The night brought the usual interruptions—a night terror for Briar, trip to the bathroom from Ave and the molar-growing mews that have had Fin in our bed every night this summer. Each time I tapped Sean’s shoulder and pled for him to go. He did, but still the sleep escaped, my ears straining to hear even as my sinuses bellowed, “put your head down or we’ll explode.” I buried my face in the cool folds of my pillow and willed myself to sleep.

Not slipping from my bed to pad through each room, making the rounds unbidden, I fell into the dreams of a daughter. Maybe it was not answering their calls, whatever it was, I spent the night trying to save my mom. Foggy corridors with her standing just beyond my reach peppered with face-to-face encounters where I was faced with her certain death if I didn’t act. I twisted in my sheets, calling for help to get her to Boston, pleading for her heart not to succumb to the vines ensnaring it in a dark place where it threatened to stop beating. I lost my foot, water sluiced over my hands, I lost my grip and shot past windows and faces.

Help me.

Please.

I can’t.

Mom.

I woke as sunlight kissed my face. The pages of my dream came rushing back and I shook my head. Silence. The bed was empty. No babies. No Sean. No mom. I listened, finally exhaling as I heard the familiar sounds of Saturday morning. My body slipped back into the sheets and I closed my eyes. Mom, daughter, wife, sister, dreamer. Me. I drifted back to sleep and there was nothing but soft indigo as I melted into peace.

The light changed and I opened my eyes to see Fin. She was watching me, scanning my face to decipher why I hadn’t woken yet. I blinked and whispered, “Good morning.” I watched her face, tiny dimples appearing over her eyebrows as she continued to pore over my face. I waited until she said, “I love you mom. I love you to better.”

Night and day collided. The daggers hit my heart.

There may not be fixing or saving, but I do believe in loving to some kind of better.

*

I hadn’t imagined I’d get to go after the past month, yet here I am.

Mingling with unbelievably elegant people at an almost rooftop bash thrown by Martha Stewart.

Sitting 3 feet from Gavin Degraw at an exclusive party hosted by Schick.

Rubbing elbows with people I’ve admire through a screen for years.

It’s lovely and magical and everything I’d thought it would be.

And yet…

Every cab ride I take, every new corner I round and every window I look through…

I find myself imagining if the girls were here.

If Sean were walking beside me.

If the small talk I was making was about what animal New York City clouds look like and what kind of creatures live under those big round circles in the sidewalk.

It isn’t that I’m not enjoying myself, because I am, I truly am. It is the simple truth that for every step I take away from my family, the more precious I know it is.

~~~

So if you aren’t at BlogHer, just take a moment to imagine being far away and then turn back around and see all that you have.

That’s the big deal. Promise.

Three stair step heads, swinging tousled tresses out of pale, bright and dark blue eyes. They were swinging legs and arms every which way over the balustrade and making sounds of exuberance that exhausted and lifted me at once. A navy masked bird of some variety kept swooping low and alighting on the birdfeeder before dashing away as if the girls were giving chase.

“Mama, why’s he go so fast like that?” Briar asked me.

“Well, honey, if they didn’t go so fast the kitties would get them.”

“Are all birds that fast?” She volleyed back nearly before I’d finished answering. I smiled, she is so ready with a question no matter the circumstances. I’m batting about 50/50 these days, wishing at times I knew more, all the while feeling grateful that I can say, “We’ll have to ask Daddy, he knows things like that.”

They kept watching the birds, their heads moving out of synch as the part of the flight that interested each girl was different. Ave watched where it came from, Briar watched where it landed and Fin eyed the bits of seed that skittered down the decking with each swing of the feeder.

“Why don’t you all sit on the step and see if they’ll fly over and land calmly?” I offered smiling at their wide, expectant eyes. They thundered to the step and then flounced down in unexpected, graceful unison. Several birds swooped out of a large tree and perched in the weeping birch to the right of the stairs. Avery gasped, “Maybe it will land on my finger.” She lifted her right hand and held it up toward the tree, while Briar lifted her left toward the feeder. Finley took both hands off of her knees and lifted them up and out in front of her, “Here a’birdie, birdie. Here’s my fingers.”

I watched them, my own breath held as if I were a fourth little girl not wanting to frighten the birds. My birds. My eyes washed over them, my windows. They see the world in ways I wouldn’t imagine, revealing the facets that I overlook.

Jump.
Walk.
Sing.

Giggle.
Demand.
Wonder.

Can.
Will.
Did.

As we sat, fingers and hearts outstretched, the birds came. They never landed on our fingers, but they came again and again. We answered with muted “hellos” and “look!’ It was magic as they came and went, and so it was that as I sat there with my three little girls and felt the magic again. It was all around me and I trusted that even though it sometimes leaves, it’s just to come back in a new way.

I wish you magic.

If I were parenting me I’d say, “It’s this time right now—these nights of going to bed dreaming about it, followed by the mornings waking up imagining being one day closer— this is what makes something so sweet when you finally get it.” The girls would dutifully nod and gamely smile, but their eyes would be a little vacant. Because really, saying the waiting is part of the payoff  is a sweet load of crap when you are in the thick of waiting.

We sold our house in January and, instead of turning around and buying another house, we paid off debt. All the purchases that had been made on credit had taken their toll, any in-the-moment savings having long since gone up in a cloud of interest smoke. It was gratifying and galling at the same time. We agreed that we would save and buy a house that would fit, that we would weigh our options and make the decision based on what was best for our family. It would be great.

Fast forward to today. We have been renting for several months, the street is busier, the house smaller and the sense of doing-the-right-thingness is much less fulfilling than we (I) had imagined. I have been wanting out of now and into soon. Every day we’ve each pored over the listings, searching for where we were supposed to be. Days went by in a blur, the motions of work and school carrying us into family time at night and then onto more surfing. It began to feel as if we couldn’t have one without the other— if we stopped searching, we’d miss the house, but if we spent all of our time searching, what was the point of having worked so hard to rent in a place that allowed us to keep living?

Last week after a challenging course of negotiating, the offer we put on a house was accepted. Yay! Commence fantasizing about our house. Much of my dreaming is about nesting, which carries me to online stores and DIY magazines as I imagine things we can do. I mutter to myself to be patient, our plans involve saving until the very day of closing, not buying dishtowels or night lights a minute sooner. I go and paw through boxes wanting to reconnect with the things that have been packed for nearly a year now, since before we put our house on the market. Except that the timing seems unmanageable. On the one hand I wanted it to hurry up and happen, but then our landlords accepted a contract on their house. Our until-summer house. They want to close 4 days after we are scheduled to close on our next house. I had thought we’d do a leisurely move, manage to accomplish the task over weeks as we continued to work and the girls had a place to be. Instead we need to be ready to go, which is fine, but I just want to start now.

I don’t want to to wait to pack. Don’t want to wait to nest. I want, I want, I want. It is deafening, this roar of wanting to end this chapter and begin the next one. My thoughts are a circuitous loop of doing that ought to happen in late June, not now. We have two birthdays to go before we can pack. Fin will turn 2 in 5 days and then 15 days later Ave turns 4. I need to be here mentally and emotionally to honor those passages and yet, despite my best self-parenting, I am petulant and distracted.

This weekend was different, we spent the better part of Saturday tromping our way up Shelving Rock along Lake George, laughing and cuddling through a picnic at the top. After sleeping like logs, we again attacked the day, with Sean working a few hours in the morning and me mopping the floors and scouring the sink while the girls napped. I had mixed feelings as I admired my work thinking, “If only this were actually our house and we were done,” but I shook it off. After lunch Sean took the big girls for the afternoon while Fin and I had some alone time. We went to three parks, between each one I thought, “Maybe I should…” but cut myself off, “What? What could you possibly have to do on a Sunday afternoon?” Pushing the stroller to the 3rd playground I leaned forward as Fin asked me something, “What’s that, baby?”

“Can we have a cog? One day, mama, can you get us a cog?” She asked.

“You want a dog?” I asked. “Not a cat?”

“No, I weelly, weelly want a cog.”

“You know what honey, once we move we’ll get a dog, ok?” I prompted, hoping for a yes.

“Ok, mom, but ’til we get a cog let’s play at the playground. We go home and have litty, bitty milk and cuddle, ok?”

“Sounds good.”

“I wuv you so much, mama. D’is is the best day of ever ever in my whole life ever today!” and she clacked her heels on the front of the stroller as if to say, “Let’s go, let’s go have fun.”

Finding the path to contentment in the heels of a dusty almost-two-year-old is the kind of thing that can make any wait bearable.

Lately though, I’ve felt that despite my best efforts, way more air than sand has been catching in my hands. I have, surprise-surprise, lost sight of something for my desperate lunges for time.

It’s us. I am letting us slip through my fingers. So much of my life is about them, sweet, precious, beloved them. You would think that us would go right along with ours, that I would cling desperately to the moment in time that is now, parents, lovers and partners. If I were thinking I would sandwich in as many moments of us as possible and yet I don’t. I turn away at times as if to dally in the frothy excess of romance, of adult time, that it’s a penalty in my role as a mother. To hug daddy rather than to cuddle the girls is wrong, right?

Adult time while the girls are up is one thing, often an impossible thing. The din of vying for attention and clamoring for more— apple juice, drawing paper, piggy backing, whatever— it’s often not worth trying to talk over. Fine, we get that, but the nights? Post-bedtime, is that off limits too? Or is turning away for being too tired, too busy or too wrapped up in the Olympics another form of mommy-multi-tasking. Asleep at the wheel and letting NBC take the brunt of marital conversation.

I want these moments. I want to capture the charge of an unexpected spin in the kitchen, the way his hand feels against the small of my back. My body is strong from 5 years of lifting and swinging three kids and the ever-growing grocery hauls. I know my body, know the parts of me that make me proud and forgive the things I used to hide. He knows me, my god three kids and more if we’d wanted. He knows my body. He has studied the things that bring me joy and created new ones and along the way has smoothed surfaces I thought would stay eternally jagged.

When we dance it is with everything I remember watching breathlessly as a romantic teenager. He can cup my face in his hands and make me literally weak in the knees. He is my now and my forever. It is because of him, of us, that we have the very people making me so aware of the fleet nature of time. Why do I not chase the moments between us with the same ferocity? Is it not a good lesson for my daughters?

It’s time to make sure that as time has me on my knees I remember what’s important. This life of mine, treasured and dear, is more than my girls, more than my place as a mom, it’s my romance and my adventure. And so, I’ll end this night kissing my husband so that I can wake up tomorrow in the arms of the man of my dreams. We’ll sip coffee and smile at each other and when the girls cling to our legs and look up, we’ll kiss and they’ll giggle. And when they beg for more we’ll give it to them.

We all need us. Go catch some.

I have been know to wax euphoric about being a mom. I’ve written reams on breastfeeding, the mom/dad equation, and milestones. I’ve shared what little wisdom I’ve gleaned from the journey of 2 to 5. I’ve achieved neither fame nor money for what I’ve done, but man, I’ve loved it. The friendships, the memories captured in adjectives and thoughts. It has felt like full-bodied preservation of my life so far, until the other night.

Sean has been getting together with two of his childhood friends. They sing, and as they do I writhe with self-loathing for not having that skill and butterflies for the hotness that is my husband singing crazy-sexy songs. Seriously, weak-in-the-knees, ready-to-release-cat-calls kinds of excitement. For my husband. Three kids, ten years, a business and a 100+ year old house and I have third-beer, second date giggles and rushes of longing.

That’s nowhere in my archives. I have the odd post on love and fun, but as the crow feet spread ever wider and the tautness of my skin loses the fight, I am not giving the moments when we pulls me to him and kisses my neck and says, “You’re more gorgeous than you were that first summer. My dream girl, Amanda.”

That needs to be here, damnit. Which leads me to the other night, after weeks, months actually, of rehearsing they were heading out for an open mic night. I had known it was coming and was so deliciously familiar with the set list that I could mouth the words as they each sang their part, right down to when they’d shake the shakers and tap the tambourine. A series of calamities had occurred with our family and night-time sitter that made my going impossible. It hadn’t seemed lie a big deal until they were getting ready to leave.

I was crestfallen. We had always found a way to balance parenting and partnering. We’d shoehorned date nights in and blurred post-dinner play and bedtime into prime time alone time and had been satisfied. I felt tremors of something that rocked me, an emotion I’d either suppressed or only just tasted for the first time: No. I want this. I want to do this for me with him.

It was embarrassing to feel a desire to shirk my duties, to quickly find someone to take the girls, but the truth was, I wanted to be with Sean. I wanted, if only for those 60 minutes, to go and be his girl. After the shame of that emotion slipped out the door with the guys, I rolled it around. So I wanted to be with my husband, the father of my girls.

Is that so bad? Is there some awful lesson in the girls seeing that I have a passion outside of my love for them? That beyond the breastfeeding and block-building, I have a side of me that smells like perfume and leather? That after getting married and having babies there are still nights that bring the sexy click of heels on hardwoods and the whiff of fallen leaves and aftershave as mom and dad head out and a babysitter bakes cookies and reads stories?

I think my desire to leave a legacy for the girls faltered in its focus, they need this side of mom and dad. The kissing and the laughter, the leaving and returning, to truly show them how beautiful their life and their family really was. The next time he plays, I’ll be there. And I’ll send texts to the girls and snap shots for the blog. And after, as they sleep upstairs, I’ll dance with him in the kitchen before we tiptoe up to kiss them goodnight.

More and more I am learning how little a say I have in life. I can impact journeys, shape beginnings, but, when it comes down to it, I cannot change endings. The layers between loss have become more slender, the stretches of time between one passing and the next seem uncomfortably close. Actually, I think it is just the predictability, the knowing that no matter whether I could turn the to the pages ahead or not, there are more. Always, there will be more.

Yesterday a man died. A father. A husband. A cousin. A son. An uncle. A friend. A teacher. A soul. One minute he was here, as potent and unstoppable as John Wayne, and the next, he simply was no more. I am reeling, wondering how I could so completely have missed the possibility of this twist. This loss.

It has been said before, but it feels as if something greater should have precipitated this. After the news settled, there was more. Relaying and narrating. Bearing witness to the realization of loss is a page that, given the choice, I would not read. Naked shock. Years whizzing before glassy eyes, a nearly imperceptible whoosh of air.

I am so very sorry that Ted has gone. He had a twinkle and a ferocity of hug that always made me squeeze back in the way you only do for some people. I am perching softly as those who loved him longer reminisce. There is laughter, but more then that there is a kind of stillness in the silence of reflection.

It is between those layers, when there is no speaking, when his spirit seems most present.

May you sail peacefully, dear friend.

.

Today I knew how her dad was feeling—

Briar was indisputably radiant.

And ready.

And her dad was more in love with her than ever before.

You have been taking our breath away since the day you were born.

.

There was no hiding, no turning back. I allowed the tears to come in waves as I watched the lead singer, luminous and irresistible in her exhilaration. I found myself wondering her age, imagining her provenance—
middle child?
small southern town?
parents still married?

It was silly, but as she sang the anthem of little girls emerging from babies to successes I wanted to know her story, the story of her parents. I think it was in that musing that the biggest hit, the mack truck that crumpled me, came- it was in seeing more of my daughters in her than myself.

++++

I remember Alanis blaring from my apartment as Christina showed up with Zima and chips. I remember Ani DiFranco melodically leading us in a chorus of “Fuck you and your untouchable face.” Faces of boys, the laughter of girls, the marrow of my unbridled, unworried days. I wept as I thought of the living ahead of each girl. I wondered which girl would date the player, which girl would fall for the badder-than-bad-boy (or girl, makes no never mind), which girl would sit wishing.

I mark time in songs and milestones, but the purest living, the most potent time travel is in going back to moments with our girls. If they’re like me, the songs Sean and I play will remind them of their childhood and, one day, some gorgeous woman will be working the stage, maybe slinking maybe stomping, but whatever she’s doing will be for them. To them. Their songs, their time.

There is not a part of me that wouldn’t give everything I have to ensure that they make it from baby girl to whatever they want.

.

I chatted up the guide as we waited for the bus. Yes, a bus. We go high glamour for birthdays ’round these parts.

We paddled, floated and then swam. The water, as it turns out, was perfect. I slipped out of the raft and into the river, my pfd tightly cinched and doing its job I bobbed about in the water. Every so often I’d turn and stroke into the current, sending water sluicing over my body and the delicious burn of exertion running through my legs.

At one point I joked that I felt like a navy seal as the charcoal sleeves of my shirt blended into the water. “Did you say navy seal?” the guide asked. “Did you know there is a navy seal approach to getting back in the raft? Wanna try?” I looked at him and asked how as the rest of the group watched. I imagined the number of ways a woman could embarrass herself by “putting your back to the raft and then lifting yourself in a backward somersault up and into the raft.”

They waited. I hemmed and hawed. And then I thought, “What the hell?”

I may not get high marks for grace, but it was the most fun I can remember having in a long time. Empowering, invigorating and unforgettable.

I couldn’t have asked for anything more than the chance to feel strong, alive and loved.

Thanks, you know who you are!