TP's wedding

There's a chapter in Lena Dunham's new book where she talks about her little sister Grace. It's a story about a little sister becoming herself and the big sister not really being ready to accommodate all that.

Dunham writes: “What I really wanted, beyond affection, was to feel that she needed me, that she was helpless without her big sister leading her through the world.”

I could have written it. Big sisters have to protect, filter, make things infinitely harder for little sisters. It's not just our job, it's who we are.

My baby sister got married this month. Before she walked down the aisle, I said, "I"m so happy you found your person. Someone to make you happy and mow the lawn for you."

"Yeah, Mike hires someone to mow the lawn," she laughed. "But I'm glad, too."

TP looked absolutely resplendent. I may have gone before her down the aisle, but on the way out, I stood a few paces behind.

Photo credits: Rentham Photography 

The Notebook (aka Facebook was my idea)

I am so smitten with a boy named Myles with soft blue eyes in the eighth grade that my hor-motional body may burst. There is no Facebook profile to stalk in 1993, so I begin what I believe is the first Facebook wall in analog, a page of an erstwhile Social Studies notebook that I devote entirely to writing thoughts and feelings about Myles. Things I observe after he gets a haircut, witticisms he utters during a pop quiz in language arts. The page looks like the diary of a crazy woman, every thought punctuated with hearts and swirls. It is my private graffiti and I write on this page at least once a day. The release feels good. Even as I am scrawling all over the page, though, I am aware that this paper is a complete liability to myself.

On a family vacation, I am suddenly conscious that I am sitting in the middle seat of our mini-van and my younger sister Taryn is in the far back seat where my notebook is. Just before I turn around, I feel the knowledge tightening in my chest that there is nothing else on earth that Taryn could be reading right at this moment than my Ode to Myles.

My instincts do not disappoint me.

My face, hot, my eyes cast down as I grab the notebook from her.

I leave Taryn to digest this collateral damage she has just read.

Should-ing all over myself

As I am holding Baby Boy up to the trash can so that he can urinate squarely inside its rim, I decide to forgive myself. We are probably giving that unarmed security guard services guy quite a show as he watches us on the video camera. Aside from the tourists who surreptitiously touch everything and climb up the rocks at Ruby Falls, despite the guide's caution against this , my son being lifted to whiz in a can could be the most exciting thing to happen all day for the video monitor. I really should know better, though, to have peed the boy before we embarked on the cavernous subterranean journey, because we've already done this. We visited Ruby Falls earlier in the summer, the kids and I. So I should know that there aren't any bathrooms within the whole cavern basement and the place is one big giant dripping spout so even if you don't think you have to pee, you're bound to think you do. I should know this!

Just like I should: - never overdraw on my bank account anymore. - not still break out like a teenager when I am stressed. - observe a reasonable bedtime. - be more diligent in getting my kids to read and do chores and speak 3 languages. - be fit enough to audition for American Ninja Warrior. - make a mealplan for my family the next 3 years like I know you and Pinterest do.

But I need to stop should-ing all over myself. Who, in the history of shoulds has ever benefited directly from someone declaiming, "I should do that thing that I've been meaning to do!"

Try these: - I should vote! - I should container garden! - I should go back to school! - I should not be such a witch all the time!

Which of the above changes a molecule in the world if none are ever executed, if no actions are taken to turn the shoulds into dids?

So I'm tossing should from my lexicon this school year. I will bandy about "want" and "pray about" and "tried" and that powerhouse of a three-letter past tense verb, "did."

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p.s. Here I am with my new friends at Nerd Camp. It was the greatest time among new but true friends.