The Peas Ask A Valid Question

"I really wanna be a Catholic!" said Indy, emphatically like she says everything. "But daddy never lets me!"

"Don't worry," I assured her. "Mommy will let you become a little papist. Mommy wants you to be whatever you choose."

Then we had a long talk about patriarchal tyranny.

This morning I fastened pipe cleaners into Ayla's pigtails for Dr. Seuss's birthday. She asked for green eggs and ham tonight, and so I'm making them.

Best mother alive.

I worked for a few hours this morning and then Indy and I headed out for ham. The storefront was bursting with beautiful tulips. I've walked past them a hundred times before, wishing. I'm only French in a few corners, I can't actually buy flowers before bread. I can't afford tulips.

"I'm buying the tulips," I said. Hungry for self-granted power like Scarlett O'Hara. I told Indy to pick whatever color she wanted.

Indy carried our purple tulips back to car. Liberated to spend money on joy, like me. Her short hair white like the clouds, she looked like spring incarnate. At preschool drop-off, she and her classmates ran back and forth, up and down the sidewalk, one great train made of arms and legs and a beautiful array of shades of skin and hair.

I wrote a few weeks ago about a failure of self-confidence, about approaching 30 and feeling more insecure than ever before. And now, for now, I've shed it off me. I feel it in moments of bright clarity. Thoughts like sun through shards of glass. I see what's best for me, what's best for my family. Unburdened by needs to please people, to make people like me, to appear a certain way.

Sometimes the clarity goes away. I don't panic. I know it will come back.

Moments that say things like, You don't have to make sure those people still like you, or Next time you get soused off one lemon drop martini during the Oscars, maybe don't go on Facebook. They come with a smile. Without guilt or shame.

I feel like I've aligned my energy behind the right things.

I am highly susceptible to cheesy. Last night I nearly cried at a commercial on tv.

Not an ugly cry. This cry that is a laugh as well. I read somewhere that on a basic level, we can only interpret events and emotions as large or not large. Our brains won't automatically label something as happy or sad, by emotion, but only as overwhelming or small. By degree.

"Is it ok that I like where is the love by the peas?" I texted Mr.V.

"No. That one is not ok." he texted back. I laughed even harder.

The thing I'm learning about me is I'm never going to be particularly stable. My emotions, my moods, are always going to swell and fall like the sea. I can't change that. It's just a matter of learning how to ride them.

Anyway, can you tell: Spring is in my heart.


I am Vesuvius and I prefer the Glee versions of all the songs, and that's ok.