Glory Days...

Lately, these girls and I have been living like it’s 1993. It’s pretty glorious.

We have hit the pinnacle of the Brenda/Dylan/Kelly triangle. For context, the Joy of the early 90s loved Dylan and Brenda, and pretty much hated this triangle for ruining what seemed a perfect, if intense, high school romance. (There is an early Brenda/Dylan scene that I adored where Dylan smashes a huge flower urn, causing Brenda to flee, and he chases after her and apologizes-this scene encapsulated to me exactly what I wanted in a boyfriend, someone with tons of spit and cuss but who directed only love at me. This explains so much. But I’ll leave it at that.)

The girls, on the other hand, really love Kelly, and have basically since we started watching. So I was anxious to see their reaction. This has been Betsy’s, “I like Kelly better with Dylan. But Dylan should break up with Brenda instead of going between the two.”

Goodness. On one hand, I am so ridiculously proud of her for realizing that it is Dylan who is basically the louse in this situation. On the other, I am like, why did I never see that it wasn’t necessary for these best friends to get into a catfight over this boy, when he could have just been honest with both of them?

My girls are forever teaching me all the things.

Things I’m loving right now:

The Oscars always make me happy. I love watching the pretty clothes, I love the celebration of movies because I am a complete movie geek, even if I haven’t seen most of the movies that they are talking about. I don’t believe at all in the actual awards themselves-the best movie is just the movie that you liked the best. For me last year that was Mary Poppins Returns. But I absolutely loved Olivia Coleman’s acceptance speech, because it seemed so genuinely off the cuff. I loved Spike Lee because I think Do The Right Thing is a work of art and I’m glad that he worked in a reference to it. And I love Lady Gaga because, as I told the girls, I don’t want to live in a world where there isn’t a Lady Gaga.

Bob Costas, Unplugged

This read is incredible and important. I have had a crush on Bob Costas for most of my life, and this article confirms all of my impressions-he is a thoughtful, intelligent person sportscaster who isn’t afraid to ask hard questions.

"I am not a Howard Cosell at the end of his career deciding he doesn't like boxing," Costas says. "I decided long ago that I had misgivings about football, and I tried to use the forum they gave me to make those points. They gave me bits and pieces, but eventually they took those bits and pieces away from me."

1993, by the way, was a fabulous year in my life. I was 14 years old, with a world full of dreams still to live and boys still to love (I will forever love Tommy Werner with all of the love of a girl convinced that love is slow dancing to Everything I Do, I Do It For You at a middle school dance).

Of Flowers and Dreams and True, True Love...

I’m glad it’s February 15th.

I know plenty of people who hate Valentine’s Day, people who are happily married or in a relationship, and who just don’t want to celebrate because of an arbitrary date on the calendar. I know plenty of people who do enjoy Valentine’s Day, and love getting flowers and candy and jewelry and what have you. And I know loads of people for whom Valentine’s Day is mostly about making a Valentine box with their kids.

But mostly what Valentine’s Day has been to me since I was about 13 years old is this girl who is sitting in her ninth period class (the end of the day) and watching as what seems like every single girl in the room received flowers and balloons and stuffed animals. And even though I knew that none of the office aides was going to bring me a bouquet of roses, my heart leapt every single time that maybe, just maybe, I had a secret admirer and this flower arrangement was meant for me.

When I was in college, I had several professors who very kindly took an interest in my writing and who encouraged me to submit and look beyond life in Rix Mills, and while I still treasure that they liked my writing, I knew that wasn’t the life that I was looking for. The life that I wanted seemed a million miles away-I had no idea at all how to flirt, how to date, how to be anything but awkward. So, when I was 21 years old, and I met this boy who seemingly looked beyond all the backward, shy but loud, strange girl I was and asked me to marry him, it was-I have said this before-it felt like winning the lottery to me. I had a best friend who bought me flowers for no reason at all- I often told people, "Nick may not be perfect, but he is perfect for me."

I relished being a wife and a stay at home mom. As I tend to do, I tried to be the ultimate-I did *all the things* and I made sure that everyone was eating healthy and slathered in sunscreen and never, never watched too much television. I read all the books. I tried my best.

Being a single mom has taken a lot of practice. I’m not who I used to be at all. It’s disconcerting, becoming someone new. There are lots of bits of me that are much better in this new version-I’m more patient, I say yes much more often than no, I listen a lot more than I talk. The girls and I watch old 80s television shows at night and more often than not eat junk food that would never have been allowed from the Old Joy. The girls have seen me fall apart, and so I really saw no reason to act like I know all of the answers. I’m grown up enough to know that life is about more than just doing all the right things, that love is about more than flowers and gifts, and that I have absolutely no idea what I am doing.

So, I’m all of these people on the inside-I’m that girl hoping for a boy to give her flowers, and I’m that woman who knows that no matter how many flowers someone gives you over the course of a lifetime, if they don’t respect you, then ultimately it doesn’t matter.

I hold these two contradictions tight and pray and try my absolute best to believe that somehow I’m not too damaged to win that lottery all over again.

An ending...

The rabbit died.

Anakin Midnight Kimchi Watson Johnson, who was tremendously loved by his owner and her sister, brought much joy into our house when he came home on Valentine’s Day in 2016. He asked for little, and brought us so much.

In February of 2016, my divorce became final. As we all know, I was consumed inside of a grief that truly threatened to eat me alive. Into this life came this bunny. Honestly, Anakin came to us because I just couldn’t deny Betsy anything at that point-I didn’t have any strength to tell the girls no. (They enjoyed this version of me.)

I had no idea how to care for a rabbit. But the three of us learned. Anakin represented a new chapter in our lives, the one that involved only the three of us. We built his outdoor cage all by ourselves, we played with him and learned to protect our feet around him because he did like to chew on our toes.

Anakin was meant to be for Betsy and Felicity. He was meant to be their pet, he was meant to make up for the fact that their dad had left and their mom had fallen apart and the world that they knew didn’t exist anymore.

He did all of that.

In addition, though, he gave me a reason to get up when the girls were gone. I have come to realize that the most wonderful thing about pets is that they simply do not know that you are barely holding it together, they don’t know that you feel about 2 inches tall and full of such anxiety about the future that you are merely existing minute to minute.

Anakin brought joy into our lives at a time that joy felt long ago and far away.

He will be much missed.