In about 20 minutes I’m going to tell my 4-year old he can’t play outside today. I don’t think I’ll have to duck my head to avoid projectile matchbox cars, but he’s not going to be happy.

With the heat and house being smack in the middle of a valley-I welcome our first Dangerous Air Quality day of the summer. I have no energy to pack up these kids and head to the coast, and I really don’t want to see yet another animated feature.

The homemade playdough is so two weeks ago and there are not enough Spongebob’s in a day to keep us sane. My next best idea was the zoo-but as it turns out Griffith Park is on fire.

I’m not kidding.

It can be exhausting to live in Los Angeles. Maybe we can all don oxygen masks and go in the pool? How about a nice space helmet? With fire retardant PJ’s, of course.

Help.

I have an unnatural radish obsession. I really think its some unhealthy, mental statement my inner child makes to my outer mother.

Yeah, I’m confused too, but let me explain.
Years and years and years ago, when Madonna had no children and Ricky Schroder was hanging on my rainbow-ed bedroom walls, I watched some odd tv show, or movie, or something, adapting a fairytale. I don’t think it was Rapunzel. I don’t think it was the Princess and the Pea. It was one of those C-List fairy tales that you didn’t see very often.

There was a young couple living in some cottage. The wife was played by some actress I would recognize, but always got confused with Liza Minnelli or that woman who does all the voice overs for Playhouse Disney and was the secretary on Moonlighting. Anyway, the wife was pregnant and had cravings. The dutiful husband would go out with his brown sack and try and cater to his ready-to-give-birth bride.

One night, late, late one night, the wife requested radishes. She HAD to have radishes. And one bushel (yes, bushel, because it was that kind of fairy tale) would not due. She needed to eat hundreds and hundreds of radishes until she gave birth.

Of courses, as in any good story, our main characters had like NO money and NO hope and NO real luck. UNTIL the husband stumbled upon some field that seemed to grow nothing but the radishes his wife craved.

From then on it gets really foggy for me. I know there was a baby born and some troll that ultimately owned that radish farm. I think the couple had to give up the baby to the troll, but I’m not entirely sure. Maybe they just hired a good lawyer.

Point being, it got stuck in my head that pregnant women should crave radishes. Nevermind I didn’t actually crave anything during either of my two pregnancies, I still made myself eat radishes. I was supposed to crave them. So all fat and hungry I would crunch on a few radishes, somehow thinking that nasty troll would show up and try to take my baby, despite knowing the nasty troll wasn’t coming. Ever.

I ate my radishes through both of my pregnancies. I crunched and gnawed and nibbled, like I was fulfilling some childhood fantasy. It was if I had promised myself at 10-years old “when you are all pregnant you WILL eat radishes” because you KNOW us girls fantasize about what it will be like to be pregnant. What our wedding will look like. What our husband will look like, etc. I was simply making good on a deal I made with myself way back when.
So today I sit on my parent’s Florida patio, eating radishes. I actually had a craving for them today. No, I’m not pregnant…but I’m still crunching them and rubbing my belly and looking at my kids. 32-years old and I’m sitting here reliving some childhood thought.

The truth is, I do stuff like this all the time. I don’t think my mind works very, um, normally (there are those who know me well reading this right now saying “yeah, we know, you’re CRAZY” and shaking their heads) at least if it does work normally-does anyone else ever talk about these nutty little thoughts and things our minds do?

I guess I just have an active imagination. Always daydreaming and then sneaking those daydreams into real life.

So today i was a pregnant, fairytale wife. Crunching radishes and waiting for a troll. Looking at my kids and wondering what little stories are embedding in their cute heads. Of all the things they see and hear and do daily, which little story will stick in their head until adulthood? What little quirk will remain with them forever, after something innocuous as a make believe story on the tv one night?

I wish I had the ability to pick those moments. To comb through their little minds and pluck out the things they should just forget and drive deeper the images and sounds and stories that will stick with them into adulthood.

I’d like to think as a parent I’m in control of those snippets of life. I am, afterall, the one who monitors what they watch and what they eat. Who the talk to, what they learn.

It’s never enough and at the same time too much. I can’t tell them what to remember and what to forget, I can’t censor what their mind’s eye sees. I can only stare in wonder at what comes out. This entire idea is also reminding me to do my best and NOT judge years from now when they are eating radishes on my patio and daydreaming.

i guess you are never too old for make-believe.

Someone once told me a story, about these little jars…glass jars with corked tops..that women would use to collect their tears in while their loves were away at sea or at war or on a journey.

Tears are heavy. Tears are symbolic. Tears are the mind, body, and soul’s way to express what can’t be said. Pure emotion and love in a tiny glass vase, worn around the neck, tapping close to the heart as a battle is won, a discovery is made, a destiny reached.
The tiny jars are overflowing today. 18 months of pure emotion and love are pouring out of me with abandon. I can feel.
So here I am, exactly one week into Paxil withdrawal, filling up millions of imagined tear jars. They cover my counters and my shelves and my floor. They tink, tink, tink, as I clear room to make my way through this week.
They are all labeled. One for loves lost. One for friends found. One for coffee spilled. One for the laundry I must fold. One for things I should have done. One for people I never met. One for the stain on my rug. One for the baby books I should have kept. One for the coat I’m glad I bought. One for the game I should have won. One for the shampoo I ran out of. One for the socks I can’t match. One for babies I did not have. One for the men I love. One for the women I adore. One for the garden I need to tend.
The jars are clinking and cluttering my mind as I shake off the cobwebs. Tears have never come easy to me. Tears have never been a release. Tears were always messy, intense, and weak.
A river release is underway and I’m letting it flow through my life freely. It’s a temporary river, this I know. A few more days, maybe a week, and the seasonal stream will be gone.

I don’t fear these tears. I don’t have any ill will toward the jars collecting. I’m laughing and pouting my way through this chemical chaos, and I have no doubt I’ll emerge to sweep those tiny jars off my counters and tables with a crash…maybe saving a few to remind me where I was-but not before defiantly crunching them into the ground.