thirteen

Dear Tolliver,

You stopped wearing your hat last week. And by "your hat" I mean at least the third, maybe fourth, iteration of the same camo MedFlight style, each one worn till it was stinky and frayed. I'm still not sure what this change signifies, but I did notice it coincides with year thirteen.

I love the way you move around the kitchen, cracking eggs and learning to measure ingredients with your heart, the way you brush past in a cloud of cologne and competence, on a collision course with adolescence.

If you are not swinging bats or casting lines, you are climbing - why use just two limbs to walk when four allow you to ascend? You move in age appropriate yet utterly shuddersome ways, to the tops of trees and, in Ireland, up the side of a church. You make me feel like Geppetto, like I somehow created a puppet come alive to do things I could never do, never dreamed of doing. It isn't easy for me to watch you test the limits of comfort, but it does usually feel like the right way to love.

You still read a lot of Garfield and Ariol and Nathan Hale, but you are also working your way through A Sorrow in Our Heart, a substantial work, fomented for decades in the compost of humanity, and I have no doubt you are folding Ekert's frontiersman wisdom into your own life.

You apply a lovely openness to new things, choosing most often not to decide whether it's for you until you've sampled it - British mushy peas, the wheeled luge, memoirs. You are learning to shake the belief that if you're not doing something perfectly right from the beginning, you're not worthy of doing it at all. I'm pretty sure Shakespeare and Babe Ruth worked through plenty of self doubt. 

One similarity between us may be our taste in home decor. The brass whale you said would look nice on the new shelves is exactly my style, understated and easy to dust, just the right shade of metal to go with the matte finishes, different from the plush cats and Black Keys posters your brothers gravitate toward. I hope you'll always shop with me.

There's something in your name I hadn't noticed until recently, Tolliver, that sounds like "to live." Not only do you measure up to that, you help me rescue dormant parts of myself. Your name reminds me of my good fortune, in lots of ways. When I say it aloud it feels like a tiny prayer. Actually, it may often be, because see above re CLIMBING.

This is the first time in years you have not asked to skip school for your birthday. You did ask for an elaborate meal scheme - chicken from Canes, waffle fries from Chik-fil-A and mac n cheese from Hot Chicken Takeover. This combination may be a misuse of time but it's also one I'm definitely going to make for you.

It is easy to envision you as a young adult, wrangling a classroom full of small children or decorating your first apartment. I try not to imagine too far ahead, you with a mustache or a mat of chest hair, managing fly fishing expeditions in Idaho. 

What I know for certain about you at this complex time could fit on the head of a pin.

What I hope you know is how lucky I feel, how loved you are.

xoxo Mom

casting a wish

It feels like a very hectic, very shaky time to be a human. 

I try not to be distracted by the massive peril that exists beyond the tepid nonproblems.

But if one bad apple spoils the barrel, what can happen with one rotten orange?

The boys take turns zooming past on a tiny bicycle tricked out with super high handlebars and, for special effects, a crushed plastic water bottle between the spokes. 

Could they be like some kind of fierce emissaries of the future?

When the world withdraws its mercy, I know to look for little things:

We are still cutting zinnias in rainbow arrays for the counter.

There are yarn projects and potholder loom loops all over the place.

Audition sheet music and monologues remain taped up by toothbrushes.

Gauze and goose feathers for fly hooks are scattered evidence of new skills.

There is music in every direction.

Life at home is strangely content. 

A shallow reservoir of magnanimity opens when I look at my children.

The boys are big-hearted and brave and so very wise.

Can raising good kids be a public service?

This is me not so much asking a question as casting a wish.

TRAP

Tuck played leading man Ephrain Salas, a kind and loyal firefighter, in the GHHS fall play TRAP by Stephen Gregg.

And he's already preparing an audition for the spring musical, The Wizard of Oz.

It's a joy and a dream come true to see him on stage!

one stop along the way

I can't not say anything.

I wish I could share the written equivalent of a warm cup of soup, a hug in the form of a sentence.

I do not have those words.

I feel like my brain is suddenly made of microplastics. 

It is fascinating (and alarming) to realize what I consider a threat, others call salvation. 

But I keep coming back to the idea that the one thing we must all share is the longing for a better world. Do our definitions of better match? How can guns have more rights than girls?

Andy left the boys a note before he headed to an early meeting yesterday, more an outstretched hand than a pointing finger. A reminder that the only thing we can control is our reaction, and our direction forward.

Today is one stop along the way.

Hank asked if America will still be a thing to be president of when he's older.

We tell the boys that nothing is beyond the reach of conversation.

But where do we even start on the topic, our country set to be "stewarded by a malevolent sociopath who despises empathy and shuns the law." 

Our kids deserve so much more than the mess they've inherited. 

I know that lamentations will not move me forward. I know how to turn around a day gone wrong, by baking or singing or touching grass, by making something or helping someone, by reading books and moving my body.

Hank did the math, and three hundred sixty five times four feels like a lot of days.

Pavlovitz

costumes and candy

plus carving pumpkins and crisp air!