FIRST GRADE PRACTICE SENTENCES

I have a huge mule and he has a cut leg. 

Has Ava ever laid eyes on the offspring of a jack and a mare?

Wikipedia says the average weight for one is between 820 and 1,000 pounds. While they can be male or female, mules can’t reproduce due to their odd number 
of chromosomes. The good news is, there will never be a song that goes, “baby mules, doo doo doo doo doo doo.” 

The last mule I remember lifting had vodka and ginger beer in it. The first nasty cut I remember Ava suffering was on her toe. I’d guess she was 3ish. The weather had begun to warm, the daylight in the evenings stretching and beckoning the neighbors to hang up their plaid parkas and come play outside. Ava and the girls next door had been trying to balance their wobbling little bodies atop a swim noodle on our uneven concrete driveway. We don’t have a pool, but I’m not convinced the availability of water would’ve changed the course of that particular evening anyway. Besides being cylindrical, I bet that swim noodle was purple, Ava’s favorite color. 

This anecdote is all secondhand. 

I’d been inside, maybe cobbling together tacos for Tuesday’s dinner. Al had been the one to witness Ava slipping. He’d been chatting with the parents of the girls next door, so he couldn’t be certain how Ava’s fall led to the flap of skin dangling from the end of her toe. Was it her baby toe? She sobbed into his shoulders, then into mine. The bad news was, there wasn’t a song that went, “baby toe, doo doo doo doo doo doo.” 

Please clean the chimpanzee’s cage this week. 

Pick up your markers. Clean up your legos. Put your dirty clothes in the hamper. Mommy doesn’t like to waste food, but throw away your half-eaten apple. Brush your teeth. Don’t forget to wash your armpits and your butt and your vagina. Yeah, yeah, that’s funny, but you have to wash there, too. You’re not a baby anymore, you’re 7-years-old, I shouldn’t have to do it for you. Flush the toilet. Rinse the dishes. Wipe your face. Want to help me mop? I’ll let you use The Swiffer! 

Sweep the crumbs onto your plate. Hang up your coat. … 

I’m not the tidiest person. In fact, my focus on cleanliness has significantly blurred since Ava’s arrival. Still, I do prefer some semblance of order. After all, we shouldn’t live like poop-slinging chimpanzees. Yet humans sleep in dirtier beds than chimpanzees. (“About 35 percent of bacteria in human beds stem from our own bodies, including fecal, oral and skin bacteria.” Look it up if you don't believe me.)

… Ava, when you’re done jumping on it, please make your bed. 

Tidiness is learned, not innate. Or is it the other way around? No, we have to teach our kids the intrinsic value of cleanliness. Why? Because it is next to godliness? Nature versus nurture is something I can’t help but think about when it comes to my daughter, but like the vacuuming, the dusting, the laundry, and haha, the ironing (our ironing board is on permanent basement sabbatical), I usually let it go. 

A cute wren can sing a big tune. 

Bird is the nickname Al gave Ava. She loves to sing in the bath. Lately it’s all Kidz Bop all the time, but she’s been known to belt out "S.O.B." 

That’s got to be the textbook definition of a big tune. 

We stay on the sea and sail all day. 

Ava loves the water, whether it’s in a pool, lake, puddle or miniature plastic tea cup. Besides a kayak, the only other boat she’s been on is the ferry to Mackinac Island. We went over to the island last summer and again in the fall. In the summer we sat in the outdoor observation deck, the Mighty Mack in the distance, blue skies and sunshine and summer breeze in our hair. Picture-perfect ride, except for the terrible head cold that made me cloudy and dizzy, and the worst: a mouth breather. I couldn’t taste the fudge or the fresh air. 

In the fall it poured and the big lake roiled. The sky was bleak and the wind relentless. My husband and I rode over first for The Great Turtle Run, a 5.7-mile race through not around the island. Ava and my mom joined us later. Separate voyages, but all of us sat inside and none of us suffered sea sickness. Ava loved the crashing waves, the ferry’s rocking and rolling. I worried about my mom, but she said the scariest part had been a little boy choking on a butterscotch. The paramedics came, but thank God he’d coughed up the disc the color and the circumference of a harmless dandelion head. No Heimlich needed. 

Ava enjoyed trick or treating on the island. A tradition for October, their last official tourist weekend. It was too cold and windy, but she grabbed gobs of salt-water taffy. To our relief, no butterscotches. We still steer her away from hard candy.

Pete the cat is a funny pet. 

We have a couple of Pete The Cat books, but Ava prefers Dog Man. She named our new puppy we rescued last November. Squirt, inspired by the book with the same name, the true story of an orphaned otter. Her first choice (and a distant second for her parents): Cheetah Pup. 

Squirt doesn’t wear or love tennis shoes, but she has dainty white feet and the funny cat-like tendencies of scratching and kneading. She has the dog-like tendencies of caring what humans think about her and barking, often too much. 

Monday through Friday I take Squirt and our other dog, Charlotte, out to wait with Ava for her school bus. Some other snapshots from their Club Med lifestyle: We walk the neighborhood twice a day. I feed them fresh-cut vegetables, expensive dry food, treats with zero grains. They lounge on furniture and in our beds. When it snows more than a few inches, I shovel a path in our backyard so they can frolic, play ball and do their business (almost) free of hassle. 

I am that dog lady. In my next life, I hope to return as a dog owned by me, that dog lady, in my present life. 

Meg is a girl with lots of curls. 

Oh, Meg, you don’t know the half of it. Ava spelled “lots” “lost” in this sentence. May our daughter never lose the tightly wound spirals that crown her head. 

About every six to eight weeks Ava’s curls are strong-armed into braids. Most days I might wash and throw my hair into a tangled bun. It grows curlier and frizzier with age, and when the weather’s damp, it’s often hidden beneath a baseball cap. Nobody stares if I don’t comb, straighten or otherwise tame it. Nobody says I should “fix it.” Nobody places a finger on it without my permission. To my recollection, no kid has ever laughed at my hair or pronounced it ugly. My hair is part of my forty-six years and who I am, but it makes no political statements whether braided, ponytailed or in its free and natural state.  

Ava’s hair, however, elicits constant advice, handling, whispers, touching and opinion, well-meaning and not. 

The snail went under the tree to look for food. 

Ava dressing herself. Ava entering and exiting the car. Ava reading aloud to us when told she must read aloud to us. Ava going to bed. Ava rising from bed. Ava returning the blankets and the pillows from the fort she built to their rightful places. Ava running if told she must run. Ava eating a single sprig of broccoli. Ava taking a bath. 

According to snail-world.com, snails are one of the slowest creatures on the planet. “Garden snails (Helix apersa) reach a top speed of 50 yards per hour (or about 0.5 inches per second).”

I’ll wait for you to play with my trains. 

She clings to her set of Thomas & Friends trains. Though Ava hasn’t played with them since well before the show added more gender-balanced, multicultural characters to its cast, she refuses to let me relocate her less diverse, really useful crew to Goodwill. 

Ava is an only child. At least in our home. To our knowledge Ava’s birthmother is raising two of her other biological children, a boy and a girl. Her son and her daughter. So outside of our family, our daughter is not an only. 

We’ve never been secretive about the limited information we have on Ava’s birthmother, but I’m positive we’ll have to answer more questions, whether sooner or later, down the pike or straight away. A few months ago Ava asked me, “Who is my real mom?” An innocent question, but one that stung nonetheless. 

What does it mean to be somebody’s real mom?

While on the subject of language, please stop using natural to describe maternity, paternity or children. As in, “they have two natural children and one adopted child” or “he is her natural father.”  

Some synonyms of unnatural include abnormal, unorthodox, fake, deviant, weird and unusual. That said, despite being “contrary to the course of nature,” adoptive parents do try to be exceptional or extraordinary. We share that worry and goal with biological parents. 

Ava’s brother and sister would be teenagers now. We’ve mentioned her birthmother has two other children, but I’m not sure if Ava’s connected the genetic dots. It’s likely the three of them will never play trains together. It’s possible Ava might travel by train, plane or Uber to meet them someday. How much longer will she wait to ask?

Does Thomas have siblings? 

The coach had a yellow pillow and a red bed. 

Ava listens to her swim coaches and her teachers. She follows rules at school and in the pool. 

At home she can be wholeheartedly willful, particularly with her parents. I’ve read articles and laughed at memes about willful children, particularly willful daughters. Most conclude this is a trait that will serve her well as she grows. We women need to be strong, after all. Dogged to get the respect we deserve. But most days in the present I can only peek through the slats of the bars that are my fingers covering my face and wince at Ava’s red adolescence on the yellow horizon.  

Last night she screamed at me and threw herself on the kitchen floor. She whined and wept and pouted and huffed because the banana slime I allowed her to make while I simultaneously prepared dinner didn’t have the right consistency. Too sticky. I had given her three times the amount of cornstarch. No, I’m sorry, she couldn’t have more. 

She’s a pro at telling me it’s all my fault and I don’t know anything. You’re mean, Mommy. Mommy, you’re mean. You’re mean, Mommy. Mommy, you’re mean. M-o-m-m-y, you are m-e-a-n. 

Sometimes I am mean. 

Sometimes I yell back. Sometimes I say nothing, let the immature words of my child wash over me, the mature adult who is her mature mother. Sometimes I laugh. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I tell her to please leave me alone, that I don’t want to talk to her. Sometimes I fold her into my arms, tell her I love her no matter what. Sometimes I toss banana slime in the garbage, bowl and all. Sometimes I add more cornstarch and sprinkles and water, and sugar and spice and everything nice. Sometimes I take deep breaths. Sometimes I shut myself in my bedroom, lie on the bed, cover my head with a pillow and pray to do better. To be better. 

The caveman ate bread for breakfast. 

The pediatrician says kids Ava’s age usually eat too many carbs. Her BMI is too high. She should be somewhere between the 5th and 85th percentile. He always smiles and shows us the handy chart with the curved lines.

Ava loves bread. Of course we want her to be healthy, to adore fruits and vegetables, but the thought of giving her any kind of appearance complex permeates, resonates, nauseates. She’s a freewheeling first grader, for God’s sake. She has a whole life ahead of her to wring her hands over The Scale of Judgment, to fret over her reflection in society’s mirror. 

In her book Hunger, Roxane Gay writes: “This is what most girls are taught—that we should be slender and small. We should not take up space. We should be seen and not heard, and if we are seen, we should be pleasing to men, acceptable to society. And most women know this, that we are supposed to disappear, but it’s something that needs to be said, loudly, over and over again, so that we can resist surrendering to what is expected of us.”

I want nothing more than for Ava to defy expectations, to take up space, to come alive and revel in full glorious view. But how often do I send her the wrong message about body image? Once a year? Once a day? Twice an hour? If you ask me, bread is the greatest thing since sliced bread. My BMI barely falls within what’s considered healthy by medical standards. I don’t have the drive or bone structure or walk to pursue a career in modeling, but if I did, in my size 10 I’d shuffle myself down the plus-sized runway in a trench coat, hoping nobody would notice me. 

America, where beauty is so easy even a caveman could do it.

Those five pails are full of green paint. 

Green is a popular color in our home. Two different shades in the living room, one in the basement, a variation of bronze in our bedroom that in the right light somehow shimmers green. Maybe I’ve just got green on the brain. It’s a symbol of growth, nature, innocence and fertility. It’s a symbol of greed and envy. It’s gender-neutral. 

It’s a color that’s meaningful to us. In our house we say, “Go green!”  

Before Ava was born, I painted two walls of her bedroom a celery green. The adjoining walls are burnt orange. Though we stated a preference for a girl, we didn’t know for sure what gender we’d ever be lucky enough to adopt. Years of “trying.” One miscarriage via in-vitro. One failed adoption. 

Then the safe delivery of a baby girl. 

For the last year or so, our daughter has asked to repaint her room—first purple, next pink, next blue, now rainbow. Ava, our pot of gold. 

Humbugged & Bothered

In lieu of my 2018 holiday card, I posted a mostly light-hearted blog on December 20. Seven days later I’m writing a post in progress on how much this time of year sucks. (Thanksgiving is and will likely always be my favorite holiday.) Funny how the emotions of a woman in her mid-40s can fluctuate. 

Label it hormonal. Label it middle age. Label it the holiday blues or seasonal affect disorder. Label me Ebenezer Spice or the Grinch(ette), but right at this very moment I don’t give a flying fruitcake. 

Because what I’m labeling it is real. 

Maybe it isn’t real for you, you or you over there in Everything’s Coming Up Rosesville, but it’s real for me … again at this very moment: Thursday, December 27, 1:44 p.m. (EST). And for the record, we even got a puppy for Christmas! (Okay, maybe technically not for Christmas, but the weekend of Thanksgiving, when the pressures and preparations of Christmas were already beginning to bubble and roil.) 

A new puppy is only one of the many things (living and nonliving) I have to be thankful for. I am not a religious person, but I do my best to count my blessings every day for all that I have and have been given—especially the amazing people in my life. (Some of whom will possibly keep reading and still probably like me. Somewhat.) And yes, if you must know, I often look to the heavens while expressing said gratitude. The point is, I am cognizant of and respectful of how lucky I am. 

#

It's Friday, December 28, 3:09 p.m. (EST) and I’m feeling a touch less glum ... grumpy ... gweduck. (Gweduck is a word. It’s an alternate of geoduck, but nevertheless a word defined as a very large, burrowing, edible clam. Nails my present mood!) What I probably need for continued mood elevation is a good-natured talking to or a spinach salad with a light vinaigrette. Maybe both. Yes! What I need is somebody to constructively criticize me while my mouth is stuffed with leafy greens. 

Or maybe what I really need is Bob Ross on roids. Because let me paint you a hasty picture of what’s on my mind:

I need a vacation to anyplace sunny. Not necessarily warm, but sunny, or I'll settle for one one-hundredth of a percent less bleak than the filthy tube sock of a sky I’m gazing at through the den window. Then again, who needs vitamin D when you’ve got an artificial Christmas tree adorned with several tangled strands of multi-colored lights, crowned with a single strand of purple lights your daughter insisted absolutely, positively must top the whole festive business? Tradition or protocol be damned, I might go right ahead and leave ‘er up ’til March. Or maybe, per tradition or protocol, I’ll rejoice in the opportunity to take down the sweet old gal all by myself this year! Why the fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la not?! I am quite skilled at single-handedly dismantling, organizing and hauling shiny-happy-heavy decorations to my basement. Sure, it’s a far cry from trekking Antarctica solo, but some might say I am truly winning the race at putting the wrap on Christmas. 

While we’re on the subject of vacations, let me say how much I love hearing about your trip-of-a-lifetime travels to Maui, Melbourne, Milan, Madrid, Mumbai and more! The pictures are truly stunning. (Seriously, I do appreciate the globe-trotting posts and pictures, but forgive me when I say if I have to see one more shot of you snorkeling with a pod of baby orcas or you dining on espresso and cheese croquettes in gay Paris, I might blow up your feed with pics of me in yoga pants ingesting our remaining stash of holiday truffles and eggnog. All the way from our beautiful, over-budget shower in Portage, Michigan!)  

Now that I’ve rained on your vacay humblebragging, I’ll pivot to gifting. If I tell you my husband and I don’t buy each other Christmas gifts, I mean my husband and I don’t buy each other Christmas gifts. Repeatedly asking me about it isn’t going to change that fact or guilt me into buying him Hugo Boss Bottled Tonic. If you want to buy your significant other something for the holidays—tiny or monumental, tailor made or off the rack—by all means, spoil him or her rotten. Please don’t chuckle nervously, laugh outwardly, tsk-tsk, avert your eyes, hint at a head shake, or otherwise worry your pretty little heads privately or publicly about our empty stockings. 

Re: our daughter’s holiday haul, Santa and our entire family delivered! Four minutes and twenty-six seconds later she asked if she could look at our phones. Or watch these two darling siblings on YouTube make tub after tub after tub of glitter slime. The good news is, she’ll have a ton of brand spanking new stuff to play with by summer (give or take). 

Before I bid you fare-the-well and hap-hap-happiest of New Year’s, let me add I respectfully decline your leftover baked goods, your perfectly prepared roast beast, your hot dips (because none will compare to my book club’s), your jellies and figgy puddings, and your candied yams. Do NOT take it personally! (Really, don’t.) It isn’t you. It's me. Trust me when I say I can always eat another bite and it pains me to waste food. If possible, donate to those who really need your surplus bounty. 

Negative Nancied or Debbie Downered out yet? I promise my next post will contain at least one ample serving of unicorns and rainbows. 

I give you unicorns and rainbows. (For real, this was awesome.)

The older I grow, the more I’m beginning to understand how this season isn’t chock full o’ holly jolly for one and all, and sometimes that one and all includes me. Stress, anxiety, depression, insomnia, loneliness, sadness, loss, or as lame as it sounds, I’m-So-Over-It-Ness are legit side effects. And you or someone you love shouldn’t have to simply lighten up or get over it or grin and bear it, or nod and wistfully wink your cares away. 

If you’re experiencing I’m-So-Over-It-Ness (or any or all the above realities), hang in there. Consider this a fist bump followed by a Christmas tree followed by a wrapped gift followed by a Mrs. Clause followed by a thumbs up from me to you.

Happy (really) Almost New Year! 

Xoxo,

Amie

In Lieu of Your 2018 Holiday Card, Please Accept This Ramshackle Post and Photo of Us Wearing Semi-Nautical Attire (Not Pictured: Ava [Daughter, Age 7], Charlotte [German Shorthair Mix, Pushing 11], Squirt [Terrier Mix, 6-months-ish]

A few words of gratitude, gibberish and gripe: 

1.) There may be nothing more terrifying than finding a latex unicorn mask dangling from the end of your flag pole. Yet this unexpected gift has brought oodles of magic and joy to our household. Cheers to our thoughtful neighbors! (You know who you are.) 

Totes adorbs. 

2.) Puppies aren't the same as babies, but they are still baby animals. While they’re adorable, they also keep you up at night, put everything in their mouths, and urinate and defecate on your floor (sometimes peering over their haunches at you with something resembling a smile).

3.) Elegant twinkling lights. Gaudy decorations. Snow on Christmas. No snow in April. Holiday gatherings with friends and family. A few precious moments alone locked in a bathroom with boozy eggnog (I may be coming around a smidgeon on eggnog). Chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Almonds you burnt in the oven for the damn appetizer you were supposed to bring to your in-laws.

4.) A minor stomach bug before (not during) Christmas. Fingers crossed.

5.) Broken pinky fingers on young children heal quickly. They also stink (literally [I dare you to smell your kid’s hand after three weeks of snug enclosure within a cast] and metaphorically [no swimming for three weeks]). 

6.) YouTube videos of kids opening presents, eating food or making slime. Dolls or stuffed animals hidden inside glitter, gelatinous substances, bath bombs and various sizes of plastic orbs. I don’t get it, but recognize I’ll be sad when my daughter a.) moves on to INSERT “MATURE” ALTERNATIVES and b.) stops caring whether I get it. 

7.) I love running outdoors when it gets cold outside. My 46-year-old body doesn’t love running outdoors when it gets cold outside. #oldladyrunning 

8.) Speaking of cold outside, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”: Okay, I get it, antiquated, creepy, sexist—a pretty meh song on the whole—but where does one draw the line on music, art and book banning? Then again, I have vowed to never eat at Chick-Fil-A(ssholes) and it isn’t like McDonald’s is a Champion of Ethics. 

9.) Pizza.

10.) I’ve nothing against Pearl Jam. In fact, I have great nostalgia for the album Ten. But an entire channel on Sirius XM dedicated to this band? Tom Petty, yes. Pearl Jam, no. Bruce Springsteen, yes. Pearl Jam, no. 

Eek! How did this get here?!!

11.) I belong to a book club where we meet regularly and talk about books we’re reading, podcasts we’re listening to and shows we’re watching—sprinkled heavily with things you probably shouldn’t discuss in most group settings: politics, religion, murder plots, raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. Plus, some of us drink alcoholic beverages and all of us eat hot dips. The point is, we don’t demand everyone read the same book and then come together with salient and succinct observations about said book. Did I mention we eat hot dips? (Sorry, we’re currently not recruiting additional members.) 

12.) If you resolve to achieve a single thing in 2019, make it leaving one space after a period. Because giving up carbs is overrated. 

13.) Poems. Love songs. Your kid’s first or six-millionth words. Tacos on a Wednesday (Tuesdays are for suckers). Losing someone monumental in your life. Gaining an amazing new friend. Sunsets. Sunrises. The ocean. Lake Michigan. That one Parks and Rec episode where Ron goes to Scotland. It’s a Wonderful Life. Love Actually. Bambi. A news story about anything, negative or anywhere in the hemisphere of positive. Don’t be ashamed or embarrassed or stubborn or strong. Let whatever moves you move you to tears.  

14.) I’m thankful for you, even those of you who’ll never read this or think it’s stupid or would prefer a traditional holiday card with a family photo of us all wearing navy shirts and khakis. 

15.) David Sedaris’ Calypso. I think it’s his best in a while, but maybe it’s just my current frame of mind or stage in life. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I will always carry the Sea Section in my heart. #props 

16.) Not everyone will love or like or give shit about what you do. If you love or like or give a shit about what you do, keep doing it anyway. 

17.) This year I celebrated 20 years of marriage. I’ve been with my husband for the majority of my adult life. I wouldn’t have it any other way or trade what we have and are to each other for all the tea in China or all the pizza in my past, present and future. That said, you can groan when people say marriage is work or “a work in progress,” but they aren’t wrong. If you’re unwilling to bend, odds are you’ll break.

18.) Robert Mueller: How much longer must we wait to Make America Great Again?

19.) and 20.) The hope of another year. 

Isn't she magical?

Warmest holiday wishes to you and yours! 

Xoxo,

Amie

For Al

Romance isn’t dead, at least not in our home. 

But let me start again. 

It’s a little over seven years ago. Picture us driving to pick up our baby, a safe delivery, a little girl born in a hospital in Southfield, Michigan. Picture me crying most of the way there. Yes, happy tears, but also tears for fears. Wow, I finally understood the meaning behind the silly name of that 80s English pop band. 

Speaking of names, my husband and I didn’t have one. We’d planned on calling a girl Harper Lee, but the birthmother asked if the baby she carried and brought into this world could have a name beginning with A. Her name began with the first letter of the alphabet. Her other two children had names beginning with the first letter of the alphabet. 

Such a small request considering the weight of her gift. Plus, our names started with A, too. What’s in a name anyway? Most would view this as mere coincidence. I don’t know that I’d label it fate, but I would deem it poetic.

Speaking of poetry, I don’t read nearly enough. Still, I do have poems I turn to again and again. Seven years ago on our drive to Southfield we listened to Marie Howe read and talk about her life on "Fresh Air." (I wholeheartedly encourage you to click on the link and listen to the program in its entirety.) I haven’t found the words to describe how much her interview and reading moved me. Toward the end of the program, Howe says, “Poetry holds the knowledge that we are alive and that we know we're going to die.”

I didn’t have one of those aha moments. I had one of those Holy Shit experiences. 

Picking up a new life and those words, combined with her own story of becoming an adoptive mother late in life, and oh by the way, her poems—accessible, mystical, illuminating—they filled me with such hope and gratitude. Hope that it was possible for me to tiptoe down the plank blindfolded and plunge into motherhood. Gratitude for the privilege of being able to at last do so, and maybe most of all, for being alive in that very place and space in time, for being able to feel every bit of that roller coaster rise and fall of joy and terror. 

Without listening to Howe, without sitting in that car beside my bundle of bouncing energy, without signing your shaky signature on the paperwork, without stepping through the whoosh of the doors of that sterile Catholic hospital, without laying eyes on itty-bitty sleeping Ava—the nurses both happy and sad to see her go (these days there aren’t many babies rooming in hospital nurseries for them to ooh and ahh over)—without feeding her for the first time (How do you hold a bottle? How do you burp a baby?), without driving away with the sudden responsibility of this living and breathing being next to you in the back, nestled in the car seat you quadruple checked was snapped in place, I realize probably none of this seems earth shattering to you. Forgive that last run on. If only you could’ve rode shotgun the day our daughter came into our life. That same day Marie Howe sparked the reassurance I so desperately needed. 

I bought two of her books, What the Living Do and The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, within days of returning home with Ava. The title poem in What the Living Do about the death of Howe’s brother struck a visceral chord with me. It continues to strike that chord. To this day I can’t read or hear it without the hairs on my arms standing at attention or my eyes welling. Two hundred and thirty-nine words that together pack such a heartbreaking punch. 

And boy am I a sucker for heartbreaking punches. My husband of almost twenty-one years knows this painfully well. He’s not a bring home flowers on a random Tuesday kinda guy. He’s not a gush about his spouse on social media kinda guy. He’s not the kinda guy who proposes to his girlfriend of eight years by popping the question with skywriting at halftime or a diamond ring buried in a chocolate soufflé. 

For this I say thank God. 

He may lose his wallet or his phone on the daily. He may leave drawers hanging open like dumbfounded mouths. He may be enthusiastically devoted to clutter. His mind may be burdened with fantasy football, buying and selling cars or “House of Cards.” (Damn you for being an asshole, Kevin Spacey!) He may hate to fly and to put up the Christmas tree. He may love Jell-O salads and Phish jams lasting fifty-nine thousand minutes. (Are there any other kind?) He may forget the key ingredient for the soup and the casserole, but recall an urgent need for underwear and canned corn. All first-world struggles. All what the living do. 

For this and more I say thank God. 

But let me circle back to the beginning. 

It’s mid-to-late October, 2018. Picture What the Living Do pulled from the shelf, innocently stacked atop my husband’s New Yorkers, right there next to his glasses and hair tie and water bottle and iPad and discarded socks, and my interrogation regarding said discovery. What’re you reading? Why are you reading this now? Have you read it before? Do you know how much this book means to me?

Yes, I know and I have, he says. I remember. I always like to read it around this time of year. 

Picture me nodding and then returning to the everyday business of life, the retrieval of stray socks and empty water bottles, or the unpacking of half-eaten apple slices or half-exploded Go-Gurt in Ava’s lunchbox. All the while my husband prepares and plots for my birthday gift … what I’d intended to be the trip we recently took to Mackinac Island. 

Despite my best intentions—I’m not a “make a big fuss over my birthday” kinda girl—Al says he has an errand to run one early November afternoon. I'll be home soon. I’m picking something up for you. 

The “Something He Picked Up for Me”: Not only did he go to the trouble of having some of his sweet coworkers orchestrate the layout (thank you), but also called Marie Howe at Sarah Lawrence College to tell her our story. She graciously agreed to sign the poem (thank you, thank you) and Al had it framed. “What the Living Do” now hangs in our living room.