My Mother: The Past and Present Reminder

This past Monday, my mother arrived in Colorado to visit with us for week.  The two older boys are loving her being here.  So am I.  She has been my constant companion as I began the season of my life where I am dropping off and picking up my sons from school.  Since they both get out at different times, it has in moments felt like a private taxi service with me being the driver.  Not complaining of course, because since I am a fairly new driver, I need all the driving time I can get to become one with the vehicle and the road.  At least that's my thought.  It's working.  My turns have been less on the wild side lately. 

As I've been driving along the roads of Boulder to and from school, the mountains on all sides of us depending on which direction I'm driving in, it has been nice to have her sitting in the passenger seat next to me.  She is the Bronx to my Boulder (though I have to admit I'll always be a Bronx girl).  I realized today she represents my past...the life we both shared when I was growing up.  She is a die-hard city girl like me, having been born and raised in Manhattan. She moved to the Bronx when she was in her early twenties, when her family decided it was time to own their own home.  And now at seventy, she's still there.

She's the past to my now present.  

I left the car to pick up one son two days ago, with the radio channel on the mainstream/alternative music station playing songs the likes of John Mayer and Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty.  When I returned, she had switched the channel to a station playing Motown/soul to the likes of Marvin Gaye and the Stylistics.   Music that I grew up on. That I remember singing the words to when I was four years old walking around our two bedroom apartment that overlooked a major highway in the Southwest Bronx.   Along with old school hip-hop (she had that channel on previous to the Motown/Soul one), this was the music that became part of my DNA as I grew up.   It's been a long while since I connected to that music and other things that were a part of my growing up in New York City, specifically in the Bronx.  

I am a mother now too just like her but living within a different context.  I'm raising children with a husband in a city by the mountains while my mother raised me by herself in an urban metropolis filled with subways and endless, moving people everywhere you went.

Two different worlds.  

She's unfamiliar to my new home now.  Would I be unfamiliar in my old home when I went back East to visit her next time?  A home that was as familiar to me as my own name?

What's that saying?: "You can never go home again"

While driving today I found myself trying to remember the days and years I lived (and worked) in the Bronx.  That was fifteen years ago.  

Though I love my new world, I honestly hope I can go home again as I try to hold on a bit to it through my mother and through my old friends/classmates (and now Facebook friends) from my high school back in the Bronx. 

I am thousands of miles away from that home and yet, I don't want it to be too far from me.  

In my heart, at least.  

Thankfully, I have the living reminder that is my mother.  

How many of you are living far from the hometown you grew up in?  Do you still feel a connection, and is it through family or friends that still live there? Do find yourself remembering your past life there or is it just, in the past?

A Bit From My Butterscotch Babies...

Yes, they have their own blog.  Feel free to take a look...

Noah, Rhys & Owen: Brotherly Love: "Owen from his first smiles, would look at Big Brother Rhys and grin widely.  He was captivated by his big brother with the wild c..."

Stuck In the Land of P (For Strong Stomachs Only)

I'm surrounded.  All around me, I am truly in the land of P.  There are two things that start with the letter P that surround me all the time: pee and poop.  Both have been a constant since I gave birth to my first son over five years ago with the addition of my middle son three years ago and now with my latest son who was born this past March.  It's not like this surprises me.  I've surrendered to the fact that I'm going to have deal with these two elements for a good seven years, at least.  It just that these days I really feel it because both have taken on various different forms and its just so constant.   

With my 5 month old, I've got the usual baby pee and poop in which the poop ranges from every shade of green and yellow, from the seedy to the clay varieties.  And depending on what the baby takes in whether it be breastmilk or formula, it's anyone's guess what will come out of him, though I've notice the poop stench is much stronger when he drinks in formula.  

Then there's my 3 year old whose pee is pretty standard, though his poop is pretty intense and atrocious, most times.  Not to mention, the amount of it just astounds me and my hubby and anyone who has ever changed a poopy diaper of his in the past.  The amount of waste he ejects can rival that of any adult male.  I'm not kidding.   Now he's potty training and so the pee and poop are no longer in his diaper but in other places as well.  When it ends up in the potty, it's a truly joyous moment.  Especially the poop.  He gets 2 cookies if he poops in the potty, 3 if he doesn't need me to prod him to go and goes all on his own.  Not only as a form of encouragement to say "please, please, continue to poop in the potty like a big boy" but also as a form of gratitude to say "thank you for sparing me the job of having to clean up the floor or bed after you."  However, there are those moments when I am on my knees wiping up the floor or pulling off the latest bedsheet. Like at least once every other day.

I'm surrounded. 

Then there's my 5 year old whose pee and poop, I technically shouldn't have to face anymore since he is using the toilet in the standard way.  However, many a time, in his haste to get back to the latest road he's built out of tracks and blocks or the show he was watching on t.v., he forgets to flush the potty.   Hence I end up walking into the bathroom, a good two hours later and smelling the most horrible of  stenches.  Looking in the toilet bowl, I find the culprit: my kid's latest dump which has been "stewing" so to speak.  Not to mention the countless times I'm pulling off or drying bedsheets from his latest nighttime overflow.  He still hasn't mastered staying dry at night consistently.   And that's okay.  I'm here for him and will be until he does, whenever that will be. 

I really am surrounded.  

Throwing away a diaper or trainers (i.e. pull-ups) at least once/twice every other hour.  I looked in my trash can the other day and these items made up most of the trash.  Not to mention the baby wipes I use to wipe those precious bottoms. 

What's amazing, though there are still those yuck moments where I get really grossed out by what I see, is how much I can tolerate the constant pee and poop.  Now honestly I couldn't tolerate it if I had to do it for a living.  I truly admire nurses and caretakers.   And I definitely couldn't tolerate the sight of pee along the wall of a building or poop on the sidewalk or in grassy, weedy places (as you well know about me from my previous post).  Yet somehow, I can tolerate it when it comes out of my children.  Unlike my hubby, who gags pretty much every other time he has to change a diaper or deal with an "accident", I face the Ps head on with a cool, almost professional-like detachment.  Is it because, though the waste product can be nasty and downright horrendous, my little creatures who emit them are so amazingly adorable (a mother's bias of course)?  How can I stop my heart from melting from the sweet smile that crosses my 3 year old's face as the pee shoots out of him or the toothless grin from my 5 month old as the last of the poop leaves his bottom during a diaper change?

Besides, with every pee and poop I face, am I not building character or at least fortifying an already strong stomach?  Hey, if I can stare down the sometimes green-black goo that comes pouring out of the bottom of my 3 year old (what did he eat??), I can face just about anything gross can't I?  Except, fungus/mold, maggots, slugs, pink vomit...anyway...

I'm not complaining.  I embrace my duty.   I'm just amazed at the endless pees and poops that I'm experiencing in every way shape and fashion these days.  I know someday this will all be a thing of the past that I will look back on with fondness, right? 

As I'm typing this, I look up and see a huge stream of pee coming from my potty-training 3 year old, spraying out like a fountain and covering an area of my dining room the size of a standard welcome mat as he stands staring in amazement.  He looks just as stunned as I feel.  And then I just sigh, quickly getting up. 

It really is like 24/7. 

"Potty!" I say.  "Potty. Go to potty now.  Sit.  Sit!" as I point him over to the little red potty seat by our fireplace.  He runs his little wet feet over to the potty as I inwardly cringe at the footprints he's made.  As I side step the huge puddle of pee, I notice he even got some on the play mat.   Okay.  Such is my world...

All I can say is, thank goodness for hardwood floors, heavy duty paper towels, sweet smelling antibacterial soap, and silly after-pee/poop smiles as I brace myself (yet again) to face the pee head on.  

What's In My Backyard??

Two Saturdays ago, I decided to help my hubby by going out to our backyard and cutting down our extremely tall weeds. It was the first time this Bronx girl has used a weed cutter and I was brandishing it back and forth, knocking down weeds left and right. As I worked in the hot sun, I thought about how therapeutic this was for me. It allowed me to let my thoughts wander without interuption from little hands and big screams.

I thought to myself. Here I am surrounded by green stuff. Nature. Grass and weeds and dandelions. I grew up in a concrete jungle of sorts. The backyard to my house growing up in the Bronx was made up of mostly concrete with weeds growing through the cracks. The parks near to my house were mostly playgrounds with a tree or two growing in them surrounded by massive concrete. So walking among grass and trees or even being surrounded by grass, bushes and trees only occurred when I visited the big parks in the city: Van Cortlandt, Pelham Bay, Central Park.

Since my exposure was limited, foilage was somewhat foreign to me. I would wander among the grass and bushes and wonder what was there. Poison Ivy was definitely the main enemy. I can recall several times when classmates would end up in an endless state of itching because they had wandered into a patch of poison ivy. Poop in various forms (i.e. dog, goose, rodent) was enemy #2.

Even now, when I go out to the backyard I wonder what's within those weeds and thick grasses. Poop? Something worse? And what are those leaves? And are they poisonous? Or worse, are they poison ivy or poison oak?

When my boys run through the grass, I have to force my voice to be still since I am so tempted to yell..."Watch where you're running!" or "Be Careful where you step!" In my own backyard.

When we go to the grassy park two doors down from our house, I'm constantly on watch for the  hidden dog poop and something else icky that I don't have a name for.

I have to confess, I'm more at home walking on the concrete sidewalks here in downtown Boulder, than in the plains and grasses of rural Boulder where I live. I barely check where the boys step when we're on the sidewalks, unless they're stepping off the sidewalk and into the street. Then it's a quick warning to them to get back on the sidewalk where it is safe.

Safe.

Sidewalks. Concrete equals safety to me. Grass, weeds, plains equals mystery. The great unknown for my feet. You can't see what's in grass sometimes. You can see practically everything on the sidewalk. Even the stuff you don't want to see. Memories of me in the back in New York City sidestepping the grimy gobs of dirty pink bubblegum, the remnants of someone's leftover pizza, the dark, unrecognizable gooey spots stuck to the sidewalk enter into my brain in the moment.  Gross, yes but familiar. Safe.

So there I am on that Saturday, brandishing the weed cutter. Chuckling about my paranoia of all things grassy and weedy when I look down and see within the tall weeds a dead animal face looking up at me.  Of course, I scream and run away from the thick mass, leaving the cutter on the ground. I'm breathing heavy. This is so not cool. Not cool at all as I stand there taking in big gulps of air and shaking. I look towards the closed patio door.  No one's there.  My family did not hear my piercing scream and are oblivious to my fright.  I look around to the other backyards surrounding mines.  Hopefully my neighbors were just as oblivious as I was just beginning to feel a little foolish.

After a minute, I shake my head and take off  hubby's garden gloves. I walk towards the house. I'm done for the day. I'm completely done with that overgrown weed patch. What else would I find if I continued?

Minutes later my hubby who grew up surrounded by nature in the Pacific Northwest and has much more exposure to green grassy things and trees nods his head in sympathy. I don't have to touch that weed patch again. I could attempt the weeds in the front. I nod and shake my head. I could. Okay. I grab the weed cutter and head towards the front of the house with determination.

I find after a few swipes at the tall weeds by the side of the house, I can't continue on any further, the image of the dead animal still in my head. So I head back to my concrete porch.

Where it's safe. 

Maybe I'll tackle our overgrown yard another time. Then maybe not.

Things That This Bronx Girl Holds Dear, Or More Specifically, Can't Get Out of Her System

I have to confess. The subway sign in the photo is in my home in Boulder, Colorado. It's hanging on the wall in the little mini hallway between the boys' bedrooms.

No, I didn't steal it. I bought it for a nominal price at the Target Store in Boulder. Yes, Boulder, Colorado of all places. It was one of a kind - stashed in between two other works of art - one depicting Wrigley Field in Chicago and some other baseball stadium I can't recall in the moment. Okay, actually I can: Fenway Park in Boston.

That precious piece in the photo. My Subway Art. It actually is art. A painted replica of a symbol that I hold dear from my past life growing up in the Bronx.

I spotted it by accident when I was flipping through canvases. When I saw it, my heart started racing and I became giddy all over. The same reaction some people would have seeing their favorite celebrity in person. This familiar symbol from my past was staring back at me in all its gloriousness. You see, I used to pass that specific subway sign (s) growing up in the Bronx. Often without thought as I rushed down the stairs and into the subway station on 161st street and River Ave. Not only coming from several Yankee games, but from friends' houses, from the Bronx County Courthouse where I was summoned for jury duty, from the public pool a couple of blocks over from Yankee stadium or from the big movie theater with the stadium seating. Or most frequently, when I was transferring trains, going from the D train to the #4 train. The sign became a part of my existence. The same D and #4 trains were the trains I was most familiar with because they stopped at the subway stops near my home. The road (railroad, that is) that led to home everyday was past 161st and Yankee Stadium.

This sign said "home" to me. For others, it might be an ice cream shop that they used to visit while growing up or a park of some kind that was played in frequently. For me, it was this subway sign.

So, in all my giddiness that day, I ran out to the car that my husband was waiting in with the kids and sent him into Target to look at it. I wanted him to spend his hard earned money on that sign. Where else was I going to find something that so represented home to me in a place such as this, the Mountain West?

I saw the discovery of this sign at Target as a beacon of encouragement. An actual kiss from God. That I would find something so familiar in this different place I had moved to. It's not like I'd find the subway sign from 161st in the Bronx in stores wherever I went. I was a happy girl that day.

It's fun to see people's reactions when they see it hanging on our wall. From"Really? A subway sign?" (in other words: "that's not art") to "How cool! Did you steal it and bring it back with you from New York?" to "So sweet of you to get that for your boys."

Yes, a subway sign and no, really, I didn't steal it. 

And it's all mine's (okay, the rest of the family's, too)...my precious work of art.

Butterscotch Babies:There's Beauty in the Mix

I sit and watch my sons play. The oldest, my 5 year old is pushing a toy car transporter around while my second son, who is 3 is putting plastic vegatables into a sand bucket with a toy shovel. Meanwhile my youngest who is 4 and 1/2 months is playing with a cloth book. As I watch, my mind wanders back to a time over a decade ago when I was visiting Denver, Colorado for the first time. I was standing with my friends after a church service, and across the way I saw a girl of about ten years old talking and laughing with her sister. She had skin the color of butterscotch candy, light brown fine wavy hair and light colored eyes. She was gorgeous. During the moment while I stared, something inside me stirred and thought, I'm going to have children that look like her one day.

How did I know? There wasn't any physical evidence pointing towards that fact. I wasn't dating anyone at the time and I was (and still am, of course) an African-American woman with dark brown skin the color of milk chocolate, loose coarse wavy hair (when not chemically straightened) and dark brown eyes. But something within me told me that the possibility was pretty strong.

Now I'm not claiming to be psychic. Far from that especially since I believe that there is a God and he is the higher power and has his hands in all things, most especially the aspects of my life. But here it is years later, and I'm staring at three little boys who resemble that girl I saw years ago.

Yes, I have my own butterscotch babies now (having married a man who is Caucasian). Apparently and ironically it was part of the Master Plan that is my life.

It was very clear that this girl of years ago who was stunningly beautiful was a product of an interracial coupling. I just remember thinking that she was beautiful because she was a blend of two overt races (white/black) and possibly a few covert ones. With a mix, came beauty.

I look at my own and see beauty too. Not in the sense of them being more beautiful than other children but just in the sense of how they were created - with their own unique set of features: my oldest with skin the color of butterscotch candy, light brown loose curly hair and eyes the color of caramel. (Pardon the candy references.) My middle with the same skin complexion as his brother yet with darker hair with tighter curls and eyes the same caramel color as his brother. Yet his eyes appear lighter because of his dark hair. And my youngest, who has slightly lighter skin than his brothers with brown hair (straight for now) and gray colored eyes. What makes each of them individual makes them beautiful.

I believe the same applies to children with parents who are of the same race. Unique features from each parent are passed onto the child to create one beautifully blended individual. A combination of distinct features joined together makes each child lovely in their own right.

And to think there is so much prejudice in the world with all this beauty around.

Which all the more convinces me that what makes people ugly is due mainly to what we look like on the inside and not out.

Right now my two older butterscotch babies are playing well together creating their own race car world while their younger brother sleeps on my shoulder. There's peace in our world...

...for now, anyway. Until they both want the same race car...;-))

City Mice Vs. Country Mice

From time to time, the scratchy, scurrying sounds within the lower cabinets in our kitchen drive me a little crazy. The one comfort being that the 13 pound family cat that is Chelsea in all her beautiful caliconess, is stationed outside the lower kitchen cabinets standing guard like a vigilant sentinel. It's her pleasure. Though it's not mine when she captures them and plays hockey with them (the mice being the puck) through our small kitchen and dining room. Fine, the mouse is caught but still to my stomach, not so cool. But what really is not so cool is that a couple of weeks later, after said mouse has been played with and disposed of, there are more scratchy, scurrying sounds.

Where are they coming from?

It brings me back to the days when I lived in New York City. The Washington Heights section of Manhattan, which is the northern tip of the island. The first home that my husband and I lived in as a married couple. Our cool apartment with its hardwood floors in a pre-war building. In this place, we had little furry gray visitors too. They'd come through our hall closet and make their way in. It was the reason I was able to convince the husband that we should take the then 10 lb feline in. And she earned her keep. She caught two the first month she lived with us. But then there would be a drought for awhile -- like 8 months or so before we saw another one, maybe two. Here in Boulder, they seem to just keep coming.

Field mice, I've been told. We live in a neighborhood surrounded by wide open space on three sides. Nothing but fields and grass as far as the eye can see with a few houses dotting the landscape. We really are in rural Boulder. As we drive down the road towards downtown Boulder, we're often passing cows and sheep along the way. We're also passing mice. Little field mice we cannot see but appear in our kitchen with a consistent frequency that astounds me.

The good news is that they are not living in the walls or the attic of our house which means that they are not right under our noses. They make their homes in the beautiful open space that surrounds our neighborhood. That's nice. And far away. The bad news? That in this expansive field utopia they flourish. They breed and increase, then come into our homes like we go into the nearest restaurant to find food and partake of it. They nibble and leave their mouse droppings and go. Then return the next day, and the day after that to continue the feast until they lose interest or they are being swiped around like a hockey puck by a 13 pound cat. At least this is the case in our home.

What's better? To jump and screech every month or just twice a year?

In my opinion, neither one. But then I guess anything is better than their city rat cousins that are four times their size and scary looking. They live beneath the ground, more than often frequenting the trash bag piles above ground that line the sidewalks. And there isn't an equivalent of those here in rural Boulder - thank God.

Nor of those stubborn city cockroaches...