the facebook

so lillie and grae finally jumped into the facebook. i, of course, am anti...as i seem to be with a few deep pools of disconnected connectivity. what can i tell you? i am a selective drowner.

the minute they created their accounts - grae talking lillie out of using thumbs-up symbols instead of the ells in her name and lillie convincing grae away from selecting a user name of kathy or carol or dave - i felt a pang. this is how it ends, i thought. how pedestrian.

turns out, the initial sign-up wasn't even the most heartbreaking moment. nope. the part that sliced me open head to heart was when lillie's chair dance stalled for a second and her chandelier smile flickered.

mom? with her forever lashes butterflying me from across the room. where's my hometown?

i wish i could explain how lost she looked in that moment. no...i wish i could forget how lost she looked in than moment.

you know. it's funny. we've given them texas and oman and the emirates and jordan and london and thailand and jakarta and even virginia a few times plus a million little stops here and there to catch our breath in hungry gasps. we've made them feel at home even in the emptiest places and given them like-a-baby sleeps on the scratchiest sheets, building gingerbread houses in a hundred and ten degrees and hanging disco balls to make it all a party. we thought we'd given them the world.

but somewhere along the way, we forgot all about giving them a hometown. 

i think people need those, don't you? if for no other reason than to leave it in a scene, slam the door, and announce you'd rather die than ever come back. only to return, too many years later, and feel your beginning all over again.

coming home, you know...it's a big part of our fairy tales and happily ever afters. and i can't help but feel like we've ripped those pages right out of their books.

(in case you're wondering. grae chose - without an inch of thought - chicago as her hometown, even though she has never lived there in her entire life. because...michael jordan. also? she went ahead and selected harvard as the place where she studied. so she doesn't need to be bothered updating later.)

gimme.

three words...

i and miss and pat.

i didn't so much this week - is that bad to admit? - because we were busy and i never really see him during the week. but it's friday and right about now he would be walking through the door and oh those chocolate browns and i am having a fail of a day and all i need is that boy who won't be back til next week.

instead, right now, there are a lot of neighborhood girls upstairs. pretty much all of them. i think they are walking around in my heels. and screaming. possibly crushing doritos into the marble floor. plus screaming. did i mention the screaming? oh, i see i did. nonetheless. happy girls, all. 

it is no match for those chocolate browns, but i will take it.

(also, i just downloaded the entire season so far of real housewives of miami. trash helps.)

gimme.

down to earth

whenever anyone pre-introduces me to someone i'm sure to like, they seem to always use some form of the phrase "you're going to love her. she's so down to earth."

and when this happens, i seem to always make a grimace.

down to earth. in my head, those words make it sound like you've no more drowning in the clouds dreams. you've no more ideas that bump into the moon in the middle of the night. there'll be no more reapplying lipstick in the reflection of a star. no more tripping over fireworks in july. no more dipping your quill in the inked sky and writing a new world for yourself.

i hope the thought of me never evokes those words. down to earth. because that might be worse than the time someone suggested i shop at a tranny store for cute man-sized heels.

gimme.

oh, esmé

that little thing. 

she begged for a clip to hold her hair back, and i kind of assumed her request was really a result of a few months of rugged aussies calling her a boy at school. nope. she just wanted to be able to see her paper better when she wrote. 

her confidence is like lillie's, which means the problems belong to you. not her. this philosophy gets dicey around fourteen and, i imagine, forty. but right now - when she's feeling beautiful despite what other small people may say - i'll take it.

yesterday, i got a little note from my friend in hong kong. it read: stella told me while she was doing homework, "mom, i wish esmé was in my class." why? i asked. "because esmé taught me that there's a u at the end of you. i wish esmé could help me now."

it's wonderful when you teach someone else something wonderful. it's even better when they remember it forever.

i've got to do that more often...

p.s. i forwarded that mail to pat, who is traveling, because i always try to make him cry. (it's a life goal of mine, made easier when he's airplane tired or just being the sappy italian he is.) he replied, "i wish someone had told me there was no v in of." drat. i should've saved it til he was on his second thirteen-hour leg.

awkward...

in no particular order.

i wore an ancient david meister dress (this one, in fact) to the marine ball this weekend. upon our arrival, i realized that jakarta is a leetle more buttoned up bridesmaid dress than anywhere we've been in the middle east. translated, this means i showed a touch more boobie than i probably should've. 

pat claims that this is an impossibility.

and then someone told me they might be moving to someplace-in-india. to which i blurted out, "ugh!" straight before i even thought about what i was blurting out. the general rule in these parts is to smile and gasp when someone tells you where they may be posted next, and tell a story about someone you know who lived there and loved it. for some stupid reason, all i could come up with was, "i had a friend who lived there!" and then i think i said something about toilet paper and bodily functions of train riders.

it was just...painful. i am better at this than that.

and when this newish acquaintance (who i adore) caught sight of pat's colleague's wife standing next to me, she innocently asked, "oh! is this your daughter?"

later, i said to pat, "i mean! she's brazilian! how could she be my daughter?"

he thinks i missed the point.

oh, i hope you were fools this weekend, too.