Here, transitions are anything but unpronounced. They are loud and messy. There is usually screaming involved. Screaming and kicking and threats and spitting and sometimes even biting. All transitions have rough edges that can catch you unawares and rip you apart. You must be, at all times, wary. You must anticipate a transition before it presents itself, hurtling through the dark corner of your peripheral visi0n and into sight.

This summer was full of transitions. First, there was the season itself. Then camps began. Half day camps, full day camps, away from home camps. All the while, we were preparing for the greatest transition we had yet to face: Kindergarten.

Noah started school on August 8th. The school he attends should be world-renowned for its transitions. The entire staff in the school knows my son by name, greets him cheerily when he arrives at school, is aware that sometimes he needs a little bit extra to get in the headspace that’s so easy for most children. You know, that place where, yeah, that’s overwhelming, but I’m going to tune it out and do my thing. Noah doesn’t tune out stimuli. He absorbs them. And after absorbing them, he immediately tries to wring them out of his spongelike brain. He’s five. Nothing he feels in unusual. But he is articulate, oversized and still learning to self-regulate. It’s difficult for him (for all of us), but he is getting there.

Today he will spend the school day at a farm. He will be outside where the world is biggest and there is space between him and everyone else’s bodies and thoughts. He will ride a bus (a bus!) to the field trip location. His best friend will be there with him. He will swim in a river. He live in the sun.

I can’t wait to pick him up. What a wonderful Friday.

And, as for transitions, I have made mine. I wanted to homeschool, and while that is and will remain a possibility in our lives, I want Noah to stay in school. I am a mother with one child at home instead of two. I am a mother who never believed she could send her child away all day every day. I am a mother who still feels sad for all the moments she’s missing. But I am also a mother who is not selfish.

Noah is in school. I want him to stay there because it offers him benefits I can’t offer him at home. My original reasons for homeschooling were 1) to enjoy the time that only passes once, and 2) to offer my children something better than what the public school system can offer.

But I made that plan before Noah’s school was chartered. I was cemented in that plan when Noah’s Montessori preschool experience brought the family to tears on a daily basis. And my resolve became pliant when the goals of this school emerged. People began to talk. I listened. I considered. I gave it a shot. We were lucky. So many want the few spots in this school. Noah’s name was drawn. We committed to trying, and what a challenging and wonderful try it has been.

N: How does a dirt become alived?

Me: How?

N: It gets punched in the face!

I can tell they are married by the arrangement of their legs under the table: his denim knee extends into the space between her parted, oversized thighs. She shifts her mostly nude legs, issues instructions for the care of their child–a three-year-old boy squeezed between the wall and his heavy, gray-bearded father on a red picnic table bench. I only know he is theirs because he calls them Mama and Daddy.

The boy, I have learned despite not eavesdropping, has used a Port-O-John for the first time. At the park this morning. It didn’t flush. His mother washed his hands with a wet wipe. A disposable wet wipe, the brand and merits of which she illuminates in explicit and alarming detail to this man she’s married.

Either they have been married a long time or not long at all. He is quiet as she speaks, as if he knows the words will pass faster unhindered. He offeres nods and grunts at intervals when she pauses to breathe and scratch her ample and exposed arms. He is committed but noncommittal. And then there is the boy.

“Make sure to wash him before basketball camp.” I imagine the boy stretched from three feet to six, soaring through the air, his parents bending bleachers and shouting, “Defense!” or “Take it to the hoop!”

“Make sure to wipe down his legs,” she is telling her man evenly as his head droops in assent.

Her husband and I anticipate the conversation’s end. He shifts the boy away in casual increments, speaking silence to his son with his eyes. Clearly, he has done all this before. Still, the mother acts as if it will be the first time.

They pay me no attention. I do not, as I had intended upon entering this room in search of solitude, return the favor. Instead, with my peripheral vision, I observe as the boy’s head meets with a wall.

“Watch out.” It is not a cautionary statement. It is belated. It is flat. It is from the father who recognizes that we all must take small spills before we know how to mop up the big ones.

The mother, however, grows rigid with fright. Her arms fly open, her bosom a pillow collecting her son’s bruised head. The boy cries down the canyon of her cleavage. It is a small cry from a large mouth. My son makes this face. It is a false cry. The father and I know that. The mother knows it, too. But, for every mother, there is the knowledge of truth and the knowledge of what could be. She allows her skin to swallow these cries. Clings to her son as if he might crumble. As if she felt the devil knock against her own skull.

The father waits.

The mother holds on. As if the boy might grow up or be lost in just these few moments.

The father waits.

Soon, she will let him out of her sight.

Just me. So rare. I’m free! Undone.
Hair down, feet up, coffee in hand,
curtains sashed, thoughts turned down.
If only I knew this peace could keep.
I may have dug myself too deep.

Two boys. Two personalities.
Great big minds, little hands, little feet.
Little lips, little mouths, big eyes, so sweet
until they open up with cries,
salty tears from wet-lashed eyes.

Then my hill juts up too steep
a pain inside runs dark and deep.
I know this pain. It’s mine. I’ll keep;

Alone, my world would come undone.
I never could go back to one.

A “Get Well Soon” Book for Pop Pop (who is scheduled for surgery this Wednesday).

***

Once upon a time there was a boy who never, ever threw up. . . He had MAGIC!

When he started to feel rappy and juggy and like he was gonna throw up, he used the magic to make it disappear!

The boy’s name is Superman.

One day he didn’t know it was coming–he feeled well–and then he threw up on the floor.

He cleaned it up. He didn’t tell his mom because he didn’t want his mom to say, “I think you have a virus.”

He knew he threw up food. He came to his  mom and said to his mom, “I threw up food.”

She said, “Well, how many throw ups did you have?”

He said, “Just one.”

THE END

***

My favorite part of writing with N lies in the plot twists. He’s full of surprises.

This story is completely his. I acted only as recorder.

Today, he asked me about our family in Lebanon. We looked at pictures of my grandparents. His heart was open to them. He loved them immediately. Maybe it was the expressions on their faces, or maybe it was my love for them. He was worried that they would be old, but decided that the pictures showed them young. I took those shots a handful of years before they passed. They were both near or past 80. Thing 1 was relieved by the youth he perceived in them.

He took a breath and let it out slowly. He wished he could have met them, he said. He said he knew I was sad that they had died. I told him his middle name was my Jido’s first. Thing 2′s middle name is my Jido’s last. My maiden name. Thing 1 absorbed the statement slowly. He liked sharing the name. He felt happy to be connected. So, I reminded him of the day my Tayta died.

We were in the kitchen, I said, when we got the call. It was my auntie Dina. I couldn’t understand what she was saying to me. I could hear the words and her stress, but I still tried to have her tell Tayta hi for me. When I snapped my phone shut, I looked at my son looking back at me. I sat on the floor. I cried.

N watched with an open mouth. Then he set his jaw and climbed into my arms. He held me until I could stop crying. He never asked me why. He didn’t cry himself. He just held on until I was okay. It was the longest most beautiful hug I’ve ever experienced.

Where was Thing 2? Gestating. Just as Thing 1 had been when Jido passed away. God rest their souls.

Thing 1 wants to visit Lebanon. He wants to meet the rest of the family before they are old. He didn’t say it, but before they die. He said he would have liked Tayta. He asked if I could talk to her.

I learned some words, I told him. She taught me words for food. Mostly we cooked together.

My precious N asked me if I would please teach him those words.

Jibneh, banadoura, kamoun, ba’dounis . . .

I said yes.

I’m a full-time mom with two kids (5 and 2.75 years old). I’m married, brunette, half Lebanese but mostly American, and I have lots of interests. Writing is number 1 on that list, and always has been. Coming close behind in photography and crochet. I can also knit, though not well and I don’t like it much. I’m anxious to learn how to sew. I’m anxious to homeschool. I’m anxious because Thing 1 will be going to Kindergarten in the Fall and I’ll be missing so many hours with him each day. I’m anxious because Thing 2 will be going to 2 day preschool in Fall and he’s my little baby. I’m anxious because I will suddenly have time to focus on myself, exercise, my house, and Thing 2 once school starts. And generally, I’m anxious.

I used to blog here. I used to post recipes here. The About page can introduce you to some Fiction and Nonfiction of mine around the interwebs. I have a graduate degree in Creative Writing. I don’t write half as often as I’d like to. I love my writing as I write it. As soon as I step away I hate it, but my goals are to have fun and entertain.

And because I am an individual of varied interests, I post less often here than I want. Mostly due to my recurring thought of, “Oh! I’ll post about this bit of nonfiction that’s bouncing around in my skull!” But I’ve retired my mommy blog, and lots of times I want to post on the parenting books I’m reading. Then I think, “I’ll share these pictures I took!” But, again, I find myself hemmed in.

I guess one more thing about me is I’ve grown into an intensely private person. Through friendships, broken promises, age, family and heartbreak, I’ve become very different from the girl I used to be who was very happy to spill it all. But I’m still me. I’m still varied, and I still want to share some things, books I’m reading and photography being two of them. So, without further ado, here’s one of my favorite shots–of my younger sister and brother-in-law at their wedding last Fall:

Just married.

***

Drive Me Home

We stepped out to raindrops slapping our faces. Said you knew where to find one, you’d call me a cab in a country town. Can’t believe how you’ve changed since the good old days. I smiled and tipped my head the way I used to.

A cab can’t take me back to that grove of peach trees and wildflowers. By the orchard lane, dirt path, gummed up my shoes in the rain. Where we slipped on by the fence posts. Clung to each other as we fell down, browned our skin and dresses in the mud so the lace was wrecked and Mama had to cut it off and Daddy went outside to pick the last switch from the bush we’d been so bad all summer.

That summer. Rain coming down in sheets bathed us on the walk back home. Stolen peaches bundled in our skirts, hiked up, panties showing brown like the rest of us. Hair strung down our backs, freed from those high-up knots Mama tied. We went home barefoot. Declined the offer from our neighbors who rolled down their windows and laughed at us while the sky growled. You girls sure? they asked us. No thanks. Not today. Don’t need anyone to drive me home.

Well, my mother-in-law lent me a book on bibliotherapy. Basically, you use reading to explore emotions and make connections/find resolutions through characters/plot. This works well with my sweetie pie. Perhaps, given that he’s suffering from an overly active imagination, I should have expected our combined bibliotherapy efforts to morph into storytelling. All the writing I’ve done in the last few weeks has been geared toward helping my son explore and gain control over his fears. That means I’ve collaborated on quite a collection of stories about the scary grossness of the technicolor yawn.

With Noah’s permission, I’ll post one here. In the meantime, you may enjoy some of his other Fiction.

Thank you for sticking around. And for somehow growing. I don’t know how readership is growing when I haven’t been posting here, but I am very happy it has. Keep passing it on!

***
Jana could not wake up. She was trapped in a body that did not belong to her. She twisted and kicked but there was no way out. Her screams were muffled by living fabric. It was wound loosely around her. Still, she felt suffocated. There was so much and it pulsed like flesh. She tried to catch site of her feet. Were they freed? But her feet did not exist. She was Jana no longer. She knew this. She knew what this was. If she could just remember . . .

The surface of her dream cracked. Light poured in. Jana felt the folds of flesh fall away. She zipped toward the light. She could almost reach it. She reached her hand inside the glow. Jana squinted. There was someone else on the other side of the light. She was reaching in, too.

No, the girl mouthed. Jana understood. This light was a heart. It wasn’t hers to take, but it was so beautiful.

No! the other girl tried to shout. Jana knew she shouldn’t take this. She closed her hand around it anyway. The other girl screamed. The pain reverberated inside her head. Jana realized it was coming through her bond. The other girl was Bria.

She woke to her sister choking her. Bria was wrested away. “I didn’t know,” was being said over sobs, but Jana couldn’t tell who was speaking.

“Give it back!” Bria was screaming, but Jana could no more part with the heart she held than she could with her own and still live. And who was that holding Bria away from her? He was crying, and Jana needed to comfort him. “Loden?” she asked. There was hatred in his eyes when he turned to her. “It was a gift,” he said. “It wasn’t meant for you.” Jana opened her arms. Loden fell to the ground and cried on her shoulder. She was the only one who could help him now. By the Creator, what had she done?

***
Bria ran to the caves Elric had shown her before he was lost to himself. She threw herself into them blindly. She wanted to be lost too. She would travel as deeply into the false night of the caves as she could and wrap herself in weaves so even Jana couldn’t find her. Bria didn’t stop to wipe her tears. Sparkling webs clung to her hair. She tore one web away from her mouth without slowing. She took lefts and rights impulsively. Her breath became a flame that burned her chest. She barked a deep, aching cough and had to stop. She slumped to the ground to cry. There was no time here. She wished for freedom. Bria fell asleep.