lifetime of memories

November
So full of milestones
my birthday (today)
my son's birthday ( my youngest- turned fourteen on the 8th- OMG!)
Freedom Day (the day my divorce was finalized- the 3rd). 
I missed Freedom Day this year with all the craziness
that tailspins me around from one thing to another.
My son's birthday was awhirl with life stuff (fourteen-year-olds will do some dumb stuff.)
And my birthday sandwiched between two days of work
Nevertheless
November is a lodestone
of the past
Mimosas and cheesecake,
    favorite foods
Walking out of the courthouse,
    dance-down-the-street happiness that it was finally finished
Son sleeping in my arms
    trashcan close by to catch any upheavals
    while friends eat cake and laugh in hilarity
Being dressed like a doll (I hate shopping!)
    a fourth decade dragging me down,
    reminding me of opportunities dried up and carried off the wind
Bearing down, pushing,
     finding life altered once more with a bleated cry
Pecan pie eaten in a dorm room
Snowplowing my way home
     a surprise blizzard gifting me with the day off (DPS hadn't cancelled school in 20 years!)
A slammed door as whispered conspiracies shut me out
   exclusion burying the giggly companionship
Watching for a package laden postman (Mrs. Beasley in a box)
     anxious nose pressed against the glass
Many more
Memories
carried in the leaf blown arms of
November

Birthday extravaganza

Having mentioned the birthday, the pictures need to be posted before the boy is able to drive so... 

Having had a warmer than average October, the first Sunday of November (the day before Mack's actual day of birth) was as bright and sunny as the boys' smiling faces. 

Rudy is a neighborhood friend

We rounded up the party and headed off for fun-- or perhaps to be sick if one were to judge by Tristan's face. 

Tristan is Mack's best friend of the last four years

The alien

For months you were an alien inside me

unfurling and moving of your own accord

indifferent to the space you'd invaded

taking over as though it were 
your kidney to recline upon

your lungs to kick

your stomach to raid

expanding as though 
into the eternal

heedless of the limits of time...

or space 
-my space-

And you dwelt there

all at once 
mine

and not mine

in the sacred dark of my womb

Until the day arrived

-was it really so many years ago?-

that it was time to awaken unto the world

to find your humanness

You were wrinkled and pink

bent and battered

a Mr MaGoo face

angelic to a new mother's embattled gaze

At first it seemed you still belonged there

in the warm cocoon of my center

I held your smallness and recall

that strange oneness

Yet quickly you gain your foreignness

your otherness

You roll away from me

so that you can crawl off

and walk into the next room

and run outside

and peddle to your friend's home

where you will get in a car and drive off to meet your friends
and steal your first kiss in the backseat of your new car

then fly off to see the world

In a blink of an eye you are an alien outside of me

with a life that has little to do with me

Yet still you are the alien

whose nose I blew

whose vomit I washed off myself

that I held in the dark nights in the hospital

that I fretted over when the oxygen wouldn't flow

that I frowned at when your words were too cheeky

whose grades I fussed over each report card

that I yelled at when you sauntered in late

that I love