Punks

Rockstars.  That's what they are playing in this picture.  Now this is a play activity I can get into.  I was DJ and I mainly stuck to the Clash today.  Mia's good at looking tough, full of Enlish moxy like a true punk star.  Luca is a bit too happy to truly be punk.  He's still cool by us though.

Happy Spring

So it's official now.  I can start talking about spring.  And spring colors and spring fever.  And spring cleaning.  This puts a spring in our step around here. (Ba doom Ba) 

We celebrated by going to get frozen yogurt.  And Mia skipped back and forth, which she does all the time now.  Even between bites during meals. 

I just liked this shot.  Kind of cool.  Graphic.  The raspberries hanging abover her head.  The profile.  I'm paying silent gratitude to the universe for this change in season.  Some pops of color will do me right. 

These two ate their yogurt and didn't share one bite with me.  Although they happily ate each others. 

I always think they'll have leftovers so I don't order my own.  But, who am I kidding, there are never left overs after a sweet treat.  These are my kids afterall. 

St. Patrick's Day

Because I'm a dork and I have too much time on my hands today.

Luck of the Irish (a day early)

I struggle with the word lucky.

As in, "I'm so lucky to _____________" You can fill in the blank. To have my health. My wealth. My husband. My home. My children. My work. My single life. (.....)

We've heard it said a million times. I've even uttered that ghastly word. And every time I do, I think, "Uh-oh. How did that happen? It slipped out. That word. That word that makes me feel so uneasy."

Years ago - pre Mia - pre Luca - there I sat, at another baby shower, with no baby. A big vast emptiness that I wanted to desperately fill. And I heard that word. Lucky. The gaggle of women talked about how lucky they felt to have their babies. Their working parts. Their innate ability to create.

And there I sat next to them. So terribly unlucky. Or so I thought.

My dad's death. My mother's diagnosis. My sister's diagnosis. That word....luck.

It just makes me feel so lucky to have my dad. I just feel so lucky to have my health. That's what people would say. Rightfully so. I understood it. I knew I had even said those very things myself in reaction to another's situation. I said it before I became a connoisseur of semantics. Before the meaning of words began to morph and change as I aged and evolved.

You get older and shit just happens. Suddenly, you begin to realize that good fortune comes and goes as it pleases.

So why do I struggle with the word luck? It simply means exactly that.....good things falling upon unsuspecting people for no apparent reason. What is it about the word that makes it a difficult one for me?

I guess because of the implication, if situation x is lucky than situation y must be unlucky. I find people to use it in an exclusive way. A way that can be painful and alienating. I've led, and continue to live, a pretty stellar life full of amazing people and indescribable experiences - experiences we would put in the "x" category. But I've also had my fair share of "Y" moments.

What's interesting though, is that those "Y" moments - those unlucky little rocks - have such beauty when turned to reflect the light a certain way.

At my dad's deathbed, when I left the room momentarily to ask the nurse at her station something, I identified myself, "I'm Roger Padden's daughter." I felt a swell of pride in being able to claim I was his. An x instant buried in a y experience. A lucky moment tucked into the folds of a dark unlucky hour.

Being lucky and unlucky aren't mutually exclusive. THAT'S why I struggle. They aren't two separate outcomes neck and neck on a starting block. They are actually partners, allowing one another to take turns in finishing first. Accepting that they travel together is something I've learned along the way during my own race.

Having what one wants doesn't make one lucky. Having ease doesn't mean one has been spared, even just for the moment. None of us are spared. None of us are lucky enough to escape the grip of unluck.

I know. I know. Just words. I'm at it again with my study of language and how it's used. The effects of it.

One damn word.

Luck.

If you are breathing, you have it. If you are feeling, you have it. Feeling anything - good, bad, or indifferent. If you are contemplating or grappling with anything, you have it.

I'm here to swing open wide the doors of luck. To make it known that it isn't some exclusive club you must be invited to join.

Life isn't about shared experiences or even a smooth playing field to make things fair. I don't demand equity with everything (despite being a proclaimed socialist.) I do demand equity with feeling the warmth and magic of random fortune though. Every human being deserves to know they are lucky. All of us for unique and different reasons.

(Although, in light of St. Patrick's Day, and my heritage, we Irish may just have a bit more of something special. That doesn't make me lucky. Just superior.)

Does gender really matter?

I found my first rock in the dryer tonight.

I heard it - clanging and banging around in there and I thought it was a zipper throughout the whole cycle. I wondered what sweatshirt or coat I was washing with a zipper capable of making such a racket.

When I pulled the load out, the rock fell at my feet. Hot. And very clean. I smiled because I remembered Luca picking it up and putting it in his pocket, with a sweet grin afterward. I remember watching him play and marveling that he was at the stage of keeping little treasures in his pockets for later.

Tonight I marveled that I am at the stage of washing those little treasures. And finding them late at night while the kids sleep. I folded the tiny pants and the pjs with airplanes. I folded Mia's socks and her pink leggings. I stacked their piles next to their doors so I wouldn't wake them up by going into their rooms.

This is what I do. Often at night. Usually alone. I fold and tend to small projects for the family I've created. Sometimes it's laundry. Maybe cleaning. Sometimes it's a project for Mia's school or a craft for her room or Luca's room. At times it's looking through the seemingly hundreds of pictures I take a week. It's blogging even....maintaining this space for us to sit in. Weeding it. Watering it. Making sure it doesn't die even if it isn't award winning. It's the mothering that is done after hours. The stuff no one sees, not even really the partners who help shoulder the responsibility of parenting. It's my time to be do what I consider my best work.

When I was pregnant with Luca, swollen with the pride and happiness I felt at having another baby, someone told me they couldn't see me with a boy. I remember feeling slightly hurt, knowing at the time that my bump was more than a need for maternity pants, but rather, a teeny tiny boy. A boy that somehow someone out there couldn't see me raising. I remember putting my hand on my stomach, on Luca, willing my fingers to send a message to him. Just one message.

I can see myself raising you. I can see myself with a boy.

Because that's really all that mattered - what I felt. What I could envision. I knew raising a baby, a child, wasn't sex specific. The late nights. The onesies. The feeling of a baby nestled in a chest pouch. All of the moments of exhaustion and bliss didn't add up to a gender, but rather a general role. My role. My role of being a mom.

When that rock hit the tile in the laundry room, I thought of that comment and smiled. Maybe storing rocks and frogs in pockets is a stereotype often fulfilled by boys. And just maybe there will be baseballs through windows, dirt on lots of things, and stinky shoes left in the closet.

But my job raising this small boy won't be defined by things in the dryer that clang or items in a bedroom that stink. My job will be defined by nurturing a spirit. Holding a hand. Providing a foundation, a safe haven. Giving a baby a place to be more than a sum of parts defined by gender.

Sure, they have their differences - boys and girls - but my reactions to them are the same. They both bewilder, fascinate, frustrate, excite, and pull a profound sense of love from me.

I'm just thankful that it was a rock tonight in the dryer and not a crayon.

Heaven

I'm raising a deep kid.

Mia.

I don't want to sell Luca short. That boy I'm sure will be a deep thinker too. We're still working on articulating vowel sounds after consonants right now though. In a few years, I'm sure I'll be mulling over his complex questions and ideas. Keeping up with one kid with questions I can't answer has me on overload. Check back with me in a few years when I have two.

Mia has been asking a lot about death lately. In a very casual sort of way. While pulling out frozen strawberries for smoothies, she asked if people take their eye balls to heaven. Because if they don't, as I've suggested, than how do they see. And furthermore, she questioned, how do they function at all without their bodies. While shoveling up dirt in our backyard she asked what a soul is. That little shovel hammering away at the dry dirt. Her eyes never leaving her work. While teetering on the side of the couch, arching her back into a wheel position, she asked what people wear up there. And who takes care of the babies that go.

With each question, I'm left slightly awed. Maybe wounded too. That this small girl is already at the stage of understanding her own mortality. I'm confused about what my responses should be. Inspired by the need to create some. Frustrated that I don't have the answers, to any of them really. And deeply curious.

So there we sit, after each and every probing question, the two of us formulating ideas about where we go when we leave here.

I've made it all very pretty. Very palatable. Heaven is fluffy and white. Papa gets to sleep in clouds, to which Mia sighed, "cooooool". She has asked me what people eat. And if they work. With each question, I feel as if the myth I'm perpetuating gets more and more elaborate. I often wonder if this is fair. Or even wrong.

But it's safe and warm and non threatening. She's a smart kid and will figure out soon enough the hardships life has to offer. She will probably begin to piece together her own ideas, taking some of this and marrying it with new concepts. I just don't want her to fear death. To fear the unknown. I want her to understand that it's natural. And inevitable.

As we flew home from Mexico and Mia and Luca spooned in the middle seat, sleeping, dirty fingers locked within each other's grasps, I watched them and couldn't get the image out of my mind. Of Mia, earlier in the flight, looking out of the window of the plane at the fat puffy clouds. Like caricatures of what clouds really are. Unreal. I saw how she stared at them and searched. She said, under her breath, "I think heaven is up around here."

I assured her that it is way way way up high. Even higher.

Just out of our reach. Just out of our grasp. And maybe that's how our understanding of death is supposed to be, an idea that is just beyond our comprehension.

The other day, I told Mia that I am not the keeper of all truths. I admitted to not knowing a thing about heaven really. I explained that when you go, you don't ever get to come back to tell your story. There are no slide shows of the trip. No updates on Facebook. I told her that we can create our own truth. Our own understanding, even if it's a little bit wrong.

She was just fine with this. And insisted on getting the biggest white cloud when she goes. With a swing like the one in the front yard.

That's all just fine I said. Sounds lovely. She beamed and seemed pleased that her afterlife is looking pretty good. As a parent, that's what my goal is. To raise confident kids. Kids that feel safe. Kids that don't have anxiety about things out of their control.

So far, mission accomplished.