On the eve of kindergarten

Laying next to Lil E tonight in the dark of his room, singing the same songs I've sung him for nearly six years, I was suddenly cognizant of the sound of my own heartbeat pounding out of sync with "You Are My Sunshine."

I've gotten good in all this time of singing the lullabies and thinking about things other than dreams and love and Michael rowing the boat ashore and rays of light. The song filled the room steadily and my thoughts unfolded to the time when I first heard Lil E's heartbeat, that day laying on a table in the doctor's office with my belly exposed to the air conditioning and colder jelly and a tape measure.

His heartbeat blared over the static of the machine, like a galloping horse so powerful it made me close my eyes.

Lil E's dad worked at a hospital and borrowed one of those machines from a doctor or nurse and brought it home for me to strap to my stomach to listen in utero on my own. Periodically, for months, I wrapped the elastic around my middle, found where the growing baby inside me was positioned, rested against a pile of pillows on our bed and heard the heartbeat gallop through our tiny apartment.

 It reassured me. I tried to quickly count the beats for ten seconds and wondered whether it really was a good predictor of his gender. Long after I could feel him moving, could even see him ripple across my belly just when I was ready to sleep, his heartbeat in stereo was soothing.

It wasn't just the sound of his heart. It was the sound of ours together. Never matched up but there, pounding inside the same body.

When he was born, it was instantly like the cliche -- my heart now living outside my body. Different beats, different people, but much of my heart swaddled in the pink and blue and white flannel hospital blanket, calling "MOMMY! MOMMY!" from his crib, jumping from the playground equipment, crying that he misses his daddy or me, swinging air light sabers and quoting five different Star Wars movies, waving at me gleefully through the window of his preschool room, got punched "in the heart" on the last day of school, asked me earnestly in early summer, "Can we please talk a little bit about kindergarten every day because I am not completely comfortable with going yet?"

And now, a bit of my excitement and anxiousness and bliss and tears will go with him to kindergarten. 

This boy's life, this heart beats on.

I feel so much tonight. So very much. Mostly, I feel amazed that we are here already. And so, so lucky that even after we do our kissing hand and wave goodbye and the door on this new year closes for the very first time, I get to be there through all of it.

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Friday Shoegasm: Fall flats that are far from falling flat (or even flat at all)

I'm going to be wearing my sandals until it snows, but the truth is that it's about that time to start thinking about and investing in those shoes that will help you glide from the glorious summer months toward the days when you skid across ice and slush in an effort not to harm your most divine suede boots.

When it's warm, I wear a lot of dresses and wedge heels. But when fall hits, I dig out the jeans and close-cropped jackets and, once in a while, the flats.

Try not to gasp to loudly. Sometimes, even the most experienced shoe whores slide into flats. And when I say flats, I really mean lower heels. When I fly, I always have a pair of foldable real flats in my bag in case my toes go numb and my heels fall off and I have blisters the size of New Hampshire and I have 77 gates yet to walk. Let's be clear -- those are for emergencies. Maybe Saturdays. But mostly emergencies.

Flats for other days are two-inch heels or less. Blame it on my overly stretched arches and tapped out plantar-something muscles, but I'm just not comfortable getting down to my own real level very often.

It's shoes like these, featured today on RueLala, that make my heart flutter and dream of zipping up my favorite leather racer jacket and stepping breezily through crunchy leaves in the crisp autumn air. They are by Stuart Weitzman, maker of many a feminine boot and bootie and pump, and were a phenomenal deal on the shopping site for $149 (they normally retail for $325).

I say "were" because they are all sold out and, lovies, I cannot hunt them down anywhere. My trick of seeking out RueLaLa and iDeeli items after they've sold out on Overstock.com didn't work. A Google search and even stalking old standby shoe-shopping sites didn't come up with nary a red lacquer animal print wedge heel (to others)/flats (to me).

Even at a bargain price, I couldn't bring myself to pay $149 for these beautiful, shiny, growly good shoes. You can be sure that, even as I bare my toes for the weeks (or months) to come, I'll be hunting for these in their full Stuart Weitzman allure or in some knock-off sort-of heel Hail Mary.

Have you eyed your shoe for the fall?

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Mighty words, small child

Time has eased in the last three years. Still, it's our little rituals that help us ease the transitions during times when Lil E is away from our home. Whether he is with his dad or spending the weekend at my parents' lake house or at a sleepover with a friend, we take a moment to prepare ourselves for the time apart.

Often, Lil E chooses one of my necklaces or bracelets and wears it as a reminder that I love him and that I will see him soon. It both pulls at my heart and soothes my soul to see him skip off, my eyes following the line from the sleeve of his Star Wars t-shirt to his skinny, tanned arm to the oversized pink rhinestone bracelet hanging over his little hand with inevitably dirty nails.

In the spontaneous moments of slight anxiety when a bauble is not available, I rely on a trick I took from the parents of some out-of-controlled kids I nannied for a million years ago. Their parents were in denial of their bad behavior or seemed overwhelmed by the idea that their children might be anything more than smart and beautiful. I was at a loss when they screamed and cried and threw tantrums. But in one chaotic moment when the parents were trying to leave for a meeting and the kids were in full meltdown mode, I earned something important. As the screams hit a peak, the dad reached in his pocket, pulled out his business card and said, "I am always available for you. This is a card to remind you of that." And then he left.

There have been preschool drop-offs and goodbyes in front of the babysitter and kisses through a car window when I've handed Lil E my business card, the one with the same pink shoe you see every time you visit this page, and whisper some very similar sentiment.

Before longer trips -- business travels for me or vacations with his dad for him -- I take it a step further, making him a calendar and writing a note to stick in his suitcase. I draw and I write and he knows this. It's what I do.

I'm not the mother who will weave an extravagant tale about flying boys and wizardry and unicorns, but I will happily draw Chewbacca doing Tae Kwon Do on his way to the 'burbs to spend a week with his dad. 

I know -- ohh, how I know -- that these rituals are as important for me, as integral to easing my mind as they are to outlining the plan for a long weekend for my boy. The time I set aside to put crayons and Sharpies to paper are more important to me than remembering to pack my concealer and whitening strips or getting to the airport in time to grab a coffee and window seat. What's spoken in drawings and bubble letters speaks just as loudly as the hugs and kisses and snuggles -- and just one more kiss for the road.

When I left for NYC for BlogHer a few weeks ago, that ritual got more sacred.

I outlined the calendar, wrote the note, colored in pictures around the words that I penned, as per usual. We did what we always do -- read it all together, laughed at some parts, winked across the table at each other at other parts. But then Lil E told me he'd be making his own calendar and writing his own note. This time for me.

That would have been enough, his sweet intention and surge of independence. Then he really did it.

He made a grid for the calendar and filled it in with cartoons and speech bubbles and the plan for my week. He wrote a letter to me -- "No, I do not need help, Mommy! I know how to write it already." -- and he made sure I knew what it all said, reading it, explaining it and tucking it safely in my carry-on bag.

When I saw what he put there, both the tears and the smile came just as easily.

He wrote about my blog, with a picture of me at my laptop, the screen up to Yahoo, where I work. The message, in his own defiant writerliness, looks like "Tak Me Ee U Mse Me" but he told me says, "Text me if you miss me."

He cheered me on from the sidelines many cities away, encouraging me to "Run Mommy Run." (Look what a Zen runner I am in this snapshot. Let's be real, it's a pretty accurate expression.)

 

In the shorthand he loves for us to speak, he reminded me of things I could hear over and over again, no matter what city I'm in -- "I heart you" and "I heart New York."

And then, just before the hugs and kisses and his name sweetly and carefully tucked into the corner, he added a sentiment that is compassionate, facetious and so him. After many recent conversations about bosses and work and strategies for getting along with people who are different than you are in school and in your career, and in his way of reminding me that he is perceptive more is going on than me typing away on a blog where his picture lives, he wished out loud, "Hope your boss doesn't be mean to you."

I don't know if it was those words or just a turn in the universe or some next level we achieved in those precious moments before the doorbell rang and he ran off to be with his father for four days, but the trip (aside from the running) went exactly as he and I both hoped it would.

I'll take that. I will keep that note where I can see it every single day, now far from the Statute of Liberty and long after his I HEART NY tee has shrunk three sizes,as a reminder of the power of all those mighty thoughts wrapped up tightly in all those tiny rituals.

 

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