Okay, because we're talking first memories and core events in life, I'll take a minute to drop my two cents since I'm sitting in one of my best friend's (Jen R. Parkin's) computer-room/guest-quarters at midnight PA time and.....I'm not very sleepy. And Sharon knows we've shared many core moments, she and Jen and I. And with Serena who slips like the wind in and out of our lives leaving random myspace comments or knocking on office doors without leaving notes. And with Trev, whom Jen and I are off to see on Tuesday for a picnic on the Jersey shore where Jen can see the Statue of Liberty for the first time. How horrible I sometimes think it is that I saw Paris before Jen. But I don't think I saw Jen's Paris. That's hers. And I sent her a Moulin Rouge postcard. Which I can now confirm is hanging on her refrigerator. This makes me happy. Anyway, today Jen and Aaron and I took their baby Olivia (who is really adorable...I always worry that kids will either HATE me or else they'll be really ugly and I'll have to fake wanting to kiss them on the cheeks. Olivia LOVES me, or at least loves girls, and she is the cutest kid I have seen since pictures of myself at 16 months--haha, Jen!), anyway we took her to these raspberry days outside of Philly....hayrides with berry picking-and-eating and places to feed goats and chickens and people dressed up as Dora and Elmo (who needed to be guided along by the hand so they wouldn't trample the toddling children who kept dancing around underfoot). All in all the experience was interesting because I remember Jen from her wild single days--packing her up inside a suitcase because she was petite enough to fit, midnight movies at the FHE brothers' houses on a school night, eggnog shakes at the HogYog, throwing lightbulbs onto Porters' parking lot with Aaron Davis and running around a cemetery afterward (actually, that was pretty unlike Jen that night....we caught her in a rare mood).....Jen the Wife and Mom is still definitely the same old Jen, but a more refined, protecting, intuitive Jen. A Jen who carries crackers with her along with twelve other various and assorted items of which she will use every single one whenever Olivia sneezes, calls out, beckons, or grins. Books, tissues, juice, etc. I'm impressed. And intimidated.
I feel jealous definitely. And scared definitely. I mean, this is a lot of responsibility. And we all know Jen was always better prepared for it than me. Jen practically raised me as her own while we lived together, when I asked her to. Or when I let her. She never could get me to clean my room. The point of this whole blathering post is that one of my very first memories is feeding goats at the Hogle Zoo when I was maybe three. I remember their tongues and I remember tentatively holding out my palm between the iron grate and being nervous and excited when a baby goat...possibly even a faun, not even a goat....batted his big eyes at me and licked up the pellets with his gray tongue and big floppy lips. And I guess this does make me a bit eager to experience this again with my own kids. No, I won't even guess. I do feel this way. I do envy Jen a bit that in a few years she'll take Olivia to the library and read huge hardback childrens' books with her and take stale bread to feed the ducks. I admit this is a hugely romantic portrayal of parenting, so before Sharon and Jared pipe up and tell me to get over this single woman's portrayal of motherhood (which I KNOW I know nothing about).....I recognize the late nights with stomach flus and broken bones and just the sheer monotonous fussiness and changing of diapers that will never ever end. But even those things I want to relive with these little people, I think. Even if I get a little girl someday like myself, paranoid and anxious until she breaks out in a rash on her stomach and I have to buy her worry stones that we both know don't really work. I like to think that maybe I'll remember how it was, and tell her I know how it is. But I also get scared I'll forget. Or I'll have a child I don't know or understand. A child with problems I never had, and I'll have to sit her down in silence and maybe even anger, staring her down with no empathy, and waning patience.
Well, in any case, EVERY kid of mine is going to love feeding the goats. We'll always have that.
9 comments:
Don't worry little Emmy. You'll be impregnated before you know it. And whether that magical night occurs at a truck stop or otherwise, you're going to be one bitchin' mama. I really mean that.
Oh great, now I finally know what my first tattoo will be...."Bitchin' Mama" with an arrow through a heart that will match only my mullet in sheer whitetrashiness. I hope I'm at least impregnated by something human.
Ha! I read this at work and had to stifle my laughter for about 5 minutes straight (by that I mean without interruption. I've been straight for WAY more than five minutes at a time.)
On a serious note, I am impressed by your lofty standards:
"something human" is pretty ambitious, I must say. Don't let anything get in your way. Dream your beautiful dreams. Touch the sky.
So Jaren, on the topic of being 'straight,' why don't you tell the whole class about your recent dream...
And oh yes, I second Jaren's "bitchin' mama" observation. To the Nth power.
Jaren, I'm not even going to ask about your recent "straight" dream. I don't want to know.
Mother of pearl! It WAS a straight dream. It was about me and Joe and wrestling and plastic swords and non-snakes. Straight, straight, straight as can be.
Sure, Jaren, sure.
Hey, I want one of those little pictures, like the Em's gorilla face? How do I get one? And where do I save it. Em can you hear me? You selling?
Hahahaha, it took me a minute to figure out what "gorilla-face" you're referring to. Can YOU hear ME? It's always a risk posting on a comment on one of these entries further down the page. You add a picture to your profile. So look for a link to "Edit your Profile" or we can look at it together next time I see you. And it's a WOOKIEE face, btw.
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