Of Beaches and Babes

You'll have to do without me for a few days, I'm afraid, as we're off to a kitchy motel by the ocean. In the meantime, because I've spent the whole day feeling sentimental, here are some pictures of my children as babies. Enjoy!

The Girl, at about four months of age.

The Boy, just hours after birth.

The Night I Embraced the Exclamation Point and Became a Different Person

Suddenly, and dare I say happily, life is moving in a new direction. It might not be moving in the right direction, but new is new, eh, what? For starters, I had my first meeting with the TESOL people yesterday, and, if I want to, I can begin taking classes as soon as the fall. The fall! Honestly, I have some mixed feelings about this whole TESOL business (hard to imagine, I know, given my long history of decisiveness), if only because I'm still pretty scared of going back into the classroom. And okay, yeah, if we're being totally honest, I do continue to entertain occasional notions of pursuing a serious writing career. But. But! A gal has to make a living, people, and teaching 'em foreign youngin's how to speak English real good seems as nice a way to make a living as any. Right. Right?!? And anyway, it would be fun to take a class. Why not take a class in TESOL? Gimme a T! Gimme an E! Gimme an S! Gimme an O! Gimme an L! What's that spell?

You know what the hell it spells, bitches!

(Please--for the love of God--don't Google me, nice TESOL people)

In other news, we've begun looking at houses. Like, you know, to buy. As we see it, our timing is damn near perfect, now that The Girl's officially enrolled in kindergarten and the housing market is absolute shit. Do we not rock? Anyway, given my voyeuristic nature, I seriously love me an open house. What, after all, could be more entertaining than rootin' and riflin' through strangers' homes? You just never know what you might find, and some of what you find is so intriguing! Take this house we looked at on Sunday, for example. The whole place was decked out in red, white and blue, with cutesy Americana crap all over. Even the kids' rooms were all stars and stripes, except for the poster of a suggestively-posed Zac Efron (wait for it) . . . on the back of the boy's bedroom door! Fascinating! Fascinating, I tell you! And free! If I were smart--smart enough, say, to not go house-hunting at the worst conceivable time--I would shoot for a degree in sociology instead of a degree in TESOL. But how can I escape the call of TESOL, when the call of TESOL is so compelling? TESOL. TESOL!! Gimme a T! Gimme an E!

And here's where you say, "Gimme a break!"

Marie, Marie

Happy birthday, old friend. If I were any kind of chum, I would send you a hunk of that chocolate trifle that you love so much. But trifle doesn't travel so well in the mail, and--as you know--I'm not always the best at getting to the post office, anyway. In any event, I hope you have an awesome birthday. Thanks for being such a pal all these years.

XOXO

Thorny-Corny

So, anyway, last week was a bit of a difficult week. The Girl, she was driving us crazy, what with the inexplicable tantrums and such, and I was left, even on the most beautiful mornings, feeling kind of depleted. Last Friday, in the midst of yet another insane episode (this one over the towel she was offered at the pool), I couldn't help but wonder where I'd gone wrong, or what I'd done wrong, and as I stood there, wet and angry and horrified, I decided that I was, without question, doing a fairly shitty job of this parenting thing, because if I weren't doing a fairly shitty job of this parenting thing, why would she resist me at every opportunity and scream and stomp and metaphorically give me the finger, like, all the damn time? Surely it's I, I thought, and my multitude of anxieties and neuroses; surely it's I. And, sulking, I made a mental list of my many inadequacies, and I didn't talk to anyone all the way home. But then I thought of how much I love her, and how cool I think she is (at least when she's not giving me the metaphorical finger), and I decided that, shitty parent or no, I'm what she's got, and I have given my whole self to her and The Boy, and that's got to count for something. And, yeah, she is smart and funny and creative and friendly, which suggests, I suppose, that I've not ruined her completely. Plus, of course, there are the good moments, the even better-than-good moments, like when she snuggles up against me or pours juice for her brother or asks me about the origins of language. And, to our relief, she's been nothing but pleasant this week. Very pleasant. So pleasant that I'm back to feeling sick about the imminent start of kindergarten. Man, man, MAN, am I gonna miss her. One more word and I'm going to cry.

Think she could be picking up on my apprehensions about kindergarten?

Shut up. I don't want to know.

Mirror, Mirror

Cole asked me to reveal some crap about myself. And because I am nothing if not dutiful, here come the secrets:

• Least favorite condiment: Mayonnaise
• Where I was this time ten years ago: Unemployed in San Francisco
• Favorite thing to do as a kid: Pace the house while making up stories and twisting ribbon around my index finger
• Name that Damian Jackson, the kid who later went on to point a gun at my 12th grade boyfriend's head, called me in fifth grade: Porky
• First poet to knock my fuckin' socks off: Margaret Atwood
• Sixty-third most embarrassing moment: Kicking over my piss cup during a closely supervised pre-employment urine test at Baltimore City Schools headquarters
• Punchline to my favorite childhood joke: A fifty-foot cock that wants to reach out and touch somebody
• What I accidentally dropped from the Eiffel Tower (and then--amazingly--found in the sand below): A dangly glass earring

Cole told me to write eight things, so I wrote eight things. If I were a rule-breaker, as she is, I would have written nine things, but I'm not a rule-breaker, so . . . .

Yeah, I know--nine fucking things. Nine more than you wanted, right?

Right?

Ten July

Hot. The red, possibly toxic train goes 'round and 'round the track. The recycling truck idles, crushing birthday cards and magazines. The Boy looks up with big eyes.

My neighbor had a tumor. Not a cancerous tumor, and now it is out, but still I can see that he's scared. The sun, relentless and orange. Epileptic sprinkler. Low fireflies.

On the desk: yellow highlighter; microphone; train track; girl's panties; 1999 Baltimore City Public School System photo ID; lobster claw; Fargo snowglobe, with Frances McDormand figure surveying bloody corpse on bloody snow.

Breakfast. O's and melon. Crumbs and spill. The long, golden yawn of morning.

The Busters of Walbrook

Backing out, I sideswipe the neighbor's fence. I spill the milk, I forget about work, I bicker with Thom about chicken.

There are no fireworks. Everyone says there'll be fireworks, and so we go out, looking for fireworks, only to find no fireworks.

The Girl falls asleep in the car.

The Girl says she wants the goggles. She asks me to buy her the goggles, so I buy her the goggles, and then she won't get in the goddamn pool. We go to swim lessons. "Come on, get in the pool," I say, but still she won't get in the goddamn pool. So we go home.

We sit in the house.

The Boy, with his broken-off toenail, keeps having tantrums and slamming doors. The Girl rolls her eyes. I roll my eyes. Finally, after about the 8,000th slam, I tie the doorknob to the bookcase. The Boy stomps his feet; The Boy throws a fit; But no longer is he able to slam the door.

We sit. We eat. I pile some toy trucks in our only closet.

We go to the playground and it rains. A lot. We swing in the rain. We slide in the rain.

I pick a zucchini. Another zucchini.

The Boy takes a nap. The Girl plays picnic.

At work, the nice new girl with the floral flip-flops writes about the perseverance of George W. Bush. She compares him to Adam Sandler.

Everyone's asleep and the moon is orange.

Good night. Good night. Good night.

The Third of July

I wake up to Kansas, to Joe out on the dusty balcony, looking out at all the grass. It's July 3 and Thom is still sleeping. The cats, shedding and traumatized, hide under one of the beds. Next door, somebody showers: a rough towel, too-white and damp already, hangs on the back of the toilet. Today will be a long day, but it's all right. In a minute I'll get out of bed, maybe eat some cereal with the milk from the cooler, maybe check a map or zip up a suitcase. Thom and I will start out in the truck together, leaving Joe with the car, and later, maybe in Missouri, I'll get the car to myself, and I'll think about what to do with the rest of my life. Last night, at the depressing Pizza Hut, listening to the Stetsons order Pepsi and pepperoni, I felt lost, felt the dread of winter and job searches and Kansas, felt the cramp of indecision, felt myself floundering, again. Just the day before, in the sharp yellow of Utah, everything seemed possible--three-quarters of the country, including the Rockies, lay before me, and I sparked with dreams and plans and ambition. But here there is Kansas, and Kansas changes everything. Not east, not west, Kansas is just a rectangular portal. A swimming pool without water. A waiting room. Tomorrow I'll be home, wherever that is, back in the house where I was raised. I call my mother from the motel phone and tell her about the wonders of Kansas--the wide fields, the bright stars, the Pizza Hut. She's excited, because tomorrow we'll be together, for the first time in almost seven months. My mother: almost the sole reason I've left San Francisco, and my best friend in the entire world. She wants to know when we'll be home tomorrow, if we'll make it in time for the fireworks. I look around at the unzipped suitcase, at the cats clinging to the bottom of the mattress, at Thom and Joe and the endless grass and say, "yeah, definitely," even though, in truth, I don't really remember what fireworks are.