Right Now

 

{Sharing} my desk with Hadley. She’s currently doing research for her Science Fair project next month.  She’s doing her project on lightening. As in thunder and lightening, “and Mama? Can I like, make lightening for my project?” I told her to ask her Dad. Hadley then told me that she is also planning on participating on the Talent Show her school is putting on.  “I’ll be singing ‘Let it Go.'” I told her that no, she wasn’t going to be singing in the talent show.  “Why, Mama?”  I told her for many reasons, but one of them was that every girl in her school will probably be singing “Let it Go.”  Hadley said this was not the truth.  That in fact, one of her classmates is singing a song about a heart attack.

{Looking forward to} the weekend.  It’ll be a fun one, folks. We’ve got the Cougar Dash, we’ve got the Listen to Your Mother show, and my niece Mabel Day will be making her DC debut. I cannot wait to see her and I’m hoping her parents will allow me to take her on stage with me.  She’ll be a great accessory to the essay I’m reading.

{Reading} Barbara Kingsolver’s Small Wonder.  She started writing it on September 12, 2001 and realized that writing about small things was a way to look at and sort of dig her way out of grief. One of the things she finds out is this: “God is frightful, God is great – you pick. I choose this: God is in the details, the completely unnecessary miracles sometimes tossed up as stars to guide us.”  I read these words and thought that every essay I’ve written in the last two years has to do with these words. I’m not writing about how He’s always protected and guided me, or about doing His will. I’m writing about the unnecessary stuff: the buzz of cicadas, the rush of the Chicago el that lulled me to sleep every night for 18 years, the callous I get at the beginning of each Spring (ok, fine, the first warm day in February) that allows me to wear flip flops every day until October, the grit from the gymnasium floor that I felt underneath my fingers moments before I performed at half-time, the moment I learned what a good hem is, the heat from the tar of my cousin Tara’s driveway as we skateboarded down it, all of these unnecessary stars are what I hope sparkle in my stories. But no lesson. No moral. Just unnecessary stars.

Six Years Ago: Hadley at a year and a half. There’s a picture at the end of Hadley and her little buddy in the swings at a park nearby. Two nights ago, the two of them created surveys of which bird and sea creature everyone at the table liked best while they waited for their dinner at Dogfish Alehouse. Old friends, these two.

Five Years Ago: A picture of Hadley and Harper at the same age in the same outfit. Can you tell the difference? Also, some lessons learned at a “Mommy and Me” outing.  Good gracious I’m so glad I don’t have to go to those anymore. New moms – you don’t have to go to them if you don’t want to. I promise you your kids will not end up in therapy figuring out that all their problems are due to the fact that you did not take them to “Mommy and Me” events.

Four Years Ago: Hadley got to go to “Take Your Kid To Work Day,” with Jesse.  I’m glad I wrote about it because this year Hadley and Harper got jipped.  Jesse went to the Senate to talk about hurricanes (I think his talk was titled, “Hurricanes: They’re For Real So Give Me Money To Research Them So My Wife Can Buy Flip Flops.”) while I took the girls to work with me. Which means the girls got to watch me scrub the toilets. I’m just kidding. I don’t scrub the toilets.

Three Years Ago:  You know, just another trip to the White House.

Two Years Ago: An apologetics on writing about my children.

One Year Ago: A baseball story.