Hello. My Name is…
I had someone call me Melanie yesterday. Twice. This happens to me all the time. It can be Melanie, or Melissa, or Belinda, and yesterday's incident made me think of a time, a few years ago, when someone called me Melissa all day. Even after being corrected. After trying a few times, I finally just gave up and went with it. I became Melissa. I answered to her name, did the work assigned to her and gave an opinion when she was called upon. It may seem like no big deal, and in some respects I guess it wasn't. I mean, I was never going to be around these people again. What did it matter? But it did matter. I felt like a total imposter. Melissa doesn't fit me. Melissa doesn't have my...
No Vacancy
Yesterday, I was driving to the office. Stopped at a red light, a car pulled up next to me, windows down and stereo blaring RUSH. I haven't heard RUSH in a long time, even the very popular Tom Sawyer... A modern day warrior Mean, mean stride Today's Tom Sawyer Mean, mean pride I always kind of liked that song, so I sat there hoping it would be a long light so I could listen a bit longer. The song went on and came to this... No his mind is not for rent To any god or government Always hopeful, yet discontent He knows changes aren't permanent But change is "His mind is not for rent." For the rest of the day, it was that particular part of the verse that kept running through my mind....
Brave Face
Yesterday, I rolled my suitcase out to the car, loaded it in, and returned to the house for goodbyes. Typically, my daughter, or her husband, take me to the airport with the kids in tow, and it's an awful process. This time was different because I had a rental car, so I was saying goodbye right there at home. I wasn't sure how it would go. I hugged Emmie and Bobby, and started tearing up as usual, then I picked up my sweet baby boy who will be enormous the next time I get my hands on him and the tears really started in earnest. Then I turned to Lilli. Lilli finally has a true grasp of where I go when I have to leave (she asked to go with me no less than a hundred times). She knows...
Sometimes When You’re Hurting
When my girls were little, my mother gave them an infant washcloth, fashioned into the likeness of a rabbit. It held pieces of ice in the folds, and was used to sooth away little hurts. We called it a "boo-boo bunny." Fast forward to my grandbabies, and you'll find a little square bean bag of sorts in the freezer that I provided, covered in kid-pleasing fabric and filled with "beans" that hold in the cold for long enough to sooth those same little hurts. Lilli calls it the "boo-boo buddy." Last night, as we were reading books, she kept fidgeting with her foot. When I asked her what was wrong, she pointed to her ankle, to a tiny little scratch, and then she said... "Sometimes when...
Soar
Yesterday, I did something I haven't done in years. I took 3 children, 6 and under, to the mall. Just me and the kiddos and my orthopedic boot. A woman actually came up to me and said "When they talk about women who can do it all, they're talking about you." Wow. I couldn't tell if it was a compliment or if she was just trying to encourage me in my flustered-looking state! I chose to take it as both, and we soldiered on into the mall, headed toward the bungee-jumper contraption that brought us there in the first place. (Mimmie is a very easy sell.) We arrived at said contraption, and while Lilli had been as excited as Valé to jump, she took one look at the height of it and said "No...