Tired. Inside and out.
All I can do is leave the hurricane on the living room floor, the dishes in the sink. My unfinished work in my studio. The bills that will be overdue if I wait until Monday. All I can do is sit and smell the girls, eat fish n’ chips while watching So You Think You Can Dance, work on our own moves in the living room while blasting the neighbors out with the iPod dock station, and walk to the ice cream store and indulge in slushies, sprinkled with penny candy of choice; usually Pixie Sticks.
Sitting next to the girls at the beach, they were smiling and finding their way to my chair on occasion, lean in and run their hands absentmindedly down my arm or dig to cover my feet with sand.
Claire tends to lean in close and put her face right in mine. Sometimes she blows in my nose or shakes her wet hair over me and I pretend to cringe and shiver. Other times, she asks to turn my face so she can tell me a secret, which is usually “I love you.” On a day she is mad at her sister, she may say “I’m never speaking to Anna again, as long as I live, EVER.” in a sort of evil-babyish-chuckie-doll-possessed-whisper.
It was recently that the girls decided they were going to start calling me “Mom” instead of “Mommy.” I felt a bit “off” upon hearing that but am a bit grateful they’ve forgotten and it only lasted about an hour.
At the beach the other day, Claire was with her grandmother and Anna was with me. Around two o’clock she came to me and asked if she could get a slushie.
I did a little risk taking and handed her two dollars and said “Here, go over to the red snack shack and ask for a lemon slushie, hand her the money, she will give you the slushie and fifty cents in change and don’t forget to say thank you.”
My shy girl grabbed the money from me and BY HERSELF, ran across the sand and up the steps in the midst of a group of high schoolers and tourists and stood in line for her treat. As she ran off, I yelled “AND DON’T CUT IN LINE!”
