There is no “just getting to” the end of a book. Ironic, I think. We read for pleasure and escape, while we try to skip our own voyage. The beauty of breakage. You’ll miss the whole thing.
I am chopping lettuce. I always think that I don’t have many parenting tips, or solo mom hacks, but Rowan is the crabbiest right now, and his cheese quesadilla is cooking while I chop the lettuce. I will feed him first - whoever is having the hardest time, especially when outnumbered, get them settled, and then tend to the others. It is early June, and we’ve just come home from an impromptu late afternoon / early evening at a friend’s pool. Her children are older, and she was out of town. We are lucky to go as we wish… a connection and relationship I would not have, had I not found single motherhood. I am wearing a green bikini, and my boyfriend’s button down shirt. I am perfectly content with how everything is. My hair is frizzy. I am chopping the cabbage now. Isaac, MJ, and I will eat it with romaine, shredded carrot, dried cranberries, and Ken’s Italian Dressing - I grew up going to the steakhouse in Natick, MA, on rare occasions when we would dine out. My father loved it there. Of course, now that I work in our town’s best restaurant, I realize Ken’s was nothing special… but I remember the raised entryway telephone booth vividly, and one time, when I was maybe nine or so, I tried the escargot.
The boys and I will have veggies and hummus with dinner, and meat. I make everything on cutting boards, and serve them like trays… in turn you will have less dishes. I suppose this too, is another piece of wisdom I have to pass along. Having a perfectly set table doesn’t matter, possessing the emotional bandwidth to tend to your children’s behavioral needs, does. You must pick one.
“Home” in this moment is my apartment… a little treehouse. I have had it for three years, although it may be our last summer here. Our family now blended and big and it’s wonderful. It is bittersweet, leaving our nest for four - my first ever roof completely my own. Not a single person has helped me pay a bill or rent, and as tight and stressful as some months have been, I sigh with a smile of experience.
I have become much less picky about the food I eat, and as a result I believe it has made me more beautiful. I say that in the way that it is just how I feel, comfortable. Not in a, how I think I look, way. We spend so much time… time… time… in our awkward years, adolescent periods, early twenties and maybe some change after that… fixated on things to change, enhance, buy, “it will make me better” we tell ourselves. Although, a lot of people are living proof that they can still be terrible even if their lips are “perfectly” plump. I want to be satisfying from the inside, my wrinkles don’t do much.
I am still practicing the home workout videos that once made a vein rip through my abdomen muscle in 2021, but now those lines are soft, slight. It’s better like this, at home, skin being lived-in. An understanding, kind of lived-in. I am unsure when the shift happened, but I stopped caring some time ago. Not unkempt, just unwound. Whatever strings had become pulled so tight, gave way to rhythm and being. Finishing Rowan’s cheese quesadilla scraps (in addition to my salad), is far more enjoyable than shaming myself for not eating a perfect plate containing 30g of protein. Actually, the more we focus on real hunger, intentional activity, and true treasuring of moments, the less rattled we will be by everything else. It’s like all of our attention goes to the areas that make us the most worked up… And I’m exhausted by that. Steadiness - a song plays within me.
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