Sweet, Elusive Sleep

I never liked slumber parties.  After the fun and games concluded, my peers drifted away as quickly as they had arrived.  And I would lay wide-eyed, growing more homesick with each passing minute.

Dark nights are lonely.  The quiet of a sleeping house grows loud in your ears as you try to tune out the world and turn down your thoughts.  Being surrounded by strange breathing and the unfamiliar ticks, creaks, and sighs of a home that isn’t yours is alarming.  Time stops as you resign yourself to a sleepless night.

Insomnia at home takes on a different form.

The tiny glow of an alarm clock squeezes beneath your eyelid and demands alertness.  Your worries, hopes, lists of things you can’t forget and things you absolutely must do are amplified to the maximum level, like erratic drumming from your neighbor’s garage.  You are helpless.

There are nights I find myself praying.  I whisper The Lord’s Prayer and then I talk to God – heaven – my angels – myself.

There are nights I read.  I toss and turn.  I change my gown.  I get up and watch a movie or do some work.  I write.

Some nights I climb into bed with BigGirl and hold her like the teddy bear I had as a little girl – the one that wore a soft pink day gown from my days as a seven-pound infant. 

And, there are nights I cry.  There always have been, for as long as I can remember.  I cry as I pray in the dark.  I cry until my eyes are dry and burn.

Sweet sleep, why must you be so elusive?  Why must we play these games – you play hard to get and I chase you until my frustration tells me to give up.  Move on.  It must not be meant to be.

Oh, sweet sleep.  Why do you not favor me?  Why must you tease me so?  You fill the night with your lullaby – your sweet, siren song – and I jump ship, hoping to find you, hoping you will come looking for me.  But, you remain just outside of my reach – evading my best tactics, once again. 

And yet, each night, I try again.  Like a foolish lover, I wait for you in the night. 

Again and again.

Yesterday, tonight, and tomorrow.

I lay alone and I wait.

 

Photo credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zamb0ni/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Dancing In the Kitchen

I grew up watching My Mama dance.

Daddy still has the same turntable stereo on which we listened to records.  Sometimes Mama and Daddy would dance together.  Sometimes Mama would dance with us.  And sometimes, Mama would dance alone while we watched, smiling and laughing.

Now, my girlies and I dance.  We’ve done so for years.  We’ll turn up the stereo till the neighbors can hear and dance till we sweat and our muscles are sore.  We dance to anything – classical, rock, pop, Latino, you name it.  We just dance. 

We dance ballet, ballroom, interpretive, and group (think: Ring Around the Rosie).  Sometimes I hold them in my arms with their cheek to mine and we spin in circles and dip deeply, smiles pressing into our cheeks.  Sometimes we sautée and arabesque and practice graceful arms and fingers as we tendu or relevé.

Other times, I dance alone.  I dance while I cook dinner, set the table, wash dishes.  I dance while they bathe.  I dance and I sing and I am happy.

I know one day my girlies will look at me and laugh, just like we laughed with My Mama.  Then one day, I will dance alone, with no one there to see.  And finally, there will come a day when they, too, will dance with their babies.  Then, at last, they will know just how happy I was when I danced with them.

A Haunting Tune

I’ve never liked K.D. Lang before.  It’s not that I have disliked her or anything, I’ve just never “known” her as an artist at all. 

Friday night I was on my bed, working on this and that and struggling to keep my eyelids from closing.  My back grew weak from sitting up, and I found myself stretching out on my stomach, my head at the foot of the bed, with my laptop beside me.  A fatal mistake. 

I began drifting in and out of consciousness. My bedroom still warmly lit by the light of my bedside lamp, the television still broadcasting the opening ceremonies, my laptop still faithfully standing by with my work, and I still fully clothed.  

I remember thinking, Who is that singing?

I remember feeling peaceful.   

I couldn’t hear the words clearly in my sleep, but the song seemed to go on forever, in a good way…like it was in slow motion.  It hovered in the room above my bed.

At some point the word hallelujah broke through to my mind.  Soon afterwards, I pulled myself back, lifted my head and said aloud

K. D. Lang???

and then

wow.

Since then, this song has haunted me and I’m desperately searching for a copy of it for my Zune.  No luck yet, but I’ll keep trying.  In the meantime, enjoy this older version from YouTube on me. 

By the way…Leonard Cohen’s version?  Don’t bother.  He sounds like he’s dying. 

The lyrics to this song have also intrigued me…you can find them here.

***Addendum – I’m even more intrigued now that I’ve read this.***

Sunday in Snaps

It’s been a lazy Sunday around here. 

We’ve been “Scramble”-ing with family,

chasing balloons

picnicking in the den,

tending to babies and bears,

and snackin’ from sacks in our jammies.

Take a deep breath.  Enjoy your babies.  Have a wonderful weekend.

12 x 12 February 2010

Today was quite a day…let’s take a look at the photographic recap.

#1. The day started off rainy and cold.  What a yucky gray drive to school it was.  I could have stayed in bed for another few hours at least.

#2. We started our day with a faculty breakfast celebrating my friend, our Employee of the Year.  Our crew really knows how to throw a party – and, apparently, how to rap….and wear heels with tattoos….and order Starbucks….and take down folks in the car line.

#3.  My students and I worked on nonfiction reading strategies with a very timely and integrated Weekly Reader article on about the war in Afghanistan.  We had a wonderful open-minded discussion about the past 9 years of war.  It was amazingly easy to explain some very complex topics, thanks to our collective literary memories.  (I was able to explain the concept of Osama bin Laden and terrorists, for instance, by using Tony D. in Freak the Mighty.  Sounds odd, but it was a powerful link for them.)

#4. As a stepping stone into responding to literature, students supported their thinking and opinions using details from the text and the smidge of research about the life of an Afghan as they responded to this question:

“Do you think the Afghan people are happy we are sending 30,000 more American soldiers?  Why or why not?”

Again, ….wow.  Powerful thinking from my little kiddos.

#5.  Among an onslaught of chocolate roses, heart-shaped boxes, scented candles, teddy bears, and various other lovies, I received this poem from a student.  It reads:

Rosies are red  vilets are blue you are the best teacher so Happy v-day

I love it.

#6.  Ooooooohhhh….yummy.   We celebrated Valentine’s Day together as a class with an ice cream sundae party.  TIP:  Buy the cardboard 1/2 gallon boxes of ice cream, disassemble the boxes and CUT the ice cream into squares with a big knife.  It is INCREDIBLY easier and faster than scoop, scoop, scooping from a bucket. 

#7. My handsome Harrison stopped by to get some smooches from me.  He’s another one of my boyfriends.  Love that baby!  He’s SO going to be a heart-breaker one day.  Girls will be swooning for miles…

#8.  One of my students took a picture of BigGirl and I today.  We didn’t plan to be twins, but we were. :) We love pink.

#9. Even though the high was in the forties and it didn’t stop raining all day, when we finally got home, both of my girlies peeled off some layers and locked themselves in their room.  They needed time to pull out, pick over, disassemble, and just be kids.

#10.   After dinner it was time to hit Mommy’s bed for a bit of Disney channel.  Apparently, Phineas and Ferb are so much better curled up on my pillows or beneath my covers.

#11.  With the girlies chillin’ beside me, I snatched a few moments (ha!) to chat, write and attempt to make a dent in my Google Reader.

#12.  A bittersweet closure to the day – the opening ceremony of the Olympics was overshadowed by the death of the Georgian luge athlete.  So tragic.  My heart goes out to his family, friends, and countrymen. 

 

That about wraps it up for this month.  You can find January’s 12x12 here, if you missed it. 

Be sure to let me know if you’re participating in 12x12, too.  I’d love to check it out!

Valentine’s Day Dilemma

I’m late.  What else is new?

I received my first heart-shaped box of chocolate of the season yesterday morning at about 9 AM.  I ate the four yummy little confections enclosed inside by about 9:05. 

I’ve written about this holiday before.  But, this week, Girl Talk Thursday is all about the big V Day.  So, here I go…

I really am a romantic at heart.  It isn’t that I’m a cynic or cold-hearted.  However, I believe that Valentine’s Day places undue stress on many relationships: budding, struggling, and even just busy.  Not to mention the alienation of the entire world of singles….it’s like the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve and they’re left without anyone to kiss – except it lasts all…day…long.  A full twenty……four……hours………..of awkwardness.

This holiday forces people to lump their relationships into silos and give gifts that are suitable to the status of their bonds.  As I’ve mentioned before, I fear rejection desperately.  In this, I know I am not alone.  For those young and “it’s complicated” relationships, Valentine’s Day builds up even more hype and tension surrounding those electrical impulses that silently, invisibly dart through the air between our limbic lobes.  And that hype and tension does nothing but congest the airways, making it difficult for emotion to navigate.

I will say, with certainty, that I love to watch little people practice the show of affection this time of year.  There is a lesson integrated within this day of romance and emotion.  I love to see their faces light up with pride, excitement and anticipation as they thrust at you their folded, stickered, commercial valentine with your name chicken-scratched onto the outside.  I smile and oooooh and aaaaaah and hug them as though they’ve just presented me with a priceless diamond ring.  Sometimes, they blush.  Sometimes, they tentatively and oh-so-slightly step in closer as I read the silly message, eagerly awaiting my squeeze and squeals.  This is my favorite part of the annual Valentine’s Day season.  It is so good and pure I can’t help but grow more than a little sentimental.

I also have lovely visions in my future mind of little gray couples sitting sweetly at a breakfast table, sipping coffee and reading.  Their movements much slower in this decade of their love story, one gingerly hands the other a card.   It’s just a simple card, but the words inside tell a story that brings a smile to their faces.  Their hearts are still the same young, frisky hearts that stood before the world and said “I do”.  The same scared, hopeful hearts that kissed the soft little round head of an itty-bitty baby.  The same proud, bittersweet hearts that stood together and clapped for their young graduate.  Those two lovers, who now routinely remind each other of appointments and dietary guidelines and when to take their pills and what year they met, know Valentine’s Day as a sweet gift.

So, I guess in sum, I find Valentine’s Day is best for the very young and the very old.  All the rest of us just need to take more care to live more lovingly everyday. 

Work Space Confessions

Mrs. Taggart told my mom that my desk was messy.  She showed her all the incomplete worksheets, and complete worksheets, crammed into my pocket school desk.  I don’t remember or not if she dug out the love notes from Christopher or not, but they were in there, too.  I remember.  That was first grade.

Today, for the umpteenth time, I reassured a concerned and embarrassed parent that their child - guilty of cramming study guides and other such paperwork in the bottom of backpacks, leaving them strewn and tucked about in a classroom, or “accidentally” throwing them away before they had a chance to make it home - would be OK.  Once again today, I confessed my own history of congested administrative arteries.  My own paperwork circulatory system has long been crippled.

This is not the first time I’ve confessed these office sins here.  But, yet again, I feel the need to bare my truths. 

Truths, like this…

 

Go ahead. Click on it to dig deeper.  It’s quite revealing.

Just outside of this photo you might find other random items, such as: a used ink cartridge waiting for me to take to school for our corporate contributions drive, a spool of pink grosgrain ribbon, a bottle of nail polish, two bobby pins, two pen caps from the remaining MIA writing utensils after BabyGirl’s weekend round of oh-so-NOT-cute game of “Pen Bandit” (i.e. hiding uncapped pens all over the house, sending me into a mad panic as I franticly envisioning large pools of black ink on my upholstered furniture), a scratched pair of sunglasses I need to throw away (Never mind. Just checked that one off the list.), and – le pièce de résistance – a 3/4-inch plastic dog tail.  Not the dog…just the tail.

 

While I am an extremely cyclic person and tend to have bouts of neat & tidy organization followed by stretches of “I’ll deal with this later – bigger fish to fry today,” disarray, I have come to accept my piles.  It is a love-hate relationship I have with them.  I hate the actual piles and feelings of dissatisfaction and frustration I get from them, but I love the processes from which they result. 

1. Good intentions.  Look – I buy a book about organizing my space and my life…I read some of it…I get overwhelmed by the first week checklist telling me to get a minimum of 7 hours of sleep per night (I wish), jot a To Do list each morning (Have you met my daughters?), start a journal (check), limit television (check), schedule 2-minute breaks two to three times a day to “just be” (whaaa???), practice meditating (I’d love to…), schedule time to exercise (I try), schedule more “me time” (more than the six minutes per day???), eliminate energy drains on your life (You want me to retire and move away?), and “take control” of your time (This lady’s an idiot.)…ALL IN THE FIRST WEEK!!!  If I could do that in a week, why the heck did I need to buy this freaking 52-week guide to organizing my life???

2. Creative endeavors.  Cooking, sewing, writing, photography…This is the good stuff. I love these things. If those parts of my life leave evidence on my surroundings, so be it.  I will leave my mark happily.

3.  Thrift. On second thought, perhaps this should go in the “good intentions” category. 

4. Motherhood.  Ask me why I have pink grosgrain ribbon, a crumpled-up-no-longer-sticky post-it note with a butterfly drawn on it, random pen caps floating, a funky popsicle stick flower stuck in a wooden pot, a Lois Lowry chapter book, a sea green crayon and a Hello Kitty digital camera on my desk.  My babies.  I love my babies.  This is my life and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

One of my favorite quotes comes from an unlikely source.   

“Homes are for free expression, not first impressions.”

My piles are not a problem, they are a side effect of an alive and wonderfully diverse mind.

 

 

Now, my desk at work is a whole different story…but that’s another post entirely.

This post was submitted as a part of the {W}rite-of-Passage: Challenge #9.