The Month in Moments: April

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      *** Here's to May flowers. 

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GGC

163/100

Once in a while I am introduced to a song that flattens me. Like... flattens. When I first heard this song (on the radio) I pulled over in the red and put on my hazards and "god, you're so dramatic, Bec. Why are you so fucking dramatic get over it so lame!" 

No thanks. 

Because you know what happened on the side of the road that afternoon? In the red zone with this song on the radio of my covered-with-birdshit minivan flashing its hazards? I got an idea for something. It was a small idea and in the larger scheme of everything, completely insignificant. But in that moment, it totally felt like something. And it was the exact something I needed.  It was an answer to a question I didn't even know I was even asking. Which is what renews my faith in signs and magic and life itself. The sort of, "keep moving forward with the stereo on and someone will tell you something..."

Well, this band did. Its words and its melody and all of the things it alluded to reminded me of a moment in time that is now something bigger. Something better. Something definitive? Maybe. Maybe not.

My point? This is why I keep sharing these songs with you guys. Music is what triggers everything for me, always has.  I've picked up many a musical instrument over the years - all of which I was never able to master and that's okay because, High Fidelity style, my ears are my instruments. I post these songs every week for those who play with a similar set of drums. 

163. Hero by: Family of the Year

GGC

in the waves and the sand and the sea

Every time you set up camp under the lone palm tree you remember what it was like to be small here and then medium, large...  You forget what size you are, now. Especially when you're home.You are on the outside looking in on the inside looking out, glass in between two left hands, get me out of here/no let me stay!

No.

Yes.

Noyesno.

Revi is on the beach with her shovel. She is alone and she is digging, squeezing at the sand and watching it fall into her lap, little hour glass. Turning the time as the tide pulls the sand out from under her, until finally, you have to pick her up and move her east toward the hill. 

Bo is on a towel with three teenaged girls. Their bikinis untied at the back --  no tan lines. You ask if it's okay for her to sit there and they say, "Oh my god, totally" except it's your voice that's coming out of their mouths. Your mouth is open and you're like, "she's so cute" and it's your voice and your triangle bikini top and your banana boat tanning oil with the broken cap. 

Never mind. It isn't yours. But you had the same one, didn't you? You totally did.

And there was that time when you and Mason drove to the end of the bluffs and made a promise to marry each other if you were still single at thirty. Five years ago this month was when he passed and you want to remember him so you go to the same place - the same parking spot and you drag your sandal against the white line and you miss him and all those days you spent tripping down the bluffs in his flip flops.

You miss this.

You miss him.

You are a ghost chaser in the mansion of your youth, your skin burning through the marine layer that hasn't cleared in fourteen years. And the skies are like walls peeling with polaroids. Even as your oldest daughter pulls your arm toward the sea.

Splash with me, Mommy. Let's run from the water together.

"I can't right now, baby. I have to watch your sisters."

This sand is your sand. This sand is my sand. This sand was made for you and me. 

But it feels like your sand. It feels like your entire story is here somewhere. This beach is your history. You started your period here. You bled through your bikini bottoms and kissed Robbie by the lifeguard tower. You bit his tongue and wrote a poem about it. You wore Nate's sweatshirt to the bonfire party where everyone got drunk on Zimas and you walked to Meredith's house - slept in her treehouse with the boys throwing rocks to come in, woke up with beach cruisers against your hands. 

You hate it here and you love it here and you want to go back in time and you want to never EVER return. You are the girl who likes the taste of blood even when it makes you sick. You revisit boxes full of memories for this reason. You listen to Fade Into You on a loop, parked outside your parents' driveway and text Kendra "remember when" and you FEEL it, man. You feel that shit like whoa.

You download Bad Religion and google "fimo beads" and write, at night, about what it meant to grow up on this beach. Because of the ghosts. Because of the blood and the kiss and the ghosts. 

You recently thought of the post you wrote, years ago, just after Fable was born - you were chasing and running from the same silhouettes back then, not that you ever really stopped. It's impossible to look away from all the accidents even when the roads have long been cleared and traffic is once again moving at full speed.

Take the long way to school. Listen to CDs. 

But maybe you were wrong about that. Everyone keeps saying "don't look back" but you disagree. If all those years spent in history classes taught you anything it's that in order to move forward we have to study what it took to get us here. We are the beach. We are the sand that was once rock. The sea that was once ice. The crabs that have always been crabs. We are the waves our children run from and toward with the same fearlessness.  They're just waves. 


And you're in the sand and you're sitting with the teenaged girls and your teen-monthed girls and this is where it all started. On towels with bikini strings untied. In waters so cold you couldn't feel your feet. You ran anyway. You ran full speed into the tide and held your breath, even when the waves took you down. This is where it all started. For me and him and him and them...  in the waves and the sand and the sea. Where towels can't help but be wet with sand. Where the tide is high and low and then high again.

We are the beaches upon which our children pull and drag and dig and swallow us whole. It's only natural to want to go back to where it all began. To try to remember what it felt like to kiss with tongue rings and bike uphill with no gears.

"Five minute warning," you tell them.

But ten minutes pass and you're still there.

You are there and they are here and everything looks the same from the beach. The sky and the sea and the lone palm tree with its hair in the wind. Unchanged.

Backwards and forwards, you go, like the pull of the tide, colliding with rocks before being sucked out to sea. That is the way of the shoreline. There is push and there is pull and there is nothing in between.  

You realize this as you watch your children hold hands and chase each other through the tide and how you can't tell whether they're running away or toward you. 

It doesn't matter, you think, as long as they're holding hands.

GGC

for the love of hand-me-downs (sponsored & giveaway)

The following post is sponsored by Moxie Jean, an online consignment store for children. 

We recently got rid of all of Archer's old baby clothes. Well, most of Archer's old baby clothes. I allowed myself one bin's worth of some of my favorite shirts, pants and pajamas, in hopes that when our kids eventually have cousins, we can pass some of them on. I say "some" because I intend to save the favorites of the favorites for my kids' kids. (Hal's mom saved some of Hal's baby clothes and Archer was able to wear them when he was a baby. Sigh...)

Archer (7 months) in Hal's sweatshirt.

Other than a small variety of Hal's childhood clothes, Archer never wore hand-me-downs. We didn't have any friends with children and our local consignment situation was virtually non-existent. Same situation when Fable was born. That was, until, a child's consignment shop hatched around the corner from our house and I started shopping there pretty much exclusively, saving all of Fable's baby clothes for a "potential" third child. Ahem. Which was very smart of me because Bo and Revi wear all of Fable's hand-me-downs. And yet... every few months, I remove a new set of "gently used" too small clothes to pass down to friends and/or consign in exchange for new (old) clothes. And it's all very emotional because this is it. But it's also exciting because passing things on is what life's all about.

"Godspeed, little sweaters! May you be cherished, cuddled, kept and then passed on..."

Most of my wardrobe is a hand-me-down from someone. I wear my great grandmothers' jewelry and my Nana's boots and my Grandmother's coat. But mostly I wear clothes that once belonged to strangers. They're the things in my closet that bring me most joy and because of that, more compliments... because I feel happy and beautiful and interesting wrapped up in the whispers of other women's stories. And, yes, I realize that sounds very "peace sign necklace" but it's true.

I feel the same with my kids' clothes. I love that they get to trample around in the clothes of children who trampled before them.... dresses that shall continue trampling! Jumpers that will jump again!

Which is why I was so excited to sit down to write this post, today. Because consignment is my favorite way to shop and it's how we've been shopping since Fable was a baby and how I've been shopping since forever and not only is it awesome on the environment, but swell on the wallet AND perhaps most importantly, flattering to the soul. And clothes should flatter the inside of a person I think. (Fable taught me that one.)

"closet family" by: Fable

I was given $50 toward Moxie Jean to shop and, of course, went (ahem) over budget because I (ahem) stumbled into the "designer room" and everything was gorgeous and story-like and I am a sucker. Well worth it though, because these are the pieces I chose and they are my new favorites (well, close second after WWW and Grandma Susan's homemade pieces.)

Bo in a little smocked #

This screamed "REViiiiiiiiiiiii" when I first saw it:
Just like this screamed "BOHHHHH"
Soso Bobo.

And these are the ones currently for sale that I am obsessed with oh good gracious wow. 

And also these for boys I mean THIS WHAT I AM DYING RIGHT NOW WHO HAS A TODDLER SON PLEASE BUY THIS AND THIS and I am now pasting all of my favorite boy things right here because I am so in love and it's so hard to find boy stuff that rocks and holy delicious, dudes...

!!!!!!!!!!!

I mean. This will never stop blowing my mind.
I just fell out of my chair and onto the ground and now I am on the ground. 

One of the four pieces I bought is too big for Bo and Revi to wear just yet but I couldn't resist. Layered over a sailor dress, perhaps? I can't wait.

Actually that's not true. I can wait.

I am happy to be waiting.

I am in no rush for anyone to grow out of anything just yet. But when they do... we'll do what we did for Archer. We'll box a giant tupperware of our favorite pieces and give the rest away. And it will be heartbreaking and a little bit wonderful, too. Like giving away memories... only to welcome new ones in their place.

Moxie Jean is giving away (one) $50 Moxie Jean credit to a GGC reader. To win? Tell me about your most memorable childhood ensemble. Mine was a very fancy dress with a built-in heart-purse with rhinestones on it and shoulder-pads. Behold: 

I'll pick one winner at random next Thursday, May 2nd. In the meantime, you can shop Moxie Jean here (25% off and free shipping on orders over $50 between now and May 31st! Code: GGC25 at register) and/or find out how to sell your children's gently worn clothes by going here.

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UPDATED: Congrats to Gianni for winning the $50 credit to Moxie Jean! And thanks to all of you for  sharing your stories on this post. Lovely, all. 

GGC