Sadie's Swim meet

Scrabble seems like a good idea laying on my bedroom floor on a sunny Sunday or a cloudy Tuesday. Making cupcakes seems like a good idea today, two days before the ghosts come out to gather treats and tricks. Listening to music or watching a movie seemed like a good idea to some of us last night but Nora was tired and she said so and so I downloaded a witchy tale for her from our library and she dozed on and off in a feverish haze all through the night.
When I was a child I had many hours of someone telling me what to do and the places that I needed to be but then I had many hours of no one directing me. It was in this confusion that I was lost. That is why I am here
suggesting that maybe it would be fun to make cupcakes of play music together or maybe it is really a good idea to go up in to your room and build on your own.
Nora has made me a scary tie dye ghost out of an old colorful table cloth and an apple and she has come whizzing through my bedroom now with it in hand in all ghostly earnest.
She wants to know how to tie it up and I tell her my idea and off she goes,
half ghost half fairy, six for only a few more days.
Molly runs in half out of breath, having had her last driving test, no longer fairy but now wanting to fly off on her own.
There are things for me to sign and more for me to do and I am happy to do it.
Jonah is not at my heel and so he must be either in the basement playing music or breaking something somewhere and I am thinking about his squishy baby hands
and even breathing feels alright.

Content on Halloween

Taking care of myself has never come easy. And yet not taking care of myself has never been an option either. Some of the beautiful mothers that I know do such an amazing job being self less and devoted in constant measure to their cubs. Some mothers that I know take it all in stride with such grace.
I've asked for such grace.
I've bargained for this blessing late at night as I question some parenting decision that I made or some parenting decision I did not make, could not face.
Other moms I know make this beautiful transition back to their careers and they get on the train and they go, and they don't look back and they are content in their decisions to embark on this mission.
I am looking for content.
I looked for it yesterday in Salem. I looked for it on the train ride in and I looked for it as we all climbed off the train in to the craziness that is Halloween Salem. I know it wasn't the best place to find content but it seems plausible
or it did at the time.
And so let's face it. What was intended to be a fun day trip turned quickly in to a miserable grouchy should have hid under the covers kind of day and now looking back on it all in my pajamas at 6pm the day after, somewhere in going through my pictures, listening to my music, there is was
not really hidden
just kind of lurking underneath age
layers of skin
and some gray hair.
Content.
And I realize as I reflect on arguing with Gary in the cemetery in Salem with people all around us, I realize as I told all of them we are now leaving Salem if you cannot stop blowing raspberries on strange passerbyers and looked on to their scowls and crankiness that that is all part of the equation.
Later Sadie and I trailed behind and talked among the grown adults who stank of alcohol and had face paint dripping from their faces, and Sadie told me that she thought maybe I was still sick and I thought she may be right.
As it turns out she was. I am sick with the flu
and I was a jerk yesterday
because sometimes I am a jerk.
Sadie told me sometimes she is one too and I aplogized for being one and then we laughed, all of us, the whole train ride home.
Content is noticing a thought float through my head such as "maybe I should go back to work full time" or "I want to go to work full time" or "I am never going to be able to cook anything more than a hot dog" or "there is something inherently wrong with me" and watching it float away into the space of humanity.
Noticing all of the crazy ghouls in Salem and all of the desperate people in the Emergency room at night and my small vunerable children and recognizing the lessons that there are in all of these events and that this is how life evolves and moves so beautifully and so brutally real.

Awe

I'm having one of those weeks where I am watching my children become the people that they are supposed to be right before my eyes and I am completely in awe.

Molly's birthday

Today was Molly's birthday. She turned 17 today. A few days ago I took Jonah to a park that Molly and I used to frequent when she was between the ages of 2 and 4 and there I was with my youngest child running wildly through the slides and swings thinking, "Is this Molly..... or is this Jonah?"
Time is such a funny thing. Just when I think I am ready for it to fly by I am taken aback, punched in the stomach and losing my breath thinking about her and how quickly it all went by.
She wanted us to take her out to eat and so we did. She wanted us to take her out along and I understand what she is trying to say to us and so we did. Having all these little siblings cant always be easy and so we were together, the three of us, just like it had been for many years prior to baby #2 as we called Sadie.
Of course things being the way they are around our house currently we couldn't just take Molly in to the city and have our way. First we had to stop for our first appointment at Dana Farber. We all joked and played on the way up and looked around at bald heads and weak bodies and thought about how silly it was that we were there because after all Gary has a curable kind of cancer and there will not be any bald heads in our house any time soon. In the lobby I sat feeling sad for all of these other people that have to go through Cancer while we are all done with that now, thank you, just a precaution.
The nurses and the clinicians and just about everyone was so kind to us at DF that it almost brought tears to my eyes. They were not worried about time, they were not doubtful of us and our intentions and wisdom as carriers of our own bodies. It felt loving and wonderful and spiritual.
The doctor was a tall handsome man with a kind face and a broad and welcoming smile who sat with us for two hours and would have stayed with us all afternoon if we kept asking questions.
He told us that Gary has a 25% chance of chemotherapy and a 75 % of monitoring heavily and waiting and seeing. We will find this out next week after the CAT Scan comes back and I know that whatever happens I trust this doctor and I know that he cares about me and my husband. I haven't felt that about a doctor for a really long time.
We went out to a nice little Irish restaurant and took funny pictures of each other and laughed and ate. It's fun to be with Molly because she is like an adult now and we have fun conversations and I am almost ready to launch her.
Maybe she will want to go back to that park with me.
Maybe I will blink my eyes and find myself there in years to come with her little child wishing for a return to something as sweet as the first flowers in spring and the longest day of the year.

The Backstroms do Neil Young