washwords

In “Jealousy Isn’t Always An Ugly Emotion | BlogHer” BlogHer contributing editor Rita Arens writes about some of the jealousy she sees cropping up in the blogosphere, in particular among her fellow “mommy bloggers” or at least female bloggers.

In particular, I was struck by people’s jealousy of “famous bloggers.” Arens describes (incredibly well and demonstrating an incredibly healthy psyche) her reaction to an email that asked how she and other big-time BlogHers could go on writing “as if they were normal people” when so clearly they weren’t – there were celebrities! The emailer writes

if someone’s blog became popular or famous because they were writing about their “normal” or “mundane” life, how do they continue to make money off of their blog when their life is certainly nothing like it was when the blog first became famous?

Regarding this email, Arens comments (again, verrry verry healthy woman here, Read the rest of this entry »

I hold my niece against my chest, tight. She laughs – her eyes sparkling with her laugh. She shrieks with glee rolling over my leg, my arm, my fingers on my sister’s soft bed. “Hava” says E, my niece.

“Ba” I say.

“Ma ma mama ba, hava?”

“ka la” I answer.

She giggles, throwing her head back, pleased with the answer. She pulls herself up on the footboard pointing excitedly at the window “DA! BA!!!”

“Yes! Window! Sun!” I say, wanting desperately to know what she is trying to tell me. She seems to forgive my ignorance, choosing to plunk herself back on the bed and laugh and laugh and laugh. And then, she scrunches up in a ball, butt up in the air, closing her eyes, murmuring, giggling, singing, “hava? bama?”

I scoop her up, put her in her soft onesie p.j, sing her a song, rub her tummy, while she slurps down her milk and coos. I cover her in her pink knit blanket. i tell her I love her, more than anything, in the whole wide world, kiss her cheek, and tiptoe out.

I am not home. But I am home.

Too cheesy to say “where the heart is” ?

Probably. But it’s true.

I’ve been thinking a lot about home lately. Not just because Nablopomo told me to think about it – it’s their theme for June, but ABOUT home. About where it is, how you know it, how you hold onto it, how you move to be sheltered by it when it shifts.

It started with a trip home. Well, to the home where I grew up, the town I grew up. “my hometown…. this is myyy home town…” It was a trip to take my boyfriend “home.” So where you grow up? That must be home.

On that trip, I went literally home, back to the source, to THE home, the physical home where I grew up; the home, serendipitously enough, that one of my very bestest friends in the 3rd, 4th, 5th grades had just purchased… with her husband…. and baby.

It filled me with joy. Here was the home where she and I had played. She could teach her son that the evergreen tree was hollow inside if you poked in just the right way, that the basement cabinets made an excellent clubhouse, that the spot to the left of the staircase was perfect for spying on whoever was below.

V had been there when my dad passed the rule “no more dr. scholls.” Too many girls were getting the think wooden heels of those monstrosities stuck on our thin deck and being catapulted into the backyard! She was there for birthday parties, scavenger hunts, t ball games and trips to ground round for sundaes in baseball caps.

I couldn’t wait to see it.

But I also was afraid. This was the home where my father, and my memories of him, lived. And it was the home where he died, making the brightest and Read the rest of this entry »