it was over 365 days ago when i choose to keep my heart in one piece

It was over 365 something days I decided. I decided. To keep my heart in one piece. And I succeeded. I did it. My heart stayed inside this very chest. It did not fly on to the floor in a million something pieces. I did not need a bungee cord or super glue to put it back together. I did not lay on the ground kicked in the stomach saying why me again?  I did not need a therapist to hold my hand to walk outside. Alone. I did not lay in a puddle of my own despair. Not anymore.  What happened? It is not a disney story. For those only exist in the confines of tvs and screens and movie theaters not the reality of every day. Storybooks of childhood of happy endings made easy.  What happened? It was not sexy. It was boring. It grew tired. I grew tired from the lack of excitement without the crash and burn and the quick fire repetitions of love affairs. I grew lonely. Boredom. Now. It was not pretty this keeping together of this heart. Loneliness foreign.

What happened next was. Was I learned how to play hide and seek with boredom, I let loneliness become my friend and no longer an enemy sown together-it lost its power. I let the desire for the excitement bubble outside of me in other ways. I said out loud what I wanted while my heart was held together in all its entirety. I stopped looking. And somewhere along the line, I surrendered. My own rendition of a child's pose.  In this game of love. And turned a new page, created a new story.

A new story of my attempt at love. For the first time in the history of Kate. I kept my heart in one piece and allowed life to happen in a way I did not take every opportunity and make it happen now. Right now. Because what if it was our only chance?  But I let go. Because I could not stomach another heart wrenching demise. And I woke up into. A new story. Of a relationship. Possibility. Just because you get a new story, does not mean you get a new ending. It does not just work that way.

But could be breaking the curse of loser guys and dismantling not getting what I need and the storyline of falling for ideas of people-outlines of real men- being over. Be enough. Could my heart being in one piece. And me being okay. Even if this might be over. That in this ending. My heart staying in one piece. Might mean. It all is different. In a way I wanted. In a way I have always wanted. In a way I had never dreamt. That goodbye might not be the shatter of the pulse and core of me. But instead. Letting go. To see what might be next. For us. Or just me. But no matter what this pitter patter that stays with me enclosed in its home of protection. Hasn't left.

I said over 365 days ago I could not survive another heart break. And as I stand here. Thinking of what will be next. My heart is in one piece. And knowing there is more. More of this to come. Might be the greatest gift. Of all. By myself or with him. Or someone else. I know I am not broken. Anymore. So many times it took. For me to stand here. Really stand here. And my promise to myself unbroken. And this story engrained on my heart has changed and so have I.  

home. in a way four walls can never understand.

hello friends, school made my postings pause but alas i return. all my thanks as always.

Walk. A walk on the beach breathes life into this body in ways nothing else can. Not a talk. Not a concoction of alcohol or a circle of medicine. Not a piece of chocolate. Nothing compares to when I park my car on the pavement and cross over to the bare foot feeling of damp sand between my feet. Sometimes I go because there is sun I must admire. Sometimes I go to escape. Sometimes to remember. A button to press reset inside of me.

Today I went because I needed a walk. I awoke in the middle of the night with a sinking stomach feeling that signaled I must do something. Before that would have entailed something dramatic ending of things and crossing streets to ignore people and it would have the drama of a middle school play. But today. It just meant something. Needed. To. Change. Inside. Of. Me.

And change it did as I felt the sand play around my feet up to my calves poking out of my yoga pants. I stop to see a possible wave hugging a whale I feel so lucky in all the days I had came here but it is just a rock formation. I dodge the obstacle course of fishermen. Some painted in proper gears others not. One smokes. Another tattooed. The fishing poles grow taller than humans and the connection to the ocean beyond. I walk the furthest I have. I decide to reach the end of these beaches today. I pass a family with toddler and dog bribing both so they stand still for a photograph. Again. And again. And I return to the walk. Then the pause. Of a sip of coffee. And the watch of the waves in and out. I am alone. Here. But do not feel that way. I feel surrounded by people I treasure and memories extended far out.

My mother and father first meeting was along a beach. Long ago. The equation of the randomness of me. And they took me there as I grew from the small me into the bigger me. I remember some visits there. But when I come across a box of photos. I see. Our family. And beach time. I visit my grandfather on this beach. He used to fish here. This being one of my favorite beaches. Also drawn to it. Not knowing until recently that he too was a fisherman here. My grandmother I see here in her formality and fun wanting to go but dressed in the wrong shoes. As I remember her wish to go as she came to the finish line of life. And as I reach the end of the beach for the first time. I know I must turn around. With these people and memories. And knowing that for me that my grandparents and mother. Might only live here for me. This might be why I come here to remember. Who I am. It is home. In a way that four walls can never understand.

When I come here I walk alone. But I walk in memories of us. Who we are. It helps me to remember who I am. I am in this big overwhelming world of so much. That the sand cools my mind my worried my mind. The waves welcome me in the every changing rhythm now comforting. There is a newness in each wave. As I turn around. The warming fall sun hits me. The kayakers with crabs have arrived at shore. The fishermen laugh. The crabs lay on their backs upon foreign soil their legs moving around for freedom. I keep walking and watching. I pick up a few stones. All different colors. As dogs maze around me.

And remember I can believe. I can believe. Things can be different. I can believe in me wanting different things and getting them. I just have to go home and visit. To remember. Believing is what I do best.

swimming in the unknown currents of this city doesn't make me hard- it makes me human

The paradox of city living. Is I see more. Than I should. Than I sometimes can bear. But I feel more at home within this glass house of society than I ever did in the planned of community of normalness. That never felt normal. I awake early to move the car. That if not will be decorated in a ticket which could buy me a meal, a drink, and something else more desired.

The day moves in waves above my head- the clouds move in a pattern I will never see again but I am struck and stand for a moment. The sun paints a picture on the etch sketch of its canvas. Not in black and white and gray. But perfectly brilliant colors only to last for right now. If I had awoken early to move my car. I would have missed it. No driveway or designated parking place and more parking tickets than I should admit aloud. If I had woken up I would not see the mother with her child taking him to school. He is almost her size and they move in unison. No words. But talking. Still. I wouldn't have seen this father hold the hands of his daughter. And see her jump up on this curb covered in trash. No trash can. Available. Smiling still. Next to the building clean. But still newly graffitied. It will be painted over soon.

If I had not woken up I would not have talked to the teenage boy with glassy eyes of sleep as we walk across the street. He wouldn't have told me he has been growing out his hair since he was a baby. He would not of heard me and see me smile. He would not have heard my wish that he woke up before he got school. I would not have seen his face tired and growing with anticipation of a smile. A real genuine look. Into the eye. If I had not awoken on this day. So early. I might not have seen the community I call home.

Later. I would not have been given a homeless woman's gas bill payment. I sat on a bench. She left me her payment- another envelope addressed to someone else- and kept walking. I didn't know what to do. To pick it up and touch it or leave it behind. Her conversation continues as she walked away. If I didn't pay attention. I might have missed the child inside the dumpster. The recycling variety foundation built in cardboard. His after school activity helping his father. Collect. For his family. I smile at him. For his strength. For my hope. That his hard work pays off. That he still will be freedom to be a child. And as I walk I feel the tears of the sea of me well up.

Living in the city has not made me hard. Or soft. It has made me human. It has made me realize the reality of statistics being people. And people mattering more. It has made me realize. There are no ways to build walls to avoid the realities that are humanity. Beautiful ugly growing into the realness. I sometimes close my eyes to not see. But not for too long. I have to open them again. Or I'll miss the good stuff.

The paradox of this city is how beautiful the rawness of every day that brings me to tears. It touches me. And I let it. I don't read the news. I just walk outside and let the pace of this city. Teach me. Teach me more than I ever learned from reading a book. And the fear. The fear of it being too much sometimes grows. But the beauty of it. Calms me again. The ebb and flow of this urban river. I sometimes stand on the river bed but today I will swim in its unknown currents.

the real nanny diaries: purple or otherwise- go stomp in it

this is being blogged from martha & bros. coffee- one of my second homes, a cheers of sorts, everyone in deed knows my name. check them out they are around the city and all owned from the decents of the same family. and family they will treat you as there own. 10 minute quick write for the word- disorder-written after a good few days of rain. kind of how i feel in this fog. 3 days in a row of sun. please universe send me one more day. i need it. there are no puddles to stomp in.


Disorder. I forgot about the disorder of the rain, the raindrops, the disorder of cabin fever of the young. I used to get it all the time when I was a kid. That feeling of both nostalgia and crazy into one. You want to run outside and jump in the puddles and get wet. Lift your eyes up into the air full of rain. The moisture feels good at least at first it does. It does. But then you get too wet or someone doesn’t let you outside and then you are stuck indoors for hours -sometimes days. I forgot about the disorder caused by rain until today.

Today when I walked into Kid Space a place for occupational therapy, therapy kids style. The type that most kids with extra privilege learn how to grow muscles and multi-task and hold a pencil. As I walked into the waiting room, I remembered the disorder. How I had forgotten? All these kids, kids were losing their shit. You could feel the energy of the raindrop disorder everyone is miserable-everyone crying visually or with looks in their eyes. Everyone wants something they can’t have. Have. They long for either a run outside, a stomp, or just a juice box, or a game of heads up 7 up. They want their parents to stop talking and telling them what to do. I am sick-they say. Give me fresh air- they mouth to me. Let me jump in a puddle-they sign. Bring out the sun lady. Because this raindrop rain cabin fever disorder makes you batty, makes you crazy, and the adults around you don’t know what to do. To do.

So I looked around the room and I remembered. This disorder will only last so long and soon these kids and these adults will be normal. Again. Normal. The disorder only strikes when we aren’t walked properly or watered enough or sun hasn’t shone on our roots. There is no way to get rid of it. Rid of it. Except the disorder will pass, pass like many of the disorders I study. Have studied in myself, in others, in strangers. I try to understand the order of those around me. The disorders of those around me. We name them, we say them, they pass, they come back. But what are we really talking about? About.

With the rain, it’s about freedom of the air. Freedom itself. But the other disorders might not be very different. The freedom to not worry about about the ills of life and what you have inherited or your childhood or your love life or any of it. Maybe the disorder is trying to organize it all perfectly. We can’t stop the rain, we can’t stop heartache, we can’t stop the laughter. The disorder might be the controlling. Instead let us let the drops fall down on our heads. Cabin fever is our enemy and the air of rain filled cloud our friend. Some might call it a disorder but it might be the only order I have ever known. Splish. Splash. I say.

the quest to stay out of the fog in my island of home

hello all-thanks for reading! this was inspired by the lovely word paradise. enjoy and have an amazing weekend- i am signing off for a spa day of sorts tomorrow. paradise will be mine. again.

i want to give a shout out to my former professor and dept. head at Columbia's Teachers College. I am humbled to know he reads this thing i call a blog. he was brave enough to tell me. i am glad to be expanding my target audience- Aaron Pallas- sociologist i will always be. . .


Paradise. What was paradise yesterday is not my paradise today. My paradise before was a beachfront property in a miami style vice house. My paradise was falling in love with bloody marys. It was the first time we took a run on the dance floor of drinking. I loved them so much- I took the orders from all the family members- first one then multiplying until one day I had more glasses lined up in a row, bartender I had become. I tried to perfect it each time. More family members kept coming back for more. My cousin’s husband said my final one rivaled zeitgeist. I took a moment of silence. A comparison to a godfather of bloody mary makers. I only was in the ring for a week.

Paradise for me was waking up eating and coffee along the lake and then reading, swimming, and making a bloody mary for me and co. Then repeat again. And again. That was my paradise. Paradise was swimming in the lake so much it became my bath. I was a mermaid again on my back floating-my hair back and forth-the heaviness of the hair weighing me down and freeing me all at once. My childhood habit of being a mermaid still mine as I lay on my back floating and my head and the weight of it to and fro. It was my paradise to sit along the hot shore with a towel small or big and the waves crashing rhythmically as the screen doors opens and closes and opens and closes and opens and closes. I sat there by myself. I laid there and could have laid there forever sun beating on my irish german skin brown. I took off one of my 5 bikinis to see a tan line I hadn’t had in years. It was my paradise. Bloody marys and swimming and white bottoms and family and kids running around saying they are robots and wrestling on the damp grass.

It was my paradise until I came home. Home to a forgotten feeling of despair and anxiety. And after I was able to shake the familiar feeling away. I found paradise again. Again I did. Today while driving. I left my friends home in the richmond the fog melted away into the sun of the haight. As I drove, I saw two kids on their bikes on the corner bubbling with summer. I drove behind a person with a red party cup plastic type out the window. I slowed down. I saw a tall man walking a toddler across the street. Paradise again.

As I sat sitting in the sun no bloody mary but a espresso with spice. No beach but sun. And my companion the laptop. I sat and heard. Heard paradise again. I had saw paradise. But paradise was listening to three different people talk about boobs in unison. Paradise was talking to a man from cork. Paradise would be getting proper cocktails with friends and searching for sun tomorrow. I had left my paradise-my lake-my love but now I found home. Paradise all along. All long it was. I just had to drive to the sun and leave the fog. The fog that is.

the real nanny diaries: rearview mirror of truth- fleas as pets

Dog days. Dog days of years past. As I walk down my dog-lined street- I almost step on some but in my neighborhood dogs trump people. I live in the valley of the noe. The valley of the dog. I love dogs I do, well at least the dogs that you can call dogs. Big enough to be one. Not into the ones that could fit in your purse too easily, slipped away and maybe forgotten. I love the catwalk only done by a dog that sway of the hips back and forth and no responding to others in barks. Just prancing away.

The other day Y and me got in debate about what makes a dog. I told her I didn’t like the yap variety and she promptly told me that SPCA, where she doing her weekly day camp of summer, would not share the sentiment. We respect all life she said. Really? I shot back. Tell me what about mice. Pets, without skipping a beat. Rats? Pets. Okay how about fleas? What is your and SPCA’s stance on those animals? I glance back into the rearview mirror of truth- her smile turned sideway, her eyes now thinking, spinning round the fleas through her well connected brain of a machine. We keep them in a jar. As pets. We are at a red light. I turn around and laugh. Really? In a jar. They take them off the dogs. And my voice trails off and we just are smiling. Beaming the smile when no one is looking and you don’t care.

I don’t really care. Except making sure to challenge her. Her thoughts. Her mind. As she challenges me. I never thought I would call a nine year old one of my best friends. I never thought a nine year old could challenge me more than adults surrounded around me. I never thought her happiness could be mine, her pain felt as a pang. The strangeness of love for a child. One you didn’t birth. But one of your own. Not in the genetics or bones, but the heart and soul of family. Real family. Family that you feel lucky knowing and angry to know their right. Right when they tell you aloud. Your shirt is too low. Or I think you look better without makeup. Or he wasn’t right for you but I liked his dog. Or I love you Kate- is it because I gave you the vanilla lotion to hide the smell of SPCA dogs and cats and goats from your dad’s sensitive nose? No, I loved you before.

the badge for forgotten popsicles

Good deeds. Good deeds. Sometimes I was told good deeds go unnoticed. Unnoticed unlike the terrible gut wrenching shit someone can do to you. Good deeds it pays off to pay attention to them. Like the view up the hill through Buena Vista. I stop the car every time to look at the hills, downhill, houses scattered closely together, seamless together of the roller coaster of urbanity. Flowing into the ocean the bridges into the east bay. I stop every time. As not to forget. Forget the view. The luckiness of the view. Good deeds are the same. Not the girl scout brownie boy scout eagle make but the subtle things we do. We do that are just good. That are just deeds.

As, I picked K up from his camp of Tree Frogs of hiking and running and superheroes and space camp. He had an excited grin painted on his face. I have something for you Kate it’s a surprise. He begins to slowly check out every compartment in his childhood backpack slowly at first then becoming more rapid, more quickly. He smile has now drifted away. He looks a little anxious. He looks like the anticipation of the camp has faded away. It’s okay K, I say you can look for it later. The virtual hug of nanny love. No Kate. Darn it- with his child like boston accent that speech therapy will one day fix. Eye contact direct and subverted. Darn it. I forgot. I forgot I ate it. It was a popsicle. A popsicle. Laughter erupts. It’s okay K. It probably would have melted anyway. There might not be anything sweeter than a child who saves their popsicle in their backpack for you. Except the good deed of forgetting he ate it. The puddle of the sweet was to be only left. His star wars modern lunch pail would have only held onto the freeze so long. So long.

Good deeds of subtly. Good deeds that are just really good. Yesterday as me and one of my closet friends walked smelling of the park and sun and champagne and beer and super tacos from a taqueria. We stopped. Stopped with the crowd of the bi rite ice cream enthusiasts to let a woman back her car up out of driveway onto the busy corridor of 18th street. We all stopped facing each other one group of strangers and citizens staring at each other waiting for her white lights to dim. Battleship opponents. But alas she began to get dangerously close to. Close to another car. And we told her the right directions and airport directed and baseball signed her out. But we only did everyone else kept walking. They had waited for her. Waited for her. That was enough. But we didn’t think about it. We just did it.

The good deed of strangers. It doesn’t mean more. It just something different than the good deed of intimacy. But the intimacy of two friends moving in unison in a good deed without discussing or vacillating or googling it- is a good deed within itself. That friendship isn’t an accident-it’s the good deed of a connection. We don’t get badges for these relationships or choices. We don’t need them like we once did.

this is the musical called my life

this one goes out to nanni- the best partner in crime a lady could wish for. . . there is no one i would have rather met in a waiting room but you.

have a great weekend and thanks all my thanks for reading.

Singing. We are signing loudly against the prius exterior songs from the past. A type of singing where you are almost yelling, yelling an old school classic that gets to the gut of the screaming sing and the hand motions and the sphere of friendship. We are there. Singing our hearts, our heads, our throats off while at the stop at Turk and some small cross street next to USF. It is the kind of stop that the other car across the way-our momentarily our neighbor-can see in through our window-a tv of real life. We don’t care we keep going. Singing and the hand motions Of years past when you learned hand motions. Now are in freestyle. The feelings of the prius can’t contain the singing as if no one is looking with someone you love. We really need to karaoke she says. We do. We will suck. Who cares. True. Our stage of the prius and turk street is ours.

Singing. Later when I had the luxury of the BMW instead of the usual nannymobile of the Corolla- I took her. Her on a drive. I wanted to. But instead we ended up at the UPS station to pick up her green shoes. I scroll through the ipod of my employer to find the right one. The right one that will touch that nerve of the combination of I haven’t heard this in years, I know almost all the words, time to sing and yell again. I’m scrolling until I reach- Eternal Flame. She walks back in with her box of anticipation of green shoes- will they fit. Will they fit? In all seriousness with a smile in the backdrop- I say this song is for you. Close your eyes, give me your hand, darling. Then we begin the belting out. The belting out of the lyrics you only know when the song is on. The windows are down and the sunroof is open and the music blasting in the system and we are singing in a bmw outside the UPS station. We don’t care. We keep going. Our stage moves locations like our cars. Like our cars. There is no talking. Just singing. Burning an eternal flame. And laughing. And moving our hands as if we have forgotten we aren’t alone.

Singing. We make up songs to old school ones all the time. Me and the kids. Yesterday, Y began. Hold me now. Please pick me up and spin my around. I continue turn around. Every now and then I want to. I can’t turn her down. She loves it when I pick her up and do some type of tricks we come up with in the fly. I don’t care about my back. I can’t turn her down. Look how strong Kate is- she says to her parents at each of their respective houses. Don’t hurt her they say. I keep picking her up because one day I can’t or won’t be able to.

Singing. We continue coming up with lines back and forth as I pick her up and spin her around the room. Singing and spinning and making up lyrics to the old songs. She used to say Kate can we sing a song in this decade- a tone of a tween. But now. Now we- me, her and her brother- all take turns singing the lines, made up through the tools of creativity or real, all taking a line, a line and singing to each other in our musical. In our musical. Called this is my life. I sing. Horribly. But have so much fun doing it.

the show goes on- our cat killed a baby turkey says my father

this is a tribute to my dad. happy father's day to all the dads out there.

thanks for reading and keep coming back for more. to date: i have been read in every continent and almost every state in the good old usa- oh my! my pain is your joy. my embarrassment is shared. i am still in awe. keep reading, keep sharing, and keep telling me what you think. all my thanks as always! have a great weekend!


And the show goes on. It always does. I remember once upon a time my parent’s told me that time would fly the older I got. The older I became they were right. As I spoke to my father today. I realized the last time I saw him was Christmas. Christmas is all of a sudden 6 months ago. The show goes on. I used to only see my family only twice a year but that is when I lived, lived 3,000 miles away and had to brave the plane although confided spaced phobic to arrive home for a visit. How is it I only live 2.5 hours away and six months had passed? Passed. No planes to keep me from coming. I could jump on the train or in the car. But why haven’t I gone?

The show goes on and you wake up and it is summer. I had promised myself to be better. To visit more. Visit him more. Because I love my father more than anything. He has the ability to make me laugh. Today when I talked to him on the phone- still shaking off the slumber in my pjs of tank top with hair dye left over and old school track shorts american apparel make. I talked to him while preparing a smoothie for my new blender. Our last roommate took hers to live on a farm. I tell my dad. My dad says what the hell is she going to do on a farm? How is she going to use that blender there? I needed to own a blender of my own for I am in my thirties.

The show must go on. My father tells me. Milton killed a baby turkey. I stop. What? Milton is our cat. Our cat we adopted from my x-best friend who had the tendency of taking on responsibilities she couldn’t fulfill she took on the kitten and couldn’t keep it so alas our family swooped in and supermaned and took the cat. Milton used to be Amelia. After Amelia Earhart she used. The adventurer. Used be a girl. No not because she had a sex change. We didn’t know she was a he until we took her to the vet. I asked my dad- how didn’t we know? He is still growing. Growing as if Milton’s manhood of feline variety was in jeopardy.

I hate that cat. It scares dogs, it kills mice, it attacks me while eating on the kitchen bar or when I am on the computer. He sits on the table next to my food as if I am taking up space. He claws and scratches me. I hate that cat. That cat only loves my father. Be nice to your brother he says. Dad it’s a cat. I hate him. Kate he can hear you stop that. That cat of course is possessed. Spoiled rotten- It gets food feed in its mouth and has a curfew when he has to be home. My dad is worried if he doesn’t get back by 10pm.

See he was worried when they moved to the foothills of tahoe that Milton couldn’t make it, but Milton terrorizes other animals and brings them home to brag. When we lived in the suburbs of birds and mice and now living in the wilderness of deers, mountain loins, and turkeys. Milton killed a baby turkey. And brought it home and left it on the porch. I had to bury it. He continues. Then I didn’t let Milton out because it was past his curfew. Then he scratched me not once but twice. The show must go own. And does. Dad did you hear what you just said. Replay I repeat his words. Dad that cat is insane. We laugh. The cat has a curfew dad. He is like a problem child.

The show goes on. And I miss more dad more anything. I miss these stories and seeing his hands move and hearing his dorky laugh that is my own. The show goes on and I am missing this. I want nothing more to stop the show. Because the quicker it goes, the quicker he will. He will leave to. I need the slow the show down to keep him here longer. Longer. The show going on fast forward the fear of losing my father is my greatest. I fear tons but the show going on means that I am getting older and so is he. He and how can I play in this game called life without hearing his voice on the other end. The other end telling me about our possessed cat or his relationship advice- kate no one puts on a marriage hat and becomes someone different- or his camping advice- make sure you go somewhere safe. I need him. I know the show must go on. But I need to hear, hear him to know I can safely keep going with it.

grown-ups chase milk cartons

Grown-ups. I am a grown up or I play one regularly on this show called my life. Sometimes my job as a nanny. Sometimes in my family. But the kids think I am a kid adult. And I am not sure if it is because I don’t have grown-up things like a house or a husband or kids to call my own. But actually it is probably because I am a grown-up but still childlike. The kids write me notes and cards that say- Kate’s number one rule- Have fun! Y will say you remember how it is to be a kid. How important street cred and reputations are- I laugh. I let them play and laugh in the safety of not running while chewing or terrorizing each other too much.

For I am still a grown-up but it is nice to take off the veil of adultness that seems to squelch the fun of living. I let it go, go until K starts skipping with his mouth full. Or when he runs with both his hands in the pocket- power hand out I remind. I am a grown-up again. But grounded in the sand of the playground, throwing the water in the play fight, allowing the kids to have whip cream poured in their mouth from the can sometimes. Sometimes. Once a month I allow them to. I tell them stop having fun. Having fun is not allowed in a serious tone with a smirk coming through. Then we laugh. Laugh. And I splash the kids with water, water, water from the dishes sprayed from the sprinkler of my hand.

It is hard to be a grown-up and not forget the childhood ways, the ways we were, the lightness of when the next game of pretend of super hero, when the next ice cream run would happen, when we might play doctor or school or store again. I forgot about water fights, water fights until last weekend. Last weekend when I was watching a set of twins and their sister. All together with tupperware and plastic cups and hoses. I sprayed them like my childhood sprinkler I used to run into back and forth up and down on the damp grass-it was the solitude from the heat. Laughter reverberated into my heart. Into theirs and we decide, I decide that water fights should be required. Required. So as grown-ups we don’t forget.

Grown-ups. As a grown-up, I have learned what matters most other than the chalk of the line of boundaries is modeling. Psychology reports this, cognitive and behaviorists analyze this, studies support this, parents and child givers try and do it. Model. Model my clay of humanity. Of how to be a grown-up, how to be a kid, how to make the right choices. As I run after, after the empty milk carton gallon down the Cole Valley Street. I run after recycling because I shouldn’t litter of course. But I run more and more as it tumbles pounding it’s plastic against the pavement springing up and down it keeps going.

But I keep going, keep going because she is watching me. Watching me run after the milk carton. I keep running because she is watching. And I know, I know she values recycling. And would be heartbroken if we littered the family trash. I run praying that it will stop down its windy hill. My bouncing ball of modeling keeps going until it stops in the bottom half of a bmw. Alas, I reach down to grab it and my reefs begin to slip from under me.

I am sliding and catching myself and now flashing the cars and their passerbys my world from underneath my dress. Flying up. I catch myself and catch the carton and turn around running up the hill. I know I did it because I am a grown-up. I know I did it because I am still a kid. I know I did it because she was watching. Modeling and laughing is what I try to do. Try to remember what was fun so I can teeter tooter between responsibilities and the freedom. The freedom. I laugh. But I still run after that carton. But alone I might have let it go. You can’t let it go when they are watching.

As I drive, I remember they are watching. As I remember my father yelling. Yelling at the cars. I willed children super powers for him to stop. Heart rattling my chest. And not get out of the car. But I still talk to the drivers. It wasn’t your turn. I say. Come on dude drive. I say. Seriously. I say. For the quest and calling of urban driving is a map of routes in my head of the best way to go. Best way to go. Then I hear her say. It wasn’t your turn. It wasn’t their turn she was right. They are always watching. Even when we forget we are grown-ups.

the summer delivery of happiness

Delivering happiness is simple. I have found a way to kill the depression of any adulthood woos. I have a way to throw out the zoloft and alcohol or xanax. I have a way to not seep into the cracks of sadness. It is so simple. It is so easy. I was delivered happiness twice this week in an unexpected way. I feel like I should share it with others because it is so simple. Simple it is. Walk into a school preferably an elementary school-a k-8 will do-I’m sure there is still the excitement within a jr or high school type, but different it might be. But there is something about when you walk in the walls of the last day of school. The last day of school.

The excitement felt by those running around to say goodbye, to get in line for ice cream, for no more school, no more homework. Once they buzzed me in, through the first door and then the second, I felt something different unusual. As I walked into the sea of occasional runs into the hallway and hi kates and sitting down waiting for your parents or nannies or grandmas to pick them up. No this time I found myself in a wave of energy that makes you want to do shake your hands and feet in excitement. I was delivered happiness this anticipation and excitement delivered to me that there was nothing else than to smile. Smile not the forced smile of nice to meet you- who the hell are you- or the smile of someone wanting something- no it was the toothy open grinned-open mouth-parting of the lips into the genuine. The genuine.

The sea of the last day of school dodge balled me back to my own time when my life was in the confines of parents and walls and boundaries. How I love the last day of school. How I had forgotten until. Until. I was delivered happiness for what was to come. Come. No one knew. But the ending felt great. Because you would be back. Back you would. Delivering happiness just by being there. Not doing anything but opening my hands out and taking it all in.

We all take in shit we shouldn’t but this felt like a happy elixir unlike the usual, it was different. I was different. But it wouldn’t be my own taste of nostalgia for the past. If you ever need to stop multitasking or put down that phone or detach-go see kids perform in a end of the year celebrations. To hear their little voices stretched out loud to try and be booming, the practiced choreography sometimes remembered, sometimes forgotten. You sway back to back to the beat. And look around. Smiles abound. Movement abound.

Delivering happiness is easy. So simple. It is not just delivered by children. Maybe around kids, kids at the end of the school year it is just easier to see. Because it is so loud and you can be deafened for the high kicks and dosidos and standing ovations for teachers who are leaving. Maybe we forgot the way it was. The way it could be. To start a new summer and only think of the good. To start over and not be sad for what was. What was. Because what was to come seemed like it would be better. Better than this. Delivering happiness. Nothing is better than that.

the beach of me

Traveling. Today when I was watching this chick flick that was set in London, I thought, I thought, it has been awhile since I have been traveling. It’s been awhile. Now I don’t usually watch chick flicks on Mondays, but since it was my day off I decided to partake in junk food for my mind and body. I also had lots of chips, fours types, some baked some not, some pickles, and some dark chocolate. All you have to do is add ice cream and maybe you might think I was pregnant. I am not. At least I don’t think so. I just had a conversation about this with a friend, my friend about babies, pregnancy and how we spend our lives trying not to make them and one day we will decide it’s time and then we will try, we will try and no one really knows what will happen.

Traveling for me. Is freedom. It is the escape. It doesn’t even have to be that far. I sometimes feel like I am traveling when I leave my neighborhood or one where I work and play mostly. Like today, I found a café in a neighborhood, I never go to, to write. To travel away out of the norm, a vacation of an hour. When I go to the beach, I feel like I am traveling, traveling far away. Just left to my own thoughts and simplicity of nothingness. I didn’t realize what the beach meant to me until it was taken from me. I abruptly awoke one morning and it was no longer a ten-minute drive, or a 45-minute drive. Okay I did move to the other coast. It would take hours and once I would arrive I wasn’t welcomed by the solitude of the waves, the radio of my peace, no it was a lake with ripples. The east coast beaches left much for me to desire.

I used to travel to the beach with my parents. My parents met at the beach, pt. reyes to be exact. Whenever anyone talks about pt. reyes and it’s beauty, I say, that is why I am here. Maybe that is why I like traveling there so much. Once when my parents were long and finished, my dad took me to a spot, he used to go with my mother before me and after me, and then just me and him, and then me, him, my brother, and stepmom. The great thing about this spot is that it is a lagoon, a lagoon that allows you to swim and not fear sharks, or undertow, or coldness. Just calm enough for a swim. As we hiked there, we hiked there together, we took pictures there, and did my favorite thing swim until cold or tired, back to the beach, to eat and cook on the sand and repeat. Repeat. One day I found photos, photos when it was just my mom and dad, I laughed at their funny bathing suits and their skinniness and for the lightness that once was. Traveling back to a time, a time when it had just started for them, that would eventually lead to me. Traveling back to the beach to the beginning, again, and again.

roller skating backwards

Going backwards. Going backwards on roller skates, the old type, the vintage ones and the swinging of the hips back and forth and maybe a bubble gum bubble in the mouth. Not one of the wimpy ones but a serious one, one that took the bubalcious 4 big squares to produce. Maybe watermelon, cotton candy, or just the regular bubble gum flavor. Going around a rink or out on the street. It just looks really fucking cool but I can’t do it. I can barely skate straight. Straight. Let alone going backwards.

Going backwards is something I do in my life. Going backwards into the same old habits or the same old people or the same old job. Same but different of course. But there is comfort to going backwards to the familiar of the past that isn’t like the risk of skating or walking backwards. So today I went backwards, I was going backwards to my old school, my first college, my undergraduate, for a graduate school interview. Going back, back but still moving forward is key. A peculiar familiar movement of going back and forward at the same time. The familiarity of the halls, the look into the classroom, the classroom where I took public speaking when I was just 19. 19. I am now 32. Applying for graduate school, again. School has always been my home base, my foundation, my return to freedom. Going backwards back into schools where I started my career. Going back where I felt most comfortable in the first place. Working with kids directly, not from the far distance of an office spewing rhetoric but looking into their real faces, their vibrant eyes and hearing their words and feeling their emotions not as statistics or policy decisions, but real students. I thought the policy world would gift me the ability to create real change, but in the office, in the meetings, in the conference upon conference I attended on how to fix public urban schools, but it didn’t, it didn’t, it didn’t. After a few of these conferences, I realized if all these highly intelligent, highly capable people all got up and walked to the closest, their closest public schools what a real difference it would make. The talking grew old, tired. A room full of talk so empty. So empty.

So going backwards to where I started in the classroom, in schools, now in counseling. Counseling. Going backwards to the school where I started. It was more about figuring out how to stand on my own feet then. Then it was. It was more about getting through. Through quickly. Probably too quickly. Now it’s more about knowing, knowing that there isn’t one way to get where you are going.

still dreaming

Next year it will be different. Next year will be different but I’m sure more of the same. We do it every year write down our wishes and desires and ways we want to be different- how things should be different. But how does change happen? How does a dream or goal become actualized? There is no linear path to happiness, that I am sure. But what I am sure of is the importance of dreams.

You can learn a lot by asking someone what they wanted to be when they grew up. It is funny because each thing a person might list is so telling. Every person says something like a teacher, or a marine biologist, or a doctor or, or, or. Always something interesting. Always something never boring. Always something that matters in our world. I used to want to be a lawyer or the first woman president-which is probably still telling of who I am today. I shoot high, really high even when I was still in the confines of my only domain of my childhood bedroom. The first woman president. It still hasn’t happened yet. I could still be her. But now I don’t want it like I once did. Because as a child, I didn’t understand how ugly politics could be and the price you will have to pay to be successful. So today, today I am a part time nanny, a literacy volunteer, and I blog. It wasn’t what I had planned. I thought I would be something prestigious, something important. But maybe this work is more important than the lawyering and politicking I can do.

I ask people both young and old regularly what do you want to/or did you want to be when you growing up. I think it says a lot about who we are. What are dreams are. The dreams of our childhood were much simpler, more real, less influenced by the outside world. I dream of the freedom of childhood. The freedom to dream my dreams without the judgment of others or myself blurring the lines of importance. Dreaming, I still do it. That might be why I also believe in others, I dream in the possibilities of what we can all do. Even if it means I will be disappointed. Disappointed because my dreams look different now. Letting go and holding onto the childhood dreams for simplicity and happiness and real true success. So next year it will be different and it is. I have a new life of freedom, freedom from the office, freedom from the 9-5, freedom from the sounds of judgment in my own head, freedom from the anxiety, freedom to roam and write and laugh for that I keep dreaming.

magic tricks

Magic. He asked me if I entertained people by doing magic tricks. No I said, by telling stories. Oh, you are a writer. I hesitantly said yes. Magic, magical tricks, the questions we are asked at bars waiting to get our beers.

I have always remembered, believing I had extraordinary powers. That I had the ability to will something to happen. I would sit and concentrate and try to see if I could move something. Nothing ever shifted but my eyes, my eyes around the room. I would try and put my two index fingers together to stop time. Magic. Magical gifts. It never worked. It turned out I wasn’t a character in a sitcom, I wasn’t Evie.

Magic, believing in magic is freeing even if you can’t actually do it. Not on a stage, not supernaturally, but maybe there is magic of a moment, a connection, a run to the bus stop just in time. The moment I think of someone and they call. The fact that someone can look at me and stop time. For that moment can be magic. I think so.

I love discussing magical powers with the kids. The magic of Y’s dreams of being an author and a veterinarian and maybe a lawyer and teacher too. I tell K to put out his power hand while he is running or when he gets out of the bath he becomes invisible naked boy. He runs around the house performing tricks and saving lives and afterwards his smile beaming from ear to ear. Maybe we shouldn’t tell Mom and Dad and Y about this. About these magical powers. He has a squint of happiness in his eyes, powerful, powers he thinks he has.

I wish I could bottle up the belief in magic and sell it. We all need more of it. Magic. I might be a fool for believing in everyday magic but I don’t really care. Because if you open your eyes really open your eyes you will see magic around you so you might not be able to levitate or voodoo your x-boyfriend or his new girlfriend and they actually feel it. But does that matter really? Magic the belief in it means more the ability to perform tricks. So if that man at the bar was to ask me again if I perform magic tricks today, today if he asked, I would say yes, yes of course. Everyday and promptly walk away.