We’re in the Holiday Inn in Sacramento, you are asleep on my bed, daddy is pecking away at his computer and me silently at mine.  It’s very late. We are here at the same place for different reasons.  Daddy needs a big soothing dose of his own mommy, you’ll go anywhere with your Grandma and I am here fora few meetings; getting back on my horse. Your mommy is agitated, lonely, set adrift without Daddy there and ill-prepared to be on her own with a baby. Ill prepared. She forgets to smile some days.  Liza can help, but mommy needs to help her too.  It’s a hard time; a growing time.  Last night she wrote on facebook that she was in the hospital.  A medical emergency gets immediate attention from other people. She may be needing that.  She’ll be okay for a day or so, then she’ll ask Daddy again to come get her.  That’s hard for daddy, too. He can’t go yet.

I watched you in the sprinklers on the lawn before the cold weather returned.  I watched you sing in the sand box, dig, pile sand, and scoop the soft gopher hill soil into your cupped palms. For more than half the day you were outside in the sun.  You brought a beetle in to show me the shiny skin on her back.  The dogs lay nearby, Georgia one eye on you at all times.  You pee your pants once or twice a day, forget to take off your sandy shoes when you come into the house and brush your teeth ten times a day now that you have Tom’s strawberry toothpaste for kids.  You are delighted, loving, enchanted with every moment.

I was able to get the kitchen, bedrooms and bathroom organized while you played. You are an “on your own” self-occupied player.  It makes me happy that you can be content. You are mostly fine. You even play with angry shouted language, “Get off the couch, do you hear me?  No kids on the couch, you say, as we snuggle up to read a book.  Your voice growls with pretend anger, growls with an intonation that tells me much. You cope. Daddy less so. He’s silent and dismissive.  He jokes, talks too much and paces as he smokes out near the driveway.  He tosses his hands in the air when he talks on his buy-it-by-the-minute cell phone.  He got a new job at First Alarm security company starting on Saturday. This is his tiny vacation.

Today you will go to the Train Museum across the way from the hotel.  You’ll hold daddy’s hand, walk under the tunnel to Old Town and go to the museum that daddy loved when he was a little boy.  He still loves.  I will go to a meeting all day then Grandpa will pick up our things, your carseat and me. Daddy will take my car back home, and feed the dogs and horses until Sunday. You and Grandpa and I will go to a special event called Californios.  Horses, cowboys, girls, and another hotel.  The new old house is there waiting.  We will see what is going on, look around and find places to play.  We will sometimes just sit together and be happy wherever we are. Soon sissy will join us.  And mommy too.  That will be interesting.  For now all this is plenty interesting. gma