*kendraspondence*

Hey, September, how yoo dooin’?

September, here’s what: I’m happy you’re here. You always bring with you the smell of U-Hauls and giddy college students, the sounds of wonky high school trombone players, “Haa-yaaang on, Sloopeh, Slooopeh, Hang Onnnn!”, freshly cut football fields. Your days start to slope, the sun waning, 7:30, 7:15, on on on down to 6:30 p.m. and by the time your turn is almost up, there is a coziness to the night and an acquaintedness with new school textbooks, while still a hopefulness that there are big things still to accomplish this year.

But let me tell you about this past summer, September, the one you’re sweeping up for me in your wake. I’ll be frank. I thought this summer 2010 was going to suck. I thought I was going to be all soaking bedsheets with milk and wandering zombie-like around my creeky home at 3 a.m. But this past summer was awesome in its unremarkableness. It was just lovely, and smooth. We didn’t go anywhere spectacular (Newport? Cleveland, anyone?). I don’t even think we went out to brunch somewhere splendid. We just ate a thousand popsicles on our cruddy patio, watched the airplanes overhead, and wasted a lot of sprinkler water on ourselves, which, if you ask me, wasn’t a waste at all.

Sure, it was no party when Loverpants got pneumonia. And the hematoma thing I could have done without. But I’ll always remember Fourth of July, sitting with Brother Greg watching the “Boston Pops” on our couch and talking about how his blanket and law textbook were waiting for him on the Common, but instead he was sitting watching the performance with us on TV.

I’ll remember chicken parm night with my old man and Julie, defining bummerooski with my mom and Goobs, and just being so grateful and shmoopy to come home from OH and come back to my life with my hubby.

I’ll remember getting to know the girl that Baby Girl is now at an articulate 2.5 years-old, how she used “I’m sulking” totally appropriately, how her sapphire eyes, framed by her pixie cut, look out at a world and see not a complicated planet but only the ripe cherry tomatoes in the box garden, the sequined pink slippers on sale at Target, the travesty that is the removal of the “Shrek 3″ billboard on Gallivan Blvd.

Most obviously, though, I’ll remember the ease and wonder I felt for 104 days of meeting this new Little Man in my life. I don’t know what angel interceded in Heaven so that I could have this little boy with a halo all summer long, but I am grateful. He is so marvelously adaptable that holding him – which I try to do as many seconds of the day as I can – is a tranquilizer, it’s possibly the best drug a hospital lets you leave with, no prescription necessary. Just hold Little Man for a minute, ohhhh those soft little cheeks and fluttery eyelashes! And you will know.

So all that is to say that life until now has been wonderful, and welcome to you, September 2010. 30 more days in this month of turning 30. Yahoo.

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Some snaps that our new friend, the talented Dr. Paul Yoo took at Boston Temple in the Fenway.

There were moments when I could see it, feel it on her face.  Moments of recognition that, This is Love.  Love is here. I am known, loved, counted among the special.

I saw my daughter fall in love with her family, her extendeds, people whom she has only known through quarterly visits and digital images.  I could see her melting into their hugs and finding the arc in their laughter where trust and vulnerability live.

7 days in Ohio, in the home where I got busted multiple times for getting nail polish on cherry oak furniture, where I played endless games of Uno, where I learned how to read and read my mother’s angry face and fell asleep under lit Christmas trees in a California Raisins sleeping bag.

Now my daughter sleeps on that floor, in the same California Raisins sleeping bag, and wakes up to a different hum in the morning than I remember, but one no less sweet.

Oh how it pained me to leave, but double the torment of pulling my baby girl away from this fanclub of fandamily.  Little Man will come to know the club soon and well enough in time.  But this last visit was monumental for Baby Girl.  She has inside jokes with her Uncle Mikie.  She has special songs with her grandparents and there are toys retained in their basements only for her.

I have believed for the last couple of years that this wide geographic divide between our families was overrated.  And after this last visit home, I am convinced that it is downright cruel.  But I’m trying to be content in the present and hopeful for the future and keeping a look-out for opportunities….lots of opportunities…..

The land of Cleve, on the shores of Erie

Go Buckeyes

Do the grandmothers in your family enjoy giving children baths as much as mine seem to?

Auntie TP

Baby Girl was so stoked to have cousins. She had prior to this told me about imaginary cousins that had given her presents…

Chillin’ with Uncle Mikie

My wonderful in-laws came to have lunch on sabbath at my mama’s. I made quinoa. It wasn’t terrible.

My mama. My baby.

Swimming at my old man’s

Arrival

8 years ago

CLE > BOS

suitcase full of suits

taxi ride along Storrow Drive to apartment of summer

sunny day, auspicious.

Tax Status:  Single

Many, many McJobs

dinners of black beans and salsa

wine stains on the rug

roommates and dance parties

riding the Fung Wah to NYC

debt and depression

but always, church

baptized, engaged

Tax Status:  Married

honeymoon, swoon

lovenest brought to you by IKEA

unemployment, creativity

grad school, confidence

corporate jobbing

scoping real estate

sign on the line

plus sign on a stick

gestate, wait

Tax Status:  Married with Dependents

add: cherub

glory, coming into own

joyous exhaustion

socking away old hurts

mama friends

making stroller tracks

requisite iced coffee

peddling lip gloss

capstone complete

secure sheepskin

travel solo

adjunct lecture

add: cherub two

consider days here, numbered…..

When I graduated from grade school (it was a K-8 type establishment), I thought I was going to become a great feminist orator, taking down the patriarchy one impassioned Gloria Steinem speech at a time.

When I graduated from high school, I thought I was going to become a great humanitarian, an eventual czarina of the American Red Cross, traveling the world on a campaign to suck the world of its healthy blood.

When I graduated from college, I thought I would move to Boston, drink a lot of martinis, work a mediocre job while applying to law school, and eventually become a great attorney, vanquishing injustice one power suit trip at a time.

When I graduated from graduate school, I thought I was really in a pickle because I would have loans and a kid and a mortgage and no time or no energy reserve to produce anything worthwhile for the next eight years.

And I have to say that pretty much none of these projections have really come true.  There are letters next to my name that don’t mean a lot.  There are bills in my name that should mean more but don’t.  There are clips in my portfolio for which I nearly killed myself and for which I was paid a pittance.  There are dozens of jobs on my resume that led me closer to more detours that led me closer to more doubt and self-loathing.
Yet I wouldn’t trade any of it for a smarter dossier, a shinier car, a more assured career path.

I want this life, this one that I never expected.  This union with my best friend, my laughing partner, Saturday nights spent unloading Trader Joe’s of all of its inventory.  This urbane home of the dirty, cluttered, creaky floors and the neighbors who like to bang upstairs.  This full-time job of motherhood where the overtime pay comes in chubby fingers reaching out to latch on to yours.

Not even 30 and my stock portfolio includes a closet full of lip gloss and an enviable supply of cloth diapers.

Happy Mother’s Day to those who never expected to love the job as much as you do, and for all those who will join the force soon, I’m wishing you a blessed journey.

And to you, Newbie ‘Nother Baby:  We’re keeping a “wook-out” for you….

P.S. Here’s a Mum’s Day-ish column I wrote.  Enjoy.

There are some things we have to do in order to get the urge out of our system, no?  I don’t mean nefarious deeds or illicit affairs.  I mean more alone the lines of indulging our curiosities until we flush that curiosity right out of our system.

In my case, that has meant:

- Eating 3 Aunt Annie’s pretzels in one afternoon.  Glad I got that urge out of my system.

- Yelling at the top of my lungs in the college weight room at two guys that kept changing the radio station to super misogynist song station.  I don’t think I will be creating another scene like this, again.  Out of my system.

- Marrying an Asian.  So glad that whole desire was fulfilled and put away.  And I kid!

- Applying to law school.  This is pathetic, but there was a time when I just needed to get the whole application and acceptance song and dance out of my system.  To prove that I was that smart, based on some faceless law school admissions committee decision.  I got in, I never attended, and it’s out of my system for good.  For sure.

- Snorting a Pixi Stick.  It was red, it was messy, it hurt.  Out! Out of my system.

- I am sure Loverpants could rattle off a mile-long list of other things I just neeeeeeeded to buy/see/chew/do so that I could tuck away that burning desire.

But the latest includes getting our pictures made with the mall bunny.  Just had to do it.  Glad we did.  No regrets.  The bunny’s name was Dennis.  Crossed Dennis off the list.

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