Going to California (speaking of night-night songs)

Someone told me there's a girl out there, with love in her eyes and flour, in her hair...

Flour, flower, potato, potahto. Here we are on Famous Californians day at school. Zoey is someone whom I have never heard of, a Newbery Award winning children's book author with white hair and oversized glasses. I want to squeeze those Sally Jessy Raphaels right off her face, she is so delicious as an old lady. 

It is June, and there are Famous California days and field trips, end of year parties, preschool graduation, kindergarten orientation. I have to make an appointment with the endocrinologist to have my thyroid checked. Of course with a new job I have no accrued PTO but do have a Google doc with the summer dotted with different camps. Drop off at 9am on Monday here, pick up at 3 there. None of this is particular to me, all of us moms standing around saying how cute they all are, John Muir with a stick-on beard, Steve Jobs recognizable for his black turtleneck, a boy dressed as Nancy Pelosi if Nancy Pelosi were blonde and short and a ten year old boy in a woman's blazer.

When my mom was very sick I remember fumbling with Ozzy's stroller in her room at Hospice, pinching my fingertip so hard that I screamed. The week that she died I had a nasty blood blister right at the bed of my nail, and then later, as we planned her service, a ridged, white mark across the nail. I remember watching it grow out, feeling sad as it got to the edge, like somehow that white mark kept me connected to when my mom was still alive. 

My hair is almost at a bob now, time carbon-dated by its growth. Newscaster hair, I say, thinking how strange it is that people at my new job might think this is just my style when really I am a messy top knot kind of woman, someone who wears her sunglasses inside because they are prescription, jeans, always jeans, hoop earrings, a gold bangle bracelet, not famous, but a Californian. It's the end of the school year, it always does this to me, though if I am being honest so does the beginning of the school year, March, October, July. My daughter with white flour hair on a mountain of dreams.Telling myself it's not as hard, hard, hard as it seems.

la la la la...
S