Marie Curie ain't got nothin' on me

There are times when I wouldn’t want to hire myself to babysit my own children. I can get almost a perverse, teenage pleasure from mimicking their high whiney voices until they break down in tears. A couple times I’ve pushed to get an emotional response from my son when he didn’t cry about something truly sad or upsetting. I think I was honestly worried that he might be unable to have a sad emotional release. Mothers are underpaid under-recognized and let’s face it- sometimes unqualified, anthropologists. We are scientists shoved into the field armed only with our limited life experiences and what we consider right and wrong as a result of those experiences. We are alchemists pulling elements off the shelves adding a dash of discipline, a cup of love, with a blueprint hanging on the wall reminding us of the anticipated, magnificent end result. The culmination of our blood, sweat, tears, love, heartache, mistakes and well meaning. How often we have to remind ourselves that the original essence we’ve been amalgamating, in many ways identical to our own, is also many parts it’s own unique substance entirely alien to us. One wrong ingredient could fuck the whole thing up! Sounds like a dream job doesn’t it. To be quite honest there are days when I don’t want the damn job. Get. Me. Out. Of. Here. Just let me fly free for a few days, a week, a month. Just lighten my load so I can think for a while. What I wouldn’t give sometimes to be my old girl self, before the preoccupation with boys turned me into a sullen, depressed, pimply pain in the ass. To be the confident, curious, energetic girl who spent all day in the woods amusing herself. To sit by the side of a secret stream, on a moss covered rock, hugging my knees, inhaling the scent of their sun-warmed skin.
I sat with that too long and now I’m crying… Grief is a funny thing. It runs on it’s own schedule. You thought the last train came five years ago and suddenly you have to dive off the tracks to avoid that roaring, steel, harbinger of memory and you’re left to nurse the resulting cuts and scrapes. I’ve always been overly nostalgic and I do grieve for that childhood never to return. I grieve that I only travel farther and farther from ‘her’ and closer and closer to frailty and infirmity. I could really use some more celebration in my life. I could use some belly laughs, some wicked mirth, some gentle words, a long hug, some sister love. Right now I’m broke as a joke and the phone brings me my friends. Once I have a little gas money though I am going to buckle the kids in and aim my wheels towards the nearest warm kitchen. Keep a light on ladies.
It sounds like the kids movie has ended, time to drag myself back to the lab. Maybe I should focus more on my own concoction today. Let’s see: a cup of patience, a gallon of optimism to balance the brooding, a dash of contentment to cure the malaise and enough wisdom and perseverance to keep the whole thing from fermenting. Let’s hope it doesn’t blow up in my face.