Pinnochio and other tell~tale stories

I was fat. A dumpling with cold black hair and an indian nose. I was a girl. Samalama Singleton. And my Father adored me.

He nub~nubbined my head, and pinched my nose, threw me in the air and caught me football style, just before I kissed the ground.

At four, my hair was blonde and he had squeezed my nose so many times, it had almost disappeared....

At ten, I ran face first into a concrete wall, sprinting out from under a Christmas tree....and set that nose straight again....broad and bumped...

And then I was 32. Exhausted. Sacked out on an empty living room floor. Two toddler loves waddling in circles around my head, little feet knotting my hair up in piles of angel speghetti on the Berber carpet. I closed my eyes. "Here we go round the merry go round, the merry go round, the merry go round".......

"Mama!" he said. A three year old's world breaking the rhyme. I opened my eyes just in time to see the bottom of his size four pretend Nike's leap in the air. I closed them right before all 38 pounds of Boy jumped in the air and landed on my face.

Broader and bumped again.

My nose grew and grew and grew.....

When my soldier left for war, I bit my bottom lip . I couldn't let him see me cry. Not out the airplane window. I waved and smiled. Turned. Ran.

I kissed the door head on. Knocked myself out silly.

Six months later, the black eyes faded....and the bump was all but gone. I had the most perfectly straight broken nose anyone had ever seen.

When I tell the story, sometimes people think I'm fibbing.....
But I'm not....
It's broken, always has been.

Only now I can crinkle it.
Wrinkle it.
Screw it up in a magical "I dream of Jeannie" spell....

If you don't believe me, ask Skinny....

You're only little once......

We've waited forever. Marked X's on the calendar. Counted days.

Watched the weather
man.

Ta! Dah! This is it!

Hippie Camp-out Night! Kimbies and I and our elfin little grandbabies goin' Woodstock for the night..... And feelin' the love......

My little heart-n-souls rode backseat, buckled up for 400 miles to spend the night in the latrineless green castle in the back yard. They came toting pillows, fuzzy blankets, yoo-hoo's, flashlights and smiles the size of martini moons. Kim's little Alana packed her Cinderella sheets, a sippy cup, and Me'Me's beer and we were off! To never-ever land, 18 steps from the back door. We played AARP Twister......Kimbies and I moaning, groaning, stretching, hoola-hooping our bodies into "left hand on green" pretzels.....tumbling in a pile of laughter. For every beer we drank (Hippie gramma's are allowed!) they ate a cupcake, a chinese fortune cookie, a puff of cheese popcorn....We built a cardboard house big enough for two......We colored, we painted, we glued, and ran barefoot in roundy-rounds through the backyard! We stayed up until 2:18 (That was the exact time according to Stone, the keeper of the battery operated clock!) and we never chickened out. The winds blew left and right and in mighty circles, 60 MPH, and we waited for the house to lift and send us flying.......we laughed, and oohed and ahhhed, and achoo!ed, piling under covers......

We woke this morning, to the same magic we fell asleep too. Alana saw it first. "Look she's fwying, dancing....... the yewwo buttahfwy...." We stretched our camp-out necks, squinted towards the window...."Where?" we chorused......."There!" she pointed...... And then we saw her......

The first ray of sun, glittering through the window.......

The Ghost of Christmas Past

I churned the gears down the river road, churning them out until they made a metallic moan, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, I'd never hit 4th before the red light. One baby booster-seated and one baby "I'm so big!" seated into the back seat, sleepy faced and oblivious to the ritual morning ride and Janis Joplin seeping from the console. And I was a little panicked.

The digitial dashboard clock was timing us, if I made the green, I had time to smoke a cigarette with Kimbies before dropping the children off, if it caught me on red.....forget it.

The Red light came quick and our seatbelts hiccupped. Snatching all three of us a little closer to the back of the ride. Three days until Christmas. And there in my rear view mirror were my sock-footed morning children, content, lazy, at peace.

"Dear Santa,
Don't worrie abot us. We ar good. We onle wont one thing. A camputeer. For Mommy and us. We love you a bunch and have oreos. And Moonpie wawnt bak at you, we told her not to, so you can come in our hawse.
Love,
Haley and Jonah"

Oh dear God, I thought, they picked only one thing. No hot wheels, Barbie dolls, puzzle ships, bicycles with frillies. One thing. For Mommy and them. The tree was decorated and dying already, we had lugged it home the night before, needles falling everywhere, on mighty clearance. I didn't have the nerve to put lights on it, and didn't have the heart not to. So I plugged it in anyway, and willed it not to burn the house down. They were thrilled.

The light turned green and I zoomed. No time now for a cigarette. Kimbies met me in the driveway to fetch them, in their pajamas, little square boxes of cereal in their backpacks. Another day at hippie daycare. I kissed them and slammed in reverse, free to smoke now, windows wide open. 1st gear, 2nd, 3rd.....

And then I saw them. The fireman's boots. Standing proudly next to the three matching garbage cans. It was trash day in our world. And I stopped. Reversed again. And stared at them.....

"I believe"......

So I snatched them.... the black rubber boots, Santa Clause's gear, and hurled them into the back seat. At lunchtime, Joe called me at the office, I panicked. He never called me here. My neighbor, my friend. Surely I forgot to unplug the tree and the damn house was on fire. I pictured him standing next to his pick-up truck calmly watching the flames, choosing his words carefully, as he watched my home come tumbling down.

"You said the kids only wanted a computer, right?" "Uh, yeah, but Joe, you know that ain't happenin', is the damn house on fire?" "Nah....it's okay, but I just picked Patty up from work and the hospital was throwing out all their old units, they're empty, you know" "What the hell are you talkin' about, Joe?" "Well, they're empty, they deleted everything from them, but Patty climbed in the dumpster and we grabbed one, and I'm pretty sure by tomorrow I can load it up with something" .....

Christmas Day....

My little ones awoke to the green glow of an institutional monitor in the hallway, the screen saver scrolling these words.....
"Love, Santa"......
it was fully loaded with battleship and checkers, and nothing more......

and the black rubber boots were under the tree....
with a note that read.....
"Now that we made it as far as Florida, we decided to barefoot it from here on......"


KJ....thank you for stirring this memory up, I'll explain the bottlecaps later.

There's magic in that old umbrella....

She wouldn’t let me do it. Post it to her blog. Copy the words and share them on the pages of Hand-me-down Levi’s where she is the biggest contributor, and has only ever typed thank-you's and love you's in the comment boxes. Where the walls are painted with love. She only let me listen. And in the quiet Sunday morning after, I sighed and tried to take it all in, one big whoosh of love….tried to save it in my mind, freeze dry the words in a forever state of limbo….

Love letter to my oldest child from Kimbies…..
Shared moments before she sealed the envelope and sent it sailing, a paper kite…..

It won’t be the same here, because I’m not the author and the words were fairytale perfect, captured just as they happened, as they were felt, as they became magic in the making, but the story is so beautiful and if the world, for just a tiny second, could capture life in their hands, the way Kimbies does in her heart, we would all know……peace and love…..

Dear Sweetest Child,

How could I have ever known that day, in the sandy gritty parking lot, when you lugged that old umbrella, stuffed into it’s sack, and plopped it into the back of my mini van, the gifts it would bear? But you knew, didn’t you? Keys in your hand, checking out, counting heads, pulling away from the beach…..your babies faces smashed up against the windows blowing kisses as you drove away, you knew……

And there it lay, on the carpeted floor of my van, waiting….

Thank you , sweet child…..

For shelter from the sun I love so much, for the little tent we’ve camped under over and over again. Alana and I. Sandy peanut butter sandwiches squished between her fingers, sippy cups melting in the heat. Our toes buried under treasure sand. For the rooftop over our heads, Grand-C in her long sleeves, shadowed from the very light we love, protected. We drag the umbrella closer to the water’s edge. A squiggly trail of where we’ve been left in the wet sand. And dig to China. The ocean sees us there. And comes to greet us. Three generations of girls. She knows I can’t come to her and so she plays birthday party at our feet. Dropping trinkets, a thousand years old or older, just within Alana’s reach….And Alana names them all….. “Umbwella chells, buttafwy chells, fingahnail chells” and drops them in her tiny plastic bucket. “Twehsures”…… she chases the frothy bubbles of the mermaid’s breath at the oceans edge, catching them with her butterfly net…..and we splash, and laugh, and precious, precious memories are made…..

When it’s time to go, when the tide reminds us by climbing a little higher, talking a little louder, pushing us a little harder, we follow the squiggly trail of the umbrella’s footsteps, back to the car…..and turn around, amazed at the vastness, the bigness behind us.
Alana raises her little fingers to her lips and blows….softly, butterfly kisses to the sea…..
“Tank you, ocean, Tank you……”

I thank you sweet child, for the gift you’ve always been….


In April of 2006 Kimbies was diagnosed with breast cancer, Stage IV, and the last year and a half has changed all of our lives forever, the sun became taboo and the race to live began. We are celebrating remission now, in all it’s hugeness, but the treatments continue, the mountain climbing an always present task. Kimbies is going to the beach again. Hand in hand with her tiny grand~daughter and in the sand, right behind her, our Mom. Love grows.