Just Between You and Me and 850 of Our Closest Friends

After she read the last post, Lauren said, "It's not that we're not creating memories to inspire the blog, it's just that they are spread out on the phone or they all happen at once when I'm home to visit. They just get postponed sometimes."

She was so right. And she forgot to mention Facebook. Case in point: *

LAUREN

I really DON'T understand how it's so difficult to follow simple instructions. Honestly, the military is the EASIEST job on the planet. You are told what to do, all you have to do is do it.

NICOLE

That's funny. Substitute "childhood" for military, and you have the exact thing I said about you to my friends.

KHRISTOPHER

Your mom's website is cool. I read everything on there last night. Funny shit.

LAUREN

Mother...just...shh!! I see this now. But these kids are ridiculous. They want to be treated like adults but they show no reason to.

NICOLE

"But these kids are..." Again, you quote me.

LAUREN

You don't even know, Mother!!!!

KHRISTOPHER

Christopher Meloni called, by the way.

LAUREN

...............

* Transcript contains minor editing.

And so it continues. Now I can sleep better.

Oh, and Lauren? Christopher Meloni left a message here, too.

Sunrise, Sunset

I have to search the young woman's face longer, now, to see my little girl. Legally, she's been an adult for almost a year, though I still question so many of her choices. But then, I'm sure my parents still question mine.

I stopped coming here, stopped posting, because it made me sad to think that Lauren and I are no longer creating the kinds of memories that inspired the title of this blog. And then I found this picture, from Christmas 2010.

This blog, like my life, is exactly what I choose to make of it.

Here's looking at you, Poots!

Poetic Payoff, Nine Years Later

Lauren and I were sitting at the same table using laptop computers the day she joined Twitter. Because I had given her a hard time about my having "out-teched" her when I joined Twitter, she had taken great pride in choosing her user name, closettweeter, and she patiently waited—for about an hour—for me to notice her new web presence. Alas, I was busy writing and did not discover her cleverness on my own, forcing her to ask me a question about Twitter so I could be amused with her new identity.

Considering that Lauren could wait no more than an hour to see the results of her actions, I had to marvel at what I discovered yesterday:

Using a style similar to mine, Lauren wrote this nine years ago in a poetry journal I started when I was 12. It took me a couple minutes to decipher the last word (bundles), partly because the handwriting belonged to a 10-year-old and partly because my eyes had sprung leaks. And, since I have moved the book a number of times over the past nine years, and have cracked it open more than once, I am completely amazed that I never noticed the poem until yesterday.

So there you have it, Poots. I finally found what you did, you clever, clever girl.

Typecasting

I bought the DVD Death at a Funeral to watch while Lauren was home on leave. I told her a little about the movie, and then she asked who was in it.

NICOLE
The only people I can think of that you'd know are "Steve the Pirate" from Dodgeball [Alan Tudyk] and Peter Dinklage from The Station Agent.

LAUREN
Peter who?

NICOLE
Peter Dinklage. He also played the "angry elf" in Elf.

LAUREN
Why does he play a dwarf in all the movies?

As soon as she said it--and I nearly crashed the truck, laughing--she tried to clarify her question. But it was too late; she knew it was going to end up here.

LAUREN
You have to explain it! You have to tell people what I meant to say!

NICOLE
Oh, no. They'll know what you meant. But what you said is so much funnier.

LAUREN
Thanks a lot, Mom.

Free Advertising

When Lauren was in high school, she had a collection of pins on her backpack. I added one that said, "My mother is a goddess." She found it a few days later.

Ah, glory days.

And the World Laughs with You

The beautiful thing about approaching life with a sense of humor is that you never know when you might brighten a stranger's day.

A few nights ago, four of us sat at the large community table in a local restaurant. Lauren and I engaged in our typical jabs at one another even as we visited with friends.

Midway through our meal, a woman sat down next to our party and quietly contemplated her iced tea. She seemed to be working on her powers of invisibility, as though she had been stood up and hoped nobody noticed.

As our group was winding down, Lauren left to use the restroom, leaving her lip balm on the table. (She is addicted to ChapStick and the like. Seriously. Addicted.)

Suzin said, "You should salt her ChapStick," which I promptly did.

The woman next to us could remain invisible no longer. She watched me cover the tip with salt, press it in, and carefully replace the lid. She laughed even as she avoided eye contact.

When Lauren returned to the table, four of us waited for the payoff. It might have been a full minute before she pulled off the cap and started to put the salted stuff on her lips.

We all laughed as Lauren said, "What the?" and inspected the lip balm. She laughed, too, as she shook her head and wiped off the salt with her napkin. And I gave credit to Suzin when Lauren said, "Good one."

After we left the restaurant, Lauren agreed that the laugh at her expense might have been just what the woman at our table needed.

I hope so.

Phone Messages and Other Lies

If you see my daughter, tell her that Christopher Meloni called.

She'll understand.