{"id":621,"date":"2010-06-21T10:00:50","date_gmt":"2010-06-21T18:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/?p=621"},"modified":"2010-06-21T10:00:50","modified_gmt":"2010-06-21T18:00:50","slug":"something-you-should-know-about-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/21\/something-you-should-know-about-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Something You Should Know About Us"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Maybe this will be one of those moments.<\/p><\/div>\n

When we were little my sister and I liked to eat chapstick \u2013 any flavor or even plain would do but my favorite was orange. There was something about the smell that I loved so much. If we were in the mood for nighttime snack, we\u2019d sneak stealth-like into my parent\u2019s bathroom and rummage around in the bottom drawer until we came up with a tube of whatever we could find.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d talk in what we thought were whispers, while we snacked like little chipmunks. I don\u2019t know how old we were, but I do know my sister (who is two years older than me) was old enough to feel guilty. As a penance she smothered Dad\u2019s toothbrush, we assumed the balm was Dad\u2019s because Mom used lipstick, with toothpaste and left it, bristles up, next to the sink. Such a good helper.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One morning Dad said something like, \u201cyou guys can eat all the chapstick you want but please don\u2019t put toothpaste on my toothbrush.\u201d Apparently it dried and hardened and in the morning he had to chisel it off. Sorry Dad. Oh and, sorry Mom for eating your chapstick.<\/p>\n

The other night while getting into bed I notice red streaks that look like blood on a crinkled tissue stuffed into the top of the Kleenex box. I pull it out to throw it away and smell something sweet. That\u2019s not blood. I smell again. Definitely not blood. In my night stand drawer, you guessed it, the lid is off and the balm has been scraped out with a tiny finger. The Dr Pepper Lip Smackers has been compromised.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t even start with me about all the chemicals Lip Smackers.\u00a0I should have thrown\u00a0Dr Pepper\u00a0away long ago, replaced it with my 100% organic food-grade quality (perfect for eating) premium shea butter, encased in a BPA and phthalate free tube, but it’s a relic from my past. It was hard to let go. \u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s all beside the point. Suddenly, I realized we\u2019re here: she\u2019s reaching the age where tangible memory begins. It\u2019s possible she\u2019ll remember some of these days, some moments, not as a general feeling, a haze of babyness, but as specific moments that have, I don\u2019t know, quotation marks<\/em>. Maybe this isn\u2019t exactly what happened, maybe I haven\u2019t remembered Dad\u2019s words correctly but that\u2019s the way memory works. What\u2019s important here is not the accuracy but the solidity.<\/p>\n

On one hand, this is terrifying. What about all my mistakes, the times I get frustrated, I do the wrong thing? She\u2019s watching, remembering, cataloguing, probably with the dewey decimal system, saving all these moments for her teenage years.<\/p>\n

But this new phase of tangible memory is also a relief because here we are, mother and daughter (both with an appetite for lip balm), making it though our days and our nights. Working it out. We\u2019ve made it this far and hopefully, if our luck continues, we\u2019ll have a lot more time together, good and bad, to remember.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we were little my sister and I liked to eat chapstick \u2013 any flavor or even plain would do but my favorite was orange. There was something about the smell that I loved so much. If we were in the mood for nighttime snack, we\u2019d sneak stealth-like into my parent\u2019s bathroom and rummage around […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mom","category-parenting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":624,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621\/revisions\/624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}