judgments.

i hear her talking to her dolls. she makes up these long, drawn out conversations. and i think about wearing headphones and letting her scatter her letters about her legs like rose petals and then drying them out and sewing them into a bag to stick in her underwear drawer. a sachet of imagination unencumbered by politics and disagreements and financial (in)stability. she will wear the scent of myopic selfishness around her like a musk. and she will shed her skin slowly, leaving dna all over the place.

these are the things i think about when she talks to her dolls.

::

we all judge each other, don't we? about our choices. is there a part of this that is healthy? a piece of this that means we are doing something well? i know that i judge people constantly, without even trying. friends have told me i am the least judgmental person they know. and yet...that isn't really possible, is it? to be an active human being with your feet steeped in sticky relationships and personal history and experience and not somehow categorize the choices others make and make a mental flow chart of how, exactly, their choices affect you. i think this gets exacerbated once we have children, but i don't know. because i only started really caring about it once i realized people were judging me in relation to them. before that, i stayed aloof, distant. at arm's length when it came to disagreements and conflict. like i said, i was the one friends said was the least judgmental but i'm pretty sure it was only because i was the one least likely to get involved.

::

my son takes a nap while my daughter sits in the front yard and yells hello at the neighbors. the seven year old boy next door comes over to our house to play almost every day and i watch my five year old daughter emulate his mannerisms and talk with his phrasing. i watch my two year old son run and hug him like a long lost relative every time he walks in. and i think, this is the village. the dolls and the judgments and the politics and the imaginary conversations we have with strangers in a crowded room.