electric boogaloo

They’re driving you crazy lately. It’s okay, I know.

You like things in life that are simple, quiet, mellow, funny, organized, and meaningful.
Everything that little bitty kids do is complicated, noisy, boisterous, dramatic, messy, and pointless.

They dump things on the floor. They fight for no reason. They pretend not to hear us, or each other, or the very laws of physics. They climb and jump on the furniture. They spin while they talk. They are full speed, full volume, full energy, FULL ON. Sometimes the excitement goes until late into the night, and sometimes starts way too early in the morning.

So why do you love them so much? Why are you hugging Graham right this second while I type? Why do you check the weather every weekend to see if you can take Nicolaus fishing, even though he’s going to be an ungrateful grump afterwards? It’s hot outside, you burn easily – you don’t have to teach them to swim or take them to check on the vegetable garden on the roof before work.

I wish there was a way to get to my point without sounding so negative. But my POINT, are you still with me? My point is that you are amazing and awesome because you still want to spend time with us. You arrange everything around spending time with your boys. You have pretty much given up studio art because jewelry studios aren’t safe places for your kids. Yeah, you could have a locked studio but then you’d be locked away from us for hours every day. No good. You’re looking for a job closer to home so you won’t have to leave as early or get home as late, and in the meantime you jump at every chance to come home early so you can have dinner with us outside and read them stories before bed. Why? We are so obnoxious to be with.
All I can figure is, that is some seriously awesome love right there.

And/or my parents paid you to marry me, and are continuing to funnel money into your secret account. Either way, thank you.

This part is from Nicolaus…
A poem about my Daddy
One day he was walking in the woods
and he saw a snake.
He picked it up.
It was alive. It looked like corn underneath it, and he realized
that a cornsnake would attract all the other animals to it.
Because if you see a cornsnake you suspect that there might be lots of food.
He knew it would attract whole families of corn eaters: deer and squirrels and even chipmunks, with small innocent-looking bodies.
It could also attract carnivorous birds that might enjoy eating a cornsnake.
And all these animals in one place were going to attract - what?
Hunters.
So he did the best thing.
He picked up the snake and he brought it home,
to save all the other animals.
And then we bought a farm with cornfields,
and he went back to the woods and caught all of the cornsnakes,
brought them home, and let them go on our farm
where they ate all the mice and lived in the corn.