Eight Years Old Today

What you should know about my extraordinary kid:

He knows when you are lying.

He will kick you in the balls if you try to do anything inappropriate with him like steal him.

He is feisty.

He's a warrior dude.

He will not eat your food. Especially pizza, pasta, or rice.

He hates leaving one place to get to another.

He's tenacious.

He's a ball of fire streaming through the world.

He hates George Bush.

He loves sugar.

He thinks about things on a molecular level.

He believes his belongings have feelings.

He doesn't believe in God.

But he does believe in Santa. (a surprise to me)

He's smart as a whip but doesn't think so.

He wants to have lots of friends.

He's not always easy to be friends with.

The nicknames his parents have used on him: Little Napoleon, The General, The Little Dictator, Bug, Sweetie, Funny Monkey, Lieberschleben.

He will not go quietly.

He doesn't like movie theaters because of all the people in the dark.

He has a stunning vocabulary.

When he really laughs the crust of the earth swallows some bugs.

Today my child is eight years old. A visitor to this blog recently wondered if Max was an "accidental" pregnancy. Ever since I've been wondering how many of you out there also thought this? This answer is no. It took me seven years to decide to have a baby and we planned when we would start trying, what we would do if we couldn't conceive, and we were fortunate enough to not have to wait long.

I don't think I love being a mother in general, but I can honestly say I love being Max's mother specifically. I don't think anyone else could handle parenting him. Most of the time I can't either. Being a parent has exhausted me beyond belief. Every day I'm amazed I get to the end of the day. Since having Max I have often wondered why I thought I could do this whole parenting thing when clearly I can't. But then I look at my kid and I realize something important:

I had to be a mother so that I could mother him. Why? His spirit needed me, not someone else. Me and Philip. Together. Why? Because if he had come to you (whoever you are) you would have already ruined him. I don't mean you are a bad parent...I only mean that you probably would have tried to force him to eat whatever you eat and you would have crushed his spirit. and made him hate all food. I only mean that you would probably have given up on him because of his negative downward spirals and not understood where they come from and that he can't entirely help himself. I just mean that you wouldn't have known how to get him to his eighth birthday believing in the magic that makes sense to him and not trying to force him to believe in things that don't make sense to him. Parenting a warrior is a tricky business.

All I'm trying to say is that Philip and I got Max because we are just the people to figure out how to raise him, just as you are the perfect people to be raising your own children.

In spite of how challenging it is to parent my child, knowing Max is such a pleasure, such an excavation into the human spirit, and sometimes it's incredibly fun. He's extraordinary. He's strong. He's everything I could want him to be. He's funny. He's curious. He's warm. He's honest. He's passionate.

I love him. I will continue to complain, to drop my parenting troubles onto the table, but in the end, what matters the most is that I love him.

And I'm fiercely proud of who he is.

Strength Between The Pages

Max and I made a horrible discovery today. We saw something no human should ever have to see. Especially humans who rarely come in contact with meat-type items. I got flea medicine for the animals today and the one for the dog now comes in a chewable tablet form. My dog will generally eat anything and when I say that I mean to say that an open litter box is her candy store. However, for some reason she was suspicious of these tablets so I got out those meaty soft chewy thingies you can put dog pills into so that they will take nasty medicine. I pulled one out. But it looked wrong.

It looked wrong somehow. So I looked in the bag and almost hurled right there and then.

Oh god.

So I made some kind of choking noise and held the bag away from me and Max asked what the noise was about and I told him there were worms in the dog treat bag. So he had to see.

Maggots.

Maggots.

He decided not to eat any more food until someone invents a brainwashing machine so he could get that image of the maggots out of his head. I totally understood. I am squeamish about them too. I would have made a terrible sailor in the age of salt pork and maggoty bread.

Our computer caught itself a nasty little virus that could have (but didn't) result in us having to shut down all of our credit card accounts. Watch out for any insistent button that shows up on your computer suddenly claiming you need to buy the windows 2009 version of the spyware that will get rid of the virus your computer has supposedly just caught. That is the virus. Don't buy the spyware. We didn't. Because it seemed suspicious. Because it was.

Magic has happened that I think cancels out the maggots and the virus... my kid has said he loves reading. MY KID. The one who resisted it for so long. The one who's main passion is video games and playing spies. He treated reading like a chore until this past summer when he was staying up to read his TinTin comics. He got into Calvin and Hobbs too. And then Bone. And then he and Philip read a chapter book together. Of course, most of the books he loves the best are comics and graphic novels. I don't care. That's not what matters. What matters is that he'll bury his restless head in them and get lost. Like I did when I was his age.

In so many ways parenting hasn't been what I expected. Things I thought were going to be easy have nearly wasted me and other things I thought would be hard have turned out to be nothing. My kid is who he is and nothing I can do is really going to shape his most decided spirit. Yet I can see the influence of love and care in him. I can see him finding his way but also finding ours. I can see that he is discovering the magic of books and it's something that gives me a great deal of reassurance. If the kid loves to read, is there really anything he might not be capable of? Or anything he can't get himself through?

It reminds me of all the time I spent reading while I lived by myself in the upper tenderloin with a brick view. I worked hard all week and then, lacking a social life, I would read all week-end. I would get so engrossed in books that I would put off peeing until it nearly became a medical emergency. I would drink about a billion cups of coffee (before I got old and developed delicate problems like heart palpitations) and not eat much food. Reading got me through loneliness and fuelled my imagination so that I had a very rich life just on my own.

I was still trying to write fiction back then too. I try to be kind to myself. Every writer starts off thinking that the only way to legitimize their calling and prove themselves is to write the great American novel. At that time I didn't realize I could write creative non-fiction. So I typed out really bad fiction after reading books that set me on fire. I knew I had the language in me, I just didn't realize I lacked the stories. Self and words are same. I can't write a character who isn't me or someone I know.

What is still fresh for me is the urgent need to always be writing. All the time. I would be thinking of what I could be writing if I wasn't at work while I worked. Poetry would sift through my brain as I packed boxes full of funky lycra garments. For some reason heavy manual labor sparks my need to write more than most other things. That's the only way I can explain why I seemed to drift into words whenever I used the industrial steam iron to the point where I couldn't really hear whatever else was going on around me.

I also wore boots. I think work boots are magic and maybe that's what's been wrong with me for the last few years- I haven't worn work boots in a long time.

I haven't been reading much. My reading life has been mostly limited to non-fiction and mysteries in the last few years. If and when I actually read. You might say I'm stuck in a desert. Or maybe for the first time since I was a kid it's important not to pollute my head with too much influence from other writers. Maybe this is the moment when I really find my way, my reason (if there is one), why I come here every single day, sometimes two or three times, to write.

I long for more conversation with other writers. I want to get into their heads and know what moves them, stops them, and what kind of an island they've built for themselves. I wish I could ask some of my favorite authors questions. Questions that interviewers either never ask or ask but then don't pursue in detail. I want to have dinner with a room full of writers.

Who are writers? Anyone who writes? Anyone who keeps a journal?

Anyone who has to write or else burn up like onion skin and float away into the atmosphere. A writer is someone who, above all other things, must write.

A person who coughs words.

I've learned not to take anything for granted in parenthood. It is often a dark place for me but seeing my kid devour new words, understand irony, and forget I'm in the room because he's so absorbed in a printed story is like seeing him get baptized. For a lot of people out there God is the direction you turn to in tough times, but for me it has always been the public library. It has always been to books. Books and the buildings that house them. So hearing my kid say he loves reading is like watching him find something greater than himself, that he can turn to for his whole adult life.

It's in moments like this that being a parent is exciting. I can relax for a brief while and watch my kid find his words and his feet. It's at these rare junctions that I feel like it all might turn out alright after all.

Good Night Rain

It's been raining all day and I've enjoyed it from beginning to end. I woke up at 5:30 am to hear it dropping loudly on the weird plexi-glass awning we have over our basement door in the "front"* of the house. I lost my joy for it briefly between 5:45 am and 6 am when my computer was freaking out on me and the keyboard wouldn't work and my whole world came crashing down on me since our only chance of survival right now is this great job I have that I love and CAN'T LOSE.

But then I got settled in on the laptop which is a cheap one I have never particularly liked until today. The rain came back into my hearing like a wonderful tapping at the temple of my sentient spirit.

Right now it's just after 7pm. I'm tired. It's been a full day. The kid had yesterday and today off from school and mostly played computer games but took time out to get all excited about the fact that his birthday is two weeks away and we played Bionicles. Then I watched him do stunts. I have to say his stunts are pretty fantastic. After he got tired of that I built him a new Lego fortress.

I also made soup for which a recipe will follow in a day or two. I'm tentatively naming it "tenement soup". It has cabbage in it. I think it might be capable of warding off tuberculosis. Possibly even the plague. Perfect for a rainy afternoon.

I harvested plantain from my yard. Plaintain is a "weed" which also happens to have some (apparently) strong medicinal value and I plan to make my very first stick deodorant using an oil infused with plantain, thyme, comfrey, and calendula. I will be telling you all about plantain very soon.

But right now I must head off to bed. I just wanted to sit down here where you all come to say hello. I wanted to feel a part of something social before closing down for the night.

I also wanted to share a wonderful conversation between myself and Max today. He rushed off from our Lego playing to pee. He came back a moment later:

"Mom, I kind of peed my pants."

I stared at him with very little surprise. He decides to elaborate.

"Well, I didn't really pee in my pants but when I took my wiener out to pee I didn't do it fast enough and some of my pee got on my pants."

"That's alright." I said. "Sometimes it must be very hard to have a penis."

He thinks for a moment as he removes the offending garment.

"Yeah, but it must be hard to have a vagina too sometimes because you can't just pull your pants down and aim your pee because it will just go straight down."



Wow, it sure is good to appreciate the blessings of one's genitals, isn't it?

*The front of our house being really the side of the house.

Metal In Your Eye

(is not a medical mystery)

Sometimes there really is something wrong. This is why we go to the doctor even when we don't see any visible cause for pain. It turns out that Max had a tiny spec of what appeared to two doctors to be metal. A tiny piece of metal was stuck in his cornea. Causing him all that pain. Boy do I not regret letting him have that Motrin two days in a row! I was tempted to say "Stick it out kid, there's nothing wrong with your eye..."

But most moms know when their kids are faking it and when they're not. I knew he wasn't faking it when he told me he would like to rip his eyeball out because it hurt so much. The first doctor told us that tiny abrasions on the cornea can be terribly painful.

To see what was going on with his eye the first doctor had to put dye in Max's eye which would then be visible by ultra violet light. This was the coolest thing that happened to us today. Except that obviously it wasn't cool having a piece of dye covered paper poked into Max's eye. But we take our pleasure where we may.

The second doctor (the optometrist) put numbing drops in the kid's eye. That has got to be very freaky. The thought of a numb eyeball makes me flinch a little. Which Max did. Then more drops followed which made Max look insulted. The doctor was quite deft. Before we knew it the science fiction machinery was in front of his eye and a pair of the sharpest tweezers I've ever seen were navigating the surface of my boy's cornea. It took about three tries before the doctor got it. We could see it. Very tiny.

Then some ointment was unceremoniously slopped into his eye. This made him more squeamish than all the rest of the procedure. He hates weird textures of goop on his skin. But then it was over. OVER.

This was so much less like torture than taking him to get his nose cauterized the second time. That was pure agony. But this, this was not very much fun. Still, the metal spec is out of his eye and he's home enjoying sugar. Now this has become one more legend in the family history to retell over and over again.

Young American

I am impervious to sentimental bursts at most of the signs of maturation in my child that many moms succumb to frequently as their "babies" morph into fledgling adult people. I know I was excited at my kid's first steps when he was nine months old and it did seem fascinating in an awful way that four months after my baby was born he lost all the very dark hair he was born with and started sprouting white/blond hair in it's place. But these things have never triggered that strange stew of hormonal emotion that they seem to stir in other mothers.

I was happy (yes: HAPPY) to tote my kid off to kindergarten and thought "This is what it's about; the kid goes off to get some interaction and experience with the world outside and I get to spend time doing the things that remind me I'm my own person until the kid gets back. Then we hang out." Well, except that in California they believe that instead of "hanging out" one should do five pages of homework with your kid every night. Five. That's a lot. Other moms stood around the kindergarten classes with arms outstretched madly tearing up. I feared that a couple of them might actually end up completely prostrate.

I didn't shed a tear when he walked off with that huge backpack weighing him down. I didn't shed a tear when he started getting lanky, or when he started telling me not to hug or kiss him in public. This is part of what having children is about- seeing them through all of these periods of growth.

I'm not very sentimental. But all of my much more sentimental friends will appreciate that when my boy came home yesterday with one of his front teeth in a baggy, proudly showing me the big gap between his teeth I almost broke down and cried. To me, losing your first front tooth is crossing a real line between your baby years and your adolescent ones. I see all these kids in Max's classes with their grown up teeth pushing into their mouths, reshaping their faces into older versions of themselves.

I have an innocent fascination with teeth. Teeth are important. Have you seen what happens to a face that has lost all its teeth but not been filled with dentures? Dudes, that's going to be me in, like, five years! It's not a pretty sight. Our teeth affect how we speak, how we eat, how we smile, and how our faces are shaped. Our baby teeth are nothing. They don't say anything about us and are milky nubs that get us through the first few years. I have known all along that my son doesn't look how he's going to really look because he hasn't got his real teeth in yet. The ones that he will wear for the rest of his life.

Unless he loses them all as a professional boxer or because of his very strong affinity for everything with sugar in it.

I put some David Bowie on and made some eggs while I was thinking about all this. I made eggs without any cheese. I contemplated what a life without cheese is worth to me. ( NOTHING.) I mean, if I was told by the doctor not to eat any more cheese or I will die I would steel myself up for the brave challenge and promise not to eat it and then I would wake in the middle of the night dying for a thick slice of cheddar and I would eat it before I gave it two seconds thought. It's amazing that people like me survive life as long as we do.

I was thinking how incredible it is that I'm sitting around getting sentimental about my son's first adult front tooth coming in. I was thinking about how most moms seem to feel that all of this babyhood goes by really fast...too fast...sobbing fast. I don't. It feels like it took a million years to get to this point. I don't see it all slipping away. I see it all before me. Max getting his first front tooth in is wonderful not because everything about my kid is wonderful (but, obviously it is), what it really means is that he made it through his earliest years alive and (so far) with all his limbs and digits still attached.

Although we do have to take him to the doctor today for some mysterious eye pain he's been feeling that reduced him to tears last night which brought on the biggest bloody nose he's had in months, it amazes me he's almost eight years old. For me the time does not go at breakneck speed. I am so anxious about parenting generally that I don't think I'll truly rest until he's an adult and I can at last say "Kid, it's all up to you now!"

Hopefully this eye thing won't turn out to be some rare disease. I may as well say that this kind of mysterious pain/illness really charges my atmosphere with apprehension. If it's possible, I've thought of it already.

So while I was listening to the song "Young Americans" I was wondering why people love that song "All I want for Christmas are my two front teeth"? As much as I'm a tooth person, that song makes my skin crawl six ways to hell. Someone played that song a lot at the Holiday Market downtown last year and I almost had a nervous breakdown over it. Why listen to such awful awful music sent by evil its self when we can all be listening to David Bowie instead?

When I listen to "Moonage Daydream" I always decide to forgive him for capping all his teeth so that he now has Hollywood teeth instead of cool teeth.

The face my boy will wear as a man is beginning to shift into place and that's pretty crazy.

Letting Go

Letting go is hard to do. Especially in a culture of mass information. My kid is almost eight years old and I have just, for the very first time, let him walk home from school by himself. We live very close to the school. In fact, I can see the school grounds from the corner of my cul de sac. It doesn't sound like such a big deal until you consider how few freedoms children of his age group generally have these days.

I don't know any kid his age who is allowed to ride their bikes freely all over town as I did when I was his age. I don't know any kids who ride or walk themselves to friends' houses. I see very few kids who walk themselves to and from school. When I was seven I used to walk myself to and from school every day which was about ten blocks from my house. Was it safe? Oh, mostly, except for the time I got mugged for my milk money. That actually happened within sight of my house.

I have tried to let my kid live a real life, using real garden tools as toys, using real forks and spoons for food (back when he actually ate food that required them), and I never managed to lock everything dangerous up in the house as we are advised to do. Mostly that's because we're kind of lame and those childproofing locks are a bitch to install and are often not just toddler proof but parent proof as well.

Anyway, I was thinking about how I have never let him walk anywhere by himself. Letting him cross the street to the neighbor's house last year was a big step for me. He thought I was kind of dumb to worry. I stood by my kitchen window pretending not to watch.

We all know what the worst that can happen is. The parent's worst nightmare is the pedophile.

If you haven't talked to your kid about this, you need to. Teach them how to keep themselves safe.

When Max was three he was trying to get me to let him play in the front yard by himself. The conversation went something like this:

Me "Come inside or play in the back yard. You can't play alone in the front."
Max "Why?"
Me "Because then I can't see you and I need to be able to see you."
Max "You can look out windows." This was true.
Me "But it's not safe for you to play out front without me there."
Max "Why?"
Me "Because you could get hurt. There are lots of cars that drive by fast."
Max "I won't go in the street"
Me "I know honey, but there are a lot of other ways you can get hurt."

I was trying to avoid scaring him too much.

Max "I won't get hurt. I'm careful."
Me "But there's no fence on the yard and people I don't know can walk by."
Max "I don't care!"
Me "I know you don't care but kids are very small and can be hurt by others."
Max "You mean they might try to steal me?"
Me "Well...yes, actually."
Max "If a person tried to steal me I would kick them in the penis!!"

I still didn't let him play out front without me for another three years, but I admit that I was impressed that my three year old already had a plan for dealing with malevolent strangers.

In deciding that it might be time to let the kid have a little more independence I thought about how I could possibly prepare him for avoiding bad situations and people. How much to say? I'm always surprised by how much he already knows and has thought about. I asked him if he wanted to be allowed to walk home by himself and he lit up and nodded his head violently.

"Alright," I said "then we need to talk about a couple of very important things. I need to know that you know what to do in certain situations, OK?" I asked him a series of questions:

What do you do if a stranger offers you candy? I don't need your stupid candy! I have my own.

What do you do if someone offers you a ride to anywhere? I don't take rides unless it's you or dad or a friend like Rex who is one of my best friends. (Rex is 8 years old.)

What do you do if someone tries to grab you? Well, first I would kick him in the balls and then I would punch him and then I would...(he had a very complicated list of violent maneuvers he plans to land on anyone unfortunate enough to try to grab him.)

I always tell him to yell, fight, scream like a banshee, and to do whatever it takes to get noticed by other people to get away from the stranger.

Other than that, what can you do? There comes a point when you have to let go a little. Because if they are going to know how to handle independence as adults they need to have earned it gradually under their parents' guidance. This is one of the very hardest things about being a parent in my opinion. I don't consider myself a particularly over protective parent, but I feel like putting my boy in a protective bubble where no pedophile can enter.

You really don't want to ask me what I think should happen to pedophiles either. It is one of the areas where I am irrational and my feelings betray my general nature of non-violence. I do believe that my feelings on the matter are raw, jagged, and primal, as they should be. I would not trust myself to be a judge or jury in the trial of any child-centric sex offender. I could not be trusted to administer fair treatment or application of our judicial system. Too much tiger in my heart for that.

It would be a disservice to let my fears prevent my son from a normal amount of independence and chance to assert his capabilities as a growing maturing human. So I am letting go. Ever so slowly.



Ways to empower your children:

• Teach them martial arts.

• Send them to a self defense class.*

• Talk to them often about what to do in scary situations.

• Make sure they know that no secrets are good secrets if suggested by an adult.

*In seventh grade PE class we had to take a course on self defense and one of the tricks I learned there helped me get out of the grasp of a mugger in San Francisco many years later. I didn't even know I remembered anything from that class but right when I needed it- it came back to me.

The Parent Trap
(or: how to ruin perfectly good humans)

I remember my childhood summers as a time that I ran wild with friends in Lithia Park, getting dizzy on the merry go round, eating soft serve ice cream with my allowance money, and riding my bike at a ripping speed (without a helmet) through the neighborhood streets. I woke up, I got dressed, my mom made sure I had a good breakfast, and then I would ride my bike to a friend's house and we would play all day. Generally we didn't see our parents much until dinnertime. We were out in the world by ourselves at the ripe age of nine years old.

I don't know a single parent who would let their nine year old out of their sight for a whole day. What's happened to childhood? Most parents I know are trying so hard to preserve the magic of childhood for their kids, to prolong the age of wonder and innocence, generally in direct reaction to their own experiences of growing up "too fast" themselves. It makes me acutely uncomfortable to see the amount of sheltering most kids I know are getting these days.

I should point out that, like our society, there is a widening divide between those kids getting the degree of sheltering I just spoke of and the kids who are experiencing criminal neglect, or worse. The division between the "haves" and the "have nots" is, on every level of life in this country, growing starker.

What I want to know is: what happened to the middle ground? What happened to loving and caring for your child without trying to make their childhood an unrealistic world where only lovely gentle things happen? What happened to letting kids get burned sometimes so that they don't reach for fire? What happened to letting your kid know that the world does not, and will not, revolve around them? Because it doesn't. And it won't.

Childhood isn't supposed to be magical and innocent. Childhood is the period of time children have to mature under the supervision and guidance of their parents. It's the same in the rest of the animal kingdom where the young are not born fully equipped to take care of themselves. Human babies are born vulnerable and unable to care for themselves. They require the protection and help of mature humans to get them through to adulthood.

Kittens are born blind and deaf and without their mothers (or some other mammal's care) they will die. A mama cat engages her cubs in play with the distinct purpose of preparing them to be on their own. They play with string or anything they can find to learn to kill smaller animals to eat. They learn to fight with each other so that they can defend themselves when challenged by other animals. We see them playing and coo and laugh because their play is so cute and they haven't a care in the world, because that's how we see them: innocent sweet little kittens playing. The reality is that if they don't play and fight with each other they will be ill equipped to survive when their mother sets them loose. Part of her parenting process is that the more physically capable they become the less she interferes with her cubs. She sits at a distance and lets them rumble and get into binds and waits to see if they will get out of them.

We had lots of cats when I was growing up. I saw lots of kittens come into the world and I saw some go out of this world as well. It was a valuable lesson in real life.

When I was a kid no parents I knew spent all their time playing games with their kids. Any parents who were staying home weren't staying home just to parent. They were staying home to manage their whole home, to make sure their family had a clean-ish house, good food, a decent place to play in the yard. It was about the whole family life package, not just the needs of the children. During the summer it wasn't just me and my siblings who were let loose on the town, all the kids our age were running around without their parents all day long with the same morning time words said by all the moms "Be home by dinner time."

They didn't know where we were all day long. That world is gone.

Now parenting is a claustrophobic place in which you are expected to want to play children's games all day long and you are expected to orchestrate your child's life from the moment they're born until they leave your home at the ripe old age of twenty three to go out in the world and have a rude awakening. Parents have somehow come up with the idea that they're supposed to be their children's best friend. In my opinion this is wholly unnatural and unhealthy. Children are neither our friends nor are they our chance to live the life we never had. What a great weight to place on the shoulders of young people. To live out our expectations of life and dreams for us.

It's certainly more challenging for parents of only children. They don't have siblings to turn to, to fight with, to hate, to love, to play with, to bicker with, and to spend hours outside with. So they turn all that attention to you- the parent. I clocked in at least 8,432* hours of quality time with my kid in the first five years of his life. I'm pretty sure that at least a thousand of those hours was dedicated to Lego's alone. That was just for the first five years of my kid's life. He had my constant emotional and physical attention. I don't think that's necessarily the best thing in the world for a kid. If he'd had siblings he would not have come to expect my constant undivided attention.

Now that he's older I feel like it's much healthier that he do a lot of his playing with kids his own age. I didn't have a child so I could play kid games for twenty years. Or even ten. He's happier and more positive when he's had a day of playing with peers. I am a mama cat pushing my kid into the ring with other cubs. It's time he stop expecting so much of me. He's seven years old, he's not a baby anymore. He needs to play with other rugged boys. He and I don't even have the same interests. He needs to be with kids who want to do the same things he does.

Next week he starts an all summer long day camp. He'll be playing with other kids all day. He'll get to play outside games and indoor games. He'll go swimming, go to the library, and to the zoo. Do I feel guilty about sending him? No. I would have felt guilty when he was younger because I think younger kids need a much greater degree of parental presence. I have never wanted him to be in day care. This isn't a day care. It's a summer long activity filled camp. I couldn't give him that level of stimulation even if I was a super-mom. Two years ago this would have been too hard for him.

I'm relieved. Relieved that he's going to be busy doing kid stuff all summer long with other kids. I'm not relieved for my own sake. Unfortunately I'm going to be working all summer so it's not like I'll get to laze around doing whatever the hell I want while he's at camp. (Oh boy, wouldn't that be awesome!!!!). I'm relieved for his sake that he'll be getting the activity he needs at this point in his life. Away from mama cat.

There's room for us all to be the kind of parents we each need to be. None of us are going to find the same answers to everything.

*Conservative estimate based on a 14 hour a day job caring for my kid, with a maximum of 2 hours of a break, often less, and generally a seven day a week job, though I calculated only six because Philip took Max on a lot of outings just the two of them to give me a break...and this is not including all the hours spent comforting him at night as well.

Partnership With Complications

(advice from a happily married woman)

One thing that never ceases to annoy me is when people talk about having babies as though it will "cement" their love for each other. Or when they think that having babies will fix the problems they already have. There is nothing guaranteed to make things more challenging for a couple than having a baby. Already have a baby and having some marital problems? Having more babies will simply make whatever problems already extant even more amplified.

I'm not saying that children can't remind parents of their love for each other. I'm mostly saying that if your marriage is already troubled, bringing in another human being into your relationship who's going to have a hundred urgent daily needs to be met is not going to make life get smoother. I'm also saying that loving someone is not a good enough reason to have a baby with them. Women have been known to love the most unsuitable men who would make the most deplorable parents. A man who is good in bed and makes your heart do somersaults isn't automatically going to deal well with no sleep, and boobs that are no longer his, and having a baby's needs come before his.

Choosing a spouse that fits your needs is as important as any life decision you can make. Here are some criteria that I think are very important when choosing a spouse:

• He/She should be a good companion. This is the number one thing I think is important. Romance is all well and good but will ebb and flow, maybe fade altogether into something more permanent and solid. Sex will also experience that ebb and flow, even for people with normal sex drives. What should be the steadiest thing between you is your desire to hang out together, to talk, to share experiences, especially the "mundane" every day experiences. So he/she should be someone you would consider your best friend.

• He/She should be flexible with life plans. Life rarely goes as planned. If you marry someone who has one very rigid idea of what will make them happy, chances are they will end up disappointed and you will both feel it deeply. If the only thing that will make a person happy in life is to have their own biological child, well, that's not an unreasonable desire unless it turns out that fertility is an issue. Then what? Will this person be willing to adopt? Or find other things to satisfy their desire to be around children? If this person's only ambition is to become president of the united states and they've never even gotten an acting job before?* What happens to your life together if they don't become president? Flexibility in navigating the twists and turns in life is an essential ingredient to finding happiness.

• He/She should not be a jerk. Yeah, because as surprising as it seems, getting married doesn't turn toads into princes. A marriage license is a lot less like a magic kiss and a lot more like an invitation to get more comfortable farting in front of your partner. So if he/she is a jerk already, getting married just means that you will be legally bound to a jerk. And no, a good woman cannot change a chauvinist pig. I don't care if your hoo-ha is made of solid gold, only a jerk can change themselves into someone decent and it won't happen as long as there are plenty of solid gold hoo-has that will take them just as they are.

• Being good in bed is NOT the next most important thing in choosing a spouse. It is more important that you choose someone you can (and already do) respect because living intimately together for all eternity will test your mutual respect like nothing else can. If the respect is solid then you can weather all kinds of indignities with kindness and with love. If that respect is like a thin cheap veneer, it will snap the first time your spouse experiences incontinence after having a baby or becomes a complete baby when struck down by a cold.

In fact, being good in bed isn't important at all because if you find your prospective spouse attractive and you have all these other great feelings for each other and your communication is great, you can both become exponentially better in bed as you navigate each other's very private preferences. Being good in bed is a skill and if the person you love isn't good in bed, that's no reason not to marry them because most people are motivated to improve in this area if it means they might get more sex. There are books and videos that can help you with that. It might be a good idea to find out (before tying the knot) if either of you have fetishes or fantasies that the other one finds repugnant.

• I have said before that I am not into S&M or any other kind of kinky or dangerous sexual practices and it would go very hard for me if my spouse could only really be satisfied by a woman wearing a French Maid's costume brandishing a horse whip. So as a last point I would say that in choosing a spouse, be sure to have some very intimate talks about the kinds of things that get you off. And also? If you're not gay, you might want to make sure they aren't either.

Wait...one more thing...if you don't really want to get married or your prospective spouse doesn't really want to get married? I think you should not get married.



*Ha ha.

The Future Just Called
and it wants it's promise back

I like to say "Houseleek" because it sounds wet and sharp and pungent. This plant goes by other names as well but I don't know any of them except it's Latin name: Sempervivum Tectorum. Houseleeks can be used the same way the Aloe Vera can, sharing many of the same cooling and astringent properties, as a poultice for burns. They can also be applied to the forehead for migraines and feverish headaches. They are growing in the future for me where this snap shot was taken. Aloe Vera doesn't grow outside here so this is a great alternative.

I don't know how often I'll find myself grinding up the leaves for cold poultices, but I know I'll be saying it's name all the time, just for the keen satisfaction of hearing it ring around in my head. Some words are like that. I like how it could be misheard as "How Sleek". Or as "house leak" which is so much more calamitous than thinking of mild onions and succulent cool crushable leaves.

There is a cornucopia of wonderfully fragrant and amusing plant names in my Culpepper Herbal such as: Hound's Tongue, Goutweed, Dropwort, Clown's Woundwort*, Root Of Scarcity**, and Scurvy Grass. I could say those names all day. How excellent to let the names of things say something solid about their usefulness.

Today I deliver tax papers. Papers I labored over all night. I hate doing taxes. It forces me to look at how bad I am at organizing my life, at sorting and dealing with the incessant paperwork that living guarantees us in this country. Especially if you have your own business. I shake the depressing aura by saying "Houseleek" over and over and over.

The good thing is that I can now move on to the next thing. The next segment of the immediate future that I'm allowed to step into just as it becomes the present. I am living day to day right now. It's a little tense around here. Things haven't gone quite as planned so our comfort level has been reduced quite a lot, quite suddenly. Still, I have the sense that it's all going to come out right in the end. I hope I'm not horribly mistaken. I've been horribly mistaken before.

The kittens are getting bigger in their confinement. The bare patches on Penny's face are filling in with new whiskers and fur. Her scabs are gone. She doesn't purr as much as Pippa does. Penny is more like Max, a bit wild and frisky and funny. Last night she purred for me and it was so wonderful to see her face looking so bright and clean and healthy and to hear her motor kick in. It took all my strength not to nuzzle up to her. Pippa is clearly going to be my forever baby. She purrs the minute she sees me and would obviously prefer to snuggle up than to play- so it's making me crazy not to be able to indulge her sweet sweet nature and snuggle. Penny will hunt and get rodents and Pippa will hunt and bring us earth worms. I can tell already.

We had another good day yesterday- in spite of all the chaos around here and my stress- Max got to go to another friend's house to play for a few hours and got lots of fresh air and fun. Then Max and I went out to dinner just the two of us and drew pictures and chatted. Then we snuggled while watching some Poirot. Then I put in a few hours of work on taxes. That was not fun. But I was satisfied that my boy didn't spend all day playing video games.

It's raining and I'm still in my pyjamas. I am going to go crawl into bed with Max for a little snuggle before taking a bath and getting on with the day which must include a lot of boxes and crap. I'll take this quiet moment to snuggle in. How about you?




*Really? Clown's have their own special healing plant? Does it remove their awful awful awful make-up? Does it magically transform them into something less depressing?

**Otherwise known as the Mangel beet which my book considers only fit for feeding to livestock which I find fascinating since it is enjoying a renaissance as a gourmet vegetable right now.

Without My Eyes

More outdoor kitty pictures

Checking out the world from under the BBQ

Max is small, Pippa is smallest.

Yesterday turned out to be a stellar day. Other than my back hurting. Max played with the kids across the street, OUTSIDE. Chick got to romp around with their gorgeous pit bull named Pepper. And I got to hang out with their parents who are our only immediate neighbors that we have anything in common with. In fact, we really like them and have been wanting to have them over and then get all weirdly shy. So stupid of us! They are one of the other few nonreligious families in town.

That was really great. Then we went to Dundee with my friend Nicole to pick more nettles, hunt down poisonous plants as well as edible wild vegetation (such as the Indian Plum leaves which taste like cucumber- WHICH MAX TASTED AND LIKED!!!!!) and it turned out to be one of the most wonderful woodsy experiences. Of course Max had his spy and warrior equipment like his enormous bright plastic nerf gun. And of course he didn't want to come in the first place. But he ended up being our path leader and it was one of those great unexpected moments in life with kid that has the low potential to turn out well, but does, just to spite my expectations. I would go on such walks with Max all the time if I could budge him more often from his comfortable well worn spot in front of the play station.

For a lot of parents it boils down to insistence and power-housing their kids to do what they want them to do. Or they just have great easy going kids who go along with any plans on offer and if you have such a kid- keep your mouth glued shut please. I choose not to live with constant royal battles because Max is a master at giving them without my precipitating my own all the time.

Part of what made it fun for him was that we took some samples of the interesting plants we were finding. Nothing major, so no conservationists need be alarmed, just a wild strawberry leaf, the leaf of a baneberry plant, and some balm of Gilead (the resinous buds discarded by the Poplar trees in the park that smell wonderful).

Philip processed the nettles I brought home so none of them would go to waste this time. After the walk in the woods I really had to rest and heat my back. So I watched North And South (again) while sorting through tax papers and then looking through my rose encyclopedia. I can't wait to be surrounded by roses of my choice. I got the roses from my Pickering order and since I can't plant them yet in their real spots I need to get them into some sandy soil just to keep them healthy until I can get them into more permanent places. They're bare roots. I'm so excited about all the roses I have now. I've always wanted to get some moss roses and I ordered two of them.

I'd love to have taken pictures of our nature walk and of my nettles. But with a broken camera I am a blind writer. That's another thing I absolutely adore about blogs- we can all show each other what we're up to all the time which is like having a real visit with each other.

I love literature which has relied on words instead of pictures to show and tell for as long as humans have been writing. I have a deep respect for story telling without pictures. But that doesn't mean that I think blogs are an inferior trashy cousin to fine literature. I have read some amazing writing on blogs with pictures. The writing becomes more personal and poignant at times with the aid of pictures. The journey is different but not lesser. I have read some posts on blogs that could stand up to the test of time in a book, that could rival the finest authors out there, and have reverberated in my head and heart with the same potency as J.D. Salinger's work.

I must solve this camera issue soon.

On the homestead front, I want to say that now is a great time to be checking on your perennial herbs, if you have any, to see what kind of growth they're putting on. Especially if you live in a fairly mild climate. Early spring is when the sap of nature starts to flow. In the milder winter areas your herbs should be starting to put on new growth which means that it will be time to trim them and dry what you trim. I have just trimmed my marjoram which survived the winter (it doesn't always, here) and put on some fresh growth. I also trimmed my thyme and chives. Though I must say I don't think the flavor of chives is preserved well by drying, so I won't do that again.

You can usually get two solid harvests from your perennial herbs: spring and fall. You always want to trim them before they flower. I can usually keep myself in home grown dried thyme, oregano, and marjoram by harvesting twice a year. I use a lot of these herbs. More than any other (besides salt and pepper). If your plants don't yet have enough new growth for a harvest, just be sure to keep your eye on them over the course of the next three weeks.

Today is all about tax preparation. I am totally stressed out about it because I didn't take a final inventory before closing the store. ACK. Luckily I diligently recorded our sales in a book so I won't have to go through five thousand individual receipts to figure out what the store made while it was open. At least I did something right there.

I am having fun figuring out what souvenirs I might bring back from Scotland which is my favorite place in the world besides Oregon. I try to be careful about how much shopping I do when abroad. I often end up buying really useful things like sweaters and cookbooks or wool socks. Things I can really use when I come home too. I was thinking this time I might go to some thrift stores in Glasgow and find a few pieces of china. You probably know that I lost a good percentage of my great grandmother's china in our attic fire. We salvaged what we could. I decided it was a perfect opportunity to create a mismatched set. I love china and I love the enormous varieties of it that you can find out in the world. I thought it would make a great souvenir item that would also be useful.

Other things I was thinking about- whiskey for Philip, a glass or two for Max (he likes having his very own things), maybe a cookbook. Although a cook book would be very funny since Scotland is all about fish and meat and isn't exactly the vegetarian capital of the world. Their idea of a vegetarian soup sometimes includes chicken. !?. It must be noted, though, that the secret of eating well in Scotland (if you're me) is to eat a hell of a lot of potatoes and pub soups. Provided you specify that you don't eat fish or birds, often there really is a superb meatless soup on offer and some of the finest I've had were in pubs. I've actually had better soups in Scotland and in Paris than anywhere else I've been.

I don't actually think Americans are the best soup makers in the world.

Well, I am, but that's just another one of those things I try not to talk about too often so as not to make the rest of you feel self conscious.

Just to take my pride down a notch...I have to say that I am feeling very uncomfortable with my body right now. I mean, I have been for the last couple of years, but I'm going to my dad's wedding there with my sister and (hopefully) my brother, and it will be all these non-fat people and my brother and dad haven't seen me in two years and don't know what an enormous tub of a person I have become. I'm already embarrassed enough thinking about what my sister must think of me in my present state, but at least she won't be shocked. I know they all love me anyway. I do. I really do know that. And I've been working on losing weight (I've lost nine pounds so far) but there's no way I'll be able to lose a significant amount by May so I have to go in mostly the shape I'm in.

If I'm diligent I can probably lose another ten pounds. But even so...jesus! I don't know how to look nice as I am. You know what's even worse than caring what my family thinks of my size? Worrying about what Scotland will think of my size. Yes, the country. The land. The air. The first time I set foot on Scottish soil I knew I had come home. The air, the mountains, the slate, and the soil all embraced me. It was love. Not just me loving it, but I felt loved in return. Now I worry that it will reject me.

Yeah. A whole country.

You thought it was just houses I was nutty about.

Anyway. I will do what I can but it's really only five weeks away. How will I impress my family and my spiritual homeland if I come as I am? Will a snazzy haircut and make-up do the trick? What style of clothes should I wear? What style of clothes will be most flattering on a body like mine? There is the whole garden lady linen look with big earrings and great hats to make up for loose flowing linen clothes. Las Manos style, for those of you who have spent time in Marin or Sonoma. Earthy lady clothes. But would dressing like that make me look like an old lady?

Or should I wear all black with form fitting styles that pretend I don't have a large stomach roll?
I won't have time to sew things for myself so I am also at the mercy of large lady fashions I can find around here. VERY LIMITING.

It's a nasty dilemma. I wouldn't even air that here because I've been trying not to mention my body issues here as much. I created a special place for talk about that journey with some friends. But it's really really worrying me. Maybe even more than taxes are. I want to be stylish and pretty for my dad's wedding and for hanging out with my stylish wonderful siblings.

The day I got my passport picture taken a young (large like me) goth girl blurted out that I was very pretty. It totally took me by surprise. I have to say it really was nice to hear from a total stranger.

I am not looking for compliments from you, by the way. I want solutions. What to do? ACK!

Well, it's time to go through nasty paperwork. It's time to drink more coffee and attend to the request from Max that I spend some time drawing with him. Something he almost never wants to do with me. (Can't miss such a golden opportunity!) I hope you all have a good and peaceful Tuesday. I hope you all have already put your tax crap behind you.

Food Related Gift Contest Winner
we run on Angelina time around here

Remember how I was going to give this lovely gift ensemble to someone who commented on my Food Related Gifts post? That was way back in December when we all still cherished bright hopes for the new year. I promised three winners. I don't break my promises. That's why I don't go around promising to swallow disturbing substances to impress people. So, I have drawn a winner for this particular gift and sometime in the near-ish future I will draw two more names just as soon as I figure out what the prizes will be.

The winner is: CAPELLO!!

Capello from "No Appropriate Behavior" who just recently survived a trip to visit relatives in Michigan. Capello, who is fabulously caustic. I love her because she says all the things I have lurking in my brain but am too afraid to say. She's an excellent writer, mother, and she has great teeth. I'm so happy I pulled your name!

Now...on to other matters. My camera is not working again. Dammit. I think the work that was done on it is under warranty still but what a pain in the ass. I really love my camera too. It's small but takes some great macro shots. I'm looking on Ebay for used Canon Rebel SLRs because there's one low end model that was almost the same price as my Powershot SD850. What I want to know is if it really makes so much of a difference? Everyone is crazy for the SLRs but I'm not sure what the rage is all about. I am looking at cameras because I'm thinking I need a back up camera.

I love the Powershot because it fits in almost any pocket. It's inconspicuous and takes really great pictures. If any of you have thoughts on cameras, do share. I can't afford a high end SLR and I should also mention that I particularly like Canons because I've been happy with the ones I've had.

I have an impossible to do list right now. I have to admit that I am really feeling stressed.

One nice thing is that I made some nettle soup and it was really good. I have to admit that it has a slight seaweed taste which is really borderline edible for me. If it was any stronger I'd find it unpalatable. So the trick for me is to not use a ton of nettle at a time. I'd show you a picture but my camera won't focus well.

Max is home on spring break. During a week I have a thousand things to do, none of which are fun kid activities which means he'll spend lots of time on the play station. His eyes will be blood shot all week and I'll have to wear the scarlet letters BM.

BAD MOMMY.

Spring break is stupid. Week ends are plenty of break for my kid.

I tried playing Monopoly with my men-folk last night. I really did. I hate that game. I've hated it my whole life. See, I want to be a good mom. I do. A neighbor once told me that if Max wanted to watch foot ball on the weekends I would watch it with him just to spend time with him. She felt so sure this would be true. She wasn't accounting for the fact that the sound of football games on a Sunday afternoon make me want to swallow poison. It's so kind when people give me the benefit of the doubt and it doubles the guilt I feel knowing how wrong they are. Everyone knows I hate board games and some friends (WHO SHALL REMAIN NAMELESS) have accused me of enjoying being a person who hates games and who maybe is a little dramatic about it.

The thing is...they make me feel like my insides are crawling with worms and I'm being eaten alive by the discomfort of having to be in mean competition with people I like. I hate competition. I really do. I hate seeing people get really into games where they all want to win really bad. Philip becomes a seven year old when he plays board games and he's not the only one this happens to; the immaturity that board games seem to engender in most people is something I loath to see or hear or be a part of.

So hand over the letters dammit, because I am BAD MOMMY.

So there's nothing my boy and I like to do together. I don't like board games or playing Bionicles, or playing spies...he doesn't like cooking or reading with me or gardening or walking or bicycling. It's distressing. And we have a week to spend together where I will get to feel super guilty for not knowing what the hell to do with my boy that doesn't involve letting him play video games the whole time.

Plus there's the tax preparation that must happen today and tomorrow, more papers to sign with title companies (hopefully), and a whole lot of other stuff I am not yet at liberty to openly discuss. Monday feels a little draining to me already.

Saag Paneer Goes Local

(overcoming specificity)

I am a very specific person. In every way. In every facet of life. There is no corner in my brain that doesn't have very specific guidelines for existing, for processing thought, for storing memory, or for experiencing life. This is why you will never find the word "relaxed" as a descriptor of my personality. When I get an idea for something I want to cook, therefore, it is always very specific. I am often trying to reproduce in my kitchen fond memories of food I've had out in the world. I don't want something "similar", I want the real McCoy.

I have always loved Indian food, though I have taken very long breaks from it at times, and there are some dishes that every good Indian restaurant serves that I want to be able to make at home. Saag Paneer is one of them. Palak Paneer is another one. My friend Chelsea loves Indian food more than I do and is on a long journey of discovery with variations on many dishes in her own kitchen. Lately she's got me hankering for a little Indian food. In McMinnville, if you want something as exotic as this it is best to make it at home.

I have a great Madhur Jaffrey book that Chelsea gave me with a recipe for Saag Paneer. I happened to have a ton of fresh local gorgeous spinach that it would have been a food crime to waste. But being in the middle of a lot of change prevents me from getting my elbows whey deep in cheese making so where the hell could I come up with some Paneer which is a kind of farmer's cheese? No where, that's where. So I channeled my many resourceful friends' spirits for the answer. It was happily right under my nose at the Hillsdale farmer's market this week end. The price was high enough to scare the pants off of Vincent Price.

We'll call it a splurge. Fresh mozzarella. This stuff is amazing. It isn't like that really spongy wet stuff that floats in water. It's more like feta curds, a little salty, and tasting like the kind of slightly more aged mozzarella that is actually my preference*. It has the texture of a farmer's cheese. Voila! There was my answer.

The recipe also called for slightly more spinach than I had, dried fenugreek leaves, and a fresh chili none of which my kitchen could furnish. No fears! I just used a jar of my home canned diced tomatoes, more onion than the recipe called for, and left out the pepper. (I didn't feel like defrosting one of my roasted frozen ones.)

The other major issue is rice. Although I have a very small amount of rice left and could have used it for this recipe. I wanted to see what it would be like to go way off the Indian map and serve this dish on polenta.

It was superb! With a little cayenne and a lot of ginger it was warming (we've got a chill back in the air here) and filling. The cheese was perfect- it didn't melt but added the perfect mellow foil to the spicy spinach. The spinach was like butter and now I'm craving a bucket-full of this dish. I restrained myself to just one serving, but I could easily have inhaled the whole mess of it. I feel totally rewarded in my efforts to be less specific when it comes to recreating something that lives in my taste bud hall of fame.

Baby update: they are both doing quite well. Very spunky and now that Pippa is a whole week and a half older than she was when we got her- she's playing with Penny and watching them leap around on each other is so cute I could just cry. They are (sadly) still continuing to show more bald spots. Penny's stomach is still distended which worries me but not the vet.

We have moved them out of the tub and into our other bathroom. The problem with this is that now we open the door and they bolt out in hopes of exploring. Chick is often camped out at the bathroom door and sometimes lunges at it with snarls. Then licks her chops. So obviously I'm concerned about the eventual introduction of kittens to dog. Such meetings will obviously be heavily supervised for quite some time.

Here's something that makes every day a pleasure: every time Pippa sees me come in she cranks up her purr machine immediately.

These are some busy times for us. Cooking really good food when you're overloaded with things to take care of can seem impossible and yet there's never a time when it's more important to have home cooked food. I find it relaxing and soothing to cook. It stresses me out to not have any time to do it. I actually made some potatoes that would have been fabulous if it hadn't been for the fact that they got burnt due to my washing the kittens and not turning off the oven first. No worries though. Apparently Philip likes to eat burnt bits. I ate the good stuff. They were Greek potatoes with lemon juice, olive oil, and oregano. The lemon juice came from my friend in California. If we hadn't been able to eat those potatoes I would have been devastated by the waste of such a precious commodity.

We have lots of papers to sign, babies to care for, and a boy who's gotten his first note sent to the principle by his teacher. To be honest, I don't think this punishment is deserved for his crime which was one of blurting out something apparently shocking to the class. He didn't use swear words and I think it really boils down to the fact that us Williamsons lead a much less gentle existence than many other people do. What Max blurted out wasn't directed to anyone in the class and so I have a hard time understanding why it wasn't enough to punish him with one lost recess instead of a string of them.

In fact, my boy is feeling very out of place at school. He's been complaining of being made fun of for his name. He doesn't take teasing in stride. (I'm trying to use this fact to help him understand how others might feel when he teases them). This is the part I didn't think through when deciding to have a baby. That I would have to watch him go through all the stupid awful crap I went through as a kid. Misfits generally give birth to more misfits and it is awfully difficult for Max to really hear us when we tell him how it's often the misfits who achieve the most amazing things in life and end up having the best friends and that some day he'll be glad to be who he is.

Today I have to complete my Master Gardening final exam because tomorrow is the last class. My friend Nicole is putting together a local food group for our county and I'm going to a meeting for that tonight. So much to do! I also have to fill out papers to renew my passport because in May I'm going to go to my dad's wedding in Scotland! Right now I'm trying to think of what articles I might be able to pitch to magazines to make good use of the trip and what magazines?

I was thinking about doing a piece on eating vegetarian in Scotland. (Potatoes and beer is where it's at! Ha! Oh, but also the pub soups...often there is a meatless choice and I've had some excellent ones.) Scotland is my favorite place on earth besides Oregon. Not surprising since they are a lot alike. Especially climate wise. I've never been to Scotland in the spring, only the winter which is when I generally prefer to travel. Maybe I'll get to see some roses?!

Oh my god. I just realized that there must be some public access historical gardens I could see. OH what a dream that would be!!! Oooh, I wonder if there are any monastery gardens there to see? Clearly research is called for. But I don't have time for that yet. I also have to prepare my taxes and I don't even know where to begin with that this year. What a mess!

*The stuff being sold as "fresh" that's soft and spongy is not my favorite. Sometimes if it is stored in oil with herbs it can be delicious but generally I find fresh mozzarella to be lacking in flavor or character. This is why I will never be considered a true epicurean. That and the fact that I don't eat any goat or sheep's cheese.

Shush. I heard you gasp in the back row!!

Strike That Halo Down

I often wonder what kinds of things people imagine I keep secret? I often wonder if anyone wonders anything at all about me? I'm such a devious being. I hide nearly all my secrets in broad daylight. Right there in the middle of the street for all to see. I've mentioned this before now. I've admitted it. Out loud. I am a master at camouflage. I have had to be.

I hold so much in my heart and head that no one is ready to hear.

Or at least that's what I tell myself when I feel alone with it all and desperate to spill it but full of the fear of exposure.

I'd like to be a mysterious figure. The kind of woman that other people have a thousand questions about. I want to be unknowable to someone. I want to be an intriguing person, the kind of interesting person that floats through parties raising eyebrows, instantly loved and completely magnetic. Drifting questions behind me like a diaphanous scarf... where has she been? What has she seen? What kind of adventures has she had?

For that I guess I would have to actually attend parties which I prefer to avoid whenever possible.

I want you to wonder if I've ever been friends with boy prostitutes who turned tricks on the corner in front of the "Polk Gulch" in San Francisco. I want you to imagine for yourself what kind of deaths I've mourned? I want you to wonder if I know what erotic asphyxiation is. I want you to wonder if I have icicles in my heart. If I loved Paris. Because if you're wondering all the other things about me I think you will have already decided that I've been to Paris and had thoughts about it.

I have found it necessary to hide secrets in the open by exposing my heart to the elements so that anyone looking will feel they have seen my naked soul but will miss the hot pink elephant eating the hem of my dress. It's been necessary to employ this strange trickery to protect myself from the shadows that have threatened to engulf me. I need the smoke and mirrors.

By using such subterfuge to hide the knife edges that cut away at me, I give the illusion of being so open that there is nothing at all to wonder about. I am afraid that I have done my job so well that I go through the world almost invisible. Which makes me wonder if I will eventually camouflage myself so well that I will permanently disappear into the background of rhododendrons and Japanese maples that litter this landscape in which I exist.

I write to make sure that the stories are told the right way. I write to answer the questions that no one has asked me. I write to make sure that when the time comes for Max to know his mother better than I want him to know me, he will be less scared because I will have told him myself that it's alright to be who we are. As long as we don't abuse or eat other people. It's alright to be different. He needs to know that even if you have grown up in full shade you can bud out like bright roses and bear sweet fruit.

He is proof of that.

I write because if I don't tell my stories, who will? Will you? And if you did, what would you say? What could you say? Could you tell about the parking garages? The many many parking garages I spent time in doing various nefarious activities like guarding drunk friends while they vomit in the corners where the rats have already pissed? There was worse but you wouldn't want to say it. You couldn't say it, because I have not said it.

Everyone has secrets. You can be sure I've already wondered about yours. I don't ever meet a person and not wonder a million things about them. Everyone has secrets but most people are more openly holding theirs tight and I'm sitting here trying to make people believe I don't have any. Because I've already told them all. If it makes me feel safe, is it alright to lie?

Perhaps I figure that by the time I have finished writing, which will be the day I die, I will have told all my secrets and if it will be true in twenty years, isn't it kind of true already? A fait accomplis?

Eventually you will know about Jack the boy prostitute. Yes, I let a teenage boy-whore tell me a really long string of boring lies. We were comfortable with that until I got tired of being comfortable with that. He was gay, though he would never admit it, and we didn't have a romance, in case you were concerned for either of us. If you are my friend, if you are curious, you will probably eventually know all about that. If I remember to tell it.

There is so much to tell.

There is the scariest box I own that must be aired and...somehow I must figure out what to do with it and I believe I will require the help of other mentally ill people to help me know how to deal with it. I am still finding them. My tribe of people who can help me face the box. A box I opened for the first time in years this week. A box I cannot continue to keep. There are some proofs of our broken spirits that must never wait in dark corners to be found by the unwary. To be discovered by tender unsuspecting sane eyes. It's like Pandora's box, only it's mine.

I have been thinking a lot about the kind of questions Max will have. He's already asked some piercing questions that made me want to die because I would rather he had any mother than me at moments when he is asking about things like the scars on my arms. It fills me with incredible sorrow to know that telling my life to my son could make him look at me like I was someone undesirable. I know what potential power my secrets, both told and untold, have to make my own baby look at me like strangers have looked at me. With fear. With judgment.

No parent comes to parenting with a clean life slate. We are none of us wearing platinum halos. Maybe some parents can seal the past in hermetic boxes where children cannot pry without crow bars. But writers don't have that luxury or that capacity. We must open all the boxes. We must unwrap the ivy twine that twists itself around old past lives.

We are forever striking our own halos down.