Disco Balls and Fur Coats

My children are FAB-U-LOUS, and I mean in a very groovy, dance to the beat of their own drummer, wearing plaids with stripes AND polka dots kind of a way. And I love it.

This comes, mind you, from a woman who, in fourth grade had an official "pin" day every week or two where I wore on the front of my red shirt every pin I owned in my substantial pin collection. My scoop neck shirt was scooping dangerously low by the end of the day, but given that I wasn't in touch with my appeal as a member of the feminine gender until, oh, about twenty years later, I simply worried whether all the pins showed up equally. Pin equality.

My siblings probably don't remember the pin days as fondly as the fact that EVERY day I wore one of a collection of terry cloth headbands with small stuffed wings (or horns, given my mood) attached to each side, or baseball hats with either a rainbow arching dorkily over the top or wings, again, on each side. This, of course, is merely the tip of my fashion disaster iceberg. Sadly, once the realization of my fashion uniqueness (a favorite artifact of those days? My unicorn mug with necessary rainbow and the words "Heather - Unique" emblazoned on it)dawned on me, I spent the next fifteen years dressed only in shades of, as my mother christened it, "forest": olive green, chocolate brown, and black.

So, the day Jordan came out of her room wearing colors and patterns together that in all seriousness made my eyeballs sting, I told her how beautiful she looked and we went off to school. I haven't loved my "forest" years - in fact, I see myself as sort of stylistically paralyzed. In my teenage years my mother had her colors "done" - and ours, too. I was a fall, I think, and I took that seriously. Gone were the days of spring pastels and the ripe jewel colors of a "summer". Fall meant muted colors. Bare tree limbs. Evergreen boughs. I couldn't keep straight those shades of red that were warm or cool, couldn't discern whether they were "blue" reds or "orange" reds and so I went to black and brown. I had some interesting pieces in these colors, I think, and some funky coats and jackets to help dress them up, but it's taken motherhood to get me to embrace once again color.


Having a girl is interesting - we don't want her mired in thoughts only of how she looks. When I bought her a faux leopard winter coat, Tom said, "Here we go," but I was thinking something the opposite. Jordan doesn't dress to look like other girls. She spent a full year, 1/5 of her life ONLY wearing dresses or skirts. A small part of me wanted desperately for her to want to wear blue jeans, but she was entirely tomboy in her tutu, so it was more of an internal rebellion against my mom's highschool rule: we had to wear a skirt or dress at least once a week. She's eased up and does dresses, skirts, pants, jeans, and of course, still dabbles generously in nakedness. I want her to care about how she looks to the point that I want her to want to wear clean clothes that fit and are good quality, appropriate to some measure for the situation, and that she feels good in - I want her to not care if they match, if they are in style, if they are what so and so would wear. We call her leopard coat her "rock star" coat and I like that. We all want secretly to be a rock star - or something a little wilder, cooler, different than what we are. Being able to dress in a way that nods slightly at that wild side is a great way of self expression, I think.

I often feel sorry for Sawyer when it comes to clothes - he's got some fun button down shirts, "party shirts", but nowhere near the rainbow array of his sister's closet. He does manage some pretty wild matching of shirts and pants, which boggles my mind given how boring a lot of it can seem in overview. He likes to add flair, though, in the form of funky hats or a borrowed scarf. And when the girls are picking out clips for their hair in the morning, he's right next to them. He does have fabulous hair, like his dad. Tom opts for self expression through facial hair and head hair and Sawyer has his Dad's mop. Right now, it's a different color, but one my friends swear women would pay hundreds of dollars to recreate in the stylist's chair. It's getting to a length now that it's reverting to the indefatigable mohawk that showed up at about four months old. His hair and his smile - that'll get him through. And, I hope, a penchant for clean shirts, nice jeans, and the occasional well put together shirt and pants set. Nothing wrong with a little pride in your appearance, I say.

Last week we ran into the head of Jordan's school at hospice. I had just stopped to admire a grown up "rock star" jacket hanging on a rack. "I almost bought that for you," she said, "but I didn't know if you'd wear it." I crossed a line just then, out of the forest and back towards my youth. I don't want to go all the way back to winged sweat bands, but I do want to be recognized as someone who'd wear a rock star jacket. I want to dress a little more like my kids. Less conformity, more joy. She bought it for me, I cleaned it and I've worn it. And plan to a lot - even if it's just over my workout clothes on the way to the gym.

My kids wear about 90% hand me downs which fits right into our belief systems about a) not spending what we don't have, and b) not buying more of what the earth doesn't need. It goes right from us to other families and I'm still amazed by what's in storage waiting for my siblings to pony up a niece or nephew. There is joy in seeing clothes your kids have worn on a friend's child, and vice versa. And joy in seeing how differently each one wears it.

Jordan had her 5th birthday party last week. The third disco party in a row, and it was fabulous. I dressed up, Jordan dressed up, some friends and some kids did as well. Someone brought the perfect music, someone was painting kids faces, adults ate and drank and talked, kids ran wild, everyone danced. Her parties are legend, not for their craziness or for how perfect they are, but for how joyful they are. A disco ball, Cincinnati chili, dutch oven birthday cake, and as many friends as we can possibly pack in our house make them wonderful. We ask her what kind of party she wants - she's been to all types and we love the variety - and she without hesitation says "disco." I hope we can keep that spirit alive in her for a long time. Inside and out.

I am thinking about buying a pair of ski boots. And it is my daughter's fifth birthday. You may not think these two things are in any way related (and neither did I until I wrote an e-mail to my twin sister about both of them), but they are.

I grew up skiing. I love skiing. I haven't been skiing in about four years for various foot and womb related reasons, and i am itching to get back. I would be camped on the mountain right now, seats out of the mini van, trying to convince my children that we were having "fun" and myself that seven minutes up on a lift and under three minutes down a run wasn't enough time to consider my children "unattended." The idea of putting myself in ski boots is probably the single biggest reason why I haven't been back. I even bought snowboard gear and spent two days learning because the boots were comfortable. But those were the last days on the mountain before the foot breaking/pregnancy winter chapters and so I wasn't good enough for there to be any associated longing with getting back to it.

I was writing my sister for any advice on ski boots she might have. I still own as my primary boots a pair I inherited when my stepmother passed away twelve years ago. She last skied in them about five years before she passed. They have NEON on them from the first time around for the fad, the foam or padding or whatever inside of them is by now so packed and condensed I think they qualify as a size nine on my size seven feet. But they are less painful simply because their pain is not compounded by the additional agony of a $600 dent in my bank account. It is shocking how much torture devices can run. The last time I tried new ski boots I was weeping on a chairlift in Canada with my sister next to me, I feel little hope for this next round, especially since I've broken each of my feet in the intervening five years, not to mention the double case of plantar fasciitis that still whispers round my arches. And I tried, I really and truly tried to find boots - in fact I am pretty sure that I am on a "no longer welcome" or "do not rent to" list in every ski shop I've been in for the last fifteen years. And I am by no means a difficult shopper in any other regard.

Okay, enough about ski boots, other than to say that the main reason the subject upsets me so much is because of how deeply I love to ski. It gives me a high, a feeling of joy unattainable through any other sport I have tried, not to mention that it's tied to some pretty fabulous (and not) memories of skiing with my dad and my sister and friends and former boyfriends and current (ha! only!) husbands.

Now for the daughter part. I gave birth to my daughter five years ago, at home with both my sisters and my mother present alongside the midwives. Other than the fact that it was MY body she tunneled through, I would say WE gave through because of how involved my husband was with the birth. (WE labored, I provided the canal, thank you very much.) As other mothers know, there are no words to convey properly what that experience was like, what a tunnel it was for me given my emergence as a wholly new person on the other side of it. Given how long, involved, intense and clearly painful it was, my sisters and mother were probably pretty changed for it as well. My younger sister drove the next day to New Mexico from where we lived in California and said she was nearly all the way through Arizona before she'd convinced herself once again to even consider birthing her own children. My gratitude towards my sisters and mother for their part in the birth, my gratitude towards my husband for welcoming them to such a profoundly personal and life changing experience is also monumental.

My brother was there for my son's birth, though somewhat more peripherally (especially in terms of his view of the actual process). Given the fact that Sawyer was faster but sunny side up, my brother deserves the same accolades for helping me through and for bearing witness to the experience, but since he doesn't (and has never wanted to) ski, and doesn't (and has never wanted to) have a uterus, I'll leave him out here: I want to ski. I therefore need to wear ski boots. The comparison? I want my sisters to fulfill their desires to bear children. Therefore I want them to go through labor and delivery. I don't want them to be in pain. But I do want for them to experience the profound and life changing joy that it brings. SO I guess I do want them to be in pain if that's the cost of their joy.

I'll admit, if you're not a skier - or if some sort of sport or art or activity doesn't bring you a feeling of joy or freedom or whatever it is like I am clearly craving, you don't get this. And you might NOT get this at all because, it just occurred to me, I am somewhat distancing myself with this analogy from the fact that five years ago I birthed - WE birthed my daughter. Distancing myself because even thinking about it, sitting here in front of my computer, I am overwhelmed with gratitude and joy and with soul-searing awe at the fact of it, and the FACT of my daughter, this incredible person, this magical thing living and breathing in the room next to this one. It is almost too much to think about in its entirety.

My husband is out of town - I shooed him out when he had the opportunity to visit his siblings who he doesn't see nearly often enough due to distance and time, and with whom he is, as he says, tight. I encouraged him to go now, when all three of them and their families are healthy rather than just visiting in event of emergency or illness or grief. To be alone in our home with the hugeness, the reality of this incredible girl we created and who since we created her five years ago has quite clearly taken the reins and created herself, is somewhat humbling. "Really? Me?," I want to whisper, creeping quietly around the corner to peer into her bedroom., "I did that? We did that?"

When asked what I'll remember most about this milestone (and I can hear her, twenty years from now insisting I remember in detail all about it), I think I'd say the enormity of her passion - for everything. For reading, for friendship, for swimming, for righting wrongs - or if she is the one wronging, for doing it fully, completely and with gusto. I will remember that small pockets of the house smell like strawberry candy or gingerbread or vanilla icing or cherry cough drops because she is so into Strawberry Shortcake dolls. The 8" ones that have their own smell, outfit, insane mane of hair, and long and ridiculous name. I will remember how glad I am that she loves Strawberry Shortcake and not BRATZ dolls that inspire five year olds to start hooking and make the Barbies that were banned from my house look like miniature statues of Mother Theresa. I will remember her clomping around, sans underwear (it's lucky she remembers clothes at all given her early years) in gorgeous dresses with her clog boots and parka on. I will remember the sweetness with which she treated her brother (85% of the time), her symbiosis with her papa, and the fact that I knew without a doubt that Hilary Clinton should feel lucky that she's not in competition with Jordan for the title of the First Female President. I will remember how she seemed underwater finally free from the constant workings of her already fabulous mind. That underwater, even though she was a more advanced swimmer, she was also her most playful and joyful self.

It's terrifying to know how little I'll remember twenty years from now, I know, because of how quickly these five years have passed and how I feel underwater myself, coming up and gasping in breaths of moments to cling to, memories like buoys that anchor us and prove: We've Been Here. We Survived. It Was Fabulous.

I am grateful to be a mama at all, awestruck that I am responsible for having brought this little being INTO being. I am insanely proud, I am dumbfounded by joy. And although I remember the pain of it fairly clearly, I'd take being struck by it each and every time I am with her because the joy of the encounter would far outweigh it's effect.

I guess in the end I should buy the boots, put on the gear, make my way up the mountain. Above all else, my daughter teaches me bravery on a daily basis, and it's been quite clear for five years now that I'm one of the ones she came here to teach. Pain is nothing when the outcome can be this rapturous.

A new parental milestone: the first time we got served breakfast in bed! We found it easy, apparently, to fall back into our old routine of going to bed WAY too late back at home. So when 7:30 rolled around (yippee, actually - this is a lot later than they'll be able to get up come Monday) both the bug and the fox were up immediately. Sawyer had woken up at 5:30 but had gone back to sleep and was in Jordan's bed, Jordan was in our bed, and I was in her bed with Sawyer (yes, some nights we do play musical beds, don't you?) We all crawled back into the parental bed, and when Sawyer continued to cajole us to "Wake up! Wake uuuuup!", I said, "Why don't you guys go make your papa coffee in bed?" Jordan said, after a pause, "But, Mama, I don't know how to do that yet." So, I mentally amended the list of New Year's resolutions, and suggested they make us breakfast in bed instead. Same answer. I didn't say anything, I was still caught up in the fantasy of coffee being brought to me in bed. So when they brought us, a few minutes later, two brimming full bowls of dry oatmeal, imagine my delight (true, actually. Aided by my imagining it was a steaming mug full of hot coffee).

Now it's three days later and we've had an eventful night mixed in with the drive back toward our regular sleep schedule - Jordan got very sick, we think food poisoning. And very sick for Jordan isn't really all that bad: she threw up (horribly and violently, preceded by even worse uncontrollable sobbing) at about 10:00pm, and another few times before falling asleep finally for the night at 1:30am. Her experience two months earlier with the stomach flu had been much worse, a long night of vomiting every five minutes until dawn, Sawyer doing the same thing in our bed with Tom. Musical beds for other reasons, mainly the changing of sheets. It's easy, though, in the morning when it's clear that they're on the mend to laugh about it, to hold them close and wish it would never happen again but to count your lucky stars that it's an unusual experience, not a way of life or a step in a long decline.

A few hours later I was on the phone with my twin sister who had changed her sheets as well, her husband, however, was the sick one, and there wasn't any laughter or relief in her voice recounting the episode. Her husband has terminal cancer and it's been a few years of an unbelievable battle on their part - one that has precluded any attempts at having children or planning for a future beyond the next few hours, days, weeks or at most months. I want for my family my acts of faith in the future to be regularly making deposits into my kids college plans, not making flight reservations for two months down the line. But it has forced the realization that everything is an act of faith in this world. Marriage, having children the grandest displays of all. Not faith that it will all turn out alright, but faith that you'll endure, I suppose. Faith that your heart will survive the potential for loss that comes with all that love.

When people ask what it's like having a twin, the only thing that is really different now, in my adult life, is to have someone who IS me genetically living a life so different from mine. We have always felt like different people, haven't ever had strange feelings of not being whole if we're not with the other, but we are identical twins so I can look at her life and see myself in it, see how things take strange twists, how we can't plan for everything in life.

We're trying to decide whether to have a third child or not right now. We have two gorgeous children who are, so far, incredibly healthy. It feels like a monumental roll of the dice to me. It's been an especially hard year with friends and children of friends and parents of friends going through terrible illness and suffering. Way, way too much death this year and it's felt like very few victories. Amazingly most everyone around us has endured, most still seem to have faith identifiable by just the ability to look forward, to move on, to continue to risk loving the people in their lives regardless of the capacity for loss that creates in them. This thought, of having another child, just by it's presence puts us in a precarious relationship with faith: if we choose to try again, that is one kind of faith, by not choosing to embrace hope and try are we not embracing faith or are we holding on ever more tightly to the possibility of what we've already created?

A part of me wants to have ten more children, put that much more love into this world - but again, there's that mirrored potential for loss, for illness, for things to move away from the joy so abundant now in our lives. But it is that much more love. And maybe that next kid will be the one who knows how to make coffee at 6:30 in the morning. Or how to cure cancer. Or how, like they all do, to give the most unbelievable hugs that help lessen the pain of the loss and add power to the faith that still remains.

We're home from Christmas in Santa Fe after a loooong New Year's Eve on the road back to Lotus. Tom had been at the wheel for over 11 hours when at midnight I kissed him on Highway 58 entering Barstow, CA, two sleeping angels in the back blissfully unaware that we were leaving 2007 rapidly behind us as so many miles of traveled asphalt while in front lay the blank canvas of 2008, ready for exploration. When we told Jordan seven hours later when she awoke that it was not only a new month but a new year, heady with enthusiasm over newly hatched resolutions involving triathlons, the bettering of ourselves, and the reduction of our collective carbon footprint, her response was all you'd expect from a nearly 5 year old girl: "January! That means it really IS almost my birthday!"

Christmas went on way too long this year as it always does - we started so early with pre-Christmas presents of advent calendars and salt and pepper shakers and Christmas dresses from wonderfully doting grandparents. As a parent, with your children on the receiving end of that much joy, it makes it esecially hard to drive home the true "reason for the season" - that it isn't all about gifts - when every day there is another box, another wonderful aunt or uncle sending something new and exciting. We have them both spend serious time and effort on thank you notes, and we try diligently to acknowledge who gave what book or toy when it's read or brought out, but the sheer volume makes it somewhat overwhelming - my father-in-law who has a relationship only with my children and not with any of his other children or grandchildren (not his choice) sent a box with 27 individually wrapped presents - and only 5 or 6 of those were for Tom or myself. Just keeping track of what he gave us is overwhelming, much less keeping track of what each of thier six grandparents, 8 aunts and uncles thought of, shoped for, bought, wrapped, and sent many miles for their enjoyment.

Rather than give in to hopelessness, I saw volume as opportunity. With 18 hours of driving in front of us, I loaded up a bag of presents and envsioned a parceling out of gifts every 90 minutes or so through the entire trip, thereby lightening our load as boxes and giftwrap were eliminated at each gas station (an action that takes another emotional toll on me at Christmas). In reality, we fell so easily into the driving through the night schedule, there were just a few hours left on Saturday to dole out gifts. There was a frantic ripping into paper and the roulette aspect of Christmas inevitable with so many presents: one of the favorite gifts this year has been a $1.45 paper streamer wand (I remember receiving them at various points throughout my childhood, they seem to break at the most opportune point of climax, just before they'd cause a huge fight or interest would fizzle out). The most promising is often the first one forgotten: out in the cold is the overwhelmingly horrible Polly Pocket Shopping Magnetic Board. Upon opening it, it ellicited excitement and the frantic dressing of the two dolls in the two favorite outfits until one didn't stick exactly right, one magnet sleeve ripped from a magnetic shirt and tragedy rapidly began to outweigh joy. Which is good, because when at 2am I accidentally had nudged the board for the fifth or sixth time causing it to scream out in a shrill and soulless voice "Polly wants to go shopping with you!" or something equally inane and completely oposite the values we're trying to instill, if I wasn't completely incapable since elementary school of even the slightest amount of litter, I would have flung it into the middle of Hwy 40 in the middle of AZ and watched in righteous yet petty joy as a semi hauled it's full load over Polly's already flat form, rendering the voice of the horrible thing forever silent.

The irony is that I think they GET the reason for the season. Their school does a fabulous job of teaching about may of the holidays people celebrate, gently and firmly redressing attention away from gifts and to wonder, joy, celebration. Our favorite part of Christmas last year was the four of us bundling into the mini van with Tom's guitar and freshly baked cookies and showing up on the doorstep of five or six completely unsuspecting friends and caroling our hearts out on Chirstmas Eve. Because this year we'd be in Santa Fe, we caroled early, and it's hard trying to check off the caroling when there's packing to do and still a few days of school to meet with open eyes after late nights on front porches. We were excited to go to Santa Fe, but there's always a strange feeling of being stretched between the past and the joy of building future tradition through the experience of being fully immersed in your own home and community. Don't worry, I get that these are wonderful issues to have at the holidays: so many relatives to share the joy with, so many homes to be at home in. We love hosting at home the best, but I love going back to NM every now and then to relive traditions there, to bring the joy of who I am now as a part of this family into my parents' worlds to remind them of why my absence is actually evidence of the growth of our greater family. At least, that's how I deal with the latent NM Catholic guilt that tends to rear it's head this time of year.

"I love Baby Jesus," Jordan's told me on more than one occasion. And I smile benignly and nod my head and wonder if it's the early shimmerings of guilt that elicits this comment, or a saccharine mimicing of something she's heard from someone convinced of their own righteousness - or I'll hapily concede, from someone with absolute and total faith. It reminds me of what's always been the creepiest part of Christmas for me, the idea that not only is Santa watching to see whether I'm naughty or nice, but there's Jesus' trump card - the threat of eternal damnation if I think too much of my own wants and not enough of the sacrifices made for me. I don't mind that Christmas isn't so much about the birth of Jesus anymore, that it's been usurped by our culture into a nondenominational celebration. I love building new tradiitons and having what matters be what song we choose first on each porch and whether we've made enough cookies for everyone we want to visit. I loved the ritual of the Catholic Church and so many of the teachings, but I know plenty of people, including my own mother, for whom it has provided more pain than joy. And so I choose a Christmas of our own making. Jesus is invited of course, but there are other houses to visit as well.

On the excessive present note, we just finished oppening the last of them tonight, saving the last five that we bought one another for the very end. I think I envisioned that this would be the most meaningful gift-opening moment. I think instead it was the most stripped down, the last step to conquer before finally falling into our own beds. And indeed, Sawyer is under his covers still holding his new tennis racket - pink, with Dora the Explorer on it. Jordan's has Dora as well and it certainly might be in her bed if Strawberry Shortcake adorned it, but clearly only Dora is badass enough for the sport. Jordan shows promise with a racket, with all sports, really, so I feel pretty confident that even though she's not sleeping with hers, it'll soon earn a place in her heart. At least I won't lie awake on nights insomnia bubbles gently through my brain envisioning a Safeway truck shredding it into oblivion somewhere between Barstow and Flagstaff.

There are thank you cards to write, miles of them, nand the last of the New Years' photo cards to get out. Ironically, someone stole the three bolted down blocks of mailboxes on our route, sixty in all, last night. Having forgotten to place a hold on our mail, it's likely our box will be of the most bountiful for the theives, packed full of cards, some checks, and I'm sure a present or two in the oversized parcel boxes that were also liberated. When we got a phone call from a neighbor informing us of the theft, I immediately mourned not for lost gifts but for the Christmas cards I count on to watch friends' babies grow, to keep up with friends who would be closer if there were time enough to get to know them better. And we do, at least moderately, through these cards. Although there is so much to do after a long trip. I am glad to have been with my parents at Christmas. Travel, especially home, is exhausting on so many levels, not the least of which is dealing with the inevitable clash between who I was then and who I think I am now, the inevitable small irritations of loved ones toward each other, what can only be terror at one spouse watching the parents of the other and wondering what horrifying traits will be unlocked in their partner by the wicked keys of time. But there are the replenishing moments as well: the overwhelming joy of watching my parents fall more and more in love with my kids and watching my kids yank my parents joyfully back towards youth. The relief as well as sadness I felt as we drove away is just what I should be have experienced on departure, I think, from a successful trip.

We're home, with its piles of laundry and endless to do lists, but we're together, safe, whole. And as I start to put away decorations and bags to reuse again next year for yet more gifts, I'll be counting every last blessing of 2007 and of Christmas this year. Including the strength of will that enabled me to save Polly Pocket for the hospice resale store pile rather than environmentally having added her to my ever present mound of guilt. The last strains of "Angels We Have Heard on High" are fading in my head, and I hear Jordan and Sawyer singing, at the top of their lungs, each of our names in place of the chorus (I remember wondering for a few years who this Gloria chick was, too). Jordan, Sawyer, Mama, Papa, Grandma, Grandpa, all the aunts and uncles' names elongated to 13 syllables sung at top volume. Each and every one eternally glorious.