Uh oh. Am I flirting with you? Indeed I am.

Once upon a time, in the land before marriage and kids, I was a solid flirt. Not over-the-top, but I had my moments. I even indulged in the old school head-tilt from time to time. And you know what? Flirting was fun. In college and law school, I looked forward to nights out because I so enjoyed the playful banter that would invariably ensue between moi and a medley of cute guys. Please note that I was not looking forward to hooking up (yes, I just said hooking up. I’m allowed). I was eager for the light and lovely chit-chat.

So. Why am I talking about this now – the lost art of flirtation? After all, I now reside – and happily – in the land of marriage and kids. My days are not spent anticipating cheeky exchanges with beautiful strangers. My nights are not spent in dimly-lit bars scoping out brooding poets and hot lacrosse players. No. My days are spent in the company of two little girls and this screen. My nights are spent (yes, largely on the couch. Sue me.) with my forever man. So, why this topic today?

First, I am realizing something. What I write about affects me. That might not strike you as revolutionary, but this truth is just beginning to dawn on me. If I spend my days talking only about parenting fails, blank pages, existential grays, and the bleeding of past dreams, I might just spiral into a bit of a self-induced depression. Not good. So. Today, I woke up and said, Flirtation! Let’s do it!

Second, and more importantly, I have a belief:

Life without flirtation is blah.

I believe this. Yes, we get older, some of us even grow up, but that doesn’t mean we have to stop with the giggles and head-tilts and goofy chatter, does it? No, it doesn’t. Adulthood (yuck) is riddled with responsibilities, yes, and much of the time we are expected to be (or act like) serious creatures, but that doesn’t mean we have to lose our silly selves.

A critical clarification is in order here. I am using the term flirtation quite broadly. Flirtation does not presuppose anything sexual. I am not advocating that all of you reading this now log off and go out and flirt with a handsome bartender. No. What I am saying is that flirtation, in the wide sense of the word (think: playful banter, koo-koo chemistry) is vital to happiness. Too much seriousness? Good luck with that.

Last night I went on a date with Husband. We walked around the neighborhood hand-in-hand. I could not decide what I wanted to eat, so we stopped in front of about six restaurants before deciding on one. Husband mocked my lovely indecision. Over sushi, we talked and laughed. We flirted. It was fun. It felt good.

It was a great night. And I slept well. And woke up smiling and thinking that we do have some control here. Life takes turns we cannot predict or prevent, but there are things we can do to sweeten our days. To put the silly and sexy and fun back in that fabulous existential pot.

One thing? We can flirt. That is, if we remember how…

{Oh, and the picture above? In the likely event that you are confused, that is not Husband and me. We are far less hideous.}

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• Do you agree that life without flirtation is blah?
• When is the last time you flirted, really flirted?
• Do you think flirtation is an important life skill? Or is it inappropriate after a certain point in life?
  
• Do you agree that flirtation does not have to be done with an agenda, that it can be totally innocuous?
• Are you affected by the content of what you write? Have you ever forced yourself to lighten things up on the page so as to lighten your mood?
• Were you a blue-ribbon flirt once upon a time?

Sometimes, flirtation gets us in trouble. Exhibit A: Quinn. Want to read her story? Then click! (Warning: parts of said story are a wee bit naughty in nature. Do I tell you this to entice you to purchase? Absolutely.)

The last few days have been a bit heavy, their waters rippled with worry familiar and foreign. Despite the surplus of seasonal sunshine, sogginess has pervaded many moments. Smiles have been there, here, but sometimes forced. There are things, so many things, spiky and scraggly and real, bobbing under the surface. Things I’d like to say. To release.

This? This feeling? It is nothing major. It is life. Life does not boast smooth edges and permanent rainbows. Life is shot through with a universal gray that at once soothes and confuses. Life is clouded with questions, questions that nip at us, questions that make us look in. Questions that exhaust us.

And so. I am here. Being characteristically vague. Waiting for the time when I can articulate the passing fog more clearly, when I can give the questions life on the screen. I am here. Because this is a good place, a place where my words can hang until they make better sense.

I am here.

Last night, we enjoyed a big family dinner out. The girls behaved for the most part and ate well. I sat in my seat, playing with my angel hair, and my mind rumbled with inchoate thoughts about assumption and reality, about perception and place. It is amazing how we can be in two spots at once. In a restaurant and in an existential tunnel. We humans are indeed skilled creatures.

Back home. We tucked the girls in. In their new purple room. They were giddy still from the lemon sorbet, but they did not fight us as we flipped the light and whispered goodnight. For the next forty minutes, we listened to them on the monitor as they talked, and winded down. Their voices, sweet and unique, wrapped around one another. They had things to say. The stints of silence grew longer as time passed.

At one point, Toddler said something that made me smile. Something little and big, so silly and so serious. Something I will never forget.

“Tell me when you’re sleeping.”

At this order, Baby said it. “Okay.”

I love that my little girl said this. That she made this request, this impossible request. I love even more that she had no clue about the impossibility inherent in her words, that there are times when we cannot articulate our state of being. Because, simply, we are not awake.

Or because we are confused, weighed down by life.

I think of their voices, little and melodic, and a smile appears. A real one. Unforced and golden. It lingers now as my fingers dance.

Even when life gets tricky, even when our minds are mangled with gray, there are things, sweet things, rainbow things, that cut through the clouds.

Thank you, girls.

• Are you ever weighed down by a temporary and largely inexplicable existential fog?
• Are there things in your life that snap you out of your own introspection?
• Have your kids ever said any silly and genius things that you will never forget?
• How often are you in two places at once?
  
• Do you celebrate or curse life’s intermittent grays? (I do both.)
  

Last weekend, Husband and I took the girls to the American Museum of Natural History. Toddler was eager to be reunited with the Stegosaurus in the Hall of Dinosaurs. Once there, the girls were in prime silly mode. They chased each other through the crowds, placed their little grubby hands on the glass dividers, and generally caused a fair bit of barely-acceptable kiddie mayhem. We did not stay too long.

We left the museum. As is par for the Upper West course, there were many families scattered about, doing their own thing, enjoying the promise of another summer Sunday. But my eye zoomed to one family in particular. The boy was probably six or seven? He was with his parents. He wore a helmet and was on a bike. This boy’s father had tied a beach towel around his son’s middle. His mother stood yards ahead, crouched down, stern-faced, waving her son to pedal toward her. The little boy did as told, pumping skinny legs, turning those wheels. He went a few inches, his father propping him up from behind. And then the bike tipped. This happened over and over.

This is not what bothered me. That the parents were teaching, trying to teach, and that the progress was made in barely there bits and pieces. What bothered me? The boy was sobbing. His face was wet with tears. His glasses were fogged. Not only that, but he was saying, and very clearly, “I don’t want to do this anymore!” These words, it seems, did not deter his parents. His father gripped that towel. And his mother barked for her boy to keep trying.

My little girls skipped by this little boy. And I followed them. But even when I could no longer see this family, I pictured them. I thought about that boy. And those parents. I felt (and feel) confused. Was this scene a snippet of tough love or was this insistence on the part of the parents too much? Instinct tells me that the parents should have laid off that tearful little guy. But maybe parenting is not meant to be all smiles and snuggles? Maybe there are skills and lessons, more and less important, that we must teach through toughness and tears?

I don’t know. I don’t even pretend to know. But on this Monday morning in August, I am still thinking of that little boy and his red eyes and shaky feet. I am also thinking of two little girls, pajama-clad and cartoon-entranced and inches from me. I know it is a precious pipe dream, but I would like to get things right with these creatures.

And so. Here I am. In my cozy spot on the couch. In my cozy spot in the cosmos. Writing. Wondering. Asking.

Always asking.

Do you think this scene with this little boy on his bike was an instance of tough love or a manifestation of excessive parental pressure? Do you think parenthood is in some sense striking a balance between discipline and fun, hardness and softness? Were your own parents tough on you when it came to learning certain skills and life lessons?

On Monday afternoon, I took Baby to music class. Truth be told, we arrived a whopping twenty minutes late because with my Box Brain, I’m even more delinquent with the everyday details. But we got there. And with plenty of time for her to run about on the rainbow carpet and frolic with friends and sing and dance under the parachute. The class ended like it always does with many bubbles and many happy kiddie giggles.

After class, I popped Baby in her stroller and we started our short trek home to reunite with Toddler and Nanny. After half a block though, I stopped. I bent down next to Baby and asked her, “Do you want to have a french fry date with Mommy?”

“Yeah!” she crooned.

And so we turned into the little vegan restaurant right there. We’d had some trouble with a certain grumpy old man in this restaurant before, but I decided to test my luck. Thankfully, the restaurant was almost completely empty. There was just one man at the bar scarfing tomato soup. (Hey, it was Matt Dillon!) Baby and I settled at a small table in the back. I ordered her a plate of fries and myself a bowl of chilled corn soup.

And we talked. We talked about the purple room she now shares with her sister. We talked about her beloved grandparents Moo Moo, Grammy, and Dad-Dad. Nanny texted me to tell me that our cats had vomited all over our brand new duvet cover. For whatever reason, I decided to share this horrific tidbit with Baby. She laughed deeply. “Oh no! Cats peeped on bed!” And I told her, no. They threw up. “Oh no! Silly cats!”

Our food arrived and Baby began a careful process drenching her fries in dip dip (ketchup). She fed me a few. She counted little fry bits (up to eight! genius!) She asked me how my soup was. Good, I told her. She asked me to strap her into her high chair – a safety detail I admittedly neglected – and I obliged. Then she finally started to eat. I smiled as she took a single fry and bit it from the side like an ear of corn. She ate all her fries this way. After a little while, I finished my soup.

“Eat it all up?” Baby asked.

“Yes, sweetie. It was delicious.”

“All done too!” she proclaimed. And then she started yelling “Fry fry!” over and over at a barely appropriate decibel. It was then that I noticed that the famous grumpy old man had taken a seat at the next table.

Check please.

We took the remaining fries to go in a little plastic box. I let Baby hold this box in her stroller and she shook it vigorously. A makeshift maraca. As I was strapping her into her stroller, I asked her something.

“Was it fun to have a date just with Mommy?”

“Yeah!” she screamed. And then she put her hand up for a high five.

I pushed this little girl home. I smiled the whole way. And as I smiled, warmed by experience and realization, my little creature shook that box of fries and kicked those little legs.

Do you agree that it is important that we have experiences with each of our children alone? Do you have fond memories of one-on-one experiences with your parents? (I do. I remember catching a big trout with Dad at Vick’s Pond when I was eight or so. And I remember pizza dates with Mom after preschool. We would sit in the very back of Pizza Joint and she would cut slices into small bites and then we would share.)

After a string of nutty days and very late nights, I’m happy to report that we are moved into our new home and reasonably settled. And by reasonably, I mean barely. But we are happy to be here even if we are aware of the reality that it will likely take months to get our bearings. On Friday, I made a weakling of a promise that I would post some new pictures of the new place. And maybe I will sometime, but not today. Why? First, I have not yet located my camera and hence there are no pics to publish. Second, I’m not sure I want to.

It’s weird. When I started blogging sixteen months ago, I had this profound urge to share bits of myself with the world. Even strangers. To me, there was (and is) something compelling and exhilarating about translating aspects of my personal experience into more universal words and sentences and stories that might resonate with others. I fell in love with the idea of communication and connection and collaboration in this modern world that, by design, is often so isolating and lonely.

Up front, when I started this blog, I had a big question to figure out. Would I identify my husband and girls by name and face or would I keep things more anonymous with them? Honestly, I had no obvious and overwhelming instinct one way or the other. I had read and liked many blogs that featured family pictures and used names. I had read and liked many sites where anonymity was the absolute rule. So. I decided to start this blog by going the anonymity route for my family, knowing that I could reveal names and faces at a later date once I figured out better how I felt about this online world, the ever-enigmatic concept of privacy and its protection.

What happened was that I never figured out how I felt. And so I kept chugging away the way I began, keeping identifying information about my family, nuclear and more extended, off the blog. And I’m pretty happy with my decision even though I wish I thought through my aliases a bit better. (Toddler is basically a teenager and Baby is now a toddler). I am proud of making a decision which for me was not principled really, but borne from mild, but detectable instinct. I am pleased that my blog, to date, has really been about me and my evolution and not about the ones I love who have not made the decision to render their worlds public.

But. Yes, there is a but. There always is. A part of me, not so tiny, is envious of those who have chosen differently. Of those fellow bloggers and writers who have opened up a bit more about their families. Who have shared beautiful family pictures. Who have highlighted faces. Eyes and smiles. Who have named names. Stories without names and faces, censored in the name of something complicated and inscrutable (privacy? modesty? fear?) are missing something, aren’t they? A layer of authenticity? Missing a layer of real?

And yet. There is part of me, not small, that continues to worry. About the effects – practical and philosophical – this blogging gig is having, and will have, on me and my family. We are all, myself very much included, riding this technological wave necessarily unaware of where we are headed and who we will be on the other end. It is when I stop to really think about what all of this means, this calculated exposure, these choices to abdicate bits of who we are, that I feel a swell of that initial hesitancy. Yes, even sixteen months later.

And so. That’s why. That’s why I have never posted pictures of my kids. Or shared with you their beautiful names. That’s why on this fine Monday morning, I’m reluctant to post pictures of my new home, rich with colors and patterns of who we are. There are parts of my life, bigger and smaller, that I must keep for me. For us.

At least for now.

And I am one person and this is my choice. I know this. I also know that this is an interesting question, an interesting bundle of questions. There are so many of us here, in this online ether, showing and telling, hiding and seeking, lurking and learning. We all have instincts, strong and subtle, about how to approach this world, how to edit (or not edit) our lives under its lens. And so. I ask you. That one-worded wonder that is currently Baby’s question of choice.

Why?

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• If you blog, do you reveal the names and faces of your family on your site or have you kept things completely or partially anonymous?
  
• Why have you chosen to do things the way you do them? Do you ever regret your decision or think about doing things differently?
• If you do not blog, but read blogs, do you have an opinion on this matter?
• Do you think anonymity strips authenticity from its object, or is simply the smart way to go?
• If you do post names and faces, have you ever experienced anything alarming where you worried about the safety of your family?
• If you do things anonymously, have you ever heard from readers who feel slighted by your censorship? (I have.)