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Tag: Writing

Marriage, Writing

Tell Me What You Need

My 5:30 a.m. wake-up call babbles through the baby monitor. I groan, never ready to start the day so early. My husband rolls to face me and asks, “Do you mind if I go for a run?” A good wife would say yes right away, I think. But I pause before responding with a sigh. “No, that’s fine. Have fun.” We both know I’m struggling … Continue reading Tell Me What You Need

Melissa KutscheFebruary 8, 2023February 2, 20231 Comment

I’m Melissa–writer, mama, bookworm, and spontaneous dancer. I share words about motherhood, books, life as a military spouse, and other sacred/ordinary things.

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By late March, the buds start to open, revealing delicate pink and white petals. We hop in the van and drive toward Showa Kinen Park, stopping on the way to pick up a conbini lunch of fried chicken, onigiri, and egg salad sandwiches. We walk familiar paths to a grassy field surrounded by trees heavy with blossoms—an ideal spot for hanami.
Since becoming a mom almost nine years ago, I've struggled to bite my tongue (and not roll my eyes) when a well-intentioned mom says something like, "Oh, you'll miss it someday!" or "Those were the best days of my life!" Even if these sentiments hold truth, they can feel a bit forced--like can you please take off your rose-colored-lenses and quit gaslighting me already?!⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Now, If you have an award here for someone who can carry a trunkful of grocery bags into the house without breaking a single egg, I’m your girl. A prize for knowing how many bowel movements each child has had on a given day and what their current favorite toothpaste flavor is? Bam. Award for forgetting to brush a child’s teeth or going way too long between haircuts and nail trims? Yep. But Mother of the Year? Even the statuette I’m holding looks exhausted and fragile. Wait, is this supposed to look like me? Did you guys model this after the picture of me picking sand out of my eyes at the beach last summer? Is this just another plastic action figure for me to trip on?​​​​​​​​
Catching snowflakes at the bus stop this morning. ❄️❄️❄️ ​​​​​​​​
[The Beauty of] M[otherhood] // Motherhood is messy. It’s mounds of mac ‘n’ cheese and macrame art. Motherhood magnifies mere mortals, makes Marian martyrs out of mall rats. Motherhood is a masquerade, a mission, a mirror. It’s the ministry of missing mittens. It mutates and metabolizes, muddles minds and mesmerizes. It’s the merging of meek and mighty. It’s malodorous and melodious. It’s midwinter mud pies and midweek mayhem. Motherhood is maniacal and methodical, mysterious and mischievous, modern and medieval. Motherhood is morning musings, mid-afternoon make-believe, and midnight melodies. Motherhood is the madrigal and the marching band; it’s major keys and minor chords. It’s minivans and movie marathons, a mash-up of the mercurial and monochrome. Motherhood is moonshine: a mixology of the molecular and metaphysical. It's the murky middle, muscle memory. Motherhood is a marriage of the miraculous and mundane. It’s a metamorphosis, a mosaic of the mystic and material. It is equal measure milk and marrow.​​​​​​​​
Jennette McCurdy's memoir, I'm Glad My Mom Died, is compelling, interesting, and brave. McCurdy lays everything bare with her raw, honest storytelling about the challenges of being a (reluctant) child actor, having an abusive mom, and many other traumatic events and circumstances. As far as content warnings go, this book would need a list a mile long, and I would especially caution anyone who has struggled with an eating disorder that there are sections which might be very triggering. ​​​​​​​​
A Breakfast Conversation ​​​​​​​​
A friend recently posed the question: What’s the most adventurous thing you’ve eaten? I didn’t know how to answer. Pheasant was out of my comfort zone as a kid, but eating takoyaki (minced octopus balls) didn’t seem strange while living in Southeast Asia. Sometimes the adventure was found in the type of thing I was eating, sometimes it was which part of that thing, how it was cooked, or how far up the spiciness scale I was willing to travel. And sometimes it just depended on the season of my life. ​​​​​​​​
Among the things I hated about my first job--a dietary aide at the local nursing home--were the too-big-for-me green scrubs I had to wear, stretching a hair net over my head at the start of each shift, and the cloud of smoke shrouding the employee entrance (always from nurses on their cigarette breaks). I hated that my coworkers were constantly late, how easy it was to slip and fall on the sweaty kitchen floor, and the gray mop water that sloshed onto my once-white shoes. I hated finding dentures filled with corn from the cob on a plate after dinner or plunging my hands into a sink full of pureed hot dog and mashed peas. I hated heaving trash bags into the dumpster as they leaked sour milk onto my green scrubs. But what I hated the most were the days when the meal roster had one fewer name on it. I hated empty hallways where a favorite person used to sit in his wheelchair. I hated fewer prune juices to pour and going away for a week-long vacation and wondering who might be gone when I get back. Because like every single job I've had since my first, there are lots of things to loathe--long lists of them, even--but the thing I've loved has always been the people.​​​​​​​​

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