get hurt anyway, I'd rather do it in a fun way," it was kind of a nice little kick in the rear, a reminder of the obvious lesson you learn over and over again: life is for living! Go do it! Because sometimes owies are cool. (Right on, Violet!)