the book where a neuroscientist dies and goes to heaven

he describes death as heaven
upward into the snail shell spiral
of white and musical color.
a Nabokov experience 
of afterlife, where each reality
is seen twice in the brain.
i hold the yoga pose 
awkwardly, forward thrusting jaw,
the thin foil skin of my abdomen
puckering slightly where the fat lets loose.
i just need enough to hold on to
i think in my yoga-centric way
to pass peace on to my children
so they will not be afraid to watch me die
or afraid to die themselves.
the pinnacle of parenting and wisdom
might be half in teaching how to live
half in teaching how to die.
a little death, every day
loss in every twenty four hour:
a dog, sunglasses, the earbuds again,
best friend moves, favorite lipstick recalled,
the slant of sun there every day
suddenly gone.
ah- we could say, wise and peaceful-
i will simply move like a cat
and lay elsewhere.
he described heaven after fifty two years
of not believing we are more than synapses
firing and misfiring in the dark
now he believes there is everything
we do not know, everything we do not comprehend,
and that we are a part of all of this unknown
even after the slant of sun has taken it's invisible being
and moved where we cannot see.

People In Your Neighborhood

take a seat and read!

Daniel Menaker's piece What Does the Publishing World Look Like On the Inside? reminded me of Nora Ephron, a touch more cynical. I loved this- touched on my late in life realization that in most areas of life, the people who are 'experts' are often decidedly not so.

Lena Dunham and David Sedaris….sigh.

The Year I Didn't Kill Myself by Gabrielle Calvocoressi…the title sums it up.

RIGGINS SIGHTING. 

I'm on Henry's sixth wife and love this page that matches Tudor scenes and art work with the real life inspirations behind them.

Jennifer Pastilof always has truly amazing stories or thoughtful points of view from guest posters on her blog Manifest-Station. This is no exception.

I loved this post so hard. Dudes are Such Whiny Baby Liars About Girls With Short Hair

I have mentioned Madonna Badger on Flux before. I started following her on Twitter and FB some time after her three daughters- all her children- and her parents were killed in a house fire on Christmas Eve. That sentence is hard to even write. This interview with her is similar to watching a delicate flower be buried in snow and frozen half dead, stomped on mercilessly by nature and then somehow survive for the slant of sun that follows.

Full Grown People, an essay on Comma Momma, is written about a different type of relationship than I have with my daughters, and I still found it so familiar because her writing is so dazzlingly honest and to the heart of the matter. Beautiful.

Can A Writer Escape Vulnerability in The New Yorker made my brain have a hard on. 

Ever Elizabeth's Early 3rd Birthday Party

“Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood.”
Pablo Neruda

“So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.”
Robert Frost

“What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?”
Lin Yutang

“Sister. She is your mirror, shining back at you with a world of possibilities. She is your witness, who sees you at your worst and best, and loves you anyway. She is your partner in crime, your midnight companion, someone who knows when you are smiling, even in the dark. She is your teacher, your defense attorney, your personal press agent, even your shrink. Some days, she's the reason you wish you were an only child.”
Barbara Alpert

“I also believe that parents, if they love you, will hold you up safely, above their swirling waters, and sometimes that means you'll never know what they endured, and you may treat them unkindly, in a way you otherwise wouldn't.”
Mitch Albom

“One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.”
Jonathan Safran Foer

"We are all travellers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend"
Robert Louis Stevenson

“You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.”
Frederick Buechner

“You are born into your family and your family is born into you. No returns. No exchanges.”
Elizabeth Berg

“These are the quicksilver moments of my childhood I cannot remember entirely. Irresistible and emblematic, I can recall them only in fragments and shivers of the heart.”
Pat Conroy

“Well, one can't get over the habit of being a little girl all at once.”
LM Montgomery

“I know how syrupy this sounds, how dull, provincial, and possibly whitewashed, but what can I do? Happy childhoods happen”
Marisa De Los Santos

“Little girls are the nicest things that happen to people”
Allen Beck

“What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a miraculous world.”
GK Chesterson

Enders

am i enough of what should be
for you to lay down the anchor the sword

the killing that's killing me?

baby blood leaks from your capillaries
while you tell me you are fine just fine

all the love i had
not enough

i couldn't wait to hold us together
broken angles and bones and nobody home

all the love i had
a bluff

i can't take you home
i am home

you are home-
where can anyone go?

baby your hands, workman hands torn up
while you tell me you are new brand new

all the love i had
love i have for you

but i know that home remains an illusion,
my freckles find a field to lay and brown.

i miss your irish eyes and the breath of your breath
baby you say fine and fine is death

all the love in the world
circles round our heads like vultures

i am selling a dream and the dream sells well
we all want  a happy ending

without anything ending.

My First Ebook with Shebooks & A Writing Contest

I have a publishing contract. This is so rad, this is so good, this is so worked for! Shebooks is a new publishing company put together by some powerful and talented women in writing and publishing. It is an online format that will charge a subscription fee month by month to read short ebooks written by women authors- novella length. With an amazing line-up of women writers, Shebook plans to launch in January and is working with Good Housekeeping and BlogHer for promotions and connections.

My Ebook is Scenes From A Marriage, the idea taken from my blog posts here and expanded into a cohesive telling of our story. I am thrilled to be working for and with these women.

Shebooks is holding a contest, for all you women writers out there. Here is a link about it. They are looking for a memoir about mothers or mothering, with a prize of $2000 and a publishing contract. Sweet.

you are the one

jump for your love ( my 39th birthday )

I turned 39 November 10.

To celebrate, all six of us plus E., Lola's best friend and a family member at this point, went to the new local trampoline jump. AND JUMPED OUR LITTLE BUTTS OFF.* We had so much fun. I was smiling like a fool- the most happy- the entire time. Afterward, we met my mom and she took us all to dinner, and after that, all the kids watched a bad movie with me. Mr. Curry had work and went to bed on time. Like a boss.

For my birthday, Mr. Curry had the kids clean, and he brought me breakfast and Starbucks, and took the kids shopping to get a present for me which was bright colored purple running shoes with neon laces- LOVE. Speaking of, that picture Mr. Curry took of my butt made me happy,  because I've been working really hard the last three months- working out five days a week and running two or three of those times, and it is paying off. My body feels like mine again, strong and capable.

*Helpful Hint- if you've had kids and go to a trampoline house, wear a mini pad. Because you might or might not pee yourself.

People In Your Neighborhood

Take a seat and read!

No One Brings You Dinner When Your Daughter's An Addict- I have written about this exact thing myself, the fact that physical illness brings much support in every way, while mental illness brings, too often, silence and isolation.

A Real Time Map Of Births and Deaths Around The World

A tiny symbol of an airplane on Google maps turns into a staggering story of loss, memory and the power of symbol and art.

Treating an Ulcer Without Medication

I just finished reading Vera, by Stacy Schiff, on the life of Vera Nabokov, wife of Vladimir. An engrossing biography that won the Pulitzer prize. I became interested to know what was happening with their only child, son Dmitri, and when I looked, I found this.

This woman's essay is unusually good. If There Was A God, She Has a British Accent at Life, Redacted

Half of All Babies Use a Smartphone Before Age 2. Here's Why That's Bad

A human story from my hometown, Mississippi

8 Foods The Experts Won't Eat

20 Ways To Help Prevent Child Abuse

And~ I had to add this one last minute, because IT IS EVER ELIZABETH as someone else's child. Rebecca gives us ten ways to deal with a spirited child. Yo. And, I totally agree with the look the other way when the sibling is helping thing. I let Lola do this with Ever. It's more important they have that bond and trust and intimacy than I control it all. xo

ghosts

for there are quiet ghosts afoot
who walk aside our mouths
and breathe the air we expel easily
with love, in and out.

they smooth our hair, 
marvel at our shiny nails
the thud of our feet on concrete
the tiny blast of air in exhales. 

for breathing is their preoccupation
breath- the ghosts of the living
where our souls enter and exit ceaselessly
until they day that life stops giving.

they think to kiss our lips
and come back to ticking clocks
but nothing brings them body or mind
for there is nothing that death cannot stop.

but love! the audience cries.
what about love, you forget!
they cannot see my tears-
i have not cried them yet.

for i hold all my sorrows
like jewels for the crown
if love survives this place
i will gladly weep, and drown.