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June 12, 2009 - 7:32 p.m. merritt, bridget, tamsin, rowan names of children who are not mine i imagine them they will be a puzzle, collage, conglomerate, patchwork clich� of all the best and brightest features before me they will not make their parent cry, quit their job, use homonyms incorrectly... or sit in a park drinking, taking pills and cutting their arms... breaking the skin good mothers spend a lifetime trying to protect. i asked today, after remarking that we had been together quite some time now, - nothing. smirk. (mine or his) - no, that's what YOU did. WE, on the other hand ... and then we revisited a list of things they should know by now. mostly it is the same list, I asked why review was important. - Are you talking about us, miss? he seems unsure whether he should be offended - no, i'm talking about it as an expression, as a metaphor for a film which I think you just watched, unless you somehow managed to focus on none of what just passed before your eyes in the dark - oh. She runs against time, across the questions that are timeless. We are meant to wonder... more than nothing. Run. I guess that some people are running, even though it appears that they are sitting still, from some past and experience that they have not found words for. And it could be nothing. And it could be themselves. And there could be nothing I can do, except show them that I have a sense of humour and that I won't take it personally. And that's mostly true. I have to care, because I can't not. I will share space in this world with them and I only have this chance. My week is sucked dry by cheerleading bullshit, lost novels following on the heels of lost cellphones and unreturned phone calls, which are somehow my fault. I have to teach the world to be nice, to remember its shit,-- to remember itself. Can I possibly teach you to see what I have been doing for a whole year, facing your daughter each day with more consistency than some people get from an adult in their whole life - and at the first sign of trouble maybe I am just another person who isn't good at communicating, who didn't call you back. Really though, I have other, less about you, more about them - problems: with kids who don't eat, can't eat, cut, fight, throw fists and make me nervous because I cannot help them, and sometimes because I was the person who crossed them, black cat style, at the wrong point in their day and now I have spent a week looking over my shoulder in the cafeteria, because I know his face and I am afraid he will remember mine, but recall nothing about how it started. I am the scapegoat, high school all over again forever. But there are moments too, when I see that if this is it, there isn't anything else like this: bee hits window when you are that close to being stung, you think about how much more painful it would be... to be the bee you are afraid to be stung by... or the body in your car wrapped around the tree after you panicked when you first felt afraid of being stung and sometimes, in real life, you don't get second chances Even Lola got three chances. Crash, crash, smile. Trust that intention is enough, that sometimes, you have to trust - without proof. Assume positive intent. Assume that we could all be capable of something we can't imagine yet.
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