10

I got you a phone for your birthday. Your face when we went to get it—oh, how I hope you hold onto that face. Pure, unchecked joy! Skipping. How we did a little dance in the parking lot. The dance of the first phones. I smiled with you, squeezed your hand because you still hold my hand when we walk together. Squeeze squeeze squeeze, how many more times do I have before your hand swings aimlessly next to me, not even noticing mine? The phone an opening to a world beyond being my daughter. Why did I get you a phone?

I got you a phone for your birthday because you know more about the California Missionaries than I do, because you can play Yellow Submarine on the guitar, because you hesitate before dropping in at the skateboard ramp, that hesitation sometimes stretching into minutes, the fear clinging to your face like a new skin. You are kind to your friends. You are kind to your not friends. Your tender heart shatters me the way possibility only can.

I got you a phone because you wrote me an essay telling me why I should get you a phone. You said that it would make you safer, that you would text me when you got places, call me if you had any problems. You said that we could chat throughout the day. You said that all your friends are getting a phone, but that is not why I got you a phone.

After we got you your phone we went to the grocery store to get ingredients to make you a cake. After I parked, I called you from the front seat, and you answered from the back seat. Hello? Hi, it's me. Hi! Both of us talking excitedly, shyly even, as if we had never spoken to each other before, the two feet between us a chasm of new. Later still I sent you a text when you were just down the hall in your bedroom, both of us fumbling to read who we were in those expectant gray dots...

I got you a phone for your birthday because you are right, you don't deserve everything, none of us do. I certainly don't deserve you, my 10 year old everything who teaches me so much, my beautiful spirit of a girl with a mouth the smile of water. I got you a phone because I never want to stop listening to you.

Happy birthday sweet girl.

Love,

Mommy

9, 8, 7, 6, 5 (too pregnant and cranky to write), 4, 3, 2, 1 (pre-blog)

Parties Weren't Meant To Last

There is nothing I can say here that hasn't been said better a thousand times today in the countless articles and Facebook posts I've read about Prince's passing, but like most of you I feel the need to say me, too. 

Me, too. 

How silly it is to feel so crushed by the death of someone I never really knew, but there it is. I am crushed. Silly sad and mournful because while I never knew Prince, his music helped me know myself. 

(Purple Rain? How many countless nights I fell asleep listening to Purple Rain on my Walkman thinking about slow dancing with boys. When You Were Mine. Starfish & Coffee is still my very favorite song to walk around and sing out loud. Don't even get me started on Darling Nikki, how I wondered for years if he met her in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine meant she was looking at a sexy magazine while sitting on some sort of couch in the lobby? Or if she was maybe rubbing the magazine against herself? The logistics, I thought about the logistics far too much when I was younger. I mean, I guess I still don't exactly know the involvement of the magazine.)

Like I said, none of this is new. If you grew up in the 80s and 90s, then Prince surely had a role in your sexual awakening. Wendy? Yes Lisa. Is the water warm enough? Yes Lisa. Shall we begin? Yes Lisa. How could it not?

I have hinted at my love for Prince before, how gifable his eyes were back when we thought that just meant fuckable. He was my spirit animal, that funny sexy little man with the world's best side eye.

Now here we are and he is gone. Suddenly, and nothing feels right. I started a new job this past week which might feel like a non sequitur but it's not. Right. Yet. Nothing is, how for the past few weeks it has felt like the change of something consequential which is maybe why I haven't been writing here. Zoey turns 10 this weekend. 10. I swear that, too, happened suddenly, and I don't know who to eat lunch with at work, who to tell my jokes to, who to say stop. Did you hear? Prince died. Fuck. This can't be right. 

None of it.

xo,
S