Terrible Mother

Happy Birthday Thing Three

Thing Three's 4th Birthday, 12.13.05

Getting the party hat on:         

The cake:                                  Blowing out the candles: 

Opening presents: 

I think there may be nothing better than being four. 

*terriblemother

Poem of the Week

The Dance

A middle-aged woman, quite plain, to be polite about it, and

     somewhat stout, to be more courteous still,

but when she and the rather good-looking, much younger man

     she's with get up to dance,

her forearm descends with such delicate lightness, such restrained

     but confident ardor athwart his shoulder,

drawing him to her with such a firm, compelling warmth, and

    moving him with effortless grace

into the union she's instantly established with the not at all

    rhythymically solid music in this second-rate cafe,

that something in the rest of us, some doubt about ourselves, some

    sad conjecture, seems to be allayed,

nothing that we'd ever thought of as a real lack, nothing not to be

    admired or be repentant for,

but something to which we've never adequately given credence,

which might have consoling implications about how we misbe-

     lieve ourselves, and so the world,

the world beyond us which so often disappoints, but which

     sometimes shows us, lovely, what we are.

-CK Williams

*terriblemother