Notions

At any waking moment the human head is filled alive with molecules of thought called notions. - Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail 

I'm wearing my mom's old bathrobe. When I was little I just thought of it as brown but it's really more of a dusty red-ish, tan-ish, green-ish kinda thing and it's patterned. Something vaguely Native American --too pilly to tell. It's thin, tired, older than I am, and makes me feel safe. I have so many memories of my mom wearing it on Christmas mornings, hair just a little frizzled, eyes raw and laughing from being woken up at 6 a.m. by her six over-eager kids. What a woman. What a bathrobe.

Now I wear it and wonder if someday I'll get to be woken up too early and drug downstairs to watch stockings I stayed up too late stuffing held by the toe and shaken violently, candy canes clattering onto the table, rubber balls bouncing into the abyss and slinkies slinking off into the place slinkies slink. Maybe I'll make caramel rolls, too, for breakfast, half with pecan, half without --because some kids don't know goodness when they taste it -and I'll fold all the tissue paper up carefully before the kids are even done unwrapping. 

Maybe wearing my hero's cape will give me her powers.

I don't know. It's just a notion.