A snapshot of my life right now: Whenever exasperated, angry or otherwise annoyed with anyone/anything, the first word out of my mouth is, “August..!” Actually, it’s more like, “Augu-” as I catch myself mid-name and then feel pretty dumb and more than a little guilty for unconsciously blurting the name of my challenging three-year-old instead of the actual perpetrator’s name. Bad mommy.
Happy Half-Birthday, Elliott! Yesterday! Wow, I pretty much suck at this mom stuff.
Moving on”¦ I’ve been in this half-melancholy since we watched Garden State last week. I totally loved it, of course. And even though I’m woefully behind the rest of the world who fell in love with this movie when it was in the theater last year, I’m kinda glad that I didn’t see it while I was pregnant. I probably would have sobbed for weeks. Anyway, the half-melancholy is all iTunes’ fault. You see, the next morning when I popped out of bed after dreaming about new love and Zach Braff and awesome music (in no particular combination, ahem), I thought, ‘I’d love to have that soundtrack, but who has time to go to the record store anymore now that I’m an old crone?’ Then I thought, ‘I wonder if that new-fangled iTunes has the soundtrack”¦’
Guess what? They did! And since I’d tried it out last summer by downloading a rather disappointing “iTunes-exclusive” Death Cab for Cutie EP, all I had to do was hit “Buy It” and it was mine. Five minutes later, it’s burned to a CD and playing in my car while taking Auggie to preschool.
Steve Jobs, this crone owes you a hug.
But the half-melancholy, you’re wondering why, right? Well, Tim and I celebrated our seventh (!) anniversary on Sunday. And watching the movie just reminded me a lot of when we fell in love — how much it sucked, living in separate cities; the excitement of Friday evenings (I think we only missed one or two weekends my entire senior year); the crushing sadness of Sunday evenings; just being young and crazy and in love. To say that things are different now is laughably obvious, but it’s not why I’m half-melancholy. Sure, it would be fun to visit that time again, but I wouldn’t trade now for anything.
My husband is”¦ I can’t think of anything that isn’t a total cliché. Which is why there are clichés, I’m sure. He’s mine. I’m his. It’s hard to even imagine the point where he stops and I begin, especially when it comes to the boys — they are the never-ending us.
I’m not doing this justice. Suffice to say, it’s not so much of a half-melancholy as a wistfulness. And that’s OK.