Bedtime is done

At last.

Now with 2 kids in my personal diaspora I treasure these inane moments even more.

Me: kiss G goodnight after reading in her bed. Not to her but alongside, while she clutches one arm. I comment that I'd like to be able to move that arm. My kiss reeks of wine. She holds her nose.
"I'm off to write with my bad breath."

G: "Wait. You're off right?" (eyes dancing, giggling, knowing she is making a pun and loving making me laugh)

Me: "You aren't allowed to make me laugh like that."

We crack up together.


I am still grieving something Patrick gave up last month. He fell for lacrosse, and I am impaled by his quitting, since there isn't any near his new home.

Lacrosse doesn't exist in the backwoods of Tennessee (go figure).

And I remember giving up on basketball because we had a goal, but no way for me to learn to dribble on grass or the gravel driveway. I didn't think being vertically challenged would stop me. I'd read novels on being good and fast. Of course I was neither.

Swimming was harder to give up. I swam like crazy (and later found out, gracefully) only to lose each and every race. I was good, but slow.

School crowded it out, grades, majorettes, boys as well, I'm sure.

The loss of things I love doing all flooded back when he gave up his dream. Always the pragmatist.

I did get to swim again in college - a single course reminded me that goggles, simple device, let you slip off, meditate as it were, a kind of swimming chi gong.

I think it kept me killing some roommates, especially sweet Paul who dated a screamer. (Actually it was hysterical, quiet Paul, hiding naked in closets so her husband wouldn't know).

tonight I am rife with words.

Whining from the room next door. Sigh. How I miss my kids.
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