7.

Dear little Miss M,

First of all, you are no longer that little. But you are still Miss M, and you will always be Miss M. When you were first born, I started calling you Miss M, or sometimes just "ma'm." You seemed like such an old soul in a tiny little body, and needed something far more formal than the name we'd given you.

Still does this, but in bigger PJs.

You were indignant and angry from the start. I remember every night you'd cry from 6 pm-8 pm. Every single night. Two hours straight. Angry, balled up fists in the air. Mad at only god knows what, for god knows what reason. And you hated sleep; you didn't want to miss a thing (you are still like this). The moment you took your first step, I felt a rush of relief - you were free, FREE! But also a deep sadness...the first step is the beginning of the end of babyhood...toddlerdom...childhood. It's been 7 years, and in another mere 9 you'll be driving. It goes so, so fast.  

You are a strong-willed, determined little girl. You like girly things like cheerleading, make up, nail polish, dancing, One Direction, Nick (and Joe) Jonas, sparkles, the color pink, Disney princesses, Disney's anti-princesses, and you'd really really like to go on a date with a boy except I can tell: you don't even know what that really means or entails. But you also like boy things like skateboards and scooters, Star Wars, soccer, Sunday night football (which you understand so much better than I do - thank your father, he's just made you cool with all the jocks), worms and roly poly bugs, all things gross, and fart jokes. 

Loves to party. With sparkles.

You are a becoming a mini-me, but with a lot of good balance from your dad's genetics. You are highly imaginative and in your own head a lot (me); yet you're a total social butterfly who can't say no to a good party (your dad). You love stories and music and creativity (me); yet you're analytical enough to be one of the best mathematicians in your class (your dad). You're disorganized (me), but you can clean like nobody's business when necessary (your dad). You're all emotions (me) but really logical (your dad) (emotions + logic = bless you, my darling...you got a looooong, crazy road ahead of you trying to marry those two character traits). You are stubborn (me) but not unreasonable (your dad). You have an illogical issue with shoes and clothes (that's all me...and you got nothing from your dad to counteract that, sorry).

Yesterday, I completely lost it with you. In public. I am sorry, sweet girl. When things like that happen, where afterwards I am filled with guilt and What-The-Heck-Is-WRONG-With-You-Amy?! thoughts, I always hope it becomes a memory that gets buried deep deep down in the recesses of your brain. And I'm sorry I've taught you cuss words. I'd honestly intended to wait until you were at least 10. (I'm sure by now you get it: mommy's got a temper, and now you know why you do, too.) 

....and/or she'll be running her own small country.

Sometimes, because you are such an old soul and also very tall for your age, I forget: you are only 6 (now 7), just a baby. And I am having a hard life, and so are you. You cry a lot and ask why daddy can't come over for a sandwich, and why we can't be together as a family anymore. You asked, for your birthday this year, if you and I could spend the night at daddy's house, and all three of us sleep in the same bed like we did a long time ago. You are sad when you're with daddy because you miss me and worry I'm lonely without you. You are sad when you're with me because you miss daddy and worry he's lonely without you. 

Your tender heart breaks mine a lot; I have tremendous amounts of guilt about what I did this summer. But I also did it because I deeply felt that, in the long run, it would be the very best thing for all three of us and I never ever do anything without weighing all the possible best/worst case scenarios and being prepared to accept any and all consequences that follow every choice I make. I feel like it's really important you know that...on the first birthday you've had not waking up in a house that has both me and daddy.

Cheerleader. For dolphins.

At night, you like me to make up stories for you in which you are rescued or whisked away by Harry Styles of One Direction until you giggle yourself silly. Then I draw pictures on your back and sing You Are My Sunshine or The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow or Somewhere Over the Rainbow until you fall asleep. And after you are asleep, I stare at your profile, and I can still see the little face from the ultrasound images 7 years ago. Isn't that amazing? From a side angle in the dark, you are still a mysterious part of me. I remember I couldn't believe you were actually inside of me. And even now, years later, I can still feel the surreal, freakish sensation of having your tiny feet swipe at my insides when you were finally big enough to make your presence known. I watch you sleep and think about how small you once were, how your entire body fit perfectly on my chest, and I remember how we'd defy all the What Not To Do parenting articles and risk it just to lie together, napping...me on the sofa, you on my chest. Really, it was the only way you could sleep. You have been sleeping on top of me ever since, often with a foot in my face.

But mostly I just look at your sweet sleeping self a lot of nights and think the same thing I thought when you were lying in the bassinet next to me in the hospital: I can't believe my body made you, and that you picked me to be your mommy. You are the happiest and saddest and most exciting and silliest and angriest and scariest and hardest and best thing I have ever done, and ever will do. 

My most favorite thing ever.

Happy 7th year on Earth, little Miss M. I'm so lucky I get to be YOUR mommy. You are my favorite, my most favorite little girl, on the WHOLE planet. There is no other little girl I love more than you, no other little girl I ever want to hug and kiss and fight and laugh and sing and cry and watch movies and dance and take nature hikes with. 

I hope you are growing up with more happy moments than sad (but I think some sadness is good for you, too - so you can appreciate the happy), and more than anything else that you know how tremendously loved you are. Every single night before you fall asleep, after I sing You Are My Sunshine to you, I say: "You are my very best blessing." I made a conscious choice when you were 2 hours old to do that, to make sure those are almost always the last words you hear before you fall asleep, no matter what kind of day you or I or we have had. It's the most important thing to me that you know you are a blessing, that you are worthy of love, that you are perfect just as you are...because one day you will encounter people who will make you question that, and doubt yourself. Which is why my biggest wish for you, every day, is that as you grow up you'll encounter far more of the OTHER kind of people, the ones who will see who you really are and love even the darkest parts of you.

I send prayers to the Universe, on a consistent basis, that you are one day in a home of your very own, one that you'll fill up with things that bring you peace and happiness and inspire moments of creative abandon full of wild recklessness. I write daily requests to Whatever is listening, that you'll find something to do with your life that brings you joy and makes you feel good, and that you'll be surrounded with people who help you and support you through the gloomiest bits while bringing your life a little weirdness, a lot of extraordinary, and great gigantic gobs of blessings and love. 

You are the all the very best parts of me and your daddy wrapped up in one beautiful place, in one growing and magnificently magical child, and more than that, you are my very best blessing of all. I love you, sweet girl. Happy birthday. 

Love,
Mommy
October 30, 2015

Miss M likes zombie eyes.

My very best blessing. Thank you, Universe.

an abyss of memories (aka: wherein i overshare)

Source: PM-Forever Arts, deviantart.com

postscript edit: a friend sent me a link to a wiki on melancholia. according that, i am not depressed. what i am is longing. i have a bittersweet longing. and according to what i was compelled to write about today, that bittersweet longing is for...my dad. and a dead deer. (which officially makes me the strangest person i know.)

it's raining today. i'm adulting about 50% better than i have been. meaning, i am washing towels and clothes right now, my kitchen and bathroom are clean and my bed has been made. but i'm avoiding looking at my bank account because, though i'm sure i have plenty of money to pay the bills i need to pay, it will mean miss m and i will probably be eating rice-a-roni till i get paid at the end of the week because we went out for dinner too many times in august instead of me cooking (please nobody tell c...it'll be one more example of how i'm not doing It right). 

but mostly: it's raining today, and rain brings out all the melancholy i can usually push far to the back of me. lately i'm like this: i can be happy happy joy joy (sunny days) everything's awesome! omg i LOVE life! *cue broadway dance number here...WITH tap dancing* and then suddenly the next day is a grey, cold, rainy day and i am plunged back into depths of melancholy and bleh, singing sad and mournful songs and dressing all in black. yes, even black lipstick. total goth. 

(what i'm most worried about right now: i heard - or maybe read somewhere - that october in georgia is going to be a DOOZY in terms of number of gloomy, rainy days. you guys! if this is true...how the holy hell in halloween am i going to get through october???? jesus god, i'm going to have to invest in a TON of black mourning clothes. maybe even just a full burqa or something. ululating included.) 

did i ever tell you my maternal grandmother had electric shock treatments? she had at least a couple of nervous breakdowns back in the 50s before we really knew about talk therapy and careful medication, and they stuck her in a hospital and gave her electric shock treatments. probably talk therapy and careful medication would have been better for her - she was reaching out for help, and the shock treatments had the opposite affect on her. they made her very quiet and sad and negative and then she wanted to take a lot of naps whenever stressed out. electric shock treatment seems to be for people who are already very quiet and sad and negative and want to take a lot of naps whenever stressed out; shocks them out of that. but if you're literally, you know, violently screaming for help, then maybe you need some calming medication and a thoughtful, wise ear to talk into instead...not brain trauma. but i don't know. i'm not a mental health professional. (you're welcome, society.)

and did i ever tell you that my dad also struggled with issues of melancholy? from what i've been told, his seemed far worse than mine. he struggled with alcohol dependence, which didn't help. i joke a lot, here and elsewhere, about drinking wine and margaritas and beer and etc, but i'm actually very cognizant of how much alcohol goes into me, why and when, and that's because of my dad. and i will be very forthright and tell you i'm pretty certain i do abuse alcohol on certain days, in certain situations, and under certain circumstances. and i will say that i am aware that when stressed and frustrated and/or angry and/or sad, alcohol is actually not the first thing you should reach out to. hug your kid. run on a treadmill. buy a new wardrobe. write it out. lie quietly and watch a crapload of indie films on netflix. eat an entire quart of salted caramel gelato and a whole chocolate cake by yourself while watching a crapload of indie films on netflix. (i do all of those when i don't think a glass of wine would fix my problem. any other ideas?) 

so my dad's thing was beer. my dad drank an awful lot of beer, and he was not that concerned with quality (pabst blue ribbon and budweiser were his go to's). and he struggled with depression. possibly because alcohol is a depressant and alcohol always makes depression worse, so if you're sad and you start to drink then it just makes your sad even sadder...is my theory. which is why, on days like today, i absolutely avoid it and just eat an entire batch of brownies instead. (i'm more of a celebratory social occasion and a stress drinker, actually.) 

and also we had guns. because my dad grew up in the pocono mountains of pennsylvania and they do two things for fun up there: (1) drink beer and (2) shoot bambi (and thumper and cute little flower and probably sweet friend owl, too). i still remember, when i was 4, my dad's 12-point buck kill (or whatever number...they assign them numbers, like penis inches). my grandfather, dad, and uncle hung it upside down in the garage, then split open its guts which spilled out from its soft, white tummy onto newspapers laid below it. and i remember standing in the door that led from my grandparents' living room into the garage, just staring at this gentle deer, blood and guts everywhere, completely fascinated and horrified all at once. later, they'd cut the head off that deer, send it to a taxidermist, and give it to my dad since it was his kill, and sometimes i'd sit on the floor with it, stroking its still-silky fur, looking into its now-glass eyes, and wondering about what its life had been like before my father and his dad and brother had stopped it. 

for years after, the deer head would move around the country with us, and in each new house my dad would attempt to hang it proudly above the fireplace in the new living room and my mom would give him a cold stare and it would end up in a guest bedroom or an office or the garage. but i can still smell my grandparents' garage when it hung from the ceiling, and i remember how cold it was that afternoon and i could see my breath in the air as i stood watching the deer from the doorway, and i could smell the wild still on its body, and i could smell its blood. that dead deer is such a huge childhood memory for me; it's one of my most vivid, actually. in fact, right now, i'm smelling those smells as i'm typing this. i'm pretty certain mental health professionals call that Trauma. 

at any rate, i have no idea why i'm not a vegetarian now. i do think about going lacto-ovo at least, and one day complete vegan. throughout college i didn't eat animal meat, but i also didn't get enough protein in general and i think i got anemia or something. so later, i went back to animal flesh but only chickens, fish, and pigs. because fish, i reasoned, don't have feelings and chickens have weird feet. and pigs because...bacon. but NO COWS. because cows have gentle eyes. and to this day i refuse to eat a baby animal. animals are our FRIENDS. stop shooting them. and NO, ted nugent, i do NOT actually care about deer being like forest rats. go read The Yearling and get over yourself.

where was i? right...alcohol, beer, depression, guns. so i grew up with guns. mostly rifles, stored in a gun cabinet with a glass door on it that stood in a hallway. and i remember my dad would sometimes take the guns out to clean them, and i don't know if it's because i've always had a really healthy sense of self-preservation and/or the memory of what can happen to a body (deer or human) from one of those guns' bullets, but the guns terrified me. and my dad terrified me as well - he'd talk to my brother and me about what he was doing as he cleaned them, and he'd describe in great detail the atrocities that can happen to children who decide to touch instruments such as these. and so i've never had a desire to shoot a gun. i have some friends who are having love affairs with them, and i think they're absolutely nuts. guns are bad news. unless you're a soldier or a cop or you live 500 miles from a grocery store and so you HAVE to shoot your own meat, why have them? 

and they can put dangerous ideas in one's head.

my dad had a moment - several moments, actually - when he wasn't doing well at Life. he was drinking way too much, and he was struggling at work. alcohol changed my dad's personality a bit; mainly, it kind of eliminated his social filter, and his superiors at work were growing agitated with him because he was a bit too open with them about their jackassery. if i've learned nothing else from my father's struggles, i've learned that jackasses don't really like to be told they are jackasses, even if it will help them stop being jackasses and become more successful. you can lead a jackass to water, but you cannot make him (or her) drink.

and he'd either been already laid off or was about to be. and he was struggling. and one day, my mom caught him in their bathroom sitting on the edge of the tub holding one of his pistols. she asked what he was doing, and he said just cleaning it, got up and put it back wherever he kept it. but after he walked out, my mom found two bullets in the bathroom sink. and no gun cleaning supplies anywhere.

i think my dad was...pondering, is what i'm saying. my father had demons; we all do. it's why i don't judge others for their poor choices. life is tricky, and some days you do think about sitting on the edge of a tub, considering options. it's what you do next that counts, and my dad was far too responsible to choose the wrong option. but that story lets me know how big his struggles really were, and it makes me wish i'd given him more hugs that lasted a really long time. 

things you learn as you age; when my dad was alive i was just a self-centered girl who didn't really get how big and overwhelming life can become.

i know somebody - probably my mom - is going to read this blog entry and try to commit me to a hospital for observation or something. so let me be clear: i am NOT writing this to suggest I'M going to go sit on a tub holding a pistol in my hands, pondering. i have far too much schoolwork to do still, too many hands to hold, a class from heaven this year to enjoy, and miss m is my entire world and i want to see her win her Golden Globe and/or Oscar one day because every day i'm more and more certain her dramatic nature is leading her down that very path. what i'm saying is: i am melancholy by nature, that i think it may be hereditary, and because of the big life change i made this summer, that melancholy has taken over a bit lately and i've noticed. if you read here regularly, i'm sure you have as well. but i've noticed to the point where i now think i want to go talk to somebody about it. i don't expect every day to be rainbows and unicorns and splashing dolphins in the sunlight zone, but i would like to stay out of the abyss permanently...maybe just hang in the twilight zone now and then, an occasional little dip down into the midnight zone during rainy octobers. but the abyss is bad. very, very bad. 

or! i could just bake some chocolate chip cookies and down them with a few margaritas after buying a couple of new outfits and watching a few indie films. i don't know.

also, i'm sorry for not using capitals at the beginning of my sentences or consistently...the shift key was just a bit too much for me today. i'm anti-shift key right now.

perils of memoir.

Before I begin, may I do a quick, do-gooder, feel-good plug? My friend Angie is desperately trying to raise money to send a sweet, handsome, good mannered young man to a private school. He's being bullied at his current school, and he has a life story that'll break your heart if you knew all the details. You may not have the money to donate, but if you could, that would be fantabulous. If you can't, would you consider sharing this link with people you know, or people you know who might be able to donate? You'll earn 10,000 good Karma points, I promise.

Okay, now on to my thoughts about perils of memoir:

Sooo...you know how, a few days ago, I wrote a piece here about my experience of going to Presbyterian Sunday school? And you know how, a few days ago, in the piece I wrote about Presbyterian Sunday school, I sort of threw my own mother under the bus for making me go to Presbyterian Sunday school? Yes. Well, here is why we don't write about our parents until AFTER they are dead:

guilty.com

Obviously, my memory is faulty. In my mother's defense, I DO remember her teaching a Sunday school class at this church. And I remember it because she taught her students either about Passover or Moses taking his people out Egypt or something, and I remember that because my mother (the original hands-on teacher) baked unleavened bread at home so the children could taste the same kind of food God's People wandering the desert might have eaten. And I remember the unleavened bread because it. was. gross. (and possibly gluten-free; god bless you gluten-free people, I really don't know how you do it).

In MY defense, I would like to say: I do remember my mom being at home at least once or twice and my dad dropping my brother and me off, curbside, and then peeling away into a Sunday sunrise for 45 minutes to an hour. It's times like these I wish my dad were here still, so we could take this matter to family court. Because I do remember this happening. But okay okay, mom, I do admit: I probably used a bit of too much artistic license when I made grossly overstated claims that it happened every single Sunday. I mean, obviously, my mom was dropping us off and peeling off into her Sunday school classroom.

My teacher DID have dark, bouffant hair, and the room was dark wood-paneled. And the teacher was the opposite of happy with me when she uncovered my Sunday school truancy. And the whole bathroom bit with the old lady was an actual, true thing that really, really happened. (Freakin' old ladies in bathrooms, honestly.)

I also feel like I need to say, in my mom's defense and because I know she's probably worried about it, I do not shirk organized religion today because of Presbyterian Sunday school or anything my mom did. I shirk organized religion today simply because it doesn't work for me, who I am right now or where I'm at. If I can find an organized religion that teaches love, goodwill to all humanity, and doesn't think it has aaaaallll the answers and is the foremost final and only correct version of the Divine Infinity; if I can find an organized religion that doesn't have sects of followers that are nuttier than a jar of peanut butter; and if I can find an organized religion that doesn't try to guilt trip its followers into constantly giving them a huge chunk of whatever little money they earn at whatever jobs they do, then I will concede. I will join the this organized religion, and I will be happy and shut up about it.

THAT'S why I don't do organized religion--I have a healthy sense of Something Bigger than me out there (which I call God for convenience's sake...Mom! Success!), but I think the peaceful religions are still pretty judge-y and the not-so peaceful ones, well. I mean helloooo: ISIS. That's what happens when you don't have all your shit together and under control, Organized Religion.

But getting back to my original point: herein lies the peril of memoir. Memories are faulty, and sometimes the actual event may need a little storytelling magic to make it more fun for a reader. But then feelings can get hurt, and I think I hurt my mom's, and I didn't intend for that to happen. I'm sorry, and I love you, Mom.

Wait--can I tell everyone how fabulous my mom is? Let me tell you a story about how deep my mother's love runs:

So I had this dog growing up. Her name was Sassy. Sassy was my childhood companion, my doggy best friend, and I grieve her passing to this day. I was also wholly responsible for her existence on the planet, because we owned her mother, a temperamental Lhasa Apso named Muffin who peed on EVERYthing. Muffin went into heat (I guess because, maybe, back in the 70's spaying or neutering your animals wasn't a thing? My parents made sure her daughter, Sassy, who we kept, got spayed and spayed GOOD) and a stray French poodle we called Pierre knocked her up. I was told NOT to let Muffin out of the house when Pierre was sniffing around, but it was not explained why to me. Thus, being a curious 8 year old, I did it anyway...this is how I continue to get into all of my scrapes and misfortunes at 43, by the way: explain it to me, or I'm doing it anyway.

At any rate, X weeks later, voila! Puppies. Sassy was the runt of the litter and the feistiest, so we gave Muffin away to some gay hairdressers (who left her alone and she promptly peed all over their designer couch) and kept Sassy.

One day, years and years later, Sassy got old. Her eyes had cataracts. She was tired all the time. Her memory was shot--she'd go outside, forget to pee/poop, and come inside and do it. She was a mess, and felt icky, and it was clearly time for someone to make a hard decision. (Years later, I'd have my own animal, a cat named Tasha, who would be in the same predicament, and I would be unable to make this hard decision...and so God would make it for me, and when God makes decisions like this for you, let me just say: God can be a bit of dick about it. And that's only because I was such a dick not to make the hard decision and do the right thing for Tasha...sort of the Universe's hands-on teaching method: "Don't do this again, okay? This hurts. She's hurting, and so now you are, too." That kind of thing.)

I couldn't bear to let Sassy go, I didn't want to say good-bye. Good-byes are very very hard for me; they always have been, they always will be.

We were traveling to see family that Christmas so my mom told me we were putting Sassy in a boarding kennel as always and to come say good-bye to her. I'd never been asked to say good-bye any of the other times we'd put her in a kennel while we went on vacation, so I was suspicious. I said good-bye and that was that.

Here's where my mother's sacrifice and love comes out: coming home, my mom knew what would happen. The Truth would be revealed. However, while at our relatives' house, she got sick with the flu. I mean SICK. Vomiting, diarrhea, temperature...all of it. My mom, who has an incredibly low pain threshold, came home anyway, even though she was begged to stay and fly back when she felt better. It was bad weather, and our flight got delayed by hours. My mom laid in an airport, sick beyond belief, and then flew home in misery because she didn't want me to find out about what had actually happened to my beloved friend, my childhood companion, without her being able to comfort me and explain it.

So that's my mom. Sunday school sleeper inner (in my head), unleavened breads/hands-on teacher, secret keeper (not really--she's as bad at that as I am), self-sacrificer. Who thinks I should go to church on Sundays. And will write guilt-trip inducing corrections on your birthday card if you cross her. But I also got my incredibly ironic and macabre sense of humor from her, and so thanks mom!

Be careful when penning memoir, Internet. There are WAY too many fact checkers out there. And they will put it on a home-made Hallmark card, they will put it right there, don't you make them!