savagemama

Really, can we ever be thankful enough? Can we say it too often? Can we spell it out too many times? I don’t think so.

This year, I’m thankful for a lot of things but here are just a few.

I am thankful for Seth. When you clear away all the complications of our life together, I still like walking down unfamiliar streets in beautiful cities with him. There’s no one with which I’d rather share a plate of mussels steeped in bacon, cilantro and garlic. I am thankful he still takes pictures of me when I’m not looking. I am thankful I wake up to him. Every day.
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Cooper looked up at me with big hazel eyes and said, “I want a snack at your house.”

“What was that?” I said.

“I want to go to your house,” he said.

This sweet little guy, who lives a few blocks away, that I pick up from preschool on Wednesdays along with Eliza and Logan, the daughter of a dear friend, caught me off guard today. I knelt down, ran a hand through his blond curls.

“I’ve got popcorn and hot chocolate,” I say. “Let’s go?”

He nods yes and heads toward the door.

If you had told me 20 years ago that I would have a house full of kids, mine and those who belong to other people, I wouldn’t have believed you.
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Today I got down on my knees with a bowl of hot soapy water. As I cleaned vomit off my daughter’s car seat I started talking to Erica Jong out loud on my front porch.

Jong, a novelist, writer of non-fiction and second-wave feminist icon, asks in this Wall Street Journal op-ed published this weekend if attachment parenting is creating a prison for the modern woman. Is it, she asks, victimizing the baby-wearing, cloth diapering types and drop kicking them right back to 1950s? She calls the whole culture of modern motherhood a giant step backwards. She calls breastfeeding and sleeping with one’s baby into question, she even takes a few stabs at adoptive parents and Dr. Sears himself. To Jong, apparently, no one is sacred.
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My neighbor Matt roasts the coffee I drink every morning. My other neighbors, Tim and Lindsay, make the soap that Eliza and Lucille fight over in the tub each night. Martin and Joellen, who are neighbors with each other, bring us this coffee and soap once a week through their local grocery delivery business. When I can save my pennies I go to Matt’s wife Amy’s boutique downtown and buy myself a pair of jeans that make me feel hip. On the rare occasion that I have an hour to kill like I did today, I go around the corner from Amy’s boutique to Garth’s bookstore, sit on the floor and read. His band played at our wedding and he doesn’t seem to mind.
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