One Last Look: Top Posts of 2016

It's good to see where you've been, so you know you can find your way back there again.

This year has left me tired. So tried, worn out, fatigued, and for awhile after November 8, I was beginning to get scared I wouldn't be able to find how to be creative again.

I was listening to the radio one morning, a show on Truman Capote, and the host casually dropped how Capote had "lost the art." I stopped what I was doing, and stood still. Without looking in the mirror, I knew my face said what I thought: the fear that this was happening to me too. That I couldn't write the way I used to.

I came downstairs, and sat down. I was going to try, after six weeks of doubt that was growing more powerful and convincing, I was going to try to write. The first post in almost wo months slowly began to take shape. It didn't pour out, there was labor, but also eventual delivery.

That post was "When the Mirror Isn't You" and it received over 20,000 views.

I didn't lose the art, whew, but I came close. Scared enough to learn that nothing begets nothing.
I have to write now, I will always have to write, and to turn to my old posts to witness evidence that I can do what I once did before.

It's good to see what you've done so you know you can do it again.

Thank you for your friendship now, and in the past. Thank you for reading and sharing your time with me.

And thank you for making these posts the top viewed posts of 2016.
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1.) When The Mirror Isn't You
I wrote this as I thought of what kept me going after the election this year. It was the love that my preschool children have for me.


"But they can't tell because they don't see me with the tired eyes of time, of so many years spent on this earth. Their eyes, barely over a thousand days old.

I look from where I am, standing feet above them. I see eyes as clear as a winter night looking up to me. They shout over each other.

"Did you have marshmallows in your oatmeal today?"

"Did you remember to wear the same color socks again?"

"I hope your mom packed you a brownie today, like mine."

2.) Why Old Moms Tell New Moms To Enjoy Them While You Can
When I noticed how often I had to stop myself from telling the new moms I know to enjoy this challenging, crazy-making season of life known as early parenthood, I knew I had to write about what I was trying to say: it's not permanent even though it feels like it is.


M"y son and I lived a co-existence, one rightly filled with highs and lows. It was hard to tell where I left off and he began. At three years old, when I would ask him what he wanted for lunch, he'd answer, “What mama have!” I was submerged in motherhood during those days - loving him so, and at the same time, falling apart with the fear that things would always be this consuming."


3.) That One Time I Was Nature Mom
Don't lie. I know you tried it to: to be dye free, preservative free, plastic free, oh the heck with it, I just had to put their sandwich in a baggie once in a while.

"All natural, all chemical free, all healthy and wise and 100 percent in earnest.

Souvenirs of when I was Natural Mom. Natural mom , the one who wouldn't buy anything unless it had the word natural written all over the natural container in soybean-based ink at least five times. Seven if you count the back."


4.) To Remind Yourself To Breathe
When my second child graduated from high school, I hadn't had the time to steel myself, I was still reeling from the first child that had left for college the year before. With this one, I almost forgot to breathe the last day he walked out of the high school doors.

"You know what would help me with today? A new language. One that isn't slowed by the clumsy work of taking that which leaves us breathless and us, trying to give it volume."


5.) When Language is a Piece of You
What's happened, what is happening across our land? Why do we feel the things we value disappearing? I am devastated by it, but I can't give in to despair. I have to keep on voicing my protest, and so do you. It's the only way that we keep from disappearing.


"We can't lie about what we feel in our hearts. Our language is more than what we speak with our tongues. It's what we say from our souls. And I will forever have Spanish at the core, as the heat and the spark, as the bridge across the distance of where I came from."


6.) If Only Cher Had My Son
When I am blessed by the stars to see my children's hearts in action, I think about the things I did right along the way. The way my youngest has shown me patience, love, encouragement, you know, he listened to me somewhere in the time we've had together.

"Cher can't do math. It's hard for her when people give her a phone number and they go too fast. Our house number has eight digits in it, I keep it written down on a piece of paper in my purse inside pocket so when I go to the post office to pick up my mail, I can give the clerk the first two numbers in the right order."


7.) It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time
This post was part of a blog hop, and the stories here from my friends are exactly the kind that leave you breathless from laughter. If you get the chance, click over and read a few.

"I like money. My desire for money was solid by the time I was five years old. I think it was then that I began with my first thoughts of the day being how could I make some money today. I didn't want a pile of hundred dollar bills to swim through, I just wanted two dimes and a nickel: enough for a candy shopping spree at the corner grocery store. I would think about money at breakfast, during school, at lunch, and again back home from school. At age 10-11-12, my chances of any money were slim. But then one day, a woman asked me if I could ever babysit."


8.) 7 Date Night Ideas That Failed Us
I fell for it. The magazines that promised they'd deliver on ways to spice up my life. All they left us with was tired, and falling asleep in front of Ancient Aliens.


"We have been married 20 years, and we are so due for a date night that we'd need six months at a monk's retreat to silence these buzzing brains from trying to balance life. With this not-dating guilt in mind, I decided to give Date Night a try after an article I saw as I flipped through a magazine while waiting to get my prescription for dry eye syndrome."


9.) Hello It's Me I Was Wondering If You Could Keep Adele From Being Happy
I am happy for Adele's successes, I am. But I'm not gonna lie: I could use a cathartic mournful ballad or two. I had no choice but to write her physician a letter, requesting cooperation.


"Have you seen Adele’s blog posts of late? Her most recent entry contains complete sentences ending with two and sometimes three exclamation points. Gone are the mournful, longing ellipses fragment of posts from 2011."


10.) I Never Make Decorating Mistakes
This one's easy, because I don't decorate. But when I saw a kitchen table that reached out to me, filling my heart and mind with visions of all five of us carving pumpkins around the table, I had to beg borrow find a way, to get that table into our kitchen.

"How hard can it be to not spend money?

Well, four minutes into the store visit and I was already love sick. My first furniture heartbreak and it was over not being able to think about leaving the store without what was in the first showroom. A dark, rich, reclaimed barn wood kitchen table with two black benches (how freakin' Laura Ingalls cute) alongside instead of clumsy chairs that were too hard for kids to push in. I wanted that table so much my neck was starting to itch."

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I hope you enjoy reading these posts as much as I found life through writing them.

Here's to 2017, please know that together, we're going to make it.

Happy New Year, friends.

xo

 

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2015: What the People Liked

It's always fun, and a guaranteed delight, to see what posts do well on a blog. Sometimes you feel when you hit the nail on the head, but when you really get to that sweet spot where others say, "Yes, this," that thrills me to no end.

It's also good for a snort and a giggle to see the searches that bring the people out of the woodwork, (let me tell you, the woods is full of them.)

I've pulled together a month by month compote of most viewed posts here on my blog in 2015, and capped it all off with a pecan brittle topping of google searches that brought all the  kooks people to the kitchen.

So much fun in a blogger's house.

Here you go, the most popular posts in 2015:

JANUARY:              Oomancy: Food for the New Year

FEBRUARY:            Happy Five Years, Good Day Regular People

MARCH:                The Unraveling of Mercy Louis

APRIL:                   13 Epiphanies About a Third Child

MAY:                     The Music That Made Me

JUNE:                    The Years Don't Lessen: On Father's Day Without My Father

JULY:                   35 Ways My Mother Loves To Torture Me Over Summer Vacation

AUGUST:            What You End Up Saying Instead of I Love You

SEPTEMBER:      Asking the Wrong Questions About Suicide

OCTOBER:        Go Ahead, You Can Miss Them

NOVEMBER:     Why Old Moms Tell New Moms, "Enjoy Them While You Can"

DECEMBER:     Wedding Vows From the 21-Year Other Side

 

As promised, the bag-full-o'nuts google searches:

--Can Latina Women Wear Ponchos
--Are Spanish People all short
--Jelly Bean Recipes for Easter
--What's Out of Style If You're Old
--I'm Sad I Have Boys
--Good frozen pizzas
--What do Spanish People Look Like
--Old Skin
--Is it Hard To Blog
--I'm Trying to Write
--Grunting Elderly


Happy 2016, everyone! THANK YOU for your friendship and your visits here in 2015. It means so much to me that you gift me with your time.

Here's to love, peace, and laughter, in 2015, and wishing you all the best in the year to come!

**P.S. Dear "Sad You Have Boys":  I wish you would read this and email me. Maybe I can help you see the way you'll fall in love with your children when you see them, as just children.

xo

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Solution versus Resolution

During this time of year, I can't help but think that I should make resolutions. Something that inches me toward who I want to be. I know I need a list, I know I should assess my life, and then, there are the goals we are to have. The GOALS Oprah tells us we need so that we spend January feeling like we have to improve every part of our lives. "What? No goals? How will you ever get somewhere?"

It hit me the other night while I tried to sleep, thinking of how my life is flying by and I want to yank the reins and switch the path to a less careening course. In moments that are clear, I say it, I don't need to resolve anything. I've spent what feels like my entire life trying to re-do myself. I'm weary of it all except for the one that fuels me: the want for things to be different for me and my family. But the *resolutions* part like I'm in bad shape about things? Nope. I'm not having it. What I'm going to do is look for solutions.

A solution that will help me fill in the parts of my life that have been neglectfully left to chance. I sorrowfully confess, that this part, is about that which is worth gold to me: my children, my family. I take advantage of their gentle nature and slap together the mothering and spousing aspects of my day in the ugliest knee-jerk style. Time is running through my hands, and my children need to know what they mean to me and why. I want them to know about the me that loves them.

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They know so little about me.

My children know me as their mother, yes, I have been with them more than any other person they know. And though they have seen me daily for thousands of days, I remain two dimensional to them.

I'm the one who hasn't fleshed myself out to them. In between breakfasts and lunches packed, laundry pulled out of the dryer to be folded, and barely below speed limit runs to activities, life and face time has been done in snatches. And though we always meant to, or I meant to, one day catch up – the number of opportunities to soak each other in is on the short side of the hourglass now.

A resolution can't cover a solution. My solution is to help them see me, through different eyes than those that once looked up from a time when I was so much taller then they were. I won't just speak to them in words, but through something with power, the kind that moves faster than words can. Music, the music I grew up hearing.

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I grew up in a Spanish-speaking household. My mother and grandmother played the records they brought with them to America from Colombia every weekend during the day and into the night. I colored and cut out paper dolls while Lucho Gatica or Lupita Palomera played in the middle of it all.

This music of guitars that danced one pluck at a time, with one voice jumping on the back of the notes, always made me feel at peace. Time stood still on the days when these records played. When I would be away at school, or at a friend’s house, I always felt as if I were tip-toeing around someone else’s culture. But when I got back to my house, and opened the front door to this music playing,  I was home.

I want my children to hear and feel this same tethering, to know what it was like for me when these sounds filled my house. I want them to hear some of this music, to start. And later, more of this music. I want to bring this part of me into their lives.

I played a CD in the car of Lucho Gatica, a singer I grew up listening to. The reaction of my children, well – I worried that they might politely hurry it through, "How much longer do we have to listen, mom?"

But the one song I played, they liked it. Not for long, they told me, "Nice. But one is plenty," but when it was done, they liked it.

My middle boy said, "I can see you being little, and dancing to it, mom.” They say it makes them feel good, and when I hear this, my imagination runs wild and I want to shout out the car window and beep my horn, crying, “DNA! It's the DNA of mine that they carry!”

They are part of this music. They always have been in it, the thread of songs that my grandmother played for my mother that my mother then played for us, that I now play for my children.

I don't want to resolve to strengthen the chain of my family's heritage. I want to solve, softly, my fear of losing who my children are while they're from America.

I want my children to understand my want, when I ask, “Do you feel this music? Do you know what I hope for, when you hear this?”

I want them to hear the guitar strumming melodies, the lone voice, and find themselves as I did, home.

 

10 Trends From 2014 I Didn't Jump On



All about the bread, 'bout the bread, all gluten 

Most of 2014's trends were fitness trends, which means this post was originally titled 150 Trends from 2014 I Didn't Jump On. Instead, I capped it at 10, because the internet likes that. And in the interest of a fair and balanced review, I kept my exercise hating tendency in check. So, here are the Trends from 2014 that left me, meh.

1.) PALEO: While I love a good piece of butcher quality meat, no one is ever going to take my gluten away. I want all the glutens. Forever and ever, amen. The meat craze can go get crazy with someone else because I'm over here with a bowl of saltines dolloped with red raspberry jelly on my lap. All smiles and starch-comforted, how else is there to live?

2.) CROSSFIT: If CrossFit is the only way to be fit, then call me NoFit. No Interested too. I'll keep the reasons to myself, for three seconds. And then I'll tell you. I've had three children. Any sudden bursts of movement and it's not pretty -- not pretty looking and especially not pretty sounding. I also prefer to keep my bowel movements private and not witnessed in a warehouse.

3.)  UBER:  No, thank you. My safety is A-#1 priority in my life. I'm not calling a person I don't know (another way of saying *stranger*) to come get me and take me somewhere while they control the wheel.  Why? Because not everyone shares the same morals and values, that's why. Ain't gonna happen. No place is that important to get to. Two strangers in a car, one who is at command central while I'm in the back. Guess who holds all the cards? Hint: the one holding them is the one who's all in on this trend.

4.) DROP-CROTCH HAREM PANTS: I don't need a special cut pant to be trendy, my middle-aged butt already makes all my pants drop-crotch.

5.) PINK CAMOUFLAGE: I'm tough. But not really. I'm tough. But not really. I can't handle all that back and forth in my head. You are, or you aren't. I am, but not really... *and not only that, but you're not invisible, you know, not even in a pinkish way.

6.) THE WORD "BAE": This one wasn't my choice. I like the way it sounds, but my kids beat me to the punch and made it clear I was to never use it. No matter if they were present or not. As it should be, my bae... er, my children.

7.)  ELLO: Usually (always) I take awhile in starting anything new as it is. If it's something online, it could be weeks before I twist my arm and tell myself to get back into the 21st century. So, after Ello was splashed all over my Facebook feed with Jump Facebook's Ship Now! I took my trademark week and a half before I began googling youtube tutorials on Ello. Heh, it was gone. Just like that. Ello, good-bye.

8.) AERIAL YOGA:  Feeling weightless while suspended mid air on silk hammocks, sounds like the magic cure to free you from that which holds you down. Money, stress, relationships, too full a plate and not enough hours to get it finished. It sounds good, but I'm not paying for that. Not when I already have my own sensory deprivation tank slash floating on air unit. I call it my bed.

9.) BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: Ah, this one was easy to pass on, strictly preference and the aesthetics of symmetry. Benedict may make others' grow dizzy at first sight, but I've never been one for a man with eyes up on his forehead. Nothing personal, just that I prefer a more quarter-planed face; eyes in this quadrant, and the forehead left just for that, the forehead.

And how could we forget:

10.) COCONUT OIL GARGLING: This was a close one. Remember, I called this trends I passed on, not trends I was nearly tempted with. This one almost got me. It had all the lure that calls my name: easy, effortless, no exercise involved, and cheap. Started by Gwyneth, all you had to do was buy coconut oil and gargle for 20 minutes, though the head of Goop would never call it gargling. The process was going viral under the practice of "oil pulling." Word games, making us conjure up visions of toxins being pulled from our polluted delicate systems via a coconut oil train. I thought about it, and then decided, 20 minutes? I can't even hold a smile for the camera for 60 seconds without my muscles spasming, how am I going to gargle for 20 minutes without ending up looking like Dizzy Gillespie for the rest of my life. But did I pass? In all honesty to you, no I didn't. I tried it. I now refer to it as the longest 20 minutes of my life.

I almost can't wait for 2015, imagine the trends I'll be able to pass on then. If I were a betting woman, I'd say all of them. Again.

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