Charlie.

The summer after I graduated high school, I started working for a woman from church. She worked from home, and she and her husband had just had a baby. She wanted someone to be at the house with him for anywhere from three to seven hours a day, depending on the day, while she got some work done. He was two months old.

I fell in love with him that summer. He'd cry and cry and cry, and I'd read to him and sing to him and walk with him. He'd fall asleep on my chest and sleep for hours while I just read and drank the chai his mom made for me every day. I memorized "The Cat in the Hat" that summer.

Then I went to college. I nannied again the next summer, and babysat whenever I was around. But the next year, I went to England. Slowly but surely I saw my sweet darling boy less and less. When I did see him, I was surprised by things like his ability to run and talk in full sentences. Full sentences! After summers of endless crying and not knowing what he wanted, here was this amazing boy talking to me in sentences!

Then I got engaged. I'm the youngest cousin, on both sides of my family; D had little cousins, including a perfect little flower girl, but the boys were all either too old or terrors, or both. Who better to bear our rings, I thought, than my Charlie?

The first week of July, I spent some time emailing his mom. She was nervous that he'd be too silly, but I assured her that he is too adorable, and no matter what happened, he could not wreck the day. She said she would consult with him and his dad.

Apparently, she asked him if he wanted to be in Cindy's wedding, and without hesitation, he said yes. Then they practiced. His parents took off their rings, put them on a pillow, and Charlie, my sweet little Charlie, walked around the house with them. She told him, now, you have to be serious. You can't be silly, because who's the center of attention that day? "The bride," he told her.

A couple of days later, when she told him that things happen sometimes, and it's okay, but Cindy's not getting married anymore, he sat down and cried.


I didn't have much regular interaction with Charlie for a long time after those first two summers. When I got the invitation to his sixth birthday party, I was blown away. How could he be SIX already?! Impossible. But there he was, eating cake and blowing out candles, loving Star Wars and Legos, and still speaking in full sentences. And the words he used! I babysat sometime around then, and he told me his mom smells good and is very pretty, and his dad is hilarious. Hilarious!

One night at choir a few months ago, his mom announced that she and Charlie's dad were going on a long-overdue vacation, and they would need someone to stay at their house and look after Charlie. Pam and I volunteered immediately.

L and B, you see, hadn't taken a single vacation together since Charlie was born, and they never even went on a honeymoon. So for two weeks, they were going to escape to Italy.

From January 24 through February 5, Pam and I stayed at Charlie's house and acted as moms to him. It was an amazing adventure, and a rather eye-opening experience. Charlie is perhaps one of the most well-behaved six-year-olds in existence. He is sweet and mannerly and smart and very self-aware and introspective and overall awesome. And yet, the two weeks I recently spent with him made me unsure if I ever want kids. See, my favorite thing about babysitting has always been the ability to give the kids back at the end of the night.

I did have a great time with him, though. Pam and I make a pretty great child-rearing team, actually. We took to him to school, bathed him, fed him, helped him make his bed every morning, read him stories every night. We took him and his friend to Chuck E. Cheese. We cleaned up after him, and tried fruitlessly to get him to use his napkin instead of the blanket as he ate his bedtime snack. We kept track of his mittens, which are always in a different place and never together. We smothered him with hugs (which he loved) and kisses (which he always wiped off) and tried to comfort him when he missed his parents. We learned how strange it is to brush someone else's teeth and cut someone else's finger- and toenails.

Regardless of what I decide in the future about having kids of my own, one thing is certain. I still love that little boy.

The Wrong Vacation

As the Fallout reached its peak and ever so slowly began to wane, the Wedding Date loomed closer and closer. Out of nowhere, my mother decided to take action, to employ some evasive maneuvers, as it were. ("Out of nowhere" is not likely accurate. I was in my own little world of pajamas and pop and Sex and the City. EVERYthing was out of nowhere.) She suggested we go on a family vacation.

I was...unenthused with the prospect. My mother can drive me crazy sometimes, and I had, in fact, already made plans for myself for The Day, and they included much wallowing alone. I planned to disappear that day, drive aimlessly, go to the church and cry. The thought of a family vacation instead didn't exactly thrill me.

But mom was adamant, and kept suggesting destinations. None of them seemed especially appealing, until she hit upon Disney World. See, we never really took annual vacations as kids, probably because we lived in Texas and road-tripped to Minnesota for Christmas every year. That was enough of a vacation for our parents to have to deal with us on, so we never went places like Disney World. I did go to Disney World senior year of high school with orchestra, but it seems like a family vacation kind of destination. At her mention of it, my eyes lit up just a little, and I said, "hmm." That was all she needed.

I could produce no valid reason why we shouldn't go ("well, I really wanted to sit alone and cry that day" just didn't seem like it was going to cut it), so she planned and compared and clicked and booked, just as I had been doing for the previous 16 months, and suddenly there were definite plans in my future. The first definite plans since all my plans had been thrown out the window. Which, by the way, I just realized as I was typing it. I'm sure someday I'll figure out what the implications of that are.

Anyway, so I suddenly had these plans and I had to get off the couch and pack. So I did. And we were off to Orlando.

I can't tell you what the dates of our vacation were. I can't tell you which park we went to on which day. I can't tell you everything we ate, or did, or saw.

I know that in Epcot's Japan, we bought oysters that were opened in front of us and had necklaces made of the resulting pearl. I got a greenish-goldish colored pearl, in a much larger than average size. My sister, mom, and myself all had our pearls set in the same necklace setting. I was slightly jealous of my sister's blueish pearl; I love blue.

I know that I wore black on The Day, as a symbolic gesture for myself.

I know that all four of us stuffed ourselves into one teacup. And now I know that that is not a good idea!

I know that we convinced our parents to ride the Aerosmith roller coaster, and the resulting picture was so awesome that we bought it. I know also that we road DINOSAUR, and also bought that hilarious picture. (Did you know that I'm afraid of dinosaurs?)

I know we had fish and chips in "England," and we took a picture of me kissing a camel at the Aladdin ride. I know I bought a souvenir, a frame, that I haven't even unwrapped; it's hiding in the back of my closet. I know that we met up with some distant family members who live in Orlando, and Pam and I love our aunt-ish-lady who we never knew. I know that I bought a pair of red suede Kenneth Cole pumps that are to die for, but impossible to walk in.

I know that, when we flew home, our flight attendant was a bit surly, and I thought to myself, "Psh, I could do a better job than that."

I know that I did not have a single drop of alcohol or, as far as I remember, cry a single tear.

I also know, now, that this was the wrong vacation to take.

Most of the trip was spent in a depressed daze. I tried to pretend that wasn't true, I tried to be normal, but I'm not sure how good of a job I did. Clearly, there's not a whole lot of details I can give you about my vacation, though maybe that's normal after a year no matter the circumstances. I commented one day to my sister that Disney World wasn't really as fun and exciting as it seems like it should be, and maybe you just have to be younger to enjoy it.... or maybe, I realized after a short pause, you just have to not be me, right now, in the mental state I was in.

I will admit, however, that it got me off the couch. It got me outside. It got me smiling and laughing and eating and moving and breathing. It was the first tiny baby step that got me moving again, moving toward where I am now. In a sense, then, it was right, because clearly something had to give.

But, good or bad, right or wrong, perhaps most importantly, we all managed to make it through a multi-day stretch in Orlando without getting sunburned.

Cousins in a chair.

As I mentioned, the annual cousins-in-a-chair picture is a very, very important Christmas tradition on my mom's side of the family. It's been taken every year for as long as I can remember, and in fact, I think it's been going on since before I was born.

This year, one of my cousins, his wife, and I were all missing on Christmas Eve. My oldest cousin apparently insisted that we get together another time so we could all be together, and so we could take the proper chair picture.

Friday the 27th, we got together at grandma's house for pizza and a picture. I made mint meringues, which I hadn't had the energy to make on cookie-baking day, and I got a chance to see my cousin who lives in North Carolina. The evening was a success (I even was able to eat and keep my dinner down!), and we were able to add this gem to our years and years of pictures:



I used to fit in my cousin's lap a lot better.