he's three. the last slipknots of baby are untangling themselves in the slightest of breeze and i feel my body shift to bear the weight of the knowledge of the fact that my babies will, indeed, keep growing up. seems woefully unfair, given the state of the world. but then i repurposed the crib into a daybed for the patio and i felt as though i tamed something unforgiving.

we had to put our cat down recently. and i am still walking around bruised and childlike in the aftermath. navigating the six year old's crying out in the middle of the night because she misses her, the three year old referencing her as if still here. a friend came over with her dog recently and i had that momentary panic of OHNO!LETMEPUTMYCATINMYROOM! and then i remembered. oh.yeah.come.on.in. there are no other pets here to worry about. sigh. it was the way it should have been. she was old. she turned sick simply because she was old. she was in minimal pain near the end. she lived a good, long life and i loved the fuck out of her. i just feel like someone butchered my family and left the pieces to rot. in a way. i mean, there is no tragedy. so they say.

i'm working three jobs. my husband works late hours. we steal romance in the middle of the night like thieves and yet there is no faking it. our romance might be a little low on the priority list but it is still alive and kicking and i sometimes wonder if my childhood dreams of finding a spell to cast on my love interest to make him love me forever and ever no matter what really worked. because i still feel like we're in the beginning.

forgive my young, random musings here for a bit, will you? i'm still getting my sea legs back in regard to my free journaling (which is how i see this space. please don't tell me you think i use poor grammar and ignore punctuation in every occasion.) if you are around and reading this, i thank you. because the small idea of "audience" is something i find cathartic and therapeutic and i value you tremendously.

and yet.

i forgot that today was early pickup. i parked in the red, waving to her from the curb, her brother still strapped in the back. she ran to me, eyes dark and dripping. she feels things with tenacity. interprets my lateness as abandonment. even when i try to explain that i'm so, so sorry and i made a mistake and i didn't actually forget to pick her up...i was just late because i thought it was wednesday and not tuesday (because monday was a holiday and she didn't have school and we were so tired from the weekend and she stopped listening but i still kept talking.) i am torn in half and jagged at the seams. because sometimes my best still fails.

and yet...i know her. the slack is growing longer and looser. i feel the tides grip the line and i know that i have to lighten up on the slack or the line will snap and she will swim away with the current. i hear things she says and i don't always understand the context. i empathize with her sensitivity. i know that she feels things on a visceral level and that every slight (real or imagined) is a pinch sharp enough to bruise. i also know that i need to teach her the tools to deal with such emotions because walking around this earth with your skin inside out and stapled together haphazardly is a horrible way to be. i navigate the waters of her day with an almost privileged exasperation. because i know where she is at all times. because she is still so small and still needs me so much. because i am falsely confident in the way that feels.

and yet...

i stopped writing because i felt as though i had no stories to tell that didn't have something to do with my children. or my self-doubt. or my pain. and those didn't feel like stories i should be telling. a friend, however, made me realize that my stories are more than that. that my stories are valuable. or at least might be. and that maybe my free writing is a time capsule that is worth more than the fear of not having something to say. that maybe, just maybe, not having something to say is worth questioning.