The first words I often hear in the morning come from my two-year-old daughter Evie. When she wakes up, she immediately demands to be let out from her bed by saying the word “mommy” repeatedly. It’s never a calm request. The way she says mommy changes in tone the longer I take to come get her. Her “mommy” starts off sounding like, “why aren’t you here already?” and escalates to “get the hell in here now you sloth of a woman and pick me up!”

She starts off saying mommy as an order for me to come get her. But it never fails that her next word she says when she first lays eyes on me is “boobie!”

Not morning. Not hi. Not good morning mother I love you and we are going to have a great day.

No.

She says boobie.

She says it like she’s ordering her breakfast…because she is.

Yes, I still nurse her.

I don’t talk to my immediate family. My mother died years ago so there’s just my brother and dad left. Still, it’s been decades since I’ve said two words to either of them. I know they are alive…but that’s about it. There’s no desire in me to reach out. I’ve made peace with that experience and took what I needed from it to grow into the person I am today.

Despite my disconnection from my family, I recently had a dream about my dad. This was out of nowhere. Brains are funny like that. Why this dream swirled down through my mind is a mystery. But it stuck with me, and I wanted to document it here.

These past few weeks have been chaotic and crazy. Closing a chapter on your life is always bittersweet and our move out of our old home is no exception. We’ve made countless memories between these walls, and I will hold them in my heart forever.

Through sweat and too much heavy lifting for people close to 40, Vince and I managed to empty our home into two storage pods and a 10×10 storage unit, defying the law of gravity and personal safety with Tetris-like packing skills.

We’re exhausted but not broken.

Lice.
This was not good.
This was not good at all.

This was not good because I immediately recall that my daughter, Scarlett, had been complaining for the past two weeks about an itchy head. I did check her scalp back then when she complained, but I didn’t see anything. However, I realized as I was looking at my phone screen that I likely didn’t check as good as I should have. Scarlett tends to be sensitive and make minor ailments into major issues. When she complained of an itchy head, I had rolled my eyes internally and checked her head out of duty, not diligence.

I realize two things at this moment. First, that I should have been more concerned a couple weeks ago and not dismissed Scarlett’s itchiness. Second thing I realize that the itchiness I felt in my own head for the past week or so was not dry scalp. Not dry scalp, but most likely lice.

Not good.
Not good at all.

I’m in the kitchen, getting ready to make dinner. It’s my least favorite thing. Cooking is not my passion. My teenage daughter, Gianna, is at the table, doing a school project. She’s trying to construct a roller coaster out of a matchbox car track, various pieces of cardboard, and tape. I can tell the project is not going her way by the tenseness of her shoulders and the look of exasperation that is forming on her face.

She’s a volcano on the verge of eruption.

As I begin to walk away to preheat the oven, she lets out a quiet scream of frustration and starts to cry. Angry tears are probably the worst kind of tears, because they piss you off when you were already pissed off to begin with. You’re not sad yet your eyes insist on leaking.

Out of instinct, I go to hug her. Tears equal hugs to me. Plus, mother hugs are supposed to be magical after all. As I go to wrap my arms around her neck, she pulls away. She. pulls. away. Like she was on fire and I was a heaping bucket of ice.

We were making steam and she wasn’t having it.

On the top right-hand corner of my glowing screen, it reads:

“3:06am”

WTF? That can’t be right. My phone needs to resync or something. Then I look at my laptop screen:

“3:06am”

I’m losing my mind. Why am I awake?  Why did I wake up? I had to have been up since 2:30am based on what I accomplished so far. The bars just closed and I woke up. I’m not Mark Wahlberg. I shouldn’t be out of bed at this time. Maybe I dreamed I heard my alarm and woke up not realizing it was a dream?