EVERYTHING has been Michael Jackson’s ever since we watched ‘Beat It’.

Goodbye old friend. You’re forever in my heart. I’ll never forget how you rested your chin on my knee and looked sweetly up for me to pet you. Or how happy it made Mom to feed you crunchy Cheeto’s because of how much she loved the sound.

We’re going to look into getting Zan private Viola lessons. He’s excited about the possibility.

Then there are mornings like Jude and I had last month.  Being a mother isn’t entirely unforgiving work.  There are pieces of it that are magic, and then there are pieces to it that feel like you’re walking into a dark cave and all you have with you is the teeny flashlight like the one you keep in the glove compartment for emergencies.  You’re lost without a whole lot of direction.  People aren’t kidding when they say that kids should come home from the hospital with a manual.

I struck one of those flashlight-in-a-tunnel moments, like I said, about a month ago.  Where I’m thrown into being a parent with no real answer as how to act.

Jude hit me in the face in one of those moments where I felt like my patience was hanging by a shred. My entire day had been spent cleaning his poop out of his clothes and trying and trying and trying to get him to go in the potty.  Literally, it was probably about the shittiest few days of my life, so when he lost his patience and emotions on me, I lost my control of my emotions and started crying.

Here’s the crazy part where the flashlight comes into the situation.  I’m not sure if what I did was wrong or right:

I let him see me crying.  Looking him in the eye, he saw my tears coming from my face, and he said, “awwww, is mommy crying?”

and I said, “yes, you hit mommy, and it hurt her.”  To which, he smiled.

“Does that make you happy?”  I asked him.

“Yeah…”  he said.

To which I hung my head in disappointment and cried a little more.

Then, right there, at that very moment, he said, “I’m sorry Mommy.” And he wrapped his tiny arms around the tops of my arms, rested his head on my shoulder, and squeezed.

I remember seeing a special on television one time about how parents shouldn’t lean on their kids for support.  It involved some horrific image of a little girl holding her mom’s hand and nodding her head as if a tiny counselor, and the mother someone who was pouring out her heart.

This, on the other hand, was a situation where I HOPE that he learned the consequences of his actions, and he needs to learn that his actions can hurt someone, and they’d hurt me.

I didn’t know what to do, or even if what I did was the right thing or not, and to me, that’s what parenting and life are like a lot of the time.

Well, my earliest memories of her must be from when I was about three, which means she would have been about 21. She’d bring me the chap-stick and kleenex in my pink room that had a blue bird in a cage and a strange, perfumed, pink elephant with blue ears that I loved.

She always took the best care of me when I was really, really sick. She’s the first person I thought of the other night when Jude woke up sick every fifteen minutes. I knew to just sit him up and let him puke into a towel, put that one in the wash, and put down another one. I remember her handing me medicine and water and letting me role over and go back to sleep many times in my life, and I remember the first time she wasn’t there for it when I went off to college and craving her there. Last year, I guess she proved that a mom’s work is never done when she brought me water and pills again after I had my spinal fusion surgery.

I must have been three though, in my first REAL memories of her. If we listened to the radio, I don’t remember, but I DO remember her voice teaching me song after song while we cleaned house. All Tammy Wynette, Patsty Cline, and Dolly Parton. They must have not been on the radio because sometimes when I hear the real songs, I’m surprised at how they sound because those songs are still sung by her voice in my head.

That’s why when we stood (myself 6 or 7 months pregnant) in the cold rain watching Dolly Parton at Chastain Amphitheater, I cried and cried.

That’s why the entire audience stood and cheered for me like none of the other kids in the third grade talent show after I finished my song. She gave it to me young…a powerful voice. Not just musically.

She’s not the kind of woman to take shit from anyone. I’m pretty sure if the devil was at my door, I was send her to handle him before anyone else in my life. She’s her own force of nature.

I love her more than any other woman on the planet and will always try to make her proud.

She’s my mom, and now Jude’s grandma.

Today we’re both much older than 3 and 21. I know that my brother, Jude, and I love her more than any other woman in the world, and that’s got to be a good feeling.

Even if she cuts Jude’s hair when I BEG her not to.

Jude was nervous, but only in that, I-just-met-a-rockstar-and-don’t-know-what-to-say-it’s-so-awesome, kind of way.

Aunt Cheryl’s favorite color is purple. It might not be anymore, but it was when I was a little girl, and I remembered admiring her eye shadow even as a small child. My mom and her were pregnant with me and my cousin Jarod almost at the exact same time. Jarod was born only ten days after I was. One of the best pictures that is burned into my memory is my mother and her standing in a doorway with their giant bellies touching. She’s the kind of person who everyone loved because she seemed to genuinely love everyone herself.

During the summers growing up, we’d pile up in the car and head to the outskirts of Chattanooga, where we’d visit my Uncle Ted, Cousins Jarod and Dana, and her. I guess I’ve always been a little too sensitive because one of my memories of her is she bought all the cousins matching t-shirts and was going to take us to Lake Winnie. Mine was different than everyone elses though (I was the littlest), and that made me cry. I think most adults would have shrugged that off and told me to get over it, but Aunt Cheryl put all four of us in the car and took us BACK down to the store to see if she could find me a matching one.

I remember her having to work crazy hours as a nurse, and how funny her hair would look all sticking up everywhere when she got up to have a bite to eat and visit despite the fact that she hadn’t slept in goodness knows how long.

I remember that she loved to have one of us stroke her hair to help her fall asleep, but I think that she liked the way that Jarod did it best.

My heart breaks for my cousins that they’ve lost her so early in life. It truly does seem that only the good die young.

I hate that I took so much time in getting to visit, and that Jude never met her. I definitely took for granted that she would be there, and now it’s killing me that I didn’t see her one more time.

There aren’t words for how terrible it is that my wonderful cousins have lost their mother, and that their children have lost their amazing grandmother.

There just aren’t words. I love her so much, and I always will.

Grandma has been entertaining him today, so it’s been a toy organizing, laundry folding, sweeping, mopping kind of day.

As long as I can listen to my John Lennon interviews and there is an adequate amount of calming light coming streaming through the panes of this abode thats bringing me so much joy these days, then I’ll shlep all day long cleaning and organizing for my boys.

It’s the little things that make mothering possible.

What is it about a sick baby that makes your heart hurt like nothing else?

We’re going to be drinking lots of fluids and taking it easy until further notice.

And to think, he was so excited about going to the dentist for the first time today too.