M

...is for Mama. My favorite job so far. My name. The "thing" about me that motivates, informs, and defines everything else.

...is for Mom. I learned how to be a mama from her. She's wise, kind, generous. And so smart.

...is for music. A big part of my life. In a lot of ways. Although I definitely like the sounds I'm surrounded by to be carefully chosen; I am not one for constant background music. It feels distracting to me. (As much as -- or more than -- my wee ones, I seem to be sensitive to overstimulation.) So, we play surprisingly few CD's in the house, eat dinner without a soundtrack, etc. Sometimes it's just awesome to rock out, or to dance to "fairy music" or salsa, for sure. But I tend to think it's all the more appreciated when the moment for recorded music has been chosen and agreed upon. Though we are constantly surrounded by other forms of music throughout our days: both children love to sing, I sing a lot, and then there are the other "musics" of our life -- the dog barking, a creaky chair, my knitting needles softly clicking, Elisabeth's chatter, James's humming, the sewing machine slowly sewing, a breeze outside the window and a neighbor's wind chime, the occasional melancholy train whistle or airplane or traffic sounds, sometimes our "real" instruments -- my cello, the children's little toy xylophone, my pentatonic flute, daddy's guitar or brassy instruments. Even my typing. These are the sounds, and the music, of our days.

...is also for three summery pleasures of mine to which I am fondly bidding farewell until next summer: the mint patch that grows by our front stoop during the summer (originally our landlady's herb garden, but the weedy mint has overgrown the rest), my favorite lime and mint beverage, the mojito, and my other favorite limey beverage, the margarita. My husband makes really, really awesome margaritas and mojitos. During the summer, I pretty much have a mojito-a-day. I have a (kind of embarrassingly) low alcohol tolerance, though, so I have to have weak ones. ;)