Hey, stop over to allied--it's the hot place for comments this week, and boy do I love that! Many wonderful side conversations are taking place beneath this surface layer where I type shit in. Everyone should have comments (have I said that before?) They put the groove in groovy. Let's keep that up. Makea da blogger happy.
When you're done commenting here, hop over to george's blog and see what mess the sessums have gotten themselves into this time... does the word dog excrement mean anything to you?
In other news, I'm tired.
Have I mentioned that we may be headed to Florida for some sunshine at the end of the month? Anyone have tips on Clearwater Beach, please use that nifty comment link below and tell me all about it.
Did I mention I'm tired?
Besides our eventual vacation, there doesn't seem to be any good news anywhere this week. Bloggers not making money, bloggers sniping at each other, sniper shooting people left and right, the right edging closer to war, companies not wanting to spend a spare dime on anything, friends and loved ones in varying degrees of anguish. ENOUGH ALREADY!
Then it's time for Jenna to go to bed. I climb in beside her to pat her back while she settles down, drifts off. Her arm drapes over me. I hug her little bottom close and she passes out wrapped around me. I look at that sleeping face--I am so blessed. She is so sweet, so beautiful, so calm. Finally she is still. She is never still, you understand. She is motion. Motion and words. These are things to be thankful for--signs of health, signs of life. But at the end of a long day, I welcome sleep when she is still, and most of all, quiet. As animated as she is awake, she is the oposite asleep. Like a rock. Nothing disturbs her slumber except a rare (thankfully) bad dream.
She had one last night. She cried without easing up until I went into her room at 4 this morning. I held her. I passed out. She finally drifted back to sleep. In the morning she told me about the nightmare.
Daddy and I had gone to a wedding to get her a baby brother, and we didn't take her with us. She was devastated. Crestfallen. How could we?
All of this, Freud doesn't need to tell me, as a result of our "night out" on Saturday when we had the first night as a couple without her in a long, long, long time. She had a blast, went to a festival, rode ponies, had a wonderful time, mind you. I don't think she thought about us once. Well, maybe once.
But then she heard me. It was my tone I guess, since I didn't say anything in particular. I was on the phone telling my friend that we had a good time on Saturday, saw a movie, that I slept until 1:30 in the afternoon the next day.
The relief in my voice must have been evident. I now can tell you that five year olds get "tone." Even subtle "tone."
Where was I when she learned to infer?
I hear her bedroom door slam, hang up the phone, go upstairs to see exactly what the matter is, and there she is weeping in her bed. "You had fun without me! You and Daddy had fun and I wasn't there! Don't ever do that again. It hurts my feelings."
I explain about grown up time, how the movie would have been boring to her, how she had a lot more fun riding ponies than looking for used cars.
Her mind is unchanged. She has already infered that we had fun not as three, but as two. That we were capable of enjoying a moment where she was not the center of it.
How do you explain that it is a different kind of fun? That it isn't the fun fun we have as a family, it is something really boring to little people. How do you explain that you talked about her sixteen times that night? You say it. You say all that, and your child still looks at you with those big brown eyes and says, I wanna come too next time.
And you want to tell her that you want her always, to be right here, right next to you, that if you could you would put her back inside of you and keep her there, safe and sound, as long as forever and ever, that you don't want her to go six inches from your side, that it would be okay with you if the world would disappear and there was no such thing as school and there was no work and there were no responsibilities, no commitments, no money, no world at all.
If you had a say, you would lie just as you do every night, patting her back and racing her to sleep so that you could gaze at perfection forever. That if you could, you'd zip the house up with the three of you inside where no one could get in, no one could say anything hurtful to this family, no one could bring poison in, no one could break through. The sealed up house would be music and games and toys and computers, and melted cheese burritos, and lots of ice cream, forever.
You don't say these things to her though.
You don't say them to anyone.
Because if you did, people might think you're crazy.
