pink pajama mama

My girlfriend Kayren from LA got married last weekend in the French Quarter. She’s originally from Pontchitoula. She had a 1920’s theme and it was a DREAM! I loved how everyone got into the spirit and dressed to the nines everywhere the wedding party went. The ceremony was held at the historical Beauregard Keyes House on Chartres Street. There were lanterns on the stairs and walking around the Quarter, seeing all the houses from the 17-1800’s, hearing the clip-clop of the horse and carriages, walking into this amazing house and into the courtyard where they were serving mint juleps–it was like stepping back in time. There was a large wooden table covered in envelopes that said Western Union Telegram on them. Inside was a list of everything that would happen during the ceremony.The ballroom was lit with candles and a jazz band that sounded like Louis Armstrong played. Kayren looked stunning in a 1920’s silk dress with buttons down the back. She was radiant and ecstatic and her groom kept crying. Their minister was hilarious and romantic and profound–he had all of us laughing and crying. Afterwards, the entire party walked over to the Palm Court Jazz Cafe for dinner and dancing. The groom’s family owns a Vineyard and every table had divine bottles of wine with different photos of Kayren and her groom. I was wearing my 1920’s hat that Kim bought for me in Scotland. Like a fool, I hadn’t planned my outfit, thinking, “Of course I have a 1920’s outfit–it’s my era.” But after perusing my closet, all my vintage dresses are on the island, so I ended up looking like a bag lady. But thank goodness I had my hat.Kim and I were backpacking and hitchhiking around Scotland and Ireland. We were walking down a curving stone path and came upon the dreamiest (and priciest) hat shop. Of course I had to choose a huge hat that doesn’t fold up. the one Kim chose folded up into a tiny ball in her suitcase, but not me. No way. I had to have the big Holly Golightly hat. I had also bought a velvet cape in London, so now I’m backpacking with a velvet cape and a crazy hat, niether of which I want to get dirty. So we’re riding on freezing buses, and I’m shivering, refusing to cover myself with my cape incase it gets dirty. I found a giant hat box for my hat in Dublin, so now I’m hitchhiking with a hat box bigger than me, and 5 yards of velvet in cloak form, plus my suitcases, etc. I’m trying not to squish my hat, so I end up wearing it most of the time. I get comments like, “Look at you–you have a lampshade on your head!” They told Kim her hat looked like a tea cozy. And the thing about this hat is I can’t see when I’m wearing it. I’m running into dear old friends I haven’t seen in years at this wedding and all I can see is their lips moving because my hat is so low over my eyes. My neck hurt the next day from tilting my head back all evening. I finally gave it to John, Kim’s boyfriend, and he put it on a statue in the corner of the cafe. It actually looked stunning on the statue. I had pinned a peacock feather to the front of the hat to add a dash of flair, and I took photos of the statue at the end of the evening. As I stumbled to leave (ok, I had a julep, a mojito, and that delicious wine…) George motions to me that I had forgotten my hat. In all my fun taking photos of the hat on the statue, I had forgotten it! And now it sits in my closet happy with its new addition–the peacock feather. My oh my. It was everything a wedding should be. 

I came home today to find Henry wearing his Mickey Mouse underwear backwards, a pink playsilk tied around his neck as a cape. “I’m Batman!” he shouted, running down the hall, the cape flying out behind him. We’re working on potty training. I said, “Henry, did you use the potty while I was gone?” “Nope,” he replied as he ran by. “Do you have to go?” “Nope.”About 2 minutes later, he shouts, “Mama! I peepeed in the closet!” Sure enough…A while later, he walked into my bedroom with his popsicle and painted the top of the air purifier with it. I came in just as he started smacking it down on the buttons, a big puddle of red slush smeared all over.Later, I’m frantically trying to cook a nutritious dinner for three starving people after swimming lessons. Annabelle says, “Mom, I know what you can be for Halloween because you’re hair is so crazy. A witch. We could get you a cute hat… “ Thank you. So now I have crazy hair. Only a few minutes before she shouted at me from the bathroom: “Mom? Is it acceptable to have a hair in your poop?”So I guess it’s what Henry told Annabelle yesterday is apropos: “Abelle, I going to pee on you, poop on you, and throw you out vindow!”This while he was jumping up and down on the bed in his spaceman pajamas.

Annabelle started her eagerly anticipated violin lessons today. She and Henry have been talking about violins for months. They put a chopstick under their chin and play it with another chopstick. Everytime I’ve told her I want her to take piano lessons, she says no, she wants to take violin. And so, I bought her a violin yesterday, and she was elated. She got a polish cloth for it and keeps asking me if she can dust it. She carries it around in its case and opens it like it’s the holy grail, gently pulling it out of its purple velvet bed with great reverence.Henry and I sat on the violin teacher’s couch and watched Annabelle’s lesson. The teacher, Ms. Sarah, told Annabelle her pointer finger was called “Lazy Larry Pointer.” Annabelle told her “My Grandpa is really funny, and one time he told me his name was Larry instead of Grandpa. My Grandma is really funny too. One time I said, ‘Can I have a glass of milk Grandma?’ and she said, ‘I’m not Grandma, I’m a leprechaun.’”Ms. Sarah asked Annabelle if she could guess what the chin rest was for on the violin, and Annabelle said, “Hmmm, your leg? Or maybe your bottom?” Every time the teacher pointed out the “frog” on the violin, Henry yelled from the couch, “Frog say Ribit!” Henry was very patient for a while, but eventually he kept running over and throwing our shoes around the teacher’s house. (She’d made us take them off so we didn’t get her white carpet dirty.)Tonight Henry went to sleep early–no nap–so Annabelle and I got to spend a little time together. She wanted to eat graham crackers and milk like she does with her Grandpa every night we’re in Utah. She said, “What do you want to talk about Mom? I’ll give you your choices. We can talk about Disneyworld. my birthday, Halloween, or Christmas.”I said, “What do you talk about when you eat crackers with Grandpa?”"We usually read the funnies,” she said. “Do you know why they call them the funnies? Because they’re supposed to be funny.” My Dad got her interested in reading the comic strips and ran out to get a newspaper every morning so they could read them together. 

Today Annabelle made a “rat trap.” She took a ball of yarn from my knitting baskets and wrapped various things around her room until she had made what looked like a giant spider web. She had a whole plan for the hole the rat needed to go into and she enlisted Henry to hang onto one end of the sparkly orange yarn and told him to pull on the yarn as soon as he saw a rat. He nodded and took his job very seriously. A while later, I came into the living room to find Henry standing on a chair while Annabelle wound him up with more yarn. I asked her what she was doing. She said she was wrapping henry up so he couldn’t get off the chair. Luckily, she hasn’t mastered her knots, so Henry was able to hop down as soon as he wanted.I applaud her innovation. 

I was lying next to Henry at naptime and feeling very open and all-loving and just reveling in the deep sacred reverence I feel for being able to participate in the lives of these little beings. I have to say, when I smell Henry’s neck, it is poetry. That baby smell, that rose petal soft skin, pure bliss. I held him close and started to sing a soft sweet lullaby to him. ”With a sweet soft voice…” ”Momom,” he said, “Stop singing that song. It make me sick.”Ok, I guess that’s succinct. 

When I was 15, I was exploring the local bookstore when I happened upon a Playgirl calendar. This being a conservative Utah bookstore, I was immediately sucked into the scandalous nature of the calendar and so I perused it. I screamed when I saw Mr. December. My cousin David, wearing only a Santa hat, stared out at me with a big grin on his face.I immediately bought the calendar, of course, and took it home to my parents, who were so delighted to see David, they never even asked me how it came to pass I might be looking at such a dastardly calendar. My Mom just pulled out a black Magic Marker and drew swimsuits on all the guys in the photos and proudly showed it to anyone and everyone.David had a very crummy childhood, and he had come to live with our family as a teenager. I loved him. He was about 10 years older than me and did super-cool things like make skateboards from scratch, including whittling places for his fingers to grip the ends so he could do handstands on them, and he worked at Pizza Hut, one of my favorite restaurants. He also flew me around like an airplane and pretended he was going to dunk me in the fountain in the mall. Like I said, super cool.Well, something scandalous happened, I’m not sure what, and David left one day. The vague reason I heard is that he confessed a sin to a bishop who told him he couldn’t be forgiven for it. My Dad is still mad about it twenty years later. But whatever the reason, he disappeared and noone in the family heard from him for seven years, until I came across his photo. Well, my Mom called his Mom, and it turned out David had changed his name to Doug and was actually going to be a Playgirl centerfold that month. Now, it is no easy feat to acquire scandalous magazines in Utah. You can’t just walk into a Circle K and ask for one behind the corner. At this time, there was one Circle K in the middle of nowhere that sold the magazine and my parents had to drive for more than an hour to buy out their five copies. My Mom took her Magic Marker and by the time they came back, every man in all five magazines was wearing a bathing suit. And so I, at seventeen years old, got to see my fun-loving cousin wearing only gray leg warmers, and the queen bee centerfold, a picture of him lying face down on a white furry rug, his buns exposed. My mom didn’t draw on this one, I guess she thought since everyone has a set of buns, it was ok for us to see them. In any case, it was way too much information, but it was entertaining to watch my parents carry this magazine around with them for a few days.I guess it was about two years later that I had spent the night at the Rose Bowl with my little sister and a bunch of friends, definitely one of the most miserable memories in my life. It was freezing and we stayed up all night on the sidewalk, shivering and miserable, with a bunch of drunken fools around us. At 8 am, I was wandering around waiting for the parade to start with about two million other people, when who should I stumble upon? That’s right, David/Doug–fully clothed in black leather! “David!” I screamed! And ran up to hug him. Out of the hundred sof thousands of people who attended the Rose Parade, I ran into David! He seemed happy to see me, and we exchanged numbers, but he was too far gone in another world to really keep in touch with our family.Twenty years later, he did start sending my Mom postcards, but instead of writing her a message, he cut letters out of magazines just like a psychopath in a movie and said crazy things about my grandparents and my Mom’s family in general. This didn’t go over well with my parents, and David’s communication was finally cut for good.Still, I always liked him even though he acted crazy. I liked his deep raspy voice and the gap between his front teeth. I liked that he went out of his way to play with his seven-year-old cousin and to make things fun. I’m sorry that something made him leave and hit the streets and start down a road that seems to have made him crazy instead of happy. But if nothing else, I hope he kept those leg warmers to keep him warm and that white fluffy rug so he always has a soft place to lay his head.