Nevergirl’s

Hi,

You really should stop reading my blog. Or well, you can go on reading it but please don’t think it relates to any pattern you know or truth you recognize. It does not. Everything here is random–the inhale before a laugh, a semi-colon plunked rudely somewhere in a sentence, a blind leap into a time of day I’d most likely have forgotten if I hadn’t written it down. It’s all noise: silly, ridiculous, senseless noise.

“In life,” says Diego Marchi, “we all have an unspeakable secret, an irreversible regret, an unreachable dream, an unforgettable love.”

Well, you won’t find any of that here.

Let me know when you want to go looking, though, so I can draw you a map to where I keep mine.

Don’t hog all of the blanket tonight, love!

An abrasive is anything that is rough and can be used to clean surfaces. They should expand that definition to include other abrasives like, say, absence. Or distance. Or indifference. Those three are abrasives too, in more ways than you would like to know. I’ve been away, and I’ve been somewhere but the absence is as much physical as it is something else. I am more away, less here. I don’t know how to call this absence, exactly, except that today, I woke up certain that while I shall always, always wish you well, I can walk out of the door without looking back.

One day, distance. Some day, forgetting.

Let’s be friends.

Dear Head,

Before anything else, I want you to know I appreciate you. I appreciate you better than weight loss pills, I think, because those aren’t always reliable — and I even suspect some contain nothing but chalk!

I appreciate you because no matter what the weather, you sit faithfully on top of these frail shoulders, keeping my gray matter in place, holding up my eyewear, growing hair… and all other important things heads are supposed to do.

I know I made things difficult for you, what with the concussions, broken noses, odd nasal ailments, bad haircuts and even worse dye jobs I’ve sustained. I ran you into car doors, cupboard corners, bedroom windows, tree branches, walls, and tables more times than any appendage is reasonably expected to endure. I tormented you 24/7 with sinuses so frayed they make my pambahay shirts look absolutely new! Those sinuses would be a torment to anyone – dripping when they should be dry, making odd clickety noises as the weather changes. I’m sure you remember those three times doctors stuck a camera up my sinuses, just to see why they’re trying to take over the archipelago.

Yes, I appreciate you — but I don’t appreciate my sinuses. They’re always whimpering and whining and post-nasaling and making me look like a female Cyrano Bergerac. Can you have a chat with my sinuses, please, and tell them to stop throwing such horrific tantrums? It’s not helping the two of us any.

Thank you.

… who visits this page constantly, hoping that I have written something new.

I know we have rough patches here and there, in every possible size and shape imaginable, and it doesn’t help that you’re married to me — the last woman on earth who can be that little wife on the prairie. But, I want you to know that aside from constantly thinking about getting you new clothes, new shoes, a new haircut, and social security disability, I’m also constantly thinking that true love is crazier and harder than most things in life, except perhaps, for cracking open coconuts. And, I’m glad we have that.

The past three weeks must have been one of the craziest in couple-kind, what with the kids and the help getting sick, and Alex and I taking turns at the nebulizer. I bet you’ve lost count of the times we went to the doctor these past three weeks alone. We must have gone, what? A total of eight times?

BUT, you held on, and even found the strength to watch the complete first season of Desperate Housewives with me. I hope you don’t change, and I hope we don’t drive you mad. Being the only male in a house with 6 females must be maddening, especially because

• nanny no. 1 never runs out of conspiracy theories
• nanny no. 2 either doesn’t hear what you say or pretends not to hear it so she doesn’t have to do it
• sister no. 1 goes running to you for answers over every little thing (from what to wear to which brand of napkin works best)
• daughter no. 2 hates eating
• daughter no. 1 would rather not stop eating
• and your wife thinks the two of you should watch Oprah together, to improve your EQ as a couple.

But, just so you know, we all think you’re super, and that there’s nothing you can fix, and that the house will always be the safest place on earth with you in it. The journey ahead may be anything but graceful and quiet BUT I do know it will be interesting.

Crayola in the laundry, meals flying onto walls, stints with the nebulizers at 2am, bubblegum in pencil boxes, children who eat anything, children who eat anything but vegetables, burnt meals when you’re most hungry, little girls with uneven bangs, waking to laughter and a toddler who decides to make a bongo of your face—what say you to a couple years more of these?