Posts Tagged Under Angie Reynolds
A Special Bicycle
Someone stole my boy’s bike.
Fortunately, a friend has loaned us one until we buy another, but that bike! I bought it when Dane was 2 – the future rider he’d become, just a pedaling speck in my mind.
That bike inspired a 5-year-old’s self-reliance that would’ve made Emerson proud.
All summer long, we rode, first in circles around the playground; then, into Sausalito or along the Bay Trail between Marin City and Mill Valley.
By Anjie ReynoldsDaddy’s Home And Mommy Needs a Break
I’m a mom who’s ready for school to start up again. Not elementary school — dental school. My husband’s on break for a week before he starts quarter number five of his twelve-quarter program.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that he gets to hang up his shirt and tie and spend some time with us — especially since during the school year I’m relentlessly on duty at home while he’s relentlessly on duty at school or studying.
During this break, we’ve been able to do some meaningful activities together; camping at the ocean, riding bikes along the bay, cutting out paper coconut trees in our son’s kindergarten class, drinking homemade lattes on the sunny porch.
By Anjie ReynoldsLoss Brings Grief, Empathy and Perspective
I’ve spent the morning crying for a high school friend.
She was a junior when I was a sophomore, and we were in a couple of clubs together. Really down-to-earth, gorgeous, sweet girl. I haven’t seen her since she graduated.
Today on Reunion.com, I read a message she posted last May about her brother. Her brother was a year ahead of her. He was an adorable jock kind of guy and they were good friends throughout school.
Her post said that her brother had lost a three and a half year battle with brain cancer. He left behind his loving wife of fourteen years and their two daughters. And, I noticed in the message, as if it couldn’t get any worse, one of his surviving daughters has leukemia.
By Anjie ReynoldsJust Who is Nursing Who?
The first time I held a baby to my breast to nurse, I felt a wet tugging at my nipple. My body was exhausted from the labor, but when collostrum flowed out into his ready little mouth, I sat there amazed.
Perhaps because I’d just endured a day and a half of labor, and perhaps because I was still reeling with thoughts of I have a baby boy—sweet mother of God! I have a baby boy! I looked down on his pink face too stunned to cry.
Looking down into his moist eyes as they took all of this new world in — the lights, the shapes, the sounds no longer filtered through what I imagined to be the red canopy of his life for nine and a half months.
By Anjie ReynoldsWhat’s Become of the Boys We Used To Kiss?
Buddy Benton kissed my cheek at my locker in ninth grade.
He’d been wanting to carry my books, hold my hand, or get a kiss from me since I’d met him the year before when I transferred junior highs. He was a little bit goofy and kind of a loud mouth, but we were both soccer players, singers, and honor students, and it was easy to be around him.
I always rolled my eyes at Buddy’s advances and lectured him many times that we were just friends — especially because he was a Mormon and I was a Baptist. I’d been indoctrinated enough to know there was no chance, no sense in starting anything since our religions were incompatible.
But Buddy stole a kiss on my cheek and something in my heart shifted. With that fast swoop to my face, where I could feel his hot breath on my skin, I felt something I hadn’t known before. Perhaps I felt what it was to be desired; perhaps I felt what it was to desire someone else: to let all the little details I’d ever noticed about him — his lanky gait, the muscles in his calves, the milky quality of his tenor voice — awaken something beautiful, fluttery, and tender in me.
By Anjie ReynoldsBrows Make the Mama
“That one’s that skinny, and that one’s that skinny,” my four-year-old daughter says, pulling my face close and grabbing my eyebrows into an uneven pinch in each hand.
My right brow looks like it always looks after I wax. Subtle. Full. A clean crescent. My left brow I must now lovingly refer to as “the skinny brow.”
Not so subtle. Not so full.
By Anjie ReynoldsSlump
My son’s been drawing racecars lately. Really good ones. Of course, they’re of the animated Pixar car, Lightning McQueen variety, but he’s six and they’re 3-D, and except that I’ve never seen the number “95” drawn accurately on the door – it’s usually “65” or “92” – they’re pretty impressive.
He’s got the spatial stuff down, as well as the colors and character personality.
But, yesterday he was in some sort of slump. I watched him rip page after page from his notebook and throw them to the floor with just a single line or curve on each tossed page.
By Anjie Reynolds
