Call Her Beautiful.

Last night I snuck into her bedroom. Tip toed, hoping she wouldn’t wake from the noise, from the light.

I leaned over her crib and gazed at her sleeping body. Carefully placed my hand delicately on her back. Watched her breathe. My daughter.  I whispered promises.

Sneaking back to my bedroom with salty mascara stained tears at my cheeks I stared at the empty wine glass, the clicking cursor in the email. My relationship with my mother is _____.

It’s a sucker punch. Air knocked out. A gasp.

Yesterday, my mother wrote me to tell me how unhelpful I am and how I don’t have any real friends because I can’t open up my heart.

She cut, for the sake of the bleed.

There are words that spilled over the page like cabernet shattered; staining, creeping across the crevices as tears poured out of me and onto four pages. Promptly deleted. I don’t want this to be our story. I am done with our story.

It is now about her. Her tendrils of fine blonde hair that curl at her neck.

It is about her brilliant blue eyes that if tear stained won’t ever be at my negligence.

Her childhood will not be filled with memories of meals denied for the sake of her appearance. She will be beautiful regardless of her appetite.

She won’t be called stupid, or a moron, or a retard or any other synonym for the same sentiment. She won’t be criticized and ridiculed. I won’t defend or excuse or accept blame for someone else’s vileness.

She is gorgeous, this daughter of mine. Affectionate. Stubborn. Adventurous. Silly girl.

She has so many to watch her, to look over her, to love her. Her brother. Her sensitive, kind, loving brother who hugged me last night as I cried and told me he would never be mean to his children.

Yes, I think she will be okay.

These whispered promises of mine that I keep in my heart. Sewn up and sealed with tears. With love. With sadness. With wishes from the damaged and dreams from the hopeful. You will call her beautiful, and she will believe it.

She won’t survive, she’ll thrive.

—

All of these photos are from instagram. You should follow me: motus8

—

A continuation from my post: Call Me Beautiful.

—

Just written for a wordful wednesday where I poured my heart out and spoke for her.

From the Beginning.

It started in 1985. In Poland.

But what if it hadn’t?

What if it was elsewhere?

We fled communism for Munich and awaited our visas to Australia. What if we got them?

In 1989 we moved to Chicago, but if we didn’t?

Evanston found us in 1993; friendships still over a decade strong were forged. Tearstained pillow cases established their home in the middle school years. What if we had never arrived?

1998. Mexico. An incident occurred that would forever change every aspect of how I perceived the world and myself. Who would I be if we had gone to the Bahamas instead?

In 2003 I chose the University of Minnesota over my first choice of Fordham University in NYC for love. If I had gone to New York I would not  have met and married my husband.

6 years ago in 2006 I graduated early and started my job at the Museum. I was going to go to Law School, what if I had?

Had a misstep been taken.  A different plane boarded. Why the possibilities are limitless. Of who I would be, of who you would be. Of how we would cross. Grain against grain. Smoothed to glass or swept to sea.

Each of these moments strung together, seemingly meaningless infinite strands of chance encounters braided, entwine us. Hold us close. The edges may fray. You may tug and pull and attempt to unravel. But once bound we have forever made an impression. Whether fate or chance unknown.

I have known you and you me.

Our paths may change, the stream will flow into the river into the ocean, the current carrying us apart. But you two have made your way into the world, born by me, by chance, by fate, by divine power. With me forever.

And when I asked of you to hold a hand and you held his, I knew that you will have your own path. That you will travel. Together. Alone. Without me.

We will each make our own way through the crevices and mountain tops. Traverses narrow and deep holding our dreams in sweaty palms.

Clinging to hopes, wishes unwished, loves unloved.

I don’t know what I believe in, but I believe in you.

For as long as we are together, let’s make it better.

–

This post came to be because she read a cartoon and tweeted it. And she read that tweet and blogged it. And I read that blog post and felt it. 

–

I have also used this as a contest entry for a full sponsorship to the Type-A Parent Conference from Brica. Brica’s Motto is ‘Making Together Better’ and you can find Brica on both Facebook and Twitter.

Call Me Beautiful

It has to be the weather.

It was gloomy on Saturday. Cold. Rainy. I didn’t leave the bed all day. Finally at 3pm still pajama clad I took Bear to see The Lorax per his insistence. Post movie I crawled back in.  Finally at 6:30 I pulled myself together, literally and figuratively, and saw Five Year Engagement then went out for drinks with friends. It was almost 2am when I came home.

Sunday was beautiful. Warm sunny. We went hiking at Afton. Had a delicious lunch at a diner we discovered in Stillwater. Went to a candy shop were I fell in love with white chocolate dipped pretzel sticks.

Monday was supposed to be nice. Where was the 70 degrees promised?

I cleaned. It helped. Having the dog hair picked up. The counters wiped down. The clutter filed away. The beds made. When there is order around me it makes me like there is order in me. Except it didn’t.

After six weeks of “dieting” and exercising and being healthy and doing all the right things  I had only lost 5 lbs. Five measly pounds. All lost within the first week. Gained. Lost. Gained. Up. Down. Flat. Flat for 9 straight days. Starring at that horrendous number. The same as 7 months pregnant, but 19 months postpartum.

I want to look at myself and think that I am beautiful. I want to, desperately.

I look back on this picture from two weeks ago. That I titled joy. I can’t look beyond my chin, my arm, the little part of my bra sticking out. That imperfection to even see the joy.

My eyes flutter across all of 2012, the ones that are supposed to be the best. Those shared socially to prove their worthiness for global speculation. I pick them apart. Line by line. Roll by roll. Until I’m left with a magnifying glass to the worst. A microscope to each pore. I am dissected and shredded and not human, but made up of haphazard slivers.

Being an over analyzer and introspective I know many of the reasons why so much of my happiness is wrapped up in self appearance. I want to believe when I’m older that I will look back on this and not only think of how I wish I knew how beautiful I was at 27, but how little it mattered. I find it hard to believe that I will ever come to a place like that in my life, but I hold out hope.

Maybe the weather will change. Maybe someone will call me beautiful and I will believe it.

Thank you so much for your support to my biopsy post. Results came back today and I’m cancer free.

Linked with Just Write and Pour Your Heart Out and Wordful Wednesday

Content Discontent.

This past Sunday I made my way to church. I find for me that it is kind of like the gym. I never want to go, but I never mind when I actually do. It was kismet that the sermon revolved around gratitude and contentment.

Content is defined as satisfied with what one is or has; no wanting more or anything else.

It might as well be re-written to say not Marta.

At first sitting there, on the wooden pew looking upon Bear fiddling around with his toys knocking into the man next to him with no concept of his surrounding space, I felt so much guilt at my discontent. How I reek of want. There is no ounce of me that is satisfied. I want more of myself, much much more. I want more of what I have and don’t have. I want better and bigger.

Thinking about the excess, what can be trimmed, scaled back. How I could be more content with what is in front of me, perhaps even that too much. As he spoke his words flowing over me my brain ticked off future returns, purchases and projects put on hold, the accounting tape running as the amounts tallied. I could be content. I could be satisfied. Couldn’t I?

Yet the discontent inside of me churned. Resisted.

I struggled all day with it. The only thing in my life I would truly not change is my children. They are perfect exactly the way they are. Perhaps one day, when they’re older I may think of things that could be better, but now at 5 and 18 months they are exactly what I would envision my children to be. Yet without them it’s a series of should could would always just falling short of satisfactory.

Dissatisfaction is a symptom of ambition – Mad Men

That night I decided that I’m content with my discontent. I want more. Be more. Reach for more. See more. Feel more. Love more. I want more of everything. I am full of dreams. Elaborate Dreams. Passion. Energy. And that’s okay. That’s who I am.

You will never be extraordinary if you are happy being ordinary. And I never want to be ordinary.

 

Stay.

It’s been a roller coaster ride already. Only a few months into this New Year. Feels so old, so yesterday’s news. Each passing day like the one before. Moments, glimmers of beauty and love flashing by us as we rise and sleep and rise again.

Today I woke up blessedly happy. With a radiance that illuminated like an orb guiding me through the morning motions. Could feel its swell inside me, this happy. I don’t want it to leave. Willing it with my mind. Filled to the brim. Don’t deplete me again. Pleading and begging to an otherworldly entity to have pity, to take my penance and let me stay in this state of bliss.

I think of Casey’s post yesterday. How happy I am at her happy. How letting her words glide over and through me gave me hope that I can be as lucky. She made it. They made it. I can make it through these swallows that take me prisoner. When I lose sight of the now so caught up in the then. When I am without words.

This weekend had record heat for a Minnesota March and allowed me to bask in the sunshine and joy of these adorable faces. It pains me that I can be filled with so much sadness and emptiness when surrounded by their boundless energy.

But I won’t dwell on the then. I will rejoice in the now.

And in the back of my heart and mind plead for it to stay.

Linked with Shell’s Pour Your Heart Out