I saw a post a little bit ago written by Maggie Mason. A letter to her 20 year old self. When I clicked on the link in her post, I found even more posts write by a bunch of other bloggers. They wrote to themselves in their 20s. There is a whole little collection of them over here. I thought it might be worth doing. (I really am becoming an idea thief these days.)
Dear 21 year old Issa,
Congrats on the marriage….he’s a keeper. At least for a first husband. What? I’m not telling anything. Just enjoy okay? Try to enjoy what you have. Stop looking for the next thing. Enjoy your time with him. Soak it up. Live it up. Don’t worry so much about stuff. Stuff, money…it comes and goes. Time is what is important.
Spend less time at work. Spend more time at home. Don’t check work email on vacations. It will still be there when you get back. Use up every second of your vacation time. Use sick days for stay at home and play days. You work too hard. 14 hour days are okay sometimes, not all the time. There will come a time when you will regret this. So try to slow it down some now. The person who dies with the most hours put in at work, does not win.
Take a cooking class. Yes you live in Los Angeles. But honey? You won’t always. Trust me, learn to cook. Learn to bake. Learn these things now and you won’t have friends making fun of you online later for you lack of whip cream making knowledge.
Congrats on the little pink stick with the two lines. I know it’s fast. Hey guess what? You are very fertile. Ahem. I know it’s scary. I also know that it will be okay. Try to stop worrying. You will make a great mother. You are right, it’s a girl. A tiny perfect, little girl. Be prepared early, because she will be early. To everything, every milestone, her entire life basically. That’s just her way. Word to the wise? When your water breaks? PUT DOWN THE PANCAKES.
Before she comes? Eat out. Go spend days at the beach. ENJOY THE SLEEP. Sleep as much as humanly possible. Know that one day? They all learn to sleep. There will be nights where you wonder later if it was the right decision. Starting so young. That’s the hormones and the lack of sleep.
She’s worth it. Every single day, she is worth it. The two that come after her are just as amazing. I promise. Enjoy them. Enjoy the smell of newborn head. Enjoy the way they sleep in the crook of your neck. Enjoy the time before they learn to speak. It comes quick with the first one. Know that once they start talking, they never stop. With the second? Know she will do everything in her own time. Not her big sisters time. It’s okay. It’s all okay. Don’t be in such a hurry for them to get bigger. It happens way too fast.
Don’t sweat the small stuff. Ice cream can be a dinner food. Late bedtimes won’t kill her. Read an extra book. Let her watch an extra show. Buy that toy. That outfit. Sometimes, let her sleep in your bed. She’ll be better off for it.
Learn to love coffee.
Friends come and go. This I know. You need to start learning that now. Look around. Enjoy the friends you have. Just know that later, when things get tough, you will find friends who truly understand you. The good, the bad and the ugly. Friends who you can show your true self too.
No matter what? Andrew’s death wasn’t your fault. You probably couldn’t have kept him from doing what he did. Let go of the guilt.
Find a therapist. Talk. Don’t stuff everything. Trust me, I know. Stop playing the what if game. It will get you nowhere.
Enjoy your grandparents. I know you will, but enjoy them as much as humanly possible.
Don’t listen to dad or his wife. They know nothing. You are beautiful. Amazing. Talented. They don’t deserve you in their lives. They won’t be in the kids lives, so don’t even bother trying. Save yourself some heartache.
Think about what you want to do with your life. When you figure it out, please write 30 year old me a letter. That’d be dam helpful right now. Snort.
Think before you type a little more. Speak your truth a little more to family and friends. Your words? Are just as important as theirs.
Mostly though? Love hard. Live. Be happy. Have fun dammit.
You are amazing. Please to be remembering.
xoxo, 30 year old me
-The way he looked at me and said: mama, I pway wain? He cocked his little head and gave me the dimple smile, just hoping I’d say yes. Sure bubs, I said. Go play in the rain. He took off outside, running and jumping and kicking a soccer ball in the pouring rain. After a bit he came in. You wet enough yet smoosh, I asked? He patted his shirt, his shorts and his cheeks before saying: no, I pway moar wain and running off again. All boy. This kid is all boy. He likes to be dirty. He like to throw balls. Play with trucks. Run in the rain. I adore him.
-The way she comes in at 2am. I hear her coming from down the hall. (Oh the joys of being a light sleeper.) She comes in my room, lifts up the cover and sneaks in. She gets as close to me as possible, some nights even lifting my arm up over her. I listen to her breath. I wait as she falls back asleep. I kiss her head and play with her hair. I smell her shampoo mixed with the smell of little girl. She won’t always want this. She won’t always want me. She will one day decide she is too big to come into bed with me at night. For now? I enjoy it.
-We went and played mini-golf, just the two of us a few weekends ago. She kept writing down one less number for herself than she should have. Most days I won’t let her cheat. I know for her, being called on it, is generally the way to go. Her competitive nature gets the best of her. That day though, I let her cheat. That day, I played worse than I would have on purpose. We laughed and told each other jokes. I watched her watch the teenage girls in front of us play. I watched her listen to their conversations. Watched her watch them joke around with each other. I silently thanked them for being seemingly nice, polite, well behaved girls. When Morgan said on the way home, when I’m big, I’ll be like those girls, I said, yes my love, I’m sure you will. Then I stopped and bought her a Slurpee at 7-11. Just because. At the check out, since she didn’t ask, I offered to buy her a bag of Silly Bandz. Just because.
I admit, I stole this idea from my friend Emily at Wheels on the Bus.
A photo tells a tale, if you listen close enough. That’s what I tell my girls when they ask me about certain photos hanging on our wall. When they were toddlers and I’d grown tired of reading Blueberries for Sal and The Giving Tree for the nine millionth time that week, I’d have them pick a picture off the wall and I’d tell them the story behind it.
If you remember someone, they are never really gone.
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A portrait, taken sometime in the mid-30′s. Sepia toned. A nice looking woman. You can tell by the quality of the photograph, the look in her eye, the pretty outfit and the pearls around her neck, that she came from a wealthier family. She could be any one’s relative. She’s mine though. My great-grandmother.
What you can’t see is what tells the story. Even if she were alive now, she’d tell you that the photo was a long ago memory of a life that barely existed much past the photo being taken.
She lived in Poland at the time. She was married. She had not yet had her first son, my grandfather. This was German invading Poland. This was before her husband would be killed, before her father would force her to leave in the night with her five year old and newborn sons. Before she’d make a year long trek to America, leaving behind everything she knew.
You can’t see that this was one of only a handful of photos that made the trip. Somehow this is the youngest photo I have of her. I’m sure there were others at one time, but this is the last one remaining.
She looks strong. She looks like the type of woman you didn’t cross. The kind of woman, who could give children that look. The look that meant knock it off this very second, or you may not live to see tomorrow.
You can’t see the woman who would tell her grandson one day, you better treat this girl right, she’s special. She was talking about my mom. She adored my mom and my mom adored her right back.
The woman in that photo was strong willed. She was opinionated. She had her entire life ahead of her.
Then again, to you, it may be just an old photo.
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Her and him. Us. It was Christmas. I was two and a half. They were just six months old. It’s a little blurry, as all pictures taken by my grandpa were. The couch is old, one of those multi colored ones from the 70′s. You can tell by looking at it, by the colors, the fabric. The tree is in the background, or you’d think it was summer, by our clothes. Of course in southern California, even Christmas can be shorts weather.
Five people squashed together in a photo. Such a small thing. A little 3×5 photo. A mom, a dad, three babies. I’m on his lap, she has one baby on hers and the other is propped up in between them. I’m not sure which is which. I’m not sure my mother could tell you at this point.
This is it. The only picture in existence of the five of us. My proof that we once existed, our family.
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A princess and a pumpkin. A tiny girl princess, all dressed in pink. A new baby pumpkin, with chubby baby cheeks. Sitting on a green couch. In the photo, the princess is leaning over and kissing the pumpkin. Adorable. Absolutely adorable.
Funny story about that day? I was convinced we should have dressed the princess as a devil instead. I remember saying, we are NEVER having Halloween again. NEVER.
That was the day, the first time of four times at least, that the princess cut her own hair. Badly. That was a day of a three hour tantrum, when I couldn’t make her hair grow back, like they do on Dora. That was the day that I threw out the Dora DVDs. All of them. The books and toys too. The day I outlawed Dora in my house. That was a day alright.
Somehow though, we still went out. We took our princess and pumpkin to a party. The princess dazzled everyone by being the charming princess that I knew she had in her. Somehow? It ended up okay.
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I think he was three at the time. Maybe it was the summer he turned four. Little bowl haircut. Yellow and red cape. Sitting on a little black and green Power Wheels trike. You remember those? The little three wheel ones? They sat so low to the ground. He is sticking his tongue out at her, as he always did. I believe every picture of my brother from two to twelve, he was making a face.
He was riding around the pool. We weren’t supposed too, but my aunt was watching us that week. We failed to mention that rule.
That photo was minutes before he and the trike fell in. Her back was turned when it happened. She was sitting talking on the phone, smoking her cigarettes. Luckily her son, my sixteen year old cousin jumped in and fished him out.
He was fine. No one told my mom for years. Man was she pissed when she found out. My brother told her, what mom? I’m alive. How does it matter now? Ah, a person unfamiliar with the what-if game.
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Black and white photo. Taken in 1972. She’s leaning against the hood of a car. If I were a car person, I could tell you what kind. But alas, I am not.
It’s a long skinny photo. It took me years to find a frame for it.
Long hair, clothes right out of That 70′s Show. It’s the carefree look in her eyes, the smile that I’d assume was for the boy taking the photo, that makes me love it. A woman I know possibly as well as I know myself, yet a woman I’ll never know. My mother. Before she was my mother. Before she’d even met my dad.
Innocence. Carefree. Beautiful. My mom at eighteen.
It’s one of my favorite photos of her ever.
I wish someone would invent a breathalyzer for my computer, blog, iPad and phone. Instead of seeing if I’m drunk, it would see if I was too crazy today. If yes, then they all lock down. Then I wouldn’t say and write the things that you can’t take back.
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I am terrified of being alone for the rest of my life. I really suck at being alone.
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I’m thinking it’s time to look into going back into the corporate world. Just for financial reasons, not because I really want less time with my kids. This both excites and terrifies me.
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I still sleep with a stuffed bunny that Logan bought me when we were fourteen and first dating.
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I lost one brother to drugs about five years ago. Last week my other brother said he’d been doing tons of coke for months. Am not sure if it’s as bad as he said or not. But I know I can’t loose my last sibling to drugs.
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I want to bottle my kids up at the ages they are right now. They are all so dang funny and amazing. Morgan spent an hour the other night explaining to me how Hogwarts should just let her in, as early admission, because she’s a very smart witch. How cute is that?
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I’m afraid that I’m trying to push people away right now, because I don’t feel worthy of having them in my life.
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No matter what I say, I’m scared of BlogHer.
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I don’t allow Play-Doh in my house.
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I have a half brother who was given up for adoption at birth. I’d love to find him. I won’t try though, because I’m not that selfish. He deserves to have whatever story in his head about his birth father, instead of the reality he would find.
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I physically ache for the beach. For California. I don’t know how I’ll make it here until the kids are grown. I’m scared that I’ll always only semi-like Colorado, just because it’s not where I want to be. Instead of just learning to love it, like I really should learn to do. (I guess it’s time to just say that, Logan and I have a same town agreement. If I left, I’d have to give him the kids. Unless we agreed. Which he wouldn’t agree for me to take them out of state.)
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