This is meant to be a “Mother’s Journal.” Started out just throwing notes together. Never enough time to sit and write. “Very rough beginning.”

I hope, Erin, that this is special and interesting to you when you grow up. I couldn’t possibly put all my feelings in words, but maybe enough for you to get the idea of how special and wonderful you are.

Hope this doesn’t sound negative, but your mother is too rigid at times, and I don’t cope with stress as well as I’d like to. But, when you grow up, I hope I have at least taught you to (1) love God (2) love others, and (3) love yourself. You make your decisions and trust them to be right. Don’t let anyone bully you, even in a nice way.

You’re so special! God love you!

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After reading the first entries, I realized how sketchy they were, and how much I had left out. Like I said, I didn’t spend much time on it.

Some funny things to remember: I was so tired when you were first born, that even when I tried to sleep or rest, I couldn’t. So, I was semi-asleep most of the time. When I would go off to sleep, I would think I was burping you, and I’d be burping Daddy. I’d try to turn you over, and I’d be turning over your Daddy. Boy, was he heavy to lift.

The weekend Aggie came to help was very interesting. She put you in the LR with her on the couch. That night, I walked in my sleep, to the LR, sat down, and “pretended” I was holding and feeding you. Aggie had a laugh out of that.

• My Monday/Tuesday to-do list became my week’s to-do list, which is okay.
• I want to go to the beach soon and work on correcting my tennis tan (I’d say “farmer’s tan,” except that if I said that out loud, my garden would start laughing at me in the most rowdy and embarrassing way), but Danny’s threatening to cloud over my weekend. Shoo!
• Speaking of the abomination in my backyard (ahem, veggie garden), there are a few watermelons growing right now. I know by now that their only intent is to get my hopes up before they die before becoming fully ripe. The garden so depresses me that I hardly even go into my backyard anymore, which means the weeds have been having their way with my roses, which further depresses me, which makes me stay out of my backyard. Vicious cycle.
• When you play tennis at night and get sweaty, the giant lights that keep the court lit up make you sparkle. True story.
• Last night I used store credit to buy a necklace, some earrings, and a bottle of black nail polish. Because I can. And because I had black nail polish when I was thirteen, and it seemed like the time to revisit that trend. When I showed it to Jesse, he moaned that I was going to keep trying to get him to let me paint his nails black—which I had totally forgotten about! But once he mentioned it, I squealed with glee. I have spent the last nine years trying to convince him to let me paint his nails. I think it would be funny. Black seems like a manly color too, no?

I’ve been rearranging photo albums, consolidating Jesse’s pictures and my pictures in chronological order (which has proved harder than anticipated), so for the past few days all I’ve been looking at are pictures of Jesse and me in high school.

Here is a memory: The Bonds had just moved back to Florida from Texas, where they had been living for a few years, and Becki and I had spent the day at the La Cita pool, and there are flashes—hot May sunshine, the pool shockingly clear and blue and cold, our hair smelling like chlorine, our skin like sunscreen and summer. And then we sat in the townhouse they were staying in while their house was being built, and the air conditioning was cold, and Jesse was on the couch playing “Wonderwall” on the guitar, and I thought, Now that is beautiful. And I had no idea then that the moment was the beginning of anything, that it was anything more than the moment. Which made it even more lovely—just a moment, just listening to a boy play a guitar after a day spent at a pool. I was sixteen.

And then the year after that, building a gingerbread house together in my parents’ kitchen, decorating the Christmas tree after Thanksgiving dinner. Hard to believe that was nine years ago, that we have seen every May since then together, that we have seen every decorated Christmas tree. We never have made another gingerbread house, though.

(Remember when I told you my mom painted our living room bright pink? Oh yeah…)

Busy weekend, moving a friend into a new townhouse, cleaning out my bedroom closet, embarking on a massive photo-rearranging project, two hours of tennis on Sunday afternoon, and we forgot sunscreen, so by the time we went to church that evening we were amusingly red and awfully sore. Our church now has evening services (identical to the morning ones), which I could not be happier about, as my morning-person experiment only applies to weekdays. Which today didn’t work so well, as we stayed up too late last night, so I was only able to pull myself (with great effort) out of bed by 7:40. I imagine tomorrow will be much the same, as it’s already nearing 11:00 now…

While cleaning out my closet Saturday, I found a journal my mom kept for me when I was a baby. It’s a blue three-ring binder with notebook paper, nothing fancy, but the pages, which are just slightly yellowing, are covered in her handwriting. I believe I’d be able to pick out my parents’ handwriting out of a lineup if I had to. Funny how we memorize things like handwriting. The way she writes a capital Y. I never had nice handwriting like my mother does.

Some entries:

4-9-84 (11 mos.)

Erin, you have a wonderfully funny way of showing your temper now. You raise your arms, out in front of you somewhat, like a weight lifter, and squeal. Everyone cracks up. Then, you sometimes get on all fours and scoot on your head.

4-11-84

You just learned to say no. You went over to the dishwasher and started to touch the silverware and said, “No, no, no!” You have a very pretty voice; maybe you’ll be a singer one day. You love to dance. It’s so cute, when music starts, you start. You were so content today. Ate real good. Mommy got some spring cleaning done. You have just learned to come toward Mommy with your arms outstretched. Sometimes you’ll tease me by coming almost to me with your arms out, then turn as soon as you get up to me. Stink pot!

She really did write that line about spring cleaning and then cross through it. I laughed when I read it, because it’s so very much like my mother—cleaning is something she’d write about, but then I imagine her getting self-conscious and thinking that spring cleaning isn’t quite the topic for a mother-to-daughter journal. But it was at the very bottom of the page, so I imagine she just decided to cross through it and keep going.

I think I’m getting antsy because I haven’t had a haircut in a long time. But I’m really close to having enough for Locks of Love, so I’m trying to hold out. (Had a dream the other night that I gave up a half inch before qualifying!) Instead, I am thinking of another blog overhaul. I just haven’t found a theme I love yet. So, a poll! What could be better?

So, I started my experiment today, but I didn’t get up at 6:00. We had tennis shopping to do last night and didn’t get to bed early enough for that, so I started the day today at 7:00, which felt plenty early anyway. I figure I will work my way up to 6:00. I managed to keep my grumbling to a minimum this morning, and I got up fairly quickly. I have a feeling that’s because it’s the first day of something new and I still have motivation left. We’ll see how it goes next week…

I started the day with a big mug of green tea (a caffeine source I hoped Zea would find more acceptable than coffee!) and some studying and prayer. A lovely introduction to a Thursday. Again, easy to say on day one, but I’ll take it!

Last night, we bought new tennis shoes. It made me think of my dad. When I was little, he’d always measure my feet with those cold metal contraptions. They terrified me, looked a little dangerous, like they could pinch you or take off a toe, but as long as Dad was operating them I wasn’t too afraid. He’d study my little feet, and then I’d try on shoes and he’d squeeze the toes to see if they were too big or too small. He was an expert on my feet—knew that I had a narrow heel, knew what kind of shoes would fit me best. I missed that so much yesterday as I tried on shoes myself, pushed down on my own toes. I wanted someone there to tell me what shoes to get, to tell me, “You’ve got a narrow heel, just like me.” I wanted someone other than me to be an expert on my feet.

In the end, I chose a pair of New Balances that were on sale. They were the shoes I was sad to take off. Dad always seems to wear New Balance sneakers, so I wondered whether there was something about our feet that was especially suited to that brand of shoe. It made me feel connected to him, though he is hours and hours away, taking walks to the river, hiking the hills, surrounded by trees we don’t have here.

I’m not a morning person. I know—there are plenty of not-morning-people. But I really don’t like mornings. If I have to wake up early, for a meeting or a doctor’s appointment or something, I tell Jesse to ignore everything I say or do until I’ve been up at least fifteen minutes. I get kind of growly. I sometimes say things that aren’t so nice. I can my morning self “Karen,” as in, “No, I didn’t say that; Karen did.” I forget who gave me that idea. Was it Sue? I didn’t come up with it, just recognized its usefulness and adopted it.

And I should clarify, when I say “early,” I mean anything before 8:00 a.m. I only pull myself out of bed around then to have breakfast with Jesse before he heads out to work, and I only do that because I would feel exceedingly guilty if I didn’t have breakfast with him before he left to work all day to pay our bills.

Other people in my family are not this way. If my dad sleeps past 7:00, we freak out and think he’s died in his sleep. He used to work two full-time jobs, a day shift and a night shift, and he got really good at telling his body exactly when to fall asleep and exactly when to wake up. My sister inherited this trait. I, apparently, did not.

There was a month or so when I was a teenager that I decided to become a morning person and got up at some ungodly hour, like 5:00 or something. I listened to morning radio shows and did math homework and felt proud of myself. Then I got sick and afterward lost my motivation.

But. I’ve decided to give mornings one more shot. I’m going to try and get up early (like, 6:00 a.m. early—I’m no teenager, so let’s not get crazy) every day for…well, some undetermined period of time. I’d say two weeks, or some other number, but if this really blows up in my face I don’t want the awkwardness of not meeting some random goal I selected on a sunny afternoon when I felt well rested and ambitious.

I’ll let you know how it goes!