It's the most wonderful time of the year

This year, more than those passed, it hit my that my daughter is growing up.  She wants to continue believing in Santa though the evidence from friends and classmates is mounting.  She still wanted to visit Santa at the mall and let him know that she had her eye on a shiny new MacBook for Christmas (didn't happen).

But she's still a kiddie.  For now.  Don't get it twisted.  She is a girly girl with the gifts of social graces, beauty and dance.  But the little girl part still resides there.  And as long as it does, I will do my best to stoke its fire.  Too often, kids find themselves forced to be miniature adults due to circumstance and peers.  I know my job is to counteract this.

What better way that the holidays?  It's the time of year when magic can happen and reindeer can make their way from houses to apartments in the blink of an eye.  It's a time when there is still something quite magical about snowflakes and snowballs, so I take advantage of it.

Yesterday, was a day full of Santa's sleigh offering the magic of Monster High dolls and fun bands to make jewelry.  For the last two years, the sleigh has docked at our humble home unleashing everything from nail polish to iPhone cases.  And I've been thankful to have a little girl who still battles to believe.

After shifting through mounds of wrapping paper and twistie ties, I needed a nap before heading us out forty minutes west to my cousin's home.  There, children played throughout the home's spacious upper level and sounded as though they'd come through the floor and they stomped so hard.  Adults laughed and ate our homemade casseroles and drank mysterious alcohol concoctions out of a cooler.  We laughed as people tried their hand at karaoke and my aunt explained why she felt the need to purchase a walker that she found an insanely good deal on at a local estate sale -- despite the fact that she's an avid dancer and ceaselessly spry.

But somehow this combination of laughter, kids and -- the ever present -- wine, made the holiday brighter.  I am reminded this morning that we all went through the losses of 2011 and said goodbye to my mom and uncle.  And we are still standing and able to come together and celebrate what remains.

The magic of family.

This is your life & there's no sleepwalking allowed

I always find shards of my life entertaining.  My daughter came to me and informed me that for Halloween, her school asked that students wear a shirt that indicates their chosen college.  Bear in mind that we are talking about the college leanings of an 8 year old.  :)  Anyhow, she lets me know that she needs a Spelman College shirt and instantly, I am flashed to the 17-year-old me moving into my dorm room at Spelman's Howard-Harreld Hall on the second floor.  How I wished I had stuck it out and -- from time to time -- it plain haunts me.  I regret leaving in the second year of my stay there.

I was haunted that morning and into the afternoon when I pined away for greener pastures behind the gates of Spelman College.  I spent the day assessing my life and wondering where it would all lead me.  My career as a librarian has stalled out.  When I walked across the stage at 24 having received my Master's, I remember the longing to rise.  I was already a Librarian I at a suburban library.  I dreamed at the time of becoming an Assistant Manager, but that was not to be at that place, so I set my sights on a library that offered more opportunities.

So, here I sit.  Monday will mark my 35th birthday.  I became that Assistant Manager I dreamed of.  Then I became the Manager that I sought out to become and then...  Well, that is where it seems to escape me.  Somehow along the way, I stopped dreaming and envisioning something better.  I could blame it on the death of my mom, which would be a logical out.  But the truth of the matter is I settled into this complacency long before that ever happened.  I digress...

On Thursday, I spent the afternoon volunteering to arrange the library's Friends book sale items and was all prepped for the dust and cobwebs that would mar my clothing and hair.  When what should I discover as I set out to arrange the Black biographies?  The book by Spelman College's first Black female president Johnnetta B. Cole.  Hmmm.  I could say maybe this is a sign of something greater...  As I continued my quest to make the section more inviting, I stumbled across a worn copy of The Story of Spelman College.  I could say at this point, someone is trying to communicate a very clear message to me.  But then it was certain as I continued working only to find the text for Spelman's required African Diaspora & the World class.  That was it.  I would be blind and lying to myself if I said that it wasn't clear to me at this point.

So today, I have decided to create my five year plan because in just five years, I will be looking at 40 and there will need to be change and progress.  Otherwise, I'm not living and breathing.  I can't just sleepwalk through the next five years of my life.  I often tell my daughter to walk with purpose.  This time, I am listening to my own advice.  I must walk boldly with purpose into the next five years.  No sleepwalking allowed.  :)

Hawaii 5-0

I ride this plane somewhere between time zones and jet lagged enough to still be wired.  I think about how strange my life has been.  Here I sit with my daughter's head in my lap wondering about ways to soften myself. After all, I bred this incredible fireball who is so talented that we are leaving her dance troupe's Hawaiian performance tour.

When I see her, I am certain that her fierce femininity is a mirror of mine. I would like to soften myself enough to be girly, whatever the hell that means.  Seriously, I've been glancing at my hardened persona and how it has arisen out of the need not to be hurt or continuously invest my emotions in those who do not deserve my air.

I can't help but ponder the ways in which I used to question why I was selected to be the beacon for educated single mothers and why I wasn't instead the beacon for happily married women.  But this is the lot I've drawn and it became painfully clear that this life had been carefully designed long before I could make choices.

My lot was cast when my mom showed me that single women don't cry about their lot as they empty mouse traps and model beer can Christmas ornaments.  Single women say fuck it and lean in.  The do what they have to do and say to hell with the rest.  Single women teach their little girls to be independent while enjoying themselves.   Single women say I'm going to make sure that I don't trip over that same landmine dressed as a handsome face.  

When my mom died unexpectedly, I had a short body to snuggle with who loved me more than I could love myself at the time.  An surprisingly tiny set of hands to wipe my face and push me to get dressed in the morning. Then it all made perfect sense.  We were alone so that we would forge a relationship that would slay one another's dragons when they rose.  We were alone to make jokes no one else would understand while being able to weep when we most needed it.

But somewhere in there is still the need for intimacy and not the type that I'm prone to do, where I select the body I'm most comfortable with for the evening.  The kind where I opt not be bothered for another few months until I feel like being bothered again.  I find myself lusting after cozy movie nights where I fall asleep in his pajama bottoms after being too sleepy to even watch more than half an hour of the movie.   That is the intimacy I value even though my drive allows for way more than that.

As I've become increasingly clear that my life was designed this way -- flaws and all -- I have no choice, but to believe my king is out there and he's just being prepped for how to best handle me.  And maybe I'll be ready when he appears.  I'm learning to wait...

Looking back on Love (with respect to Lenny Kravitz)

"Looking back on love through a broken, old TV..."

I am beginning to wonder if I have ever really known love as an adult.  I can see my relationships clearly now that they have expired and I am beginning to wonder if I've ever been in love for the right reason and at the same time as I was loved by someone else.  When I think of my most recent relationship -- which has been dead for almost two years -- I clearly see someone going above and beyond to make sure that my every need was met.  If I cleared my throat there was water.  If I rubbed my neck, firm hands would massage my shoulders easing away tension.  And sex? Oh please! It was of Olympian portions.  But did I love him, too?  Did he love me fully the way I needed to be loved? The way I needed my daughter to be loved?  I'm not so sure and that's why he is in the rear view.

"Looking back on love though the faces have all changed..."

My daughter sprang forth from the love I had for her father when he was a seventh grader and i was a  sixth grader.  We had been kids playing basketball in alleyways and walking the city carefree and young.  That later blossomed into a high school romance that would withstand absences caused by his stints in juvenile detention centers.  I didn't see him change because to me, we were still those same kids talking shit and hitting layups in the alley.  Problem was, he was a grown man and there were no traces of the small-statured boy I once loved.  He was a monster, yet I was fiercely in love with the ghost of his twelve-year-old self.  He was an abuser, liar, and cheater, but I didn't see him.  What I saw was the same little boy who wrote me a stack of letters so high that I had to ribbon them together to make certain that none were lost.  That boy was dead.    So what's a girl to do?

"I should be running / like a baby I still crawl..."

So here I am years later and what have I learned?  I don't really have a ravenous dating life as some would assume and you can catch me at home watching Matlock wearing my sexy, satin bonnet.  I would like to date, but I am not so certain that the man I need really exists.  It's almost like I've seen glimpses of what I like and need in the last one.  But, alas, even he was broken.  Content with using me once I offered my kindness.  So now, I am suspicious. Like the Vietnam veteran's child I am, I lay in wait for the first sign of suspect behavior with my twig helmet on ready to make a full- blown army crawl the hell out....

Stand clear of the wreckage ma'am...

I knew it would come.  The day when I couldn't escape the feelings that I had been harboring after the ex disappeared and it is funny the things that can dredge it all up.

Here I sit at my desk.  I had just put out of my mind some information I had received regarding child support -- information that instantly triggered a headache -- when I witnessed a woman in an abusive relationship at my library.  It was subtle and to the untrained eye, it looked like a normal dispute.  But because the hushed tones and sad faces were right by my desk, I was right there in it.

Sitting at my desk, I am often an innocent bystander in so many lives as an anonymous librarian.  I heard the woman's frustration as her man refused to engage her son and his need for attention.  I saw her man stomp off in a huff because she wasn't focusing enough on him and his quiet disregard for her children who wanted to check out their games from the library.  I saw her sad, defeated nature when she gave into his behavior by rounding up her children and telling them that they couldn't get their games and now had to leave because he was in a bad mood.

I watched her daughter mount her legs into their braces so that they could follow the man who had already stormed out.  Her disappointed toddler not understanding why their trip had ended so abruptly.  What was most disappointing of all was that I saw myself.

I remember the wreckage of trying to appease someone who was insatiably unhappy.  I remember compromising my mothering in order to be more of the nonexistent person that my ex wanted.  I often wish that I never have to run into that version of myself again.  Sadly, time and time again I am greeted by her when I hear stories of women who can't talk on the phone too long, go anywhere, or that have to rush home for fear of World War III visiting their home otherwise.  My Nonna recently told me that if you live long enough, you will meet yourself.  Sadly, that is too true sometimes.  I look forward to a time when domestic violence is not the norm.