There's No Crying in Baseball...

I am a swallower. I am that last little crumb of your cookie that hangs out in your cup no matter how many drinks of milk you take. I am that girl in every movie, disheveled, unbathed with a pint of ice cream, surrounded by tissues, pizza boxes and The Way We Were blaring on the television.



During one chapter in my life I was infatulove (infatuated + love) with a very tall brown skinned boy who had dreads spilling every which way out of his head. He was from here and there and was funny and charming.
He took my heart and pumpkin chucked it across three football fields, through a valley into a river where it hit a patch of rocks and fell down a waterfall into a deep chasm.

I thought I was dying.

On one particularly difficult evening after many glasses bottles of red wine my roommate put on a record (yes a record).

“Now you say you’re lonely….You cry the whole night through…Well, you can cry me a river, cry me a river….I cried a river over you….”

It spoke to my broken heart.

That evening I cried many rivers. Over and over my roommate and I listened to the record a million rotations plus one and cried our pretty little selves to sleep.
Crying has never been a side effect for me. It is the effect. It is happiness, nervousness, sadness and despair.

It is my best emotion.

It’s a cleansing of my soul and you are the unfortunate audience. I’m probably an ugly crier which makes for an even more unfortunate situation.

I have embraced my affliction. With reckless abandon I have cried a river in a room full of strangers, to my boss, bill collectors, while giving speeches and sometimes alone in my car during the slow jams hour or when Delilah is on (who I am pretty sure has made more people cry than Barbara Walters).

I no longer try to fight the tears back instead I give it all I got. I am a surrogate crier for my Mother who sometimes can’t cry for herself. I have probably cried for you or someone you know. I happy cry. I angry cry. I cry out of frustration. If crying were a sport I would be LeBron James, Michael Jordan or Mia Hamm.

Like an athlete, at some point you don’t play the game as well. Your knees give out. You become slower. You don’t throw as fast. Pretty soon you find yourself on the bench--watching someone else play.

I started to notice the tears don’t come as easily anymore. That it takes just a little more effort or maybe that I put more effort into not letting the emotions show. I notice that I started to care more about what others thought instead of how I felt. I decided to be polite and not make others uncomfortable. I decided that maybe I needed to be a big girl.

Then one day it happened - one day my little girl took a spill. She was airborne and fell on the playground. In front. Of. All. The. Big. Kids. I could see that look a mixture of pain and embarrassment and a touch of confusion not quite sure which of the two emotions she felt more. I saw the tears welling up in her eyes. I saw the pink spreading across her round cheeks. Her eyes darted down and she quickly moved her little legs towards me.

“Are you okay?” I asked cautiously in almost a whisper.

She buried her little face in the crook of my neck and mumbled “Uh-uh”. I scooped her into the car. No tears yet. She wouldn’t even make eye contact. As soon as the doors closed from deep in her belly the tears came out like a roar.

The roaring continued for a good portion of the trip. No reassurance from me would comfort her.

Finally, it was too much. At first it hurt my heart, now it was hurting my eardrums.

“Eva, it’s okay sweetie. Let’s stop crying now, it’s not going to make anything better.” Slowly the cried hushed.

As I caught her eye in the rearview mirror she looked at me determined and answered….
“It makes me feel better!”

And just like that my little one reminded me that this life, each moment is mine to feel and love how I want.

So cry on, laugh on, rage on my lovelies because this is your world to feel as you will.

Just remember to pack some tissues!

Love,
Me.

Experience #1-Super Short Hair

“So are you going to write every day?”

“Um…no…well I mean I guess I can. I haven’t been. I guess I could…” This was my answer to the super hip Aveda girl completing my head and neck massage.

My idea behind blogging this year was purely to keep me real, to put out a public promise to my tribe and to have them keep me to it. I didn’t think about how this would work…details…details. To be honest there is a constant dialogue in my head—a rewind of my day complete with all the witty comebacks, the assertive statements, the blow up your theory in five words, thoughts that eluded me between the hustle and bustle of the day. So in an effort to release the “voices in my head” I bring to you…ta..da..da..da - regular blog posts. This particular announcement coincides with my 35 Project First—read on…

My father is loud. He is loud and jolly and has super rosy cheeks and a big round belly. I swear he is not Santa. He just has an indescribable joy for life and he doesn’t care what anyone thinks. Ever. He doesn’t care when people can’t understand his accent or that his cars sounds like a jet coming down the street. He is passionate about everything he exerts the same passion talking about politics as he does when he tells you about sale prices at the grocery store. He is telenovela loud, dramatic, passionate and a bit macho. He has been my hero since the time I could remember. Growing up I called him Daddy never Papi. I ran to him when I was hurt, sad, tired. It was a party when I was with my dad; all yes’s almost never no’s, only go ask your mother. When I was a teenager we were Clash of the Titans he thought his way was the only way and I of course knew everything. My mother said we were too much alike me and my father. Cut from the same cloth. We even looked alike. Everyone commented about how I was my dad through and through, same round face, same round nose and maybe something similar in the eyes.

Imagine my surprise when yesterday I looked in the mirror and saw my mother staring back at me. My mother with the long oval face and long sharp nose and dainty features on my big round face. Then I realized it was my hair. I cut it short. Really. Really. Short. The shortest it’s ever been. Under all of that hair lays my mother.

Suddenly I felt warm, salty tears rolling down my chubby cheeks. It’s not what you think. This was pride. The same way that losing all those layers of hair revealed a piece of my mom, years of experience helped me really appreciate my mother. All of her sacrifices, her strength, her selflessness. I realized in that moment that I hoped that I didn’t just resemble her but that I could BE like her. I will admit that I have taken my mother for granted. I don’t just mean the little things. I mean the big things the fact that my mother doesn’t lie…can’t lie or that she is always polite to everyone and that she opens her home to everyone. She stills gets Christmas cards and phone calls from people who she met 30 years ago and barely speaks to.


I love that in her early seventies she plays on the swingset with my daughter and gets down in the garden with her to plant flowers. I love that she almost never wears makeup and has the softest most beautiful skin. I still need her when I’m sick and she coached me through my first labor. She doesn’t always say the right thing in fact sometime she’s either Yoda or “I told you so” but the kiss and hug that follows is filled with the love and understanding that I was looking for.

As a mother and a wife I understand her in a special way. It’s like looking back on that bully from grade school and understanding that there was much more beneath.

The day after I got my haircut a friend called me by my mother’s name and jokingly asked if I cut my fair to look like my mother…with a must be crazy look I answered…”Are you crazy?! Who would do that?!”

I would.

Why oh why?

I cut off all my hair. It was a gradual process. It went from long Kardashian locks to shoulder length, to a bob to a shorter bob to a pixie-ish cut. I shed my hair like a snake, I slowly dipped my toe in the short hair pool when really I wanted to make a drastic change. I wanted to jump head first into the pool but I held back. I can’t articulate why--maybe because the world convinced me that I would regret the aftermath of all that hair on the floor. The more I think about it the more it pisses me off. Who are all you people sharing your unsolicited advice and getting into my head creating doubt and insecurity. And why am I listening?

A paragraph about my hair seems so shallow but it’s just a metaphor for what has inspired this blog. In September I turned 35. I wanted to love it and embrace it. I wanted to be all confident and womanly and announce to the world that this is the best time of my life!

But all I can think about is that I. Am. 35.

Middle-aged.

I am closer to 40 and just getting older.

I don’t know why. It could be because of the pesky 40 extra pounds I long to lose, or because I was supposed to be Diana Ross by now or that life is never what you expect it to be and after a series of unfortunate events effecting people around me I feel like I should have reached a certain level of greatness that seems to elude me.
People take note I am naked, exposed, giving you the ugly truth of my insecurities. I felt compelled to write this blog so that I could begin to explore my own insecurities and yours through the lense of age. Maybe age is nothing but a number or maybe to you it is everything and a number! Either way I pledge to look 35 in the eye and embrace it.

Throughout this next year I pledge to try 35 new things anything from skydiving (<- that word is clearly an example—I would like to embrace 36 and have no desire to pee at 40,000 feet) to trying a new food or learning a new language. Big or small it doesn’t matter what matters is that I want to get out of my comfort zone, off my couch and spend a little time on me which I believe will make me a better friend, sister, Mami and wifey.

Secondly, I want to learn from you. I will interview 35 amazing women of all ages about their own milestones, insecurities and other cool shit that they wish to share. This is my gift to the world. It is my 35 project. My attempt to give to the world as I take and hope that somewhere along the way someone learns something, or starts to think of themselves or their age in a new way.

It’s a long way to September 21st, 2012 but we’re on this road trip together. I hope you enjoy, I hope you post comments and fingers crossed I hope that on my 36th birthday I can in the words of 50 cent “Party like it’s my birthday and I won’t give a %*&# cause it’s my birthday” or something like that. I hope you will be partying along with me.

Love--Me and my pixie-ish cut