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Something you have to forgive yourself for…

There are a number of small silly things that I could put here. Not sticking to my Monday/Wednesday schedule for this exercise this week or standing outside of the bathroom plugging my ears while my kid puked on Monday, helpfully calling out, “Just let me know when you’re done, sweetie!” lest I hear, see, or smell his digestive malfunction and join him over the barf bucket. (By the way, the puking of Monday and the ensuing catch-up on Tuesday explains my truancy on my 30 days of truth schedule, so I figure that absolves me on that count.)

But there are, of course, some big things that I should probably tackle.

As horrible as this sounds, I need to forgive myself for having the baby. This ties in very closely with day 1’s truth.

Now, just to clarify, this does not mean, “How could I do this to myself?” This is about my insecurity as a parent and as a good person. Like I’ve explained (or at least attempted to) several times, my pregnancy was a pretty tumultuous time. There were countless reasons to not continue my pregnancy and they were all rational, good reasons. And given another time and another alignment of the stars, they probably would have prevailed. But I could not get my head past the fact that I wanted that baby beyond all reason and rationality. I wanted a tiny family with the husband and I wanted it to start right then and there. Mind you, this was not a Veruca Salt style, “I WANT IT NOW!” but just a certainty deep down inside of me that moving forward was the right thing to do.

But, as anyone who’s lived knows, certainty is a fickle bitch and there have been plenty of moments that I doubted myself. Pretty much as soon as I uttered the words, “I’ve decided to have the baby,” I started to have moments of panic because more than anything, I wanted to do right by the child that would have to live me and the husband as his parents. And I mean, really, how often would you look at these two people and willingly put a small child in their care?

Yeah, not so much

Those moments aren’t as intense as the first night we had him at home, which was one of the roughest nights of my life. I remember stumbling aimlessly around our apartment, exhausted from not sleeping in days, terrified at the weeks or months of sleepless nights stretching out in front of us, my body in pain and rebellion as things healed, swelled, bled, and leaked, and a tiny, squirmy child who needed every crucial thing in life and he needed me to give it to him. I remember sobbing, wondering who the hell I thought I was to thrust that poor kid into this mess that was my life, and volunteering for the immense duties of teaching him how to live and cope and be happy.

Now, I have some variation of that first night when I’m staring into our murky future, wondering how we’re going to make it, and letting the pressure and stress of that turn me into a madwoman. And I wonder what I was thinking to put him through this.

I’m not qualified to be his mother, but then none of us really are. And I need to forgive myself for that and keep on finding the joy in my absolute best goof.

Day 01 Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

My alarm finally succeeded in waking me up at 7:40 this morning, nearly two hours after it started going off, and eight hours after my head hit the pillow, where I dreamed about the frustrating ticketing policies of Lincoln Center for The Nutcracker. Ben Stein was the ticket office representative, and he was less than helpful in a monotonic way, so I called him a “piece of shit Republican” and hung up to go have an illicit encounter in the bathroom with the husband.

If you couldn’t tell by these events, I’m a little sick. I’ve been fighting a head cold since some time Wednesday, mere hours after the chatty barista on campus said, “I’ve been fighting that head cold that’s going around,” as he handed me my drink. Ah, well. ‘Tis the season.

The mild illness, combined with an extremely packed schedule so far this month (seemingly everybody’s weddings and/or birthdays are this month), have wreaked havoc on my healthy living initiatives. I’ve been too miserable to exercise and have been eating comfort foods. One crappy week isn’t a total failure, though, right?

When I have a cold, I like to drink Constant Comment tea with lots and lots of clover honey and eat grilled cheese sandwiches dipped in Campbell’s Tomato Soup. Tomato Rice if I have it on hand, but in either case, the soup must be made with milk, not water. Cookies are also essential. Fortunately, the aforementioned glut of weddings and birthdays have kept me lousy with cookies.

I’m looking forward to a Friday night at home, on the couch, sipping tea and recovering.

What are your non-scientific cold remedies?

Something that you love about yourself…

As self-deprecating and critical as I can be, there are a couple of things that I love about myself.

I love that I’m funny and that I’ve been able to get a laugh out of almost everyone I’ve ever met.

I love that I’m a mom. When I was entering my 20s and starting to think about how that whole marriage and parenthood thing might go down, I had no idea how it might happen for me. Turns out I just kind of tripped and fell into it, and I’m so glad that I did.

But most of all, I love that I’m tenacious. I don’t tend to think of myself as a strong person, but I know that, in general, I don’t give up.

Sometimes, I keep plugging away at something past a healthy point. Going along with my perfectionism, I often mistake an appropriate letting go point for failure. But for the most part, you can put nearly any worthy challenge in front of me and I will gut it out.

In my day job, I’ve convinced/inspired more than one person to finish their higher education when they’re at the point of quitting and I’ve never had anyone come back to me and say, “I wish I hadn’t listened to you.”

Finishing something that I start is so ingrained in me. I don’t know where it comes from. I suffered through a horrendous middle school experience because there was no way I was going to let some backwoods ignorami run me out of their school. I stayed at a ballet company where I was clearly not wanted because I had said that I would be there for a year and accepted their passive-aggressive insults with my chin up. I trudged through the harder times that the husband and I have had because I’ve known that we’re just…together. I finished college, breastfeeding while reading and studying. I finished graduate school, filling every moment of my days with work of some kind. I did Couch to 5k despite nearly dying the first few weeks. Giving up on any of these was never an option.

Day 01 Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

The MamaPop writers are all participating in this writing exercise that’s been making its way around the interwebs. I’d credit the originator of this exercise if I could figure out who it was, but I can’t, so I’m going to go ahead and credit Tom Selleck. Thanks, Tom! The full list of prompts will be at the end of this post if you wish to play along.

Day 01: Something you hate about yourself.

Funnily enough, I hate that I hate things about myself.

Well, that might not be the best description.

See, this whole debacle with the economy and the husband not being able to get an electrical engineering job sort of forced me to confront some of these feelings. I remember very clearly rocking the baby to sleep one night when he was still very small and telling him all the things that his dad and I were going to do. “We’re going to finish college and we’re going to get good jobs and we’re going to buy a nice house and have enough money to do the things that we want to do. And MAYBE we’ll get a puppy!”

Having the baby at a somewhat young age and in less than ideal circumstances lit a fire under our butts to be more determined about our future and do right by our kid. Not in any kind of material sense, but just to do everything that we could to make sure that his needs were met and that he wouldn’t be denied too much because he had unprepared parents. We faced a LOT of criticism for having the baby and absorbed many accusations/insinuations that we were cheating him out of a secure life because so much of how we came to be parents did not look good on paper. So we sort of set out to prove everyone wrong, I guess.

So I finished college. I got a job. I worked my butt off to get some promotions so that I could make more money so that I could buy our house. I killed myself through a graduate program so that I could theoretically be more marketable. And the husband finished college. And we pushed and pushed and pushed ahead, our sights always on Someday when things were going to be the way that they were supposed to.

In the meantime, I never considered, or never really believed, that our lives were pretty good, day in and day out. I can see that I was often pushing happiness away because I was mistaking it for complacency and never figured out how to work toward a goal in the future without ignoring my life in the present.

I was telling a confidant a few weeks ago that after a big heart-to-heart with the husband, I realized that I wanted to stop trying to dismiss what I have in favor of something that I perceive as better because none of that is real. My family is what’s real. And I don’t care if we’re a family in a cardboard box in an alley, just as long as we’re together and present every moment that we can be.

I have to remind myself of this a lot. I’m an all-or-nothing perfectionist, which sometimes results in some pretty spectacular things, but most of the time means that I’m disowning who I am because I’m not living up to some arbitrary ideal that I’ve set for myself.

Day 01 Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

I really need to get my driver’s license.

I’ve taken the test four times and failed each time. I can’t seem to get my mind past the fact that I hate driving, I hate obnoxious drivers, and I hate how strict they are about the test and fail me for imperfect parking but seem to just throw licenses off of a float in the middle of a parade for, like, All Jackasses’ Day. Seriously, the stuff that I see on a daily basis? There ought to be an investigation launched into the DMV.

The other main thing that’s really keeping me from just going and taking the test until I pass is that we can’t afford another car right now and if I’m driving myself to work, then the husband is without.

It’s only around times like these that I really notice how much easier life would be if I could drive.

The husband is in Detroit for a few days and my mom, who works right near me, was supposed to take me and the baby to his piano lesson and then home. But my mom came down with the flu or something and I had to call upon my mother-in-law to get us, which obviously makes me feel guilty since she has other stuff that she’s doing.

This morning, I had to catch the bus to work, which is fine, but since Port Authority did their most recent round of service cuts, the bus from my neighborhood to downtown has the most absurd morning rush hour schedule. There’s a bus at 8:07 and another at 8:41. Missing from that lineup is the bus that I used to catch at around 8:20, which would get me to work in Oakland by 9:00…maybe a few minutes after.

The problem with that is that the baby’s school bus comes at 8:16. So I have to get the 8:41 bus, which gets me to Oakland around 9:30. Or I have to deposit the baby at his bus stop and leave before he gets picked up, which I’m not comfortable doing yet. I feel like there’s probably plenty of 8-year-olds who manage such responsibilities just fine, I’m just not sure either of us is ready for that. I’d kind of feel like he was the baby in that Dave Chappelle bit where his limo driver drove him into a really sketchy area in the middle of the night and then left him waiting there for awhile.

(Some NSFW language in here.)

Well, “after” is a bit premature. And not entirely accurate. I am, by no means, done with my healthier eating and exercising. I really feel like I’ve learned a lot and am now able to make more rational decisions about what to do when the crazy, body issue voice starts shouting.

Around the time that I started grad school, my weight and health in general went completely haywire. Part of that was to be expected. I simply didn’t always have time to exercise or make the healthiest eating choices. Part of that was just coping. I found it very comforting to spend the time that I was wasn’t working, parenting, or studying curled up on the couch, watching TV, and eating whatever I felt like eating. I don’t regret it. I did, after all, survive grad school despite the odds being against me. And for all of the things that upset me about the husband and I deciding to return to school, I can’t say that I didn’t deal with it the best that I could.

But that’s over now and like I said the other day I can only work on changing the things that I can.

Around this time last year, I was reaching my heaviest weight ever, which was alarmingly close to my 9-months-pregnant weight. You know, when I had a full-grown baby inside me. I did a lot of thinking about how I really felt about that, since my kneejerk reaction was, of course, “You’re a terrible, unhealthy fat person.” That’s the body issues talking. Was I okay being that weight? Was I okay with possibly getting heavier?

At the same time, I realized something very important: I did not want to diet ever again. Never. I had been dieting off and on since I was a little girl and I had had enough. I hated feeling hungry. I hated thinking about every bite of food beyond, “Will this taste good and is it a good thing to eat?” So I started working on changing my eating little by little to an overall healthier approach and figuring out how I was going to squeeze in some exercise.

It’s been (and still is) a very slow process. I’m still figuring out how and when to get more exercise in.

Numbers-wise, I haven’t lost a ton of weight. And I’m not worrying about it. But I feel a lot better and I look differently. I think I was getting to a point where I was willing to accept the body that I had, but separated the getting healthier from my weight, if that makes sense, and wanted to see where that took me.

So, about a year ago, I posted this picture to Twitter. The occasion was that I’d had a haircut and was really not sure how I felt about it. So I took to the internet for reassurance.

My shirt was obviously working pretty hard, but I wasn’t thoroughly unhappy with how I looked. I just wasn’t very healthy.

The other day, I happened to be wearing that shirt again and decided to do a comparison. Pardon the markedly crappier hair.

I like this version of my body, too, and I think it likes me back since it doesn’t complain quite as loudly as some of the previous versions.

So, there. Progress. Interesting to see, no?

About four and a half years after Frank stood a few feet behind me, supporting me as I married the husband, I stood a few feet behind him as he married his wife. It was super cool and I felt incredibly lucky to be able to say to people who asked me that day, “Frank and I have been friends for 11 years. He was in my wedding and now I’m in his.”

It was a lovely day and it’s so life-affirming to witness the union of two people who are genuinely in love and devoted to each other. Those really are the moments that we live for, you know?

I brought my camera and thought about grabbing it a few times, but ultimately decided to leave it in my bag and just experience the day. Besides, there were professionals on hand to capture the action. I did snap a quick picture of myself in the mirror, because I wanted to make sure that my hairdo was documented.

I met up with the bridesmaids at a salon on Saturday morning and told the hairdresser that I just wanted my hair blown out straight. He nodded, then pursed his lips, then finally said, “I think we should do an up-do!” Err, okay. I was not facing the mirror for most of the ‘do’s creation, and kept getting increasingly nervous when I saw ringlets out of the corner of my eye and when the hairdresser said, “I need another can of hairspray.” Forty-two bobby pins later (I counted), I had that super cool hairdo. It went well with my dress, which was pretty retro. The husband and the baby thought I looked silly, but whatever. It was fun to play dress-up.

I was wearing a pretty hardcore foundation garment and I understood why women in the 40s, 50s, and 60s were so thin: you can’t physically eat very much of anything when the possibility of stomach expansion is simply eliminated.

The cookie table was epic. People were practically sick from eating so many and there were still hundreds left over. Relatedly, if anyone wants to come over for snickerdoodles, I have a couple dozen.

After the wedding, the husband and I went to VIA because he was slated to play records. It was a pretty cool event and it was encouraging to see so many people just out and taking in musical performances that they probably wouldn’t have given a second glance otherwise. (Shh…can you hear that? I can hear someone’s horizons broadening!)

We got to see Dam Funk perform, which was pretty cool. He and the husband chatted afterwards and are, like, BFFs now.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, my buddy Frank is getting married. The wedding is now just a few days away, which meant that it was time to bake.

Weddings in Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania in general have a pretty rad tradition: the cookie table. The cookie table is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a table piled high with cookies. The New York Times wrote about it, which officially makes it Serious Business. Traditionally, the cookies are made by friends and family members, though sometimes this task is outsourced to a bakery. Frank had asked me some time ago if I would be willing to contribute to the cookie table. I was honored and put myself down for about 30 dozen cookies.

Now, I could have done all of this baking myself, but I would have had to have started a while ago just to manage that much output from my tiny kitchen, so I was worried about freezing cookies for that long and having them taste not that swell. So, I got the idea to recruit my baking partner-in-crime, Mary, for an epic baking session much closer to the wedding.

Friday evening, Mary picked me up from work and we stopped at my house to grab my Kitchen Aid and some baking tools before heading to Costco to get our ingredients. Saturday morning, we woke up early and got right to work.

Behold…The Butter

We spent the next 8 hours churning out batch after batch, stopping only for quick bites to eat and sips of water. It was an extremely efficient operation.

The whole house smelled absolutely HEAVENLY. We had a really hard time containing ourselves in the midst of so much deliciousness.

Drool

When it was all said and done, we made somewhere in the neighborhood of 375 cookies: Mexican Chocolate Cookies, Chai Butter Cookies, and Snickerdoodles. We were going to make Pomegranate Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies, but in planning the recipes, I totally forgot that late September isn’t yet pomegranate time. So we replaced those with Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies and experimented with a small batch of Salted Dulce de Leche Cookies just to see how hard or easy they were to make. (Verdict: making the dulce de leche is a little tricky, but the results are so delicious that I don’t even care.) On Friday, I’m taking the day off of work to go to the dentist and to finish baking some of the other cookies that I felt were too delicate to freeze, namely the Salted Dulce de Leche Cookies and Pumpkin Cookies with Brown Butter Icing.

It didn’t hurt that the weather was pitch-perfect autumn weather…perfect for baking. I’ve really missed baking over the summer and can’t wait to do more of it.

All bagged up and ready to go.

Wedgie-worthy thought #1, while folded over in yoga class: “Squee! My toenail polish matches my yoga mat EXACTLY!”

Wedgie-worthy thought #2, while thinking about meals and groceries for the next few days: “Dammit, I’m out of quinoa.”

Wedgie-worthy thought #3, that I actually uttered out loud yesterday in the car: “I find lately that I’m only comfortable writing prose. Is that pretentious?”

Regarding the first two wedgies, in between episodes of morose navel-gazing, I’ve been working on my health a lot. I’ve become addicted to so-called “healthy living” blogs. I’ve been exercising at least a couple of times a week since March. And I think I’ve reached some sort of peace with food, which is a huge deal.

You’ll notice that a bulk of the links in the left sidebar are for food blogs. This tells you several things about me: that I like to cook and bake, and that food takes up a good portion of my thoughts and energy. This used to manifest itself in a number of bad ways. “Did I eat too much? Did that have too much fat in it? Should I just not eat at all today and tomorrow? To hell with it, I’m just going to eat everything in sight.”

It’s Eating Disorders 101 that people with food/body image issues who feel out of control of their lives tend to focus their control-freak energy on their bodies and this often has disastrous results. It has for me in the past. But this feels…healthier. For the first time that I can remember, I want to be healthy, not just skinny. I’m discovering a lot of joy in eating things that are good for me and it makes my occasional indulgences that much more enjoyable and way less guilt-inducing.

Some of the blogs that I’ve found really inspiring are fANNEtastic food, Kath Eats Real Food, (never home)maker, The Front Burner, and the edible perspective. Clicking on the blog rolls of any of those will take you down a rabbit hole of other, similarly awesome blogs, so check those out when you have a few hours that you can dedicate to reading (and drooling).

Inspired by these bloggers, I’ve been eating oatmeal nearly every day for breakfast for a few months and I’ve got to say that it’s been one of the best things I’ve done for myself. (never home)maker got me hooked on these Chai-Spiced Autumn Oats. I tweaked that formula a little by skipping the apple and peanut butter and replacing them with a banana. Eye-rollingly delicious. edible perspective has me making my own Maple-Roasted Cinnamon Almond Butter, which I put on my oatmeal in the morning. Unfortunately, my last batch didn’t turn out well. I used my smaller food processor which just wasn’t up for the job and ended up with a crumbly paste instead of a butter. Still tasty, though. I just have to be careful about making it when the baby is around since he’s allergic. And The Front Burner has me excited about making my own protein powder mix. I’m still assembling the ingredients, which are a somewhat heavy upfront investment. She also has a fantastic tofu tutorial.

All of those bloggers are also runners, which is also really inspiring to me. Also on my left sidebar, you’ll see my Daily Mile widget that shows what activity I’ve done that day. Yesterday, I got to show off my 3.42 mile run, which is the farthest that I’ve ever run (though there are some quick walking breaks in there, but I don’t claim to be a marathoner), and there’s usually a yoga class sprinkled in there.

I can’t make the economy better. I can’t make someone hire my totally awesome husband, who worked really hard to become an electrical engineer and is so bummed that he can’t break into that industry. I can’t wish away our student debt or our terrible kitchen. But I can take care of myself so that I’m better able to take care of my boys. So that’s what I’ll do.

Jason stood in front of me, expectantly, as I pondered my purchase. His black jacket was smudged with foundation and he smelled like cigarettes, especially when he leaned in to apply the products that I was sampling.

“I’ll take the primer, the powder, the concealer, the brushes…and the eye cream. I don’t need any moisturizer,” I said, finally.

“Great! Just meet me up at the register and we’ll get you rung up.” Jason had some odd tic where he drew his breath in sharply and quickly through his teeth every few words.

At the counter, I went through the motions of signing up for some loyalty card and dumped the free samples that I’d earned into my purse. I fingered my credit card while Jason totaled my order. I couldn’t afford all of this stuff, but I wanted it.

“Okay, Kelly, that’ll be $115 even,” said Jason cheerily as his eyes darted toward the credit card machine.

My face flushed at the total. I felt shameful about my indulgence. $115 could buy nearly two weeks of groceries. I swallowed and slid my card through the machine and signed my name on the screen as Jason made chit chat with me about my job and my life. My name stared back at me from the oddly soothing light blue screen, choppy, pixelated, and more awkward than my regular signature. It was like a cartoon of commerce.

$115 got me a small bag that barely weighed anything at all. The eye cream was the priciest item. I had asked Jason about the dark, baggy circles under my eyes and had quickly added that I’d always had them, even when I was little. I realized that I always explained this unfortunate feature of mine away before anyone suggested that I was tired, or sad, or stressed out, or melting into the earth, eyes first.

“Well, they’re hereditary,” Jason explained, which instantly made me feel a little better. It wasn’t my fault, you see. The bags weren’t there because I’d only slept a few hours a night for years or because I cried too often about things that I can’t change. “But this cream will keep that area moisturized and minimize the darkness by…” Jason droned on, spouting what I knew was probably pseudo-science dreamed up by the cosmetics industry.

My eye cream. It sounded so grown up. Of the things that I purchased that day a few weeks ago, it would turn out to be the one that I use most often. When the cream dried, it would stiffen slightly, making the skin underneath my eyes feel tighter, making me feel a little bit cured somehow.

I owned eye cream. I was someone who bought a product called, “eye cream.” This spur-of-the-moment purchase at Sephora wasn’t just a 4 ounce pump of white goo but a rite of passage.

The baby and I squinted in the morning light and I glanced down at him and winked. Up close he looked big, but he would pace a few feet away from me and I couldn’t believe how tiny he still looked.

“You look old,” he said, out of nowhere.

“Well, thanks,” I muttered.

“You do. You look old.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m not saying that to be mean.”

“Thanks.”

“Quit saying, “Thanks,” all sarcastically!”

“Well, what do you want me to say? ‘Yeah, you’re right. I’m old. Think I’ll just croak right here.'”

It wasn’t an angry conversation. I wasn’t even that hurt by his observation. The cracks in the veneer that start to show up on my people my age must look like giant canyons and vast forests of gray hairs. Everything is huge when you’re that little.