Stumbling On My Words

And little moments from my days

I’m afraid I’ll stumble on my words but then I remember all of life is stumbling forward — or backward, or even in place. Imperfect attempts at connection and progress and expression. If we don’t stumble, if we say just the right words in just the right way, then the humanness is sucked out. May we embrace the friction of trying to say things that are hard to say.

Last week I walked around the block while E napped, needing some air and knowing he was freshly asleep. It was cold. I tucked my hands in my puffer jacket pockets and pulled the collar up toward my ears. When I emerged from the tree’s shadows, I lifted my face to the sun. My eyes welling up.

In the hours before, I scrolled on my phone until I thought I might vomit. I feverishly texted friends about how to help, who to call, where to donate, when and where to volunteer. I considered the tensions of showing up in these moments while raising small children. I looked for ways to help during nap time. Could I write a pamphlet for a local org? I got quietly angry at an influencer who was prolifically making reels about how crazy it is to expect every person with a social media platform to speak on “politics”. I thought okay, sure, but isn’t posting a stream of reels about not speaking on politics…in fact speaking on politics. I stared out the living room window at a leafless bush and considered how I’d describe it: “frozen firework”, “ugly coral,” “a bush with no leaves that — next to the bare branches of the neighboring trees — gave me the feeling of a unsure preteen boy. The wounded masculine”

I sent my kids to school on Friday despite the nationwide general strike because it was grandparents day and my daughters had been looking forward to it so earnestly. I considered my own hypocrisy past and present. I turned over memories of my Jewish education, the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, all the bystander-victim-persecutor posters held up by my teachers in basement classrooms at Hebrew school, by volunteer docents in the echoing hallways of history museums, by Jewish leaders in stained glass sanctuaries.

Mmm, to walk outside in the sunny cold of Texas winter. To wave to a neighbor as they drive considerately by me. To walk around the block while my baby rests safely in his crib. To construct essays in my mind as leaves crunch under my feet. To tilt my chin up to the sky, to the beaming sun — the precise opposite to casting it down at my phone screen.

I consider buying a Brick, but it is no-buy day and I’m learning over and over that a purchase alone never solves my problems.

I stare at my daughters face through the rear view mirror at a red light and I see — in little flashes — my own likeness in her eyes, in the jawline that’s taking shape as she ages out of her pudgy cheeks, in the way she crinkles her nose when she’s privately pondering a question. I wonder how I can love hers so much — its unquestionable similarity to my own — and cycle through confusion, ambivalence, disdain at my own aging face.

I aim for presence and so often I fail. But when I succeed, a single moment can breath, a long belly breath, a big expansive plume of awareness. I can barely believe how easily my kids drop into a moment. They wake up and they’re fully immersed in something, coloring until their arms are too tired. I’m always marveling at their absorption, and I’m always pulling them out of it. It’s time for breakfast. It’s time to get dressed. It’s TIME. TIME. TIME.

After dinner I sit on the playroom couch wondering how I’ll muster the energy for bedtime. I watch H cut the hair off a stuffed unicorn. I think I should probably stop her, but I don’t.

When the kids are asleep and J is still at work I watch a video of a woman in a suede brown dress sitting on the edge of her bed. The sheets are a crinkled white linen. A thriving Pothos plant is draped across a wooden shelf behind her. There is light pouring in from a window out of frame and I sense that it’s open. She tells me she stopped ordering so many things online. She tells me she realized the little dopamine rush she got when a package arrived was contagious, she was modeling it for her kids.

Yesterday, R gave E a too-tight squeeze and I told her “Be careful. He’s fragile.” She asked what that meant and when I explained, she paused to process. Then said, “ya, fragile, even humans can be like glass,” and continued singing chika-lata-chika-lata-chika-lata yaaaa to herself on an endless loop until we all caught the bug and started singing with her.

My four year old is full of strange and ordinary observations. She asks, “Did you know, after early, comes late?” She stares at two girls walking side-by-side in the grocery store parking lot. Tilting her head to take them in, she says “I think they are twins because they have the same size head.” There’s a shadow cast on the ceiling as we lay in bed at night. “The same shape as the big zipper.”

R is asking a million questions a day, so many questions I can’t help but marvel at how little I know, the infinite mystery we all tolerate day after day. I wonder how her little body holds that many questions and moves so assuredly through her days. A contradiction to be brimming with inquiries and also so certain — that mommy will have snacks and water when she needs it. that her teachers will offer help when she asks. That when she calls out “Daddy!” he will reply. That she will wake up in her bed in our house that to her is the whole universe.

Love ya, Stephanie

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