Oh thank Heaven... (written 7.12.18)

Yesterday was July 11th. 7-Eleven gives out free Slurpees. I have 5 kids. Normally I avoid all free give aways because having to be around throngs of greedy people will stress me out to the point where any thrill in the “free” is lost immediately. Yesterday though, I decided to go for it, I actually didn’t even think the Slupees were free, just super cheap, so that would have been a nice surprise had the 10 minute trip not turned into what is now worthy of the written word. So, my family is going through some stuff, or more accurately, I am going through some stuff and as materfamilias, they all have to go through it too. I have moments where I can roll along totally in control and fine, or at least pretending that’s true and others where I am 100% convinced I would do the world a service by living alone in a Winnebago at Lake Havasu and wearing Tevas exclusively. Basically, being a female hermit who, when encountered by tourists and visiting families, makes them wonder “geezus, what broke her.” So many things, and nothing at all. But back to Slurpees. I loaded my five kids up in our minivan, the six, five, and four year olds in the back row. The 2 year old and 7 month old in the middle row, and me in the driver seat, purely physically, never metaphorically. Getting five children out of the house, with clothes on, shoes on, pee out, and without maiming each other or themselves might be possible, but it’s not a common occurrence, and when it happens, it happens with yelling and threats on my part. I don’t hesitate to admit that. My children know they are desperately loved, they also know what mom’s voice sounds like when it breaks because it can’t handle the strain of yelling, “Put. Your. Friggin. Seatbelt. On. Now!” for the 24,000th time. The entire six minute drive to 7-Eleven is filled with questions about where we are going, what we are doing, what they are getting, what they are wanting. My children ask questions, they ask questions that have already been answered, that can never be answered, that should never be answered. They ask questions that their sibling just asked, and then they ask it again. They ask questions that are statements, and they get my attention by saying Mama incessantly and then when they have my attention, they say Mama over and over again, unable to process that they actually have my attention, or most likely, forgetting what it was they needed me for to begin with, so then....they ask a question. One I’ve already answered. It’s a real hoot. We arrive at 7-Eleven. Just take a moment and imagine the nicest convenience store you’ve ever been in. There wasn’t a flood of images was there? Now, imagine the worst and make it a 7-Eleven, next to a shuttered laundromat, with a graffitied Redbox in front. Now put 7 questionable characters, 2 bicycles, one drifter, and a broken down Corolla in your eye-line and walking path. And now, the piece de resistance...imagine walking 5 tiny humans in for free liquified sugar. Hoots abound. It was my brilliant idea to tell the kids we were picking up Slurpees for our friends as a surprise too. The easiest way for me to get out of a funk is to make someone else smile, I really wish it weren’t true, but it is. So I decided we would take a fellow stay at home mama Slurpees for her and her brood. Which I only realized too late meant purchasing nine Slurpees. Nine. With five kids in tow. Five. That’s not math that I like. Not happy math. By some miracle (I thought) no one was waiting for the cheap Slurpees (that were actually free) and we walked right up to the machines. Cherry, Banana, Coca-Cola, Captain CrunchBerry, Lemonade, and Blue Raspberry swirl and churn in the machine beckoning my children and forcing them into a Sophie’s Choice level of decision making that they are not equipped to handle. Nor am I. Suddenly, there are 4 people behind us, then six. I start filling Slurpee cups with one hand pulling the lever and the other holding my 7 month old and keeping his hand from the magic colorful elixir begging him to dip his hand in and PULL! I have three or four cups filled, my two year old yelling for instant gratification, my oldest son asking for a Hot Wheels (why does 7-Eleven even sell toys?!), and my oldest daughter telling me that I’m not getting the flavor she wanted while I fill the cup she grabbed, because God knows that a child can’t possible use a different cup than the one that the Holy Spirit called them to select originally. A splash of warm water hits my naked heels and calves. What the fuck? I turn. My middle son, my beautiful quiet little blonde, has vomited stomach water all over the floor and my feet. The now ten people behind us react in shock and abject horror. The SHADOW OF JUDGEMENT falls upon me but the WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY BABY concern supersedes it. I bury his head into my hip to comfort him as best I can, and he vomits again, this time inches from a trash can. Okay dude, could have aimed a bit there buddy. Not cool. The store employee comes over with a mop, as I had instantly alerted him and was on my fourteenth apology. The people behind still want their Slurpees even with my kid’s bile on the floor in front of them. Ain’t America grand? But hell, my other kids are asking me what’s taking so long and completely unmoved by their brother’s essence emission. Vomit sounds better when referred to as “essence emittance”. Yes? Yes. I soldier on, Slurpees have been poured, they have a shelf life of forty-two seconds, so we are on the move. But it hits me, as the chaos always does. Why? Why the fuck when I am just trying to get my kids a little treat, a nice little emotional eating trip to compensate for my failures as their mother, why did there have to be vomit? If I was weak, if I was a believer, I would assume God was smiting me and fall to my knees screaming “Why me? Whyyyyyyyy Meeeeeeee?”. But a general belief in myself, a fear of breaking societal norms, and the genuine assumption that if God exists I’m well fucked beyond puke in a 7-Eleven, I refrain. Besides, if fictional Jesus really wanted to destroy me, it would have been me puking in the store, and really, it would have been me shitting my pants. So good looking out, deity I give no stock to, you aren’t stopping my kids from getting their soul healing sugar high. I hold my mother-of-five-who-doesn’t-have-her-shit-at-all-together-but-dammit-there-will-be-Slurpees head high and we leave. The highlight? The nine Slurpees were actually free, not just cheap as I mentioned, and our friends were thrilled, so it’s a win for me. “Win” is a relative term in my life.

Midnight

Midnight and the startling sound of baby cries. The desperate painful kind that tell you your child needs you faster than you can get there. I fly upstairs and into his room. He is writhing in his bed and I scoop him into my arms, already cooing and soothing and hushing to comfort him as best I can. His little body is tense, too tense, and fear runs through me. Something is wrong and not nightmare-wrong. He quiets but still cries and whimpers in pain. The faint but distinct smell of diarrhea hit me as I entered the room but I only now register it. I carry him, his little arms still wrapped around my neck, head pressed to my cheek, into our bedroom and turn on the bathroom light. His body won't relax and he is in pain. I ask him and he tells me it's his tummy. I sit him on the toilet and expect the worst but a tiny bit of upset is all that is in his diaper. But it's been there awhile, likely since shortly after we put him to bed and I know this little boy has previously been seen at the hospital due to diaper rash, he is sensitive to it biologically, and emotionally. I use cool water and a baby washcloth to gently clean his bottom and even that makes him cry and flinch. I bring him bare butt to the bed and see the red welts that are hurting him so terribly and I blow cool air as I apply the ointment gently. He is tender but begins to relax finally. His daddy brought all the supplies I requested and had returned from my second set of commands with the sippy cup of milk and small dose of Motrin I need for him as he is still trembling from the pain. I tenderly close a fresh diaper around him and lay him on his side, on my side of the bed. His eyes are dilated and his breathing is shaky but he drinks his milk and takes his medicine without hesitation. This whole time I have cooed and sighed and told him he will be okay and how brave he is and how I love him and every time he replied, "I love you too mama" even in his pain. Three months ago he didn’t speak. I hold him. Partially to keep him on his side, mostly to comfort him and myself, and I look into his eyes. He trusts me. He loves me. He feels safe with me. He needs me. I am his mother. He is calm, smiling a little now, sleepy eyes settling closed now that he can relax. I kiss him, breathe him in, rub his back, kiss him again. His ears, his nose, his eyes, his fingernails, the wisp of his hair, his belly button, him. I had no part in making him but he is mine. As he drifts to sleep the reality of my baby being in pain hits me, as it always does once they are out of it. Adrenaline and fear and love keep me focused on them but once they are okay my brain processes that in those moments I would have made myself bleed to stop their pain, lost a limb for life to stop 30 seconds of their tears. I need to cry and vomit and holler but I just refocus on them. It's no different when they don't share your DNA. If anything I owe this boy more. He has already been done so wrong. A kind of wrong most of us can't imagine and few would dare to. I can't make up for the people who failed him but I have to try. Every day for the rest of my life. No one had better ever question if he is my “real” son. There will never be an asterisk next to my title as his mom. Even if the courts send him to someone else and I die never seeing him again, he will always be my son and I will always be his mama. I've had nightmares where they take him and woken unable to breathe. Truly gasping for a breath like he’s already gone. I won't let myself think of that happening but everyday...I think of it happening. I repeat, "I will do everything I can for him, for as long as I can do for him" but add "please let that be forever." -
He lies next to me as I type this. His body pressed to my hip so he knows I'm here. His breathing heavy and steady.

He is a gift to me. To our family. He is hope and promise and goodness and bravery and strength and love.

He is my son.

His name is Hunter.

Give, written August 2018

I gave you my time, my words, my breath.
I gave you my hand, my eyes, my lips.
I gave you my smile, my sighs, my days.
I gave you my hips, my breasts, my heart.
I gave you my love, all of it, all our days.
I gave you all I had and made more and gave that to you too. 

Again and again. Again and again.
I gave and I gave and I gave. I gave.

I caved and I caved and I caved. I caved.

You’re still not whole and now I’m hollow.

My Children and Love, written August 2018

It’s a good life. It’s not one many people choose but it’s so good. It’s chaos and noise as much as it’s quiet moments that make everything else disappear.

They are good people. I’d want to know them if they weren’t mine. They are all good people. We train the magic out of them. We make them shame filled and corrupt and we break them to make them fit in the world. I don’t want to do that. I want them to keep their innocence, embrace their havoc, express their romance someday as easily as their love for ladybugs now.

The world tells us it’s too much. I’m somehow less because of how much I have. That religion or addiction are the only way I could do what I do. If that’s true, they are my religion. Their happiness is my addiction. I’m less broken with them. My scars fade through their eyes. Their existence made me stronger and weaker. I cry when I feel now. I always feel now. 

I’m lucky to have them. How was I chosen? How did I make two miraculous beings? How did the universe or the courts or nothing more than a phone call present three more gifts of humanity to me? 

They are not burdens. They are not baggage. They are the best of me. They are better than I will ever be.

It’s not for everyone. It shouldn’t be for a lot of the people who are currently doing it. You have to be selfless, you have to serve, you have to sacrifice, and surrender. So much surrendering. And when you do that you are given everything.

Tolstoy said, “Happiness is only in loving.”

Loving is actually a choice. It’s easy to fall in and out of love. It’s a challenge to maintain love. To grow love. To truly accept love. To act on love. To love in action. You cannot be complacent in love. It breathes and feeds and rests and if it is not tended upon it dies. Can you see it when you really have it, can you believe and trust it’s real?  

A man, a woman, a child, a pet. What a ridiculous joy we are given, this ability to love. To accept all the mess, all the defenses, all the darkness that tries to sabotage all the light of love. 

I have five lights. I have five living breathing happinesses. I have five declarations of my love that express themselves every moment of my life. I choose every day to love them more than myself.

I still have love to give. I’m not depleted. Love renews me. Terrifies me and makes me brave. Makes me write things I can’t erase, say things I can take back, feel things I am blessed and cursed to feel so soon. Too soon. Too late. Too much. Not enough. 

I can do it all alone. 

I don’t want to. 
Who wants to do it alone? Who has had someone and is still doing it alone?

Let’s be all in for each other. 
I’m never alone and always alone. 
Am I enough? Not too much?
I need someone to love me the way I love them. 
I need to be someone’s light.
Not someone. My one.
I need you to embrace away my defenses. 
I need you to love me for my chaos and my calm. 
I need to give and not just receive but have my givings treasured. 
Be scared but be brave more. If it ends, what a ride. If it lasts, what a life. 
I only know how to love. I know the presence of happiness. My obsession with the future comes from the promise of it. It lays before me as clearly in my mind the day behind me.

It is and will be such a good life. A good life. Underrated, underachieved, undervalued. A good life. How beautiful and simple and complicated and epic. It’s a good life. Live it with me. 

The Gym. Originally written July 2018

There are very few physical building which illicit dread when mentioned. The DMV. Prison. Your mother in law’s house.

The gym.

I used to assume that the only people in a gym were the fit and active monsters whose existence had tortured me my whole life. The Barbies and Kens of humanity with their plastic pecs and polymer posteriors. The gym was where you went once you were perfect, and not a moment before. The gym was where people without an imperfection stared at themselves in the mirror while a few beads of perfectly sexual sweat appeared on cue.

I wasn’t entirely wrong.

It’s also where I go. Where I went four years ago after joining a gym online after seeing their commercial at 9:30pm whilst sitting on the couch eating. I joined online, paid by credit card, decided to change from that moment forward. And here’s the craziest part of all...

I actually did.
I changed. Right then and there. I got off the couch. I got dressed, I drove to the gym.

I sat in my car and looked through the layer of glass in front of me and the layer of glass contained by the building glowing white with fluorescent streaming through it. I saw the blonde ponytails bouncing on the treadmill. I saw the muscle tees pumping iron. I sat in my car at 385 pounds and had every voice in my head tell me to turn the engine back on and flee home. To go back to the couch and the food and the belief that I was too me to be more.

And here’s another crazy part.
I didn’t.
I got out of the car. I walked into the gym. I took a photo and got an ID card and I stepped onto an elliptical and began.

Began. Began a workout, yes.
Began a new life, a new me, a new purpose, a new passion, a new presence, a new everything.
I began.

My first workout was 20 minutes. I got almost one mile done on the elliptical in 20 minutes. No resistance, no levels, just going.
I almost died about 47 times.
I made no eye contact but watched everyone intently willing them not to see me.

I sweat, and I huffed, and I pushed, and I shook with anxiety and effort and shame and pride. And shock. I shook with shock.

I was doing this.
I was doing it.

Oh fuck. What did I do?