Just Listening...

Now here's something interesting.

(And, well, depressing if you happen to be me.)

So I'm cleaning up the "dashboard" of this blog (while also working, of course) on a Friday afternoon, and I find I have ALL these random past posts -- mostly written but never shared for want of a little editing.

This post, for instance, is coming off the shelf right now, because it's a funny one. I vividly remember the first exchange below, and it makes me laugh still today.

...But it's also depressing as it was written 2 calendar years ago, and WHY have I not posted it before?! WHERE are the other amusing memories I've never committed to written space, anywhere, over the past 18 months? (I didn't even remember the 2nd exchange at first... and even after the "oh, yeah!" moment, the edges are a little hazy.) So what am I losing, all the time, every day, in not journaling/ scribbling/ filing away everyday bits of our lives with young kids?

I HAVE to get back into this.

Because observation is what I'll have to offer my boys later. And it will probably matter more than most of the other things I try so hard to offer up now and can't always achieve. (Adventure! Quality family time! Real meals with hot food and side dishes!)

My gut tells me I gotta shift into "trained writer" gear, for real, because only I to give my children what's genuinely me -- all the little things that strike me as significant enough to chronicle.

Whether their truths or only mine, these moments are building the story of our lives. And, like all stories, they help make us. One day, I hope they help make us feel loved and whole.

So, Owen, babe: You're not in this one only 'cause you didn't yet have the words in 2008. Plus, you had just started going to Growing Stick, so Daddy picked you up after school while Miles was the only boy in my car each afternoon. Now, you possess A LOT of language. You fill our backseats with it. And you bend it to you amazing, upbeat, zealous little will. :) I'm posting this now -- and maybe lots more of Miles talk soon --but I promise I will keep remembering your early days until I write down a skyfull of Backseat Stories, all your own. xoxo...


Nov. 2008 -- Backseat conversation is one of my all-time favorite parts of motherhood. I love the things Miles throws at me as we ride around, him strapped securely in his quadrant of the car, me in mine. Maybe it's because we're just voices in these moments -- thoughts in the other's head more than a physical presence in each other's space -- that we have such good "talks."

Well, that and the fact that he's such a deep thinker.

First grade Miles is prone to some very SERIOUS pronouncements. He just says amusing, insightful, kooky things in the most solemn way.

A recent example...
M: "Have you ever noticed that we have a castle in Tyler? Welllll... it's kind of a castle, or maybe a museum.

Me: "Hmm... Not really...."

M: "It's that building right over there with the gate shut. Was it a castle before they closed it up?

(Let the record show the boy pointing to the old Brass Lion on South Broadway.)

Me: "Well, actually, it was a jewelry store."

M: "Then I'm not surprised it's closed, because it looks pretty scary. What kinda women would buy jewelry from a scary castle? (Then, under his breath), they should have made it like a museum. Women like museums!"


Oh, and here's another gem from the backseat...

M: "Mom! Mommie! Did you know.... (irritatingly long pause) ... that sometimes, when I drink a lot of a certain drink -- well, actually, it has to be a soda drink... (a-n-o-t-h-e-r t-e-d-i-o-u-s p-a-u-s-e) so, when I drink a lot of one soda at a time, and then if sometimes if I have to burp afterwards, then my burp will almost always taste like soda. Isn't that weird? Have you ever heard of that?"

Yes, son, it's called the human condition. You are rife with it. And it makes you beautiful.

love,
the mama