i'm a perfectionist. i admit it. so, while my quark file is technically at the printer, I can't help but obsess over butting up all the color and anchoring recto/folio master pages. cause i'm a dork.

but, you knew that. so on to other things: i LOVED jonny rotten's face at the tribal council last night. after his wonderful commentary about the intellectual black hole of his competitors, he is knocked into silence by the stony and unaffected faces of his castmates as burton left the area.

i'm a tooth girl so i was overly excited that he didn't open his mouth right then. there's something about teeth that hang out of a closed mouth that make my stomach churn. of course, i'm the girl who clutches rails when going down stairs cause i just know that if i loosen that grip, i'll trip and fall - thereby knocking out my teeth. i can feel the visceral sword of it with each step down. and you know that scene in american history x. the scene with the curb and the teeth and my god! even thinking about it makes my teeth ache!

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moving along. the javinator said to me last night - "Haabee miss Mama." i don't know if i can even begin to capture the tenderness that washed over me. maybe it's because i am so afraid of the biological link he has with other people (namely his biological parents) and feel like i'm constantly having to subvert that link to ensure that i am the one true mama/parent - i don't know - maybe it's just my insecurity, but i am worry. i worry that one day he'll choose them over me. i worry that he can't possibly ignore the dna calling to him. i worry that i'll have spent my life on him and he'll walk away and leave me with nothing.

i suppose it'd be worth it. ushering him into this world from the sidelines, but carrying him in teeth into adolescence and adulthood should be enough. i am not of the generation that expects a reward for parenting. it's just. i don't know - it's just.

miller says i have an invisible cocoon around me and the kidlet. that i pretend we're part of a larger whole, but really, in my mind, it's just me and pluck against the world. he tells me that i have to widen that circle because the child is not mine. he's not any body's but his own. he tells me that one day, the child will, inevitably, enter a cocoon of his very own and if i don't set that as my goal, i will be devastated. and alone. and destroyed.

so i try. i prepare myself for the day my child will yell at me "you can't tell me what to do! you aren't my mother!" because i know with everything in me that he will. he has to. it's his job as a child to rail against his parents - biological or not. he will scream the same thing at miller. he will throw in his biological parents' faces that he owes them nothing due to their abandonment. it will happen.

but who can prepare for that? who can honestly say they are ready to be tossed aside? i know he's only almost-3 and that i have years til he begins pulling on the bonds that keep him My Son instead of Javi. but hearing it. hearing him say, in his little boy way, i choose you, mama, over everyone else buoyed and broke my heart in one fell swoop.

i used to see my life as a length of twine. Each fray broken off from the whole was another life that has left mine. dead relatives and friends and lovers (and for a while, there was at least one per year) each supporting my life, propelling it forward, until they finally broke away. that twine is still as strong and as supported as before, yet in each twist along the way is my love spiraling and twisting deeper into this little person.

one day, he too will break away. in the meantime, the twine holds us, binds us. after he told me he missed me, he pulled my head down onto his chest and rested his little boy hand on my check. he fell asleep that way.