new do

The number one thing you don't want to hear from your child, or anyone else for that matter, after getting that new hair cut.

Josie climbs into my lap, her small hands on both of my shoulders. She pushes up to a stand, one barefoot on each of my thighs, and looks down at the top of my head.

I've just come home from a hair cut that opened with me telling the woman with the scissors. "I don't have a real vision of what I want it to look like when you're done. I want something kind of funky, just not too short or too big. Just do whatever you think will look cool."

Josie sizes up the results, looks her blue eyes right into mine, keeps her mouth a straight line of expressionlessness. "Mom," she says. "Your hair looks funny."

"Oh," I say. "Well, what do you mean by funny? Funny how? Funny like, not good or funny like you LOVE it."

"Ma-awm," she says. "You look like grandma."


Anyone want a three-year-old?

half a poem

The way marked with borrowed petals
Pulled from Trilium, three white clues
Call out the spring, forward
Forward
She follows deep along the path to
Light, miraculous circles sneaking
Seeking softly through small spaces
Opening dense growth, up, around
Holding particles of dust as truth
She follows
Deep into the center – half way
Fern climbing Fir dripping moss
Green cat tail dreams
Halfway and that much more
The journey out, the journey in
Call

Ok, I'm not going to be the one to deal Carrie a chimp. She roared me, which I think means I get to share three things I think make great writing.

1. VOICE, voice and more voice. My teacher says the story IS the voice. Hear, hear. If the narrator has an interesting way of saying it, that's my siren song. I will follow that voice anywhere.I could read hundreds of pages of nothing, just for the pleasure of how it sounds. I used to have this box set of Kerouac readings. At the end of one there's a conversation among three or four people. Someone asks "What's more important, the idea or the prose?" Kerouac says. "Ideas a come a dime a dozen, It's the prose."

2. Story - I don't really want to read 400 pages of nothing just for the sound. And, I think there has to be a sound idea behind the prose, or what's the point. Tell me a good story, challenge the way I think, take me to a place I could never go without you. And surprise me, who wants to know the end with 200 pages left.

3. Truth. Without it why bother.

I roar:
Tracy
Jerri
Michelle O'Neil
Terry
Kario

*I want to Roar Jen Johnson, but she doesn't have a blog to post her answer.

x-mas at our house: part 3

x-mas at our house: part 2

Hanukkah in a box arrives a few days post holiday from my brother. I'm holding the package, Amelia and Josie are grabbing with both hands.

Inside, mixed up in the packing peanuts, is a trail of Lou and Tom's last couple months. B is for Buckeye alphabet book from their football weekend in Columbus. Mexico T-shirts from their week in Cuernavaca. And, of course, the Hanukkah lute.

For the festival of lights its two little matching bear outfits: Happy Hanukkah T-shits and blue boxers with menorahs, dreidels and stars of David. And, two Build A Bear gift cards so each girl can stuff an animal to dress in the outfits.

Josie reaches her hand into the box, closes a fist around a half dozen peanuts, pulls them out and laughs as they rain onto the carpet. "I like these," she says. "I like to do this," she takes a peanut in one hand, pinches out a tiny chunk between her thumb and first finger. Another pinch and another until one peanut is 13 peanut bits on the floor.

"I like that," she says. "I want to keep doing that."

Amelia pulls the Hanukkah shirt onto Vanilla, her already built build a bear, and slides her into the boxers one purple leg at a time. Happy Hanukkah.

"Mom," she says. "Can we go to this week. I really need to go to Build A Bear this week."

I ask if it has to be this week. Tell her the malls will be crazy busy and I'd rather wait until after the holiday when things quiet down.

"Mom," she says. "Please can we go this week. I need to go before Christmas so I can get my new Hanukkah bear the Santa outfit."

x-mas at our house: part 1

Josie and Amelia are on the couch, side by side, legs straight out so Amelia's feet hang just over the edge and Josie's stop about a foot short. They're snuggled close in, Josie leaning into Amelia, Amelia's right arm over Josie's shoulder, around her chest.

Both girls lean forward, Amelia's hair hanging soft brown over her cheeks. They've the got the holiday book. For me, another piece of junk mail. For them rapture. It's 99 percent Christmas and a page or two of Chunukah. Amelia holds it in front of them.

Josie's eyes go to big round blue, same shape her little mouth makes. "Amma, look at the baby in the nest."

The page shows every reason I celebrate that this is not my holiday. Fifteen-foot inflatable nativity scene. Baby Jesus on the blow up hay.

Amelia straightens her back, head up so the hair falls back to her shoulders. Slow turns her head to Josie with the look of a teacher, tight faced and trying hard to stay patient.

"Josie," she says. She says it slow and serious the way you talk to someone who obviously will not understand. "That's Baby Jesus and his Christ family. And that is his Jesus Christ nest."

"Aaaaa ma" Josie says. She laughs and slips out of Amelia's hold. "It's just a baby nest."

echo

hello out there.
out there.
there.
there.

helloooooo?
hellooooo.
oooooo.
oooo.

Me, shouting into the empty echo of this silent space. Trying to shake the quiet from the air. Here I am.
I am.
Am.

And I've missed you all in the busy months of fending for myself. Fending for my self being working as a freelance writer, paying my rent and watching the unopened bills overflow my little wicker in box. But, good news. You can't ruin bad credit. When the collectors call, I say "If you're not nice to me, I'm moving you to the back of the line. And it's a long line."

It's coming together. More everyday. Better balance. New paid blogging gig. Paid blogging is just like getting free money. And, even better, I do it under pen name. Free money to be me posing as someone else in a place no one knows about. This writing thing is finally echoing back to me.

All this good going on, so tell me, why is it I want to crawl into bed, pull the covers up over and sleep the day away?