She Grows

She is about as tall as me now.

Days, a matter of days, she will shoot right past me.

The smell of her fresh baby skin lingers on the blankets I have put aside.

Her little coos and gurgling baby laughter still echoes softly in my ears.

Her eyes are no longer electric blue like they were when our eyes first met.

No longer does she fit perfectly in the crook of my neck

but I see her tiny face every time I look at her.

I watch her put her makeup on now

and all I see is that four year old little girl playing in the mirror.

I look at this young woman in front of me,

this young woman with her perfectly put together self,

and all I want is for her to stay a little girl forever.

I know this child who walks around with my heart will soon bloom.

Off into the world she will go, leaving me on the doorstep waving goodbye.

I will smile and I will be proud and my heart will break

because this little girl who used to dance on my feet won't need my feet anymore.

There will be no more mornings of little feet jumping on my bed.

As much as it hurts, she will find her own feet, her own path

but all I will ever see is my little girl.

Pay Love Forward

I don't know at what point in my life I became who I am today but I do not regret any part of my journey.  Sure, there are things that I wish that hadn't happened but if they hadn't I don't know who would be sitting at this computer today.  I somehow understood that love was a more powerful force then hate, then anger.  I embraced kindness over being hurtful.  I live my life with a grace now that the younger me could never possibly understand.  I was a rough teenager, full of pride and spite.  As each year came and went, that pride that once ruled every part of me lost its power.  In its place, a calmer, gentler me came forward.

My daughter often says to me that I don't stand up for myself, that I let people walk all over me.  She's thirteen and just like me when I was her age.  Frightening?  Of course but I know that in time she will learn just like I did.  There are battles that I should fight that I don't, sure, but I weigh the consequences.  I follow my heart and understand that those battles aren't always worth fighting.  I remember the movie Pay It Forward.  Though it's been years since I saw it, I still love the premise, the simple and beautiful premise.  Since then, I have tried to practice this simple premise.  If someone does you a favor, thank them and pay it forward, never expecting anything in return.  I think that was part of my problem back then.  I expected something in return.

A couple weeks ago, my boss said the kindest words about me.  It truly touched my heart.  I wasn't expecting any kind of praise for just doing what I do though I am grateful for his words.  I just know that I like helping people.  I don't mind hard work, don't mind long hours, don't mind hanging in the background.  To me, seeing the smile on people's faces is enough.  And when they ask me what they can do for me?  I just tell them to do something nice for someone else.  This world is full of plenty of people who will do nasty things but I don't have to be one of them.  I prefer to pass out flowers for no reason to people because I want to.

A girl I work with who I adore told me the other day that she loved reading the things that I post on Facebook.  Her words again were quite touching and I couldn't help but to tear up.  I don't know who really reads my stuff and it doesn't matter really if no one reads my words.  I will keep writing.  I will keep creating.  And if it inspires someone out there?  Then I've got everything I could possibly want from doing this.  The one thing that hasn't changed from being a kid is the love I have for the written (and/or typed) word.  All I wanted to do back then was make people happy, to inspire them with some pretty prose that came from my tiny hands.  One day I will be published but this will do, too.  If I held onto anything from being that proud, stubborn girl, I still have her perseverance.  And if one person out there is inspired by my words, that's enough for me to keep going.

One Shiny Penny

It's been a long week.  I do hope one day I can just sit down and do this for a living but for now I am a modern day wench, flinging beer from one table to the next and shaking my assets so I can earn a decent tip from a dude that drinks twelve Diet Cokes in five minutes.  Yes, sir, your would like another, I know.  I don't mind really.  Serving gives me a flexible enough schedule so I can theoretically do this on the side.  Has it worked?  Not really but I do what I can.  Being a wife and mother will always take priority over my career, at least for the time being.  In five years, my kid will be on her way to college, starting her own adult adventure.  My husband and I will then be able to stare at dreamily into each others' eyes for hours uninterrupted and that, my friends, I am looking forward to.  For now, I work.  I raise my child.  I cuddle my husband.  I clean and clean and clean again.  Somewhere in there, I find myself here.

Last week I got pulled into the office at work.  Yeah, that was the same reaction I had, too.  Uh-oh.  I will admit I am legitimately paranoid about doing something wrong or disappointing people or just screwing up in general.  I don't ever want anyone to look at me and think that I'm not good enough.  I've always had this weird complex about it.  Maybe it's because I was the third child, stuck in the middle of four kids, constantly being ignored or blamed.  Maybe I'm just an overachiever or some kind of strange perfectionist, I don't know.  To my relief, it was nothing but good things and I couldn't have been more touched.  I teared up at his words because all I ever want to be in this world is amazing.  I don't want to be better than anyone else.  I just want to be constantly better than myself.  I want people to know they can depend on me.  I want people to know if they need anything, I will do my best to help them.

We are our own worst critics.  If you tell me I did a good job, it only pushes me to do better.  You can tell me that I did something perfectly and I will find a way to show you that I didn't.  I am hard on myself but aren't we all?  Don't we all beat ourselves up over the smallest, most asinine things?  I do.  I walked out of that office with my watery eyes and I apologized for not knowing how to take praise.  I thanked him for his kind words about my kind actions because I don't know how to take a compliment.  You would think that I grew up with people verbally abusing me but I didn't.  I just didn't hear anything, good or bad.  I just know that my best will never be good enough or at least it won't be for me.

I want to be better then I was the day before.  I never want to stop learning on how to improve my life for me, for my family, for my friends.  And, yeah, I put extremely high expectations on myself.  For a long time in my life, I was the only one pushing myself forward.  I was alone without encouragement, with very little support.  I had to push my way through.  Failing was not an option.  I was the captain of my own ship and I refused to let myself sink.  I had to be better then I had ever been before.  Now, that I've found happier plains, I still have that mentality though I know I should lighten up sometimes.  We all should, right?

Now, I understand my limits but I also understand that I will never stop trying.  It truly touched me that he saw all of those things in me.  Honestly, sometimes I feel invisible but I've always been a bit of a wallflower, a quiet observer just watching the world around me.  It's just nice to shine sometimes.

Apple

It's that time of the year again when you hear people all around you start giving up things and it all makes me giggle to myself.  The whole reasoning behind it is absurd but I will never knock anyone down for doing something that they believe.  This post may seem a bit harsh.  It may seem that I don't understand what I'm talking about but I was a forced practicing Catholic for the first eighteen years of my life.  I am very aware of their teachings and this thing called Lent.  Wikipedia's definition is as follows:

Lent (Latin: Quadragesima - English: Fortieth) is a solemn religious observance in the liturgical calendar of many Christian denominations that begins on Ash Wednesday and covers a period of approximately six weeks before Easter Day.
The traditional purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer through prayer, penance, repentance of sins, almsgiving, atonement and self-denial. Its institutional purpose is heightened in the annual commemoration of Holy Week, marking the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, which recalls the tradition and events of the New Testament beginning on Friday of Sorrows, further climaxing on Jesus' crucifixion on Good Friday, which ultimately culminates in the joyful celebration on Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Basically for this period of time people give up something that they love or enjoy.  They give up some vice in honor of Jesus to prove something.  I remember being a kid, listening to my parents tell me that I needed to give up something for Lent, for Jesus, and not understanding a thing they said.  Why would Jesus care if I didn't eat candy for forty days?  And at 34 years old that question still remains.  Now I don't practice anymore.  I went to Catholic school from kindergarten all the way through high school (with the exception of a two year hiatous when we moved to a small town that was heavily Baptist and my parents were forced to send me to public school because there was not a Catholic school option).  I went to a Religion class every day in school.  I went to church every Sunday followed by two hours of Sunday School where I learned even more about being a good person.  And you know what I took from all of that?  That at five I was already doomed to hell.  At five years old, just a tiny little girl with the whole world in front of me, I was already too dirty and damned to hell because of an apple that some woman gave to some guy from some tree.  The lessons just got more convaluted and more confusing as I grew.  Love everyone but don't love homosexuals.  Everyone is equal in God's eyes but women can't be priests.  It just didn't add up so at eighteen when I was out from underneath my parents' thumb, I decided the church was not for me.

I do firmly believe that we all have the right to believe whatever we want.  There are a million different religions out there that practice amazing faith.  There are a million people out there who need that sort of community and I applaud them all for it.  I am also a believer that not everyone needs a church to be a good person.  I did go through a time in my life where I didn't think that a god existed.  It was a rough patch.  How could a God who loved me let me go through the tragedies that I faced?  For years I struggled with whether or not there was anything out there at all.  Then one day I had a baby.  I looked at this beautiful, perfect little baby snuggled up to my chest and knew that there was something wonderful out there in the world bigger than me, bigger than any of us... but I knew religion was still not for me.  So I started thinking back, remembering all the basics of what I learned as a child.  I took away all the negatives, all the double standards, all confusing lingo.  I understood that all those stories in the book that I was made to memorize were just stories.  I understood what God was finally.  He or She or It was not a person at all.  It's love.  It's love that pushes us forward, that challenges who we are, that forces us to make hard choices.   The very foundation of most religion is love so why not just go with love?  Why complicate it?  I love my neighbor not because someone told me to but because I want to.  I will help this man on the street who is hungry not because it will guarantee me a seat in heaven but because it's the right thing to do.  He is need and I have the means to help him and that's all there is to it.  We shouldn't need 40 days to remind us to be good people.  We shouldn't need someone us telling us to stop eating candy in anyone's honor.  Just love every day.  That's it.  It's that simple.

A Parent's Love

I was at work the other day and I walked into a conversation that I had no interest in participating in.  So I went about my business until (and I knew it would happen) one of the girls looked at me and asked me what I thought.  Now I am the sort of a girl that has an opinion, many opinions.  When I was younger, I would have gladly shared my opinion even if someone didn't ask me but things changed as I got older.  Do I still have strong opinions?  Absolutely.  I just understand when and where to share them.  I think of both the pros and cons of indulging in these conversations.  Sometimes the conversation is not worth the inevitable debate that will come from it.  The question you ask?  Do I think that two parents are needed to raise a child?

Now here's just a little back story.  I was a single parent of a beautiful little girl for the first seven years of her life and I wouldn't give up a single moment spent with her as a single parent.  Did I plan on being a single mother?  No, no one does but I think I always knew I would be.  Her biological father was not the prime choice for a life partner but at the time he suited my needs.  When I met him, I was a nineteen year old kid who had just come out of the hardest year of my life.  What he gave me, I needed but time is a funny thing.  I grew up when I saw that funny looking pink line at two o'clock in the morning after drinking whiskey sours all night and I kept growing up as she grew inside of me.  The things that I once needed from him I relearned how to do them for myself.  When she was eighteen months old, I told him to leave because I knew it was better for both my daughter and myself.  There was nothing inside of me that having the two of us live in an unhappy marriage that was good for my kid.  So I took on all the responsibility of raising this child.  I took on the long nights of crying, sitting in a steamed bathroom when her little body wouldn't stop coughing.  I figured out childcare and how to feed her on a very tiny budget.  I learned how to balance a full time job with being a full time parent.  I wiped her every tear, loved her every laugh, kissed every skinned knee.  I watched every play she would put on randomly and sat at every tea party she ever threw because I was her mommy.  We were a team and still are a team to this day even though soon she will go off into the world.

I'm an open book for the most part.  You can ask me anything you want and I will answer you in some fashion.  I have gotten this question before and honestly it's an absurd debate to me.  There is no right way to raise a child as long as you love them, provide for them, protect them.  It doesn't matter if there is two or one or three for that matter.  It doesn't matter if it's two women or two men or two monkeys.  All that matters is that you love and adore your child.  Not to repeat myself but it wasn't like I planned on being a single parent.  It's just where my life took me.  I love every moment of my daughter even now as she becomes a teenager and I become the enemy.  The relationship that grew between us was and is something beautiful and unique.  I was a kid when I had her so in a lot of ways we grew up together.  The relationship that we have I don't have with either of my parents.  Is it because there were two of them?  No, of course not but there is a different dynamic when the work is split between two people.  Single parents are both the mother and the father, the one who praises and punishes, the giver and the taker, the shoulder and the shield.  When you can play those two things off each other, the child will always see one parent as one thing or the other.  As the sole provider, you play both roles.

When my daughter was seven years old, I met my husband.  Did I think that he would become this?  No, I had moved on from the whole happily ever after, white fences idea.  I had accepted my role in life, my place in this world.  I was this girl's mother and that was it.  I was going to raise her, watch her go off into the world, hope for a couple phone calls a week from her, and buy a bunch of cats.  And this guy came along and flashed his pretty blue eyes at me, reigniting that hope inside of me that I could find a partner to live the rest of my days out with.  Five years later, we've been happily married for two years now and my seven year old is now a full blown teenager.  I've seen both sides of this coin.  I've been that single mother, trying to get by, struggling to be everything for this little girl.  And now we're a family, both of us taking on the struggles of raising a daughter.  It's nice.  It's nice to have someone there to have my back, to discuss things with, to figure out how to do this beside.  He knows when I need to step away and I know when he needs to take a break.  He knows when not to push her, knows how to reason with her when I fail.  As most mother/daughter relationships, we butt heads.  We are too much alike.  I know in her younger years she took to heart so much of me.  I both love it and fear it but I know she will be just fine.  Her unyielding stubbornness will carry her on through.

So I told these girls all that though in a much simpler way.  One brought religion into it and honestly religion has nothing to do with it.  Love is universal and will never belong to just one organization.  Love belongs to all of us regardless if we believe in religion or not.  I have been the only one in the audience for my daughter's life almost as long as I've been in the crowd now.  I was just as good as a mother to her then as I am now.  Having two parents or one doesn't make or break your kid.  Granted, there are a ton of situations out there and I know not all kids with single parents don't get the best deal.  That being said, kids growing up with two can have it just as rough.  What is important here is simple:  Love.  You love your children.  You water them with knowledge and kindness and you let that love bloom.  Life doesn't always work out the way you think it should, the way you want it to.  Sometimes life makes choices for you but you can always choose love.  I love my little girl.  Whether I was single or not, my love for her never faltered.  It just made us stronger.

Tiny Pieces

Moments, that’s all that life is.  It’s just a collection of moments that both make us, break us, change us.  If I could recount every moment of my life, maybe it would all make sense but instead I just have flashes.  Flashes of light in my head where I can remember.  Somewhere in that flash tiny pieces of my life came together and something made sense.

There was the moment I met my daughter for the first time, all bloody and covered in goo.  All I could see was her beautiful little face, this little face that I made, that lived inside of me for nine months. 
Then the moment is gone.  There was the moment I stood at the end of the aisle, looking at the man that I was about to marry, standing so tall with tears streaming down my face.  I didn’t notice the people watching us, couldn’t care less about the white dress that I never thought I would wear.  I just remembered that moment locking eyes with him and nothing else.  The moment was gone but these moments as I acquire them make me.  

In every smile sits all the love and hate I’ve ever known, in every tear I shed, in every word that flows from these hands.  Somewhere in between these moments, I have lived.  Somewhere in this vast world, there is a record of my every moment but the brain can only take so much so we take our bits and our pieces and tuck them away so as to not forget what really matters.  We make a clip show and we continuously play the reel over and over again, adding new moments the older we get.  I see me as a little girl in the bathroom with my mother, watching her brush her long dark hair, thinking that I wanted to be as pretty as her one day.  I hear my little brother and I playing together in the leaves on a cold Autumn Day, jumping into that big pile of brown and red over and over again, not caring about the bugs that are attaching themselves to us.  I feel my father carrying me up to my bed after a long day, pretending like I'm asleep so he wouldn't put me down and winking at my siblings as we went up the stairs.  Between all those moments, I grew bigger each time, learned more, changed from one to the next.

And for every moment that makes me smile, there were moments that shattered the core of me.  There were moments that terrified me, moments that I wish I could forget, but in these most painful memories I found my light.  I see me crying on the floor with a bottle next to me, wishing the world would go away.  I feel hands on me that I will never be able to erase.  I hold a child in my arms who doesn't understand.  In these flashes, I understood what I lost but it doesn't erase all that I have gained.  I learned to find the broken parts of me, to stitch them into the better parts, to put the puzzle back together.  Even the hardest piece has it's place.

Moments, coming and going, being triggered by the smallest of events, teach us how to live, how to breathe, how to move on.  We remember the smiles that warmed our faces, giving us hope that those feelings can last forever.  We hold tight to them, wrapping them around us like a blanket because we may need them on a rainy day.  When those dark days come, it's those moments of light that shine bright.  Along the way, we learn how to live.  In between all of these moments, both good and bad, we exist.  Life happens in between the births and the deaths, the light and the dark, but we need these moments of glory, of failure to keeps us on our way.