It is hard to give my kids my undivided attention. Amidst the work commitments and the school assignments and the homework (oh, god, I still hate homework) and listening to the torturous learning to read (which he has to subject us to for 20 minutes every single freaking night) and bedtime (can I please still have a bedtime? Just make me turn everything off and be D.O.N.E.) and the chores and laundry and the tomatoes that are getting soft waiting to be made into sauce . . . . 

But sometimes, they DEMAND my undivided attention, because they need it, as much as I need them. And, sometimes, they make me wonder how much else I'm missing. 

Husband and I were having an intense conversation about something that had a deadline, something we needed to decide upon RIGHT NOW, at dinner while the littles entertained each other with their banter, or maybe they were squishing banana between their toes.

I became vaguely aware of Middle Child saying, "MOM!" I attempted to "listen" by turning my body towards him while still facing and talking with Husband. 

"Mom. MOM. MOM! Mom mom mom mom-mom-mom-momomomomomomomom!"

"WHAT?!? Jimminy Christmas, is someone on fire? Can you wait TWO minutes?"

"NO! I have an important question." 

This is my child who is so easygoing, that if he doesn't get milk after asking for it once, he will get a chair, cup, and towel, open the fridge, pour his milk, sloshing a little, put the milk away and clean up his mess before I realize what is happening, and he isn't mad. He is just that resourceful. And I know I only have him for a little while, because the world is his oyster, and he will resource his way right into whatever he wants regardless of whether or not I am holding his hand. I've actually asked him, out loud, if he will come visit me when he is grown up, because I know already that he won't need me. 

So, naturally, he had my undivided attention now, eye to eye. "What."

His eyes are wide, and serious. 

"Do alligators ever burp?"

*blink*

What else am I missing?!? 

The 'Goldbug' Melancholy

Richard Scarry books are among my most treasured and favorite EVER. The drawings, the way the typeset on the page is obviously done in a time when typewriters were part of the creative process, the randomness of the characters and stories.

I bought one in Taos at my favorite bookstore, Moby Dickens, which is right off of the plaza on Bent Street, across and down the road from the store that hangs bells made from retired buoys. Ring one next time you're there, and I dare you to keep your soul inside you.

I also have one that was given to me as a toddler by my uncle Rick. Somehow it's still intact and not torn, and only has three pages with crayon additions to the original print.

Almost every night, I reach for one of these books, and try to subliminally make my kids choose it for bedtime story. But they usually don't, so I end up looking for Goldbug in 'Cars & Trucks & Things That Go' by myself.

I realize that the books I love are probably not the ones my parents loved, and probably not the ones they wanted me to love the most. But there are still a few that I know my parents loved and that I love just as much, like Maurice Sendak's 'A Hole is to Dig'. I realize that many of the memories that are special to me are not (probably) the ones that my parents would've picked for me to keep, and the ones they would've picked are mere blips on the radar of memory if they exist at all. 

It's hard to help my kids learn how to live, without living vicariously through them. It's hard to let them make their own memories and not push my wishes for memories on them. 

Music, though . . . . somehow that's more enduring.

We went to a wedding in May and the opening song was one that my Grandad used to sing, so I was crying before the first bridesmaid even set foot in the chapel. And it got better, in that every single song was one I know by heart because someone special sang it to me at some point. I was glad I had tissue stuffed in my bra, because I needed one from both sides. 

So, that night, I sang my kids to sleep. I sang all the songs I could remember and the ones that were most special to me. I ended with the Lords Prayer, because I heard it again at the wedding and had forgotten it. I can't remember all the words in the right order when I say it, which might automatically demote me from being a preacher's daughter. But sing it, and I can even recall it in the King James Version. 

I don't know if my kids will remember Goldbug, but I hope they remember that song.

The first attempt at poetry:

Triumph

It's a difficult marriage, between tragedy and fate

and Hope is conceived in a womb of despair

She grows secretly, cloaked in smothering darkness

until the light begins to beat

so gentle it might be mistaken for a simple shift in the water's weight

and her soul becomes mercy

so the stars adopt her

and whisper the wisdom of the ancient

and the love of the bosom who never held her.

The angels watch her grow, careful to balance sage against the coarse edges,

keeping her just ragged enough to deny power any chord in her harmony

and even Time himself awaits his turn to touch her face and bows tenderly to her grace

and, thus, her pull is matched only by the moon and its waves.