Because these are the faces of HIV and AIDS. Because they are not just faces: they are real people - mothers, fathers, grandparents, children, friends - with real hearts that beat and love and...
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Because this girl deserves a future filled with hope. So does this girl, and these boys. Because we all deserve a world filled with hope. Because we all - we all - deserve a...
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My mother always told me that I was beautiful.
"You are a beautiful, beautiful girl, sweetie," she would say, and I would reply - with much eye-rolling and heavy sighing - "you're my mother. You...
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This is still very much a work in progress – I have yet to acquire a sufficiently big candy jar, and the Buffy The Vampire Slayer DVD collection still isn’t unpacked – but it is coming along and it is making me very, very happy. The trendy term for it is ‘Mom Cave,’ but for me it’s really more of a happy place slash office slash inspiration zone slash nap corner.
22
Nov
So I’m trying to renovate this old blog, but it turns out that knocking down walls and building extensions onto virtual spaces isn’t all that much easier than doing so in brick–and-mortar spaces, so there you go. If I could, I’d just set up a few extra chairs and throw a sheet over them and say hey guys! I made my fort bigger! but it seems that there’s no HTML code for ‘sheets’ and ‘chairs’ and that a virtual blanket fort isn’t really a thing, so I kinda have to go with the whole complicated hire-a-professional enterprise and hope for the best. I should probably figure out how to do this stuff myself, shouldn’t I? I don’t even know that I could if I wanted to. I’m about as technically skilled as a drunk Luddite. So.
Oh, hi! Can I tell you something about myself? I am not a mommy blogger.
Yeah, I know. There’s a baby in my header. There are lots of pictures of my children here, including that one, right there, on the left. (Aren’t they cute? I let them call me Mommy.) But still. I am not a mommy blogger.
I am mother, yes. I blog about my children, sometimes, and about motherhood, frequently, and about other things here and there (including but not limited to: religion and spirituality, grief, social causes, my nephew, cupcakes, social media, feminism, and zombies), and I do have the word ‘mother’ in the title of my blog. But I am not a mommy blogger. You can call me one, if you want, and I won’t, like, have to restrain myself from punching you. But I’d prefer that you didn’t.
There are limits to self-indulgence, none to self-restraint. - Gandhi
(Photographosophy, Gandhi Totally Should Have Tried Some Cake Edition)
(Hey! You can enter this Windows 7 phone (plus chocolate!) giveaway every day! Here, too! And? The...
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Yesterday was Emilia’s birthday. She asked for Zhu Zhu Pets and a guitar. “Because I’m going to be a rock star when I grow up, Mommy, and the Zhu Zhu pets are going to live in my pockets, so I can play the guitar with them.” I didn’t tell her that aspiring rockers usually keep rats in their pockets. We have no room for any more feral creatures in this house.
(Do you know Zhu Zhu Pets? I had no idea until a few weeks ago, when Emilia started asking for them. They’re basically, like, robotic hamsters. Seriously. My first thought when she opened them was, oh, okay. So they’re robotic hamsters. Which means, some of the charm of hamsters without the hamster shit and all that shredded newspaper. I can live with that. Then I realized: THEY’RE ROBOTIC HAMSTERS. I’m pretty sure that robotic hamsters are mentioned specifically in the Book of Revelations as harbingers of the coming apocalypse. Or maybe it was The Apocalyptic Gospel According To James Cameron. I can’t quite remember. Doesn’t matter. HAMSTER ROBOTS.)
14
Nov
Dear Emilia,
Today, you are five.
This is both totally extraordinary, and utterly ordinary. Which of these it is varies from minute to minute: in one moment, I look at you and think, when did you become such a big girl? Where did that little baby go? Where has the time gone? HOW IS IT POSSIBLE THAT YOU ARE FIVE? In another, I look at you and I think, wasn’t it ever thus? Have you not always been this little girl, this little big girl, this here-and-now person who is so completely and utterly you that any other yous, all the previous yous, are almost unimaginable?
That you are five and that you are you and that you become ever more you – ever more consistently you and ever more differently you – with every passing day is, for me, a joy for which I have no words. But it is also a sadness, an ongoing grief – a quiet grief, the kind that just hums, quietly, in the darker corners of my soul – and for it, too, I have no words. How do I describe the feeling of celebrating you and mourning you, all at once? Of the joy that I feel in your presence that thrums with a nagging sensation of loss? The complicated happiness that is loving the incomparable you that you are now and aching to discover the incomparable you that you will be tomorrow and missing the incomparable you that you were yesterday, last month, last year? The sweet sadness that comes with yearning to find out who you will become while clinging to the you that you were?