The Good Ol' Days

My mother used to think a lot. And then she would talk to me about the things she thought.

I remember her once telling me that she had often in her life she has very often wished to be richer. And she has also looked toward the future and hoped that in the future she’d be richer. She admitted to sometimes resenting people who were richer. But she told me one thing she had never done is look back at her life and every thought that her memories would be any better, or that she would have been any happier if at that point in her life she had had more money.
She told me this shortly after I had graduated high school and was working two ridiculously hard jobs to which I had to wear super lame uniforms (one was a plastic apron and the other was…well… the letter “M”) for $4.25 an hour just to try to pay my Jr. College tuition and get some text books. And I was a pretty happy person. I remember thinking, and feeling, I swear to you, that I was pretty lucky. I was a pretty happy go lucky creature then, even when I was exhausted and covered in grease. And I felt like I was on top of the world and the whole future was stretched out before me like a spread of gifts under a Christmas tree. I was a bohemian spirit and loved the romance of just climbing a hill to eat a $3 meal and feel the wind and then maybe dance in the rain.

And then when I was first married, we loved to laugh at ourselves in the little dingy apartment we lived in, eating candle light dinners of pasta off of a card table. I don’t remember a day in my life, looking back now, that I can say would have been made better if we had been rich. None of the memories I cherish most about any of the parties we had, games we played, traditions we started (annual water fight), or adventures we went on had anything to do with what we had to spend. Through it all, I already knew I would look back on my 18 year old self, and my newly wed self and know, “Those were the good times.”

I do.

So here I am now. I am still pretty lucky. I am done with school and have a good job (thankfully) but I will confess, the last couple years had gotten easier, we had begun to grow fatter, and I was enjoying a bit of a princess status. With the split, my income has been split in half and somehow, a household of one adult is not much less expensive than one with two.

It’s what my mom said back then though. I do wish for a little more right now. I am not above that. I guess it’s human nature. And I hope things don’t feel so tight forever. I miss the things I got spoiled on being able to purchase and go do without a thought. I miss buying my daughter anything I see that I know she would like while I am out and about.

But I also figure, these are probably still the days. I am still young and strikingly beautiful. I still love to walk in the wind. Being alive still feels like a wonderful thing. Some of the packages are unwrapped and revealed, but there are still shiny boxes under the tree with surprises inside.
And Elsa still readily admits to being my baby, I can still lift her and rock her in my arms, she still likes me to sing her to sleep, she still thinks I know everything just cause I am a mom, and she still thinks my shoes are cool.

And I have had do find more creative activities to do with her…which has led to more time to get to know her in a different day. We talk more when we are cruising the pet store (it’s free) than we did when we went to the movies all the time. I cook her more meals now that eating out has gotten to be too much of a luxury.

I know THESE are the good old days.

Some of the first memories I have are of the days my mother used to walk me down to the “little store.” It was a liquor store about a half mile from our apartment. (If you are from Utah and not California, calm down. Convenience stores sell alcohol in California so we call them that but they also sell other things. I used the term liquor store to my mother-in-law once and she almost choked!) This little store had a small grocery section, a large candy section, and a deli. They sold corn dogs for a few cents. There was no greater treat than a walk down there to get a corn dog. In fact, corn dogs still hold the same place in my heart held by cookies and milk in the hearts of others.

I also remember sitting on the lawn of the apartment complex we lived in, in the summer, after dark, and the adults talked and played games while the children played on the play ground all night (which was really probably till nine or ten pm). Some nights this summer, Elsa has come in from outside where all the kids are still playing well after dusk, and has told me “I stayed out till way late!”

I hope when she’s all grown up, she remembers how great our life was when she was six.

Utahns Don't Know About Pools

In Salt Lake, there is this place called The Gateway, which is supposed to be Utah’s answer to like…Rodeo Drive I think. It’s a big outdoor mall with the normal trendy mall stores like the Gap, AE, Banana Republic etc. But those are the “low end” stores. It also has stores that don’t sell any pants for less than $300 dollars. So the clientele is kind of…well women with perfect makeup, hair, and who got SUVs the second they had their first baby…and got their figures back 20 min later.

But at the edge of this gateway, is this sidewalk fountain that shoots water in time to music. This is Elsa’s favorite part of the whole city. We spent a day there this weekend. (I only had my cell phone for pics, and I have not figured out how to work it cause some pictures will only come out as thumbnails!)

In the summer, the fountain is full of people playing in it. Some even come in swimsuits. I don’t get that part; if you want to get in a swim suit and get wet, why not have a water fight or play in sprinklers? Besides, isn't the charm of playing in a public fountain that it is spontaneous and you go running through it praying you don’t get your clothes soaked (but getting your clothes soaked)?

What do I know?

First Day of First Grade

My little bitty baby started first grade. That's not even Kindergarten. That's REAL school people.

I lost the good digital camera in the seperation (it was his anyway) so the pics I took on my cell are not the best quality...but she looked something like this:

I feel like I have grown too this summer. I cried WAY less dropping her off than I did on the first day last year.

When I Say I am Going to Make a Montage, I am Going to Make a Montage

The photos that are signed with Marcia Vasquez Photography were done by my amazingly talented (and sometimes mean) friend Mars. To the benefit of the world she will soon be a busy world renowned portrait artist and won't have time to do such things for her friends. If you need an appointment for her to shoot you, you probably should make it now before she is too famous to even consider it.

Movie Mush

If you have seen the movie Momma Mia, you know the scene where the mom is getting the daughter ready for her wedding? Well, I saw the film twice (and stayed to hear Waterloo both times) and BOTH times I had tears dripping down my cheeks when that scene came up.

The first time I saw it, it was with Elsa. And literally moments before the scene, I was looking at the little actress (Elsa’s hair was curly that day) and thinking that when Elsa grows up, she would look about like that girl. Then there was that scene and I lost it.

I kept thinking about how our life is now, and how she looked on her first day of kindergarten and how someday she is going to grow up and be her own woman and not my baby and…oh dear my keyboard is getting wet.

If you have not seen the movie Momma Mia, how are we still friends? Well, you will be forgiven if you promise, promise, promise to go see it pronto, and that you will stay for Waterloo. In the mean time, here is an itty-bit of the scene:



If I can pull my blubbery head together long enough to do this, I think I will do a video montage of Elsa to the full version of this song as an excuse to post the full version of this song, since Blogger will let me upload video but not songs without storing it first someplace else. Fortunately, I love makin’ those video montages!

Starting New, But Not Over

I don’t know if life ever starts over new.

All the old stuff is what got us here, so this life is not really a new one. It's just a continuation of who we have always been becoming. Plus, I sure don’t want to lose some pretty important things from my “old” life.

But new things come up, and old steady things break, and sometimes I guess life seems to be starting over in a strange new place where I never thought I would be.

I don’t know if the term “single mother” really encompasses me. My mother was the real hard-core kind of single mother you hear about. She did it ALONE in every way; financially, emotionally, disciplinarily and everything in between. This is why on Father’s Day I call her before I call my actual father. After all, she took on being my provider and protector long before he ever tried.

But Elsa has a dad, and he’s been there since the beginning. From the second she was born he followed her to make sure those nurses didn’t drop her and to make sure they gave her her first bath gently. He took her for walks to ease the colic and rocked her in the wee hours of the morning. He’s dislodged tin foil from her throat (don’t ask). He’s leapt over park benches to stand under the jungle gym when he thinks she has climbed a little too high. We may have our differences, my soon to be ex-husband (my mom calls him my “was-band”) and I, but I think he’ll probably always jump over whatever he needs to to catch that kid. So, even though when I tuck my child in at night I do it alone, I know she’s still got two parents and not a “single.”

This new situation leaves me feeling more like a part-time parent, and that is hard. Some nights I don’t get to tuck her in. I tell bed time stories to a telephone. I don’t know what she wore for the day a couple of days a week. I don’t know where some of her sunburns came from, or what she had for dinner. It isn’t that I don’t think she is well taken care of; it’s that I don’t always get to be the one to do it. I hate dropping my little girl off and saying goodbye for two days, over and over again.

But when she is home, Elsa and I have a great time. It could just be that she is growing up and her thoughts are getting more complex. But I think there is something to be said about two girls on their own too. Don’t worry, we are not exactly becoming Thelma and Louise and I am still definitely a Mom before a pal (and I have to remind her of that often) but don’t think there has ever been a cooler six year old on this planet than mine.

Last night she and I agreed that we would work really hard, together, to save our money. I promised my daughter that if we did a good job at this that next summer I would move us in to a new place where we could have a puppy. I told her I would take her to a pet store next summer and tell her to pick any one of the puppies she wants. We had to sell Heidi and Klaus at the beginning of all this, and we both still have broken hearts. I promised her that when I got her a dog, it would be hers to keep forever.

This morning she offered me the $14 dollars she has been saving up for a Chuck E Cheese’s day, she said she wanted to put it toward the new house/puppy cause. I think we will go to Chuck E Cheese’s though. But I intend to keep the promise I made to my little girl.

I think we are going to be alright.