Freedom Rider

This happened this week.  Sunday morning Ezra said I want my bike.

And when I brought it out, he said I want to take the training wheels off.  So I got a wrench.

We removed two extra wheels, and Ezra grew wings.

Last night Ezra asked me what is "independent"?

I think he already knows.

Three Minutes In The Dark

Babies can't put the bread in the toaster, because they will get burned.  Only big boys can do that.

Babies can't sit on the big potty, because they will fall in. I can do that because I'm a big boy.

Suddenly I notice that all of Ezra's shirts are too small.  Mind you, not because I observe it myself, but because he squeals when it is time to get dressed, demanding a floppy shirt.  One that wiggles.  I don't want that shirt.  That shirt is too tight.

I don't mind Ezra's hell-bent demonstrations of growing up.  I actually relish that he's not a baby any more.  But at night, after our torturously slow tooth brushing routine and our books and our what-was-your-favorite-thing-about-today, lately he asks, Will you lay with me in three minutes? 

And I do, because it's the quietest three minutes of the day.

Will gave me a necklace when Ezra was born, a thin gold chain with three small beads, one for each of us.  It has dangled there nearly every day since.  As soon as the infant Ezra gained any control of his extremities he found that necklace.  When he was nursing we sat in the blue rocking chair in his room a million times a day, and every time he latched his tiny little hand fluttered to my throat and clutched the necklace like a prayer mala.

(The other day he pointed to my breast and asked, Is that your belly? 

No, I said.  That's my breast.

What is it for?

When you were a baby it made milk and that's how you ate.

Oh.  He thought, pointed at one and then the other.  This one made milk and that one made water?)

So here we are in the big boy phase.  The other night lying next to him in three minutes, watching him sink into slowness, I felt the absentminded starfish of his big boy hand find its way to my necklace.  It was a happy jolt, jogging me into remembering those long, slow infant days. 

The gift, as we rush into Big, is this: our former selves and all our time together, all of it, is encoded into our muscle memories in a place beyond knowing.

A Love Letter

Dear Dylan,

I can't believe next week marks three years since you've been gone. When you called me a few years earlier to confess that you'd fallen off the wagon I didn't realize it was the beginning of the end.  I had always known you as a sober person and I assumed this was an unfortunate bump in the road, but that you'd be back on track, say, the next day.  I didn't know that the wheels were starting to come off.  I didn't understand that all those years when you seemed okay, your demons were still there, under the surface, gaining strength.  I didn't understand anything.

When I think about how absent I was from your life at the end, so wound up in pregnancy and having a new baby, I feel so sad.  I know I couldn't have changed anything for you, but I wonder if I could have just gotten a little bit more of you.  Jackie told me things got pretty bad, that you were in the grip of self destruction and despair, so maybe it's a gift that I don't remember you that way.

I usually think of you when I'm in the car listening to music, but that might be because it's the only place I tend to be alone with my thoughts.  You also always come to mind when I'm chasing a tele-skier down a slope that's a little beyond me (this has become a theme in my life, but you were the first and the most demanding), or when I get on the old mountain bike you sold me when you became a partner in the bike shop. When I go hear shows at Red Rocks you are with me and I can't listen to David Byrne any more without thinking about the time that you got me backstage at the Fillmore to meet him. 

I feel so lucky to have shared the years of friendship with you and Jackie that I did.  I was such a kid when I started working with Jackie that it's a wonder she didn't roll her eyes and mock me mercilessly for my endless follies.  But she didn't.  She laughed with me, and she invited me into your lives and made me the approved girlfriend, an appropriate companion for the things you loved that she didn't, like skiing and listening to jam bands play live shows.  I hope I was good company for the things we all loved to do together too, like four straight seasons of Sunday night potlucks at your house watching every episode of Six Feet Under that ever aired.

I found myself wondering recently, during one of my Dylan reveries in the car, if you're here at all anymore.  The grief we all shared immediately after you died made you feel so present to me.  But coming up on three years without you, you were starting to feel distant and faint.  When Jackie e-mailed me to ask if I wanted the cruiser you gave her it was like a jolt.  When I saw the bike for the first time I laughed out loud for the joy of it.

Dylan, this bike is the most perfect gift I could imagine.  It just feels so you, from the outrageous color to the skull-and-crossbones valve stem caps.  Riding it makes me feel close to you and to Jackie and to all the times we shared together.  It also makes me hopeful for the colorful and inspired future I am calling forth every day.  This bike is the vehicle I'm taking to that place, so thanks for that.

I made this little film for Jackie, but also for you, to show you just how much I love your bike.  Since you loved good design and the coolest people, I'm imagining you and Jerry Garcia and Steve Jobs huddled up in a corner around an iPad watching this.  (You would have LOVED the high-def iPad, Dyllie.  Wish you could have stuck around to see it.)

Miss you so.

Love,

Corinna

Signs and Surrender

Ezra has adopted a charming little 3-year-old-ism lately, when he doesn't get what he wants.  It goes something like, I never EVER get (fill in the blank) even if that is patently and demonstrably false.  Even if he just got exactly what he wanted five minutes ago or if exactly what he wants is promised to him five minutes from now.  But it's not RIGHT NOW, and therefore feels like Never Ever. 

I have been in quite a huff this week, feeling petulant and impatient for the life I want to finally start.  My internal iPod has been running the I never EVER get script on repeat and I have been moping around in a fashion totally unbecoming of an adult who already has more blessings that she deserves.

Then my friend Kelly called and said an intuitive told her to "Trust The Process," which made me sit up a little straighter because it is the precise mantra that arose at last fall's photography camp.  Kelly said she is excited to introduce me to a director she is working with and full of ideas and hope about artful collaborations.

Then I got an out-of-the-blue e-mail from an editor I love saying "when are you going to move to LA so you can work with me?  I have so many ideas I can't sleep at night."

Another friend pinged me to say that we have to catch up and she has ideas to share about work to do together.

Then a colleague cornered me and told me that it's time for me to be the change I want to see and make my work.

All this came in a handful of days this week when I was hell-bent on wallowing in stuckness, but even I was starting to brattily concede that the Universe might be trying to tell me something.

AND THEN.

I opened Facebook and there was a message from my old friend Jackie, who is moving to San Francisco in a few weeks, asking me if I have a cruiser bike.

Let me preface this by saying that only a few days before, as a girl on a cruiser passed in front of my car, I said out loud to my mom I really want to get a cruiser bike like that, and I want it to have a basket and I want to be able to ride it to the studio that will house my new work life.

So I responded to Jackie that I don't have a cruiser but I'm dying to get one and if she has one she needs to offload before she moves I'm very interested. 

She wrote back that this is a bike her former husband (and my friend) Dylan gave her before he died and she's been wondering for a year what to do with it.  Yesterday morning she woke up with the answer that she needs to give it to me because I loved Dylan and he loved me and it might give me some joy to have something of his.

All of this is to say that I was resisting all that positive feedback that I have been getting from people all week, but then the cruiser bike landed in my lap.  So now I have to concede that, yes, Universe, I know you are listening.  Thanks for the sign.  I surrender.  I will trust your process.

a literal sign, from Camp Shutter Sisters last Fall

The Magic Number

Gratitude project: Day 6Everyone tells me three is worse than two, if you're using terribles as the unit of measurement.  It's true, sometimes.  But oh my, when it's good, this three-year-old thing is really good.

So grateful this weekend for

giant cardboard boxes that turn into weekend-long mural projects

the miracle of crossing the potty training threshold

balance bikes

the fact that he finally, finally speaks the English language

the discovery that, like his mama, Ez is a lyrics person.  (thump, thump)

Also, while I'm on the magic of three, let me say just how comfortable it feels to be a family of three.  And how grateful I am to finally feel that clarity.  Here we are, a small, sturdy love triangle, ready to take on the world.