Being Girly's Gonna Make Me Itch

Whadda y'all think?  Too girly?  I'm gonna put a black tank top on under it, black pants, flat black shoes and I'm good to go, right?  Ruffles, lace, and all, my concession to dressing up for this very special occasion which is Daniel's wedding.  Oh wait, I'll wear it to Jordan's wedding this weekend too.  I'm set. Yes, I'll brush my hair and put on lipstick

It'll hang loosely and not make me feel all bound up and compressed in clothes.  I'm at the age where I hate it for the clothes to rein me in.  "Don't touch me," I wanna hiss at my fairly pathetic wardrobe.

"Look Mom, I know you're a tough chick and all that, but I don't really want you riding MARTA alone," Daniel had told me, when I said I'd jump on it from the east side of Atlanta, and meet him down at the stadium versus me driving all the way to his apartment in Vinings.

MARTA goes through some rough areas but I don't wear jewelry, don't have to carry a pocketbook, don't look very prosperous.  My phone and debit card can be in my pocket.

Good thing I'd listened to him though, as I was absolutely clueless about the Breeze pass, nor having to get off at Five Points, walk through Underground Atlanta to jump on the Braves Shuttle Bus.  Even having him with me I still stood up too fast and cracked my head loudly on the overhead shelf and then got ridiculously hung up in the exit gate as well.

Sometimes you just can't take me anywhere.  Fortunately Daniel is very accustomed to my moving faster than my feet'll go movements.

I stood outside last night harvesting the rest of the oregano, picking 20 pounds of peppers to take to Sarah's house after I made more Fire Hot Pepper Sauce, thinking to myself how much I love this land where we live.  Peppers thrive in droughts.

Nurse Faye had called me to come get Martin who'd had his legs knocked out from under him in P.E. class by 'that El Salvadoran in JoJo's grade' as if that meant something to me.  "I hope he didn't crack his growth plate there," Nurse Faye, opined until I told her he's nearly 19 now.

He clearly was limping and hurting, we iced it, I took him home and gave him Ibuprofen, he feels much better this morning and is heading off to school.  I don't care if he wants the dark-skinned Justin Bieber hair do, it's his hair, he can call the shots.  Like I said, he's almost 19.

And dadgum, my first son, my oldest son, the super sweet natured Sergio turns 31 today, 1500 miles away in a different time zone, I'm not gonna wake him up this early, I'll call him later.

I have loved every single minute of being his mother and Martin's mom too.  Martin was a month shy of his 4th birthday when he moved in so many years ago, saddled with some older siblings with severe emotional issues, indeed one has just gotten out of prison recently. Martin's been a dream son.  Other than just a few door-slamming incidents, tears, and raised voices in the past 14 years, we've had an excellent relationship.  I truly love him very, very much and I pray he finds a woman as sweet as he is someday.

He came here in the first week of 1999, missing all of his front baby teeth.  "I can't tell if they were knocked out or pulled out," our dentist told me, because three years olds don't randomly lose their baby teeth.  Their foster mom had both toddlers, he and Tony, on clonedine because she said they were hyper.  No, they were over-medicated just to give her some relief, toddlers are supposed to be very active.  Initially scared out of his ever loving mind, Martin quickly became very bonded and an integral family member.  Without those suppressive and oppressive meds, his personality bloomed beautifully.

I'd held him back after first grade, but not before tons of agonizing deliberation.  Back then I still thought like a public school teacher and not like a mom of a traumatized son.  If I had a do-over, there are about ten more kids I wish I would've held back, as I now know it would've given them another year in which to mature and recover.

Martin's teacher back then was a friend of mine, and both of us were afraid he'd take it as a failure to be held back, but it has turned out to be a great decision we'd made.

There's all sorts of studies nowadays regarding our education system not being up to par for boys and their unique learning styles and needs, our dropout rate as a society is abysmal, our failure rate staggering.  Factor in trauma and other emotional issues and there's a recipe for oops.

I haven't read it yet, gotta find it at a yard sale - remember I live in a county full of UGA professors, I find superb books to read for a buck each.

Sergio was in elementary school back then, very, very confused, and utterly grief-stricken having endured a disrupted adoption, severely traumatized, but I then didn't understand all of trauma's ramifications.  Heck fire, that was 22 years ago, it's only recently that research has been done on early childhood trauma.

Charley, a therapist who has also helped us over the years, told me of having to passionately argue trauma as a valid ingredient in counseling with her superiors.  Seriously?  Oh my.

Another reason for me to constantly remain close to home, ( thus and via my own trauma issues) I so often have to be called up to the schools.  That past Friday night, when I was in Atlanta, had me scrambling for a 'next in charge in case of an emergency.'  It couldn't be Grandma as she was needed for babysitting, and Sarah had Tabby, while Yolie was in another town working an adoption home visit.

"It's gotta be you," I had told Sarah, who'd have to just take Tabby and Hazel with her if needed.  Her husband, Preston, and Ray were off the coast of Georgia, with Preston's dad, for several days of deep sea fishing.

Fortunately it was an uneventful night, Yolie's sweet husband, Chuck, had gone to the football game to pick up my teenagers, and I'd arrived home soon afterwards.  Our schedules can make my head spin sometimes.

I'm now liking my trial period of Amazon Prime.  No, not trial anymore, it was deducted from my bank account. Free shipping on my newish $16 black otterbox, the third one I've gone through in a year's time.  Sabrina'd given me a sissy-looking grey and blue one that I'd finally torn up as well, preferring black at all times.

I'm so comically rough on stuff, I'm clumsy and fast-moving, I drop things and run into walls, I trip and fall, I literally careen through life.  But, hey, I get the job done.  It ain't pretty, but I get it done.

CW, Lily's older birth brother, didn't go to homecoming because his Edisto Beach girlfriend lives in Augusta.  He's Martin's BFF, he's Sergi's birth nephew, he's literally my grandson-son.  Any graphic representation diagram, a genogram, done on our family is just too weird.  I even have a son who was fathered by an uncle back in Texas - try and draw that family tree.

Hey, hey we're the Bodies.