A Non-becoming

When I was seven, perhaps, eight years old, I wanted to be a mermaid.

I wanted a fish-tail, gorgeously encased in blues, greens, oranges, and golds. I wanted hair that fluttered in the wind, violet eyes as deep as the sea, and a world that breathed underwater.

Now that I’m 25, I remember why I stopped wanting to be a mermaid. Mermaids live so much longer than humans, and there is only one Atlantis. After I have discovered all the hidden worlds of the sea, what then?

Not Lying to my Yahoo

People who suffer from frequent memory lapses shouldn’t try to be funny or corky when they sign up for accounts OF ANY NATURE.

Months back, I got locked out of several email accounts I keep; yes, several, because I used to keep one for each of the personalities in my head. Google and Yahoo have this nifty password retrieval feature that has you answer a security question you devised yourself. There’s a reason you should give a straight answer to a straight question. There’s every possibility you will forget your password, so your question should be one you couldn’t possibly forget the answer to. In my case, however, the questions weren’t the problem; the answers are.
What term of endearment does your husband use on you?
I tried yab, uyab, mygirl, gwapa, gorgeous, wunderkind, goddess, cupcake, and all the self-serving nicknames I believed it reasonably possible I’d inspire any man - most of all the one I married - to say. All of them bounced.

What is your second name?
I have only one: Joy. My birth and baptismal certificates read ********. Yahoo doesn’t acknowledge this, however, so I can only surmise I gave myself a second name I couldn’t go ask my father for.

What are you most likely to mumble upon waking up?
I tried Leche Monday na pud, Kapuya uy, Alex, and Turn that alarm off. I channeled Maya Angelou and typed, But still I rise. Not surprisingly, none of them gained me inbox entry.

My goal of tightening security worked. There’s no way anyone could steal my password. Not only don’t I remember my password, I also don’t know the answer to my own security questions. I am effing brilliant, so being unable to read my emails shouldn’t bother me at all, should it? After all, there’s no way I could have won any lottery I didn’t buy tickets for, no way at all an aunt bought me a ticket to London and decided to spring the surprise on me via email, no way on earth the CEO would email me he’s doubling my salary and dispatching me to a conference in a sleepy little Italian village with real cobblestoned streets.

For months, it ate at me - ate at me like you wouldn’t believe - that I would never get to find out what was filling up my inbox. What hurt the most wasn’t so much reality but the possibility that while I was locked out of my accounts, something wonderful - perhaps even magical - was on its way to me by mail. I ached physically and mentally with unrealized surprise.

Then, one day, during one of those rare moments when I think eating free lunch is well worth the tedium of washing my plate, I remembered my passwords, remembered the answers to my security questions. I hurriedly checked all three mails in question and found them overflowing with promises of a larger penis and fantabulous riches in Rwanda.

Oh, and in the off-chance you’re curious about the questions, the answers are: beloved, nefertiti, and did gyre and wimble in the wabe - all in that order, and none of them true.

I Need Drugs, Demmit!

I’m at home when I should be at work because I’ve asthma and skin asthma, and I have both because I’ve allergic rhinitis, and no one - not my gyno, not one of the three eents I’ve seen, not the hub, or the aunt I regularly run to for prescriptions and medical advice - will give me medication. 

You’re three months pregnant, said the bearded old goat who kept me and at least six other patients waiting for an hour. I need to err in the side of caution and not give you anything. 

No medication? No medication? I looked at him incredulously. Doc, I need medicines. Look at me! My sinuses are blocked. I sneeze and wheeze and tear up regularly, and now my eyes are swollen, and my face is all red from the itching. I’ve had allergic rhinitis since 2004; it always, always triggers my asthma and skin asthma.

Well, if you can get your obegyne to say yes, you can try Virlix. Virlix is no Nasonex, but it might help.  

I left the clinic much sicker than when I’d entered it. When I arrived, I had the certainty of a cure to look forward to. By the time I left, I was still the same kind of sick; but I was pissed, and frustrated, and close to tears, and all those made me feel a great deal worse.

Thankfully, my obegyne is a resourceful woman. She mulled over the problem and came up with a clever solution. I have asthma and skin asthma because my allergic rhinitis sets them off. I cannot take medication for them because my allergic rhinitis only responds to corticosteroid, an absolute no-no for moms-to-be. Because I couldn’t take medication, I couldn’t sleep or rest. As a result, my blood pressure plummeted, I’m back to being severely anemic, and contractions occur with greater frequency. Her solution? A relatively safe sleeping pill that can double as an antihistamine and house arrest until further notice. 

So now, I’m at home when I should be at work. The asthma, skin asthma, allergic rhinitis, and contractions notwithstanding, I’m a cheerier camper because I finally have drugs to knock me out when the sneezing, wheezing, itching, and cramping get too much.

If you know of any store that sells body parts, please, call me stat. 

Go, Wander in Wonder

Things that slip by without you really noticing: water, dead leaves, cars, time, the pages of a very riveting story, sensations, hope, workdays, people you’ve loved for so long you no longer remember when you first loved them or why.

Sometimes, it’s simple to say goodbye to these things, and sometimes it’s just so hard, and sometimes, you feel raw with the blinding need to hold them close and keep them from slipping loose.

You know these things that slip by without your noticing them are the things that make up a life. In fact, you could still remember a time when everything and everyone around you had been so huge, so amazing, so wonderful. Once, you thought the water that trickled in between fingers was the liquid that kept everything alive. Once, dead leaves were the fronds you wished upon and scrawled verses on. Once, cars had been those amazing little machines that could traverse secret highways and an enchanted underpass. And once, not too long ago, his laugh was the sound that drew unicorns, vanquished fears, and healed wounds.

Then, one day, everything just shrank. You grew up, grew older, and things began to fit your grasp. You understood how the laws of the universe worked; and wonder started seeping out of your life.

It would be so much easier if you could remember the stillness and the wonder. Instead, what you remember are your mistakes, the precise science of the universe, the dust that lined your shoes when you stumbled, and the lines that now line your face.

Child of the world and all broken things, this is then the task you must force upon yourself. Find magic however way you can. Recognize beauty wherever you see it. While you are of dust, bone, and human fragility, you are also a walking, breathing marvel. You are made of kindness and luminescence; and randomly, you are capable of beauty.

Go, wander in wonder.

Firsts

She was the very picture of firstness: barely-contained excitement spilling into her features, words stumbling over each other in an effort to describe what will happen when she starts school come April 14. "I’ll bring my Strawberry Shortcake bag, and my lunchbox, and all my pencils."

"You should bring your notebook, too."

"Yes, and my phone so you can call me."

"You will have to wake up early so you won’t be late for school."

"Of course! But won’t Charlie miss me?"

I had to smile at that one. "Not yet. She’s inside mom’s tummy; she won’t even know you’re in school."

My daughter, at four, will soon learn one of life’s biggest lessons. No matter what happens between the today and someday, we never forget out firsts. There will always be something new, poignant, and shiny about firsts that time and a series of disappointments cannot crease or wrinkle. We pack them away in between carefully folded sheets of memories so that we can unwrap them in later years and think about each one with absolute clarity. 

Today, I’m twenty-five. I’ve had so many firsts I sometimes forget where I’ve stashed them in my mind. Wouldn’t it be wonderful - wouldn’t it be just - to be seventy or eighty and finally have the time to sort through all of them with careful hands?