Sad, mournful: “I way too loud.”  A pause. “No!  I not way too loud!  I perfect!”

And the singing of ABCs recommences.

I feel like a Canadian. I am an American citizen by birth and for the first twenty years of my life, I resided there.  But Canada is where I’ve become so defined: I am a wife, a mother, a writer. A failed student, a part-time worker, a terrible housekeeper.  A daughter, a sister, and with in-law suffixes on those as well.  The most powerful experience of my life happened in this very room, where I sweated and screamed and snarled, nude and all the stronger for it, to bring the baby in my womb into the world.  A world where danger and fear exist, yes, but hand-in-hand with love and beauty.  A world worth being a part of.

*

When I woke up this morning, I didn’t think about the day.  I knew it was coming, but exact dates are tenuous to me.  My world and my time are not defined and structured, even though they ought to be.  My cell phone alarm, bearing the eloquent title of wake the fuck up, went off at 7:33, and when I reached over to turn it off, the date popped up there.  Innocently.  7:33am, Sunday, September 11.  My heart clenched, fluttered for a moment.

And I fell back asleep.

I dreamed about my father.  The last time I saw him, the towers were still standing.

I’m not one of those who feels like 9/11 was just yesterday.  It happened so long ago that the memories are foggy; I was a completely different person in those days.  I was shattered and trying to pretend like I wasn’t.  I had been beaten down so far from the girl I should have been that, at eighteen years old, I bore not the self-pity of an angsty teen, but the world-weariness of a woman who was trying to convince herself that my failures and my poor decisions would not define me.

That morning in Michigan, his five year old nephew woke me up from where I laid sleeping on an air mattress on the floor, in need of a shower and some clothing.  I was naked under those blankets. I don’t remember what happened the night before, which means I probably don’t want to, but I remember those circumstances, and his excited, strangely raw voice: “An airplane hit a building!” he said. “It’s on fire!”

Within a few minutes we turned on the television to CNN.  It stayed there for the next several days.

When I took the shower I so desperately needed, I cried.  I cried for the victims, their families, the country.  I cried for myself and my family, because I wanted to be with them.  I did not want to be here.  The images of people hugging and sobbing and seeking comfort in one another’s arms impacted me greatly; so too did the desperate plastering of lost loved one’s pictures on walls and street posts.  I wish I could be there helping, I said to him at one point.  And his ghastly blue eyes flicked at me with the most dismissive of glances as he sneered, There’s nothing you could do to help anyone.

*

The tattoo parlour is perfectly clean and well-lit, gorgeous artworks sketched across the walls.  The glass counters are immaculately polished, and the various rings within them each clearly labelled where they rest within a display of pillowy white.  I’m here with a friend, Anna, to get our navels pierced.  We met online, and we’re not close enough to see each other often, so this mutual alteration of our bodies is how we’re going to commemorate our friendship.  We don’t know that it’s the first and last visit we’ll ever have with one another.

“I can’t take this,” the tattoo artist says, handing the broken ID back to me. “Your birthday’s not clear.”

“But it was good enough to get me on a plane,” I plead.  It’s been eight months since air travel was stained irrevocably by the events of that day, and we both know what I’m implying.  ”It’s gotta be good enough for me to get a piercing.”

He shakes his head.  It’s not.  We go to another parlour, where the gruff man says something that impacts my self-esteem to this very day: Your belly button is crooked.

A few months later, Anna and I stop talking.  She’s in denial that she’s in an abusive relationship and feels like I’m lecturing and not understanding her when I tell her that she needs to escape it, when she knows that I’m warning her.  She knows I’m in one, too.  We’ll get a place together, away from them, I tell her.  But she only says, I don’t want to be away from him.

*

In an almost eerie coincidence, we walk past the local fire station  at a rather specific time: Sept 11-11, 11:11am. The text is orange and blocky, soon enough fading away into reminders delivered with the kind tone of a parent: Going to college?  Check your dorm for a fire alarm.  Learn your school’s fire exits. In her stroller, my daughter gasps and points at the red and white trucks. “Mama!  Dat truck go naptime?”  One sits there, dormant, in the wide driveway; behind it, in the garage, are two more.  Yellow-green suits lashed with reflective orange hang from hooks on the walls.

“Yes, those trucks are taking naps,” I agree.

“Dose trucks so silly,” she informs me, and giggles to highlight her point.  It is the most beautiful sound, but it’s drowned out by the cars rushing past us as we pause there on the sidewalk.  ”Why dey take naptime?”

How can I explain to her?  ”Because no one is hurt right now,” is the only answer I can come up with.

“Ebbybody okay!” she cheers, in that sweet, tiny little voice. “Let’s go shopping!”

Is everybody okay?  Am I okay? I don’t know.

*

It’s been ten years.  I will never forget.

Chris and Maia are bffs.  Once he gets home, she latches onto him and wants nothing to do with me.  So the other night, they’re out on the balcony together barbequeing and chatting with each other, and every time I try to come out she looks at me, holds her hand up, palm out, and demands, “Shoo, Mama!  Shoo!”  Of course, this results in me coming out just to make her tell me to shoo, because it’s hilarious.

Then the police pull up because there’s another call about the dumbs downstairs.  Chris comes into the house and tells me, “There’s a kinda hot policeman out there, you might want to take a look.”  I love my husband.  I also love eye candy.  So I go out there to look.

Miss Maia walks over to me, grabs my ass, and starts shouting, “BOOTY!  BOOTY!  BOOTY MAMA!”  The somewhat hot policeman looks up at me.  I look down at him.  I’m ten thousand shades of red, have no makeup on, no bra, mom hair, and a toddler hanging off my ass informing the entire world that I do, indeed, have a BOOTY BOOTY BOOTY in between giggles that resulted from her father’s boisterous laughter.  I fled back into the house so quickly.

These are the joys of parenting that no one ever tells you about.

Two years ago you arrived in this world, not even ten feet away from where I’m sitting right now.  Isn’t that strange?  This same place where we have dance parties, where we chow down on dinner, where you laugh and laugh and chase the dogs around… this is where you were born.

We’ve come pretty far since then.

We love you so fucking much, and your laughter is the most beautiful sound in the world.

All our love,
Mama & Dada

I remember linking him the song. “This is how I feel about you,” I said. “I’m okay without you, but I need you around to make me whole.”

There was sorrow in his words, the weight of the thirteen years of life experience he had over me, when he replied: “No, you don’t.”

I can love… but I need his heart.
I am strong, even on my own, but from him I never want to part
He’s been there since the very start
My angel Gabriel.

We lived 248 miles away from one another, but we might as well have been separated by oceans. I was 18, living with my abusive boyfriend, working as an electronics salesperson. He was 31, living with a girlfriend he didn’t love, working on his PhD in political science. Still, we clicked. We matched one another well. We were vulnerable people on the verge of mental breakdowns who took solace in each other’s unquestioning, unwavering love.

There was a library in the mall I worked at; the librarians there came to know me well as I arrived for lunch every day, logging into a computer and hopping onto AIM to talk with him on an account I made just for that purpose. We didn’t always talk about love or life. Sometimes we talked about music or gaming or books. Sometimes we talked about mutual friends.

But every conversation ended the same way: I love you, firefly. I love you, pixie.

For lunch, I’d eat a soft pretzel on the way back to work.

Bless the day he came to be
Angel’s wings carried him to me
Heavenly.

He broke up with his girlfriend on very positive terms. I sobbed to him and confessed every horror in my life that I didn’t have the courage to flee from. He kept my heart beating. He made me feel worthwhile. Even as the monster I lived with kept me teetering on the verge of death, I took comfort in the fact that someone out there knew what I was going through … but still thought me worthy of being loved.

We never physically touched in a romantic way.

I can fly… but I want his wings.
I can shine, even in the darkness, but I crave the light that he brings
Revel in the songs that he sings
My angel Gabriel.

There’s no question that I still love him. It’s a comfortable love, tucked somewhere in that part of my soul that I retreat to when I’m feeling wounded. We’re healthier now than we were when we were in crazy love with one another, and all I want for him is happiness and security. I still feel warm every time I see him post on Facebook, and he still leaves comments here and there telling me I’m beautiful, but our relationship is calm. Peaceful.

Because we’ve survived the storm.

We saved each other’s lives.

Today you turn twenty two months old.  It’s kinda crazy.  I know that I said in your month eighteen letter that I was going to stop referring to your age in that way, but, well, as you approach TWO YEARS OLD I cling more and more stubbornly to those months.  In fact, I even thought to myself “She is twenty one and a half months old” which is, okay, maybe a little excessively clingy or obsessive or whatever.

You are awesome.  I could say that a thousand times and still want to say it more.  You genuinely make every day a joy, even when you display your incredible stubborn streak.  Actually, you know, let’s talk about your stubbornness, at least in a roundabout way.  I told myself I would not blog about potty training, or poop, so I’m not going to go into details, but let me say this: JESUS H CHRIST MAIA, IT’S JUST POOP, EVERYONE DOES IT, IT’S OKAY.

Now that that’s out (or not) (haha, so funny): everything else is great!  You’re still not talking a whole heck of a lot, or at least, you’re not forming many words, but you are very communicative and it’s rare that the three of us don’t understand one another.  Oh, sure, sometimes you like to pretend that you don’t know what we’re saying to you, but we’re not stupid.  You lost that advantage many, many months ago, and we know that you comprehend the vast majority of what comes out of our mouths.

Related?  When you’re awake, the swearing in this household has practically disappeared and I’ve also stopped listening to so much Kanye West.  Because as much as I don’t believe in promoting censorship as a way of life, I also don’t want my daughter to think that using seven curse words in thirty-seven seconds is an effective way to communicate with people.  Generally speaking, it’s not.

So!  Let’s talk about what you like:

Killing zombies.  You see the above?  That’s a screenshot from a game called “Plants vs Zombies” and YOU REALLY LIKE PLAYING THIS.  Myself or Daddy will just be sitting around and next thing we know, you’re pointing at my computer demanding “zee zee” and then we don’t have a choice, we MUST load up PvZ and kill zombies with you.  It is guaranteed to make you happy and you’re very good at warning us with a zombie appears on the right side of the screen with the intent to eat our plants. Your favourite is when the corn cob plant shoots butter onto the zombies’ heads and pauses them in place; this always gets an excited squawk out of you.

Mommy’s makeup.  Oh, my love.  It’s not like I give you my foundation, but you somehow manage to finagle the cap off the counter when I’m not looking, then suddenly you’re smearing what you can dredge from it all across your face and nose and sometimes in your hair or eyes and it’s just hilarious.  I DO let you powder your nose if you like, and you are particularly fond of applying chapstick to your entire face or to the chihuahuas.

You also like having your toenails painted.

Bacon. Holy ffffff do you love bacon.  I honestly have to break a slice into several pieces and slowly let you at them, or else you shove the entire thing down your throat in like thirty seconds and then try to steal mine off my plate. You also know how to say bacon — “bay-guh!” although you’ll only use this when you’re begging for another bite.  It’s kind of hilarious and kind of sad, because when I ask you to say “Bacon please” you get PISSED.  Asking you to say “please” is basically a sure-fire way of getting you to throw a mind-blowing temper tantrum. (PS: You’re still gonna have to learn to say it.)

Oh, and you also really like your gummy bear vitamins.  And salad.  And clementines.  You do not, however, like onions and will angrily throw them on the ground (ughhhhhh) if you find them in your food.  This is sad, because your father and I really enjoy onions and we put them in basically everything.  You’ll definitely eat them, just not if you see them and realize they’re there.

We spend a lot of time in the kitchen together. Our dining room table is bar height, and we pull a chair from it into the kitchen for you to sit in while I prepare food.  You like to stir stuff for me, although you REALLY like it if I hold your hand and help you to stir really really fast!  You know when things are “hot” and you will blow on them to cool them down (although in reality this means that you take a deeeeeeeep breath and then blow it out & up, into your own nose).

You still love trucks.  We live on a road that trucks almost never go down (thank goodness) but when we’re out driving with you, you spot trucks that we haven’t even noticed yet.  Way down the street in a parking lot with just the cab visible alongside a store? HOLY SHIT MOM AND DAD LOOK IT’S A TRUUUUUCK.  Not that you’ll say truck, of course, but we’re quite familiar by now with your excited truck noise.

You’re still a huuuuuge fan of music.  Listening, singing, dancing — it doesn’t matter, you love music in your life.  And of course we listen to a broad variety of stuff, so hopefully you’ll grow up with an appreciation for how music comes in many different rhythms and genres and nothing deserves to be dismissed entirely out of hand without at least giving it a chance or two first.

You’re a really affectionate baby.  You love to snuggle.  Sometimes you get into these moods where you just run back and forth between your daddy and me, kissing and hugging us, or rubbing our arms and legs.  Most mornings, the three of us spend a few minutes in the big bed just cuddling.  When we’re all snugglingm we say “mmmmm” together — and it’s a beautiful sound.

Hopefully you keep loving to snuggle, because we’re not gonna stop wanting you to.

We love you, papaya.

Love,
Mama & Dada

Goodnight, Adonis – Violence & sexuality.

What Rich Desire Unlocks Its Door – Soft-core erotica

I love all of these pictures, but the second one is probably my favourite because that’s so totally me once I have my coffee in the morning.  I’m all like “This shit is magic, and it’s mine. Cheers!”

“Mama”, “Dada”, “Hi”, “Bye”, “Yay” and “Yeah” — this is your vocabulary right now.  You are comfortable waiting right on the cusp of speaking, even though I am practically falling over myself trying to get you to say more words… you will look right at me, shut your mouth, and wait for me to be quiet before you launch into a very expressive babble full of sounds but no words I recognize.  I’m impatient, Maia. I want to hear all the thoughts that go through your head.

Of course, everyone says that once you do start talking, I’ll be begging you to stop.  So.  There’s that.

Daddy has taken to calling you “monkey” recently, and he has a good reason to.  Ever since you’ve been able to move, you’ve liked to pull up onto things (and this is why you were standing at, what, five? five and a half? months old?), and that love has only grown as time passes.  I’m pretty sure I’ve covered it before, but you are just ALL OVER ANYTHING that you can possibly climb.  You love when we hold your hands and you ‘walk’ up our legs and torsos.  Sometimes you’ll put your butt on my chest and just sit there, perpendicular to me, laughing and laughing… other times you’ll throw yourself backwards (yes, really) into a terrifying flip.  You don’t mess around, Maia.

You’re still my little dancing machine, and your dances have grown more complex — for example, you’ve recently learned to jump.  So you’ll do your stompy feet, spin in a super fast circle,  jump, then wave your arms around like you’re Donkey Kong or something.  Your favourite songs are “Sweet Caroline” (the ‘ba ba ba ba’ song), “Fuck You” (whatever, censorship sucks), and “Like a G6″ (or as we sing, “Like a Cheesestick”).  You are just amazing, papaya.  You have so much energy and you take so much joy in the world, it’s contagious; I dance and sing and laugh along with you, lost in the beauty you fill our household with.  You like to ‘jump’ on the couch or in your crib, and by that I mean you bend your knees, leap up in the air, and throw your legs out so you land on your butt, then laugh and laugh.

Sometimes you do stuff that makes us laugh.  Like, you know, being absolutely horrified at your Daddy cutting open a pumpkin.

You love pumpkins, Maia.

They were kind of the only thing that made Halloween bearable for you at first, until you realized that Halloween also involved: 1) knocking on doors and 2) people letting you grab handfuls of stuff out of a bowl to put in your basket.  SCORE!  BEST HOLIDAY EVER!

Seriously, we had to run to keep up with you.

You’re growing up so fast, girlie.  You are still fiercely independent (I feel like I’ve used that exact phrase in every letter I’ve ever written to you); you want to feed yourself, dress yourself, clean up after yourself, and do things on your terms.  We’ve had a few, uh… battles of wills… over the fact that you are so damned STUBBORN.  ”Maia, put your pizza back on your plate” is a phrase that fills you with absolute, uncompromising fury, because if you wanted your pizza on your plate?  IT WOULD BE THERE, MOM, HOLY CRAP, WHY ARE YOU SO STUPID MOM, AND WHY ARE YOU SUPPORTING THIS IDIOCY DADDY?  Yes.  You speak in caps locks. It’s a little intimidating and sometimes I look at you and all I can think is where did this KID come from?

But do you wanna know something, Maia?

You’re still actually kind of small.

And secretly, deep down inside?  Behind all the independence…

… you still need me as much as I need you.

We love you so much, Maia.  Don’t ever stop needing us.

Love,
Mama & Dada