A Grumpy, Begrudging, Revealing Attempt at Prayer

I think about writing here, but I know it will end up, like, a to-do list with bullet points or something, and really? You had to go and get yourself a blog to make your to-do list? C'mon now.

So I've promised myself no bullet points.

I had a bad day. One of the boys is being rough, and I'm trying everything I can to teach him to be gentle, and he's gentle most of the time, but you never know when the rough will pop out and bam someone in the head with the wooden spoon he's supposed to be using on the djembe. Or throw a handful of sand in someone's eye. It's normal 2 year old stuff and it, too, will pass. But oh, it's a terrible feeling to know that someone might be getting popped -or worse!- any minute of the day and despite your constant vigilance, you might not be able to prevent it. Today I failed to prevent it. Twice. Bad day.

Then in yoga, near the end of class, a class I spent in tense negotiation with the frustration I carried in with me, I heard a voice. It very distinctly said: Change your reaction.

And I knew it didn't mean change the reaction I offered the child. It meant change how I feel about it. Which sucks because I felt rather entitled to my frustration.

Not that it's doing me any good.

So I'm working on that.

And it would be the simplest thing in the world to say: Hey God, will you help me be better at this, please? Thank you!

But it's like I don't even think to do that unless or until I feel I've done absolutely everything I can do to improve the situation myself, and what's more I feel as if I shouldn't ask God for any help unless or until I've done absolutely everything I can do to improve the situation myself.

I think that's a fundamental misunderstanding I have about God.

Development of an Idea (or My Brain Won't Ever Shut Up)

Read, read, read. Research, research, research. SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING! PROJECT APPROACH! UNSCHOOLING! I can't send my kids to a crappy school while immersing myself in these amazing educational ideas here at home. Can I even go work for a school district again, when I'm rapidly losing faith in the model?

I will homeschool. I guess I'll continue to provide childcare to earn a living?

Read, read, read. Research, research, research. Or ... I could open a preschool, right here in my house! REGGIO EMILIA and MONTESSORI inspired for early childhood education!

Read, read, read. Research, research, research. YOU CAN START YOUR OWN CHARTER SCHOOL IN NYS???

How do you open a school for unschooling?

Public school for unschooling? Look no further! THEY'RE ALREADY DOING IT! With locations in Western New York!

Oh. It's for high school. I want to do elementary school.

I need a network of people.

I hate developing networks of people. I like ideas. I want to be the idea person. I want someone else to be the people person.

Read, read, read. Research, research, research. YOU CAN GET PAID FOR BEING THE IDEA PERSON!? *SWOON*

Okay, I want to be an infopreneur. My idea is to take unschooling principles and make them work in elementary school. This could happen in one of two ways: we can take what they're doing in high schools like these ones, and bring them down to the elementary school level, OR we can take the approaches used in early childhood education, like these, and bring them up to the elementary school level.

So: homeschooler-->infopreneur-->open a charter school. Then who knows, because I would send my kids to this school, and then I'll either have to get a job there, or figure out a new life plan. :)

Assuming I don't have a WHOLE NEW idea next week, how the hell do I go about making THIS happen?

Change

I read my post from the other day, and the Exceedingly Practical voice in my head says: hire someone to clean, fer Gawd's sake, and your load will lighten. Get that budget worked out, girl!

And Exceedingly Practical always has a good point, so you know it's true.

But I took a walk in the snow with my boy last night, and I thought while we walked, and it's not only the housework.

I'm almost thirty-six, and I chose a life of constant change a good many years ago. But I'm tired. And I look ahead...and it doesn't end. Our babies become toddlers and then children. My career will need to pick up again somewhere, and while I have a variety of lovely ideas, I'm just. tired. I'm jogging, here and there, practicing a little pilates, and a little more yoga. I don't feel stronger yet though, most of the time. Just exhausted.

The housework is part of it, but my body's tired too, and I'm existentially exhausted. I want to be a loving parent, and a joyful, playful teacher. I want to exercise, a lot, and to teach my kids to love their bodies. I want to plan menus, and keep the kitchen clean. I want to stop stepping on Cheerios and cheesy crackers, so often. I want to write, sometimes. I want to honor the things that are good in myself, and in all of us. I want to get closer to God. Oh, and I wouldn't mind figuring out who the hell God is, also. This stuff is hard, exhausting stuff.

And part of it, too, for me, is that the beautiful simplicity of mothering babies has been replaced with the challenges of parenting children who will someday be out in the world, dragging me with them, my heart naked and terrified, beating with fear in plain sight of everyone, outside my warm winter coat, unprotected, leaping forever in front of my loves. I didn't write often enough about how much I adored the baby phase it while I was in it because I was always afraid of sounding smug, sanctimonious, or straight-up-crazy. Who the hell loves the post-partum/newborn period?

*waves hand* *shrugs*

It's sad to say goodbye to the season of my babies -and my old job- because together they enforced a slow, gentle structure upon my life. Slow is my speed. Slow is my jam. I sat with my babies, soaking them up, and then I went to work and sat with other parents, and shared it with them, and they shared their babies with me. It was pretty wonderful. And I was lucky too, in that my babies were easy.

But now the easy babies are bigger, and they race everywhere they go, leaving messes in their wake. The house is on hyperspeed at all times. My husband has a new job, and so do I, both with longer hours, both with steeper learning curves. My boy will be starting school next fall. My girl's laughing at the word no. I'm picking up new yoga and pilates classes next month, and my kids will be trying another gym childcare. I have career plans in the works, and a long list of next steps. I still want to learn to make my own yoga pants. There's just so much change that's happened, and a bunch of change that's still happening, and when I look ahead I see more change that will happen. Even if someone else deep cleans the floors, I'll still be tired.

Change is exhausting.

Don't get me wrong though. I already told my husband I want to call the cleaning lady again asap.

Balance

Warning: this post is all over the place. I ought to edit, I know. But it ain't gonna happen. It was this or nothing at all. That's just where I am with life these days.

So I stumbled upon this article today. Go ahead and read it. I'll wait. What? You say you're in a hurry? Maybe you'll peruse it later? Fine, I'll summarize: In the latest round of the media concoction mommy wars, positing that stay-at-home mothers and work-outside-the-home mothers are at each other's throats for ratings purposes, enter Anderson Cooper and Dr. Drew to fan the flames, claiming that a recent study says working moms are happier, and asking if stay-at-home moms are lazy (is it just me, or wouldn't the stay-at-home moms be happier if it were all about being lazy!? You show me lazy, and I'll show you bliss! But maybe that's just me...) .

But this blogger (who I never read until today) did something I really appreciate: she followed the links back to the original study and read it. And what did it ACTUALLY say?

Basically, that I'm right about everything! :)

Okay, okay, it didn't cite me personally or anything (hmph!), but here's the title of the study: Mothers’ Part-Time Employment: Associations With Mother and Family Well-Being. Turns out it's part-time employment that offers the most benefits to mothers, kids and families. I read it, sitting on my couch, looking at the room I just cleaned that already needs to be cleaned again, and I pined for my old job back. My lovely, wonderful, I'd-send-it-to-the-Vatican-for-sainthood-if-I-were-still-a-practicing-Catholic, as close to perfect as can be, old job.

And while it had a number of things going for it, here was the very, very best part: it was PART-TIME! And the hours were FLEXIBLE! It was luscious. Delicious. A thing of great beauty.

I am still struggling with adapting to this (not-so) new (anymore) life, six months later. It's a lot HARDER than my old life. On the days the boys come, I work ten hours: 7:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. On the days they don't come, I have my two kids for the ten hours my husband is at work. On weekends, I have essentially the same job; it's just bring-your-husband-to-work-day, twice in a row. Oh, and the grocery shopping needs to be done too. My house ALWAYS (and I cannot stress enough that it. really. is. ALWAYS.) needs to be cleaned. And I don't feel like I can slack off on that when I have other people bringing their children here every other day. It's one thing to subject your own family to your irredeemably messy tendencies; it's another thing altogether to subject clients to the same. So the haven of my home doesn't feel like a haven very often. Sometimes it feels like a work-induced hangover that never ends.

By the definitions in the article, I worked part-time before, and I work part-time now. But my old job was twenty hours a week; this one is thirty (three more hours per week and I'd be out of the part-time category). My old job was divided evenly between five mornings a week; this one is three long days, with two days off (but my days off don't feel as different as they did when I worked outside the home). And having your home be your workplace is stressful for me. I recently said to my husband: It's like if you went to work one day, and they said: Good news! Grades and curriculum are optional now! Teach whatever and however you like! But -oh yeah!- the cafeteria workers and janitors have all been laid off, and we will need you to do their jobs. Also, people LIVE in your classroom now, and will treat it accordingly. It's up to you to keep it up to whatever standards you need to successfully teach. Good luck!

There are times I catch up on (or ignore) the housekeeping, and focus on the teaching. These are the times I enjoy most. But it's hard to focus on teaching when the students are eating feathers off the floor because they escaped from your throw pillows when you were busy building Pillow Mountain in the middle of the living room. Suddenly it's time to put Pillow Mountain away and vacuum. Again. And then it's time to serve lunch, and sweep, and mop, and throw in another load of laundry, and get it folded, and then...and then...and then. It's way too easy for the lessons to end up in last place, while the never-ending upkeep takes over my time. These are the times I enjoy least.

I'd love to sum this up, all pretty with a nice bow. But I have no idea where the bows are. Organizing the Christmas stuff is still on my to-do list. I just threw it up there on a Sunday night sometime early this month because the boys were going to be here in the morning, and I haven't gotten back to it yet. So, sadly, this is all I got:

Part-time work is the bomb-diggity-dog, and don't ever forget, you heard it here first! But balance? I don't haz it right now. And I don't know how to find it.

Scattered

I want, I want, I want...

but what, exactly?

Too many things, and all at once.

I just started building a professional blog, then found out one of my boys might be leaving. He has special needs, and a team of therapists, and a meeting coming up where it will be decided if his home-based therapies should be delivered in a center-based setting instead. So the professional blog, detailing our adventures in early childhood education, is on the back burner while we wait to find out if the group we've pieced together since September will remain intact or move in some other direction.

In November I interviewed for an evening gig teaching fitness classes at the new facility my gym is opening near my house. I got the job, and I'm so excited to start planning and practicing for my new classes! But they're building the facility and the opening date is frustratingly soft. The Director of Wellness says she'll send me a schedule with the days, times, and names of the classes I'll be teaching, but it hasn't shown up in my inbox. I wait, and keep doing the yoga I've been doing, even though I sometimes feel tensed up like a runner at the start of a race, waiting for that starting shot, hearing nothing but silence while my muscles itch with impatience.

Our house is closer to whatever complete might be than it's ever been, and still, complete recedes ever further into the distance, and lists of tasks amass faster than a toddler can trash a toy shelf. I do more in the house than I've ever done, which can be satisfying, when you first see tangible results. But, dudes, the sheer. amount. of. work. The cleaning lady came once, but until the checks from the evening gig start rolling in, I'm on my own again. I alternate between fierce drive and bouts of despair.

My husband's been working 11 hour days at his new job. Then there's cooking, and eating, and cleaning, and bedtimes, and then we're both exhausted, but still driven to do more, more, more. Because we want things. We want a better curriculum, or a deadline met. We want home-cooked meals, and a balanced budget, and the old clothes bagged up for charity. We want the junk off the mantle, and the kitchen set we built for Christmas shellacked, my roots dyed, and his hair buzzed short, and neat enough for work. We want the socks with holes thrown away so they stop taking up space in the drawers, and the basement reorganized, and all the paperwork in the basket filed. We want the fucking snowblower fixed already.

I interrupted the writing of this blog post to go buy a sewing machine. I asked my husband: if I sent his mom a few pairs of cutout fabric for yoga pants in the mail, did he think she would sew them for me? I need them for my new job, and the discount store where I used to buy them closed, and I think I could make them cheaper than I can buy them. He reminded me of the cost of shipping and told me to buy a sewing machine instead. I logged onto craigslist, and you can't get one of those suckers used for under $50. But while I was writing, a $25 machine popped up in an adjacent tab when I hopped over and refreshed. I texted her; she texted me; the next thing you know my boy and I are zipping a few miles down the road, and she gives it to me for $20 because she doesn't have change.

Am I a seamstress? A homemaker? A maid or a mother or a teacher or a yogi? A child of God?

Where the hell am I supposed to put this sewing machine?

I just want a tiny peek into the future. Everything -everything- is asking me for baby steps, and I just want to know which direction to go in.

The answer, though -and the real rub is that I've chosen this answer- is: all of them. baby steps.

That may be the answer.

But it doesn't make it any less obnoxious.

The Gym Childcare. Again.

I know, I know, I didn't talk this much about childcare when I had a job! And I both worked caring for children and used childcare for my own kids. Now I'm a stay-at-home-mom and it's all I can talk about!

We tried out a new location of our gym today. Just so this makes some sort of sense, we live on the west side of a relatively small city. I teach yoga in the heart of downtown. The gym where I teach is not a family facility, but it has locations in two different suburbs that offer family programming, including free childcare while the parent works out in the building. One suburb is east of the city, and the other is north. They are equidistant from our house--down to the very minute, in fact (I timed it today)! A membership downtown can be used at either suburban location.

We've been going to the eastern suburb. It's a newer gym and has really amazing facilities, as well as lots of cool classes for tots. But it's huge and incredibly busy, and every time I go there and use the childcare I'm anxious as all get-out (and here I want to clarify that it's just a free-floating anxiety as opposed to any serious gut feeling that something is wrong--I would absolutely heed a bad gut feeling, but I'll work through anxiety).

Today we visited the northern suburb. And here's where I exhale: Aaaaahhhhh! Oh, that felt good, didn't it? (Just say yes.)

At the eastern location, it's staffed by a large group of sweet, young girls (early 20s). They don't introduce themselves, ask any questions, or even pay much attention when you drop the kids. They seem to be doing a good job caring for the kids, but don't put a lot of effort into interacting with the parents. I observed their interactions with the children, and decided that if they were good with the kids, that's what mattered.

The northern location is much smaller, and older, with fewer programmatic bells and whistles. But, and this is more like a BUT when I walked into the door with my baby there were two grandmotherly women sitting on the floor with two other babies (compared to 15-20ish babies at the other place, and 4 to 6 staff). One woman introduced herself, and then asked our names. And how do we think she'll do today? she asked about my daughter. When I said she had done well the first time and then poorly the second time at the other location, she asked questions about her nap and feeding schedules, and then about what she likes to play with. I asked her to come get me if she cried, and assured her I'd be fine cutting my workout short.

She came and got me 10.5 laps into my 16 lap half-mile, all apologies, but I was so grateful that she had done just what I'd asked. And after rinsing quickly, tossing clothes onto my still-wet body, and racing down the hall to rescue my daughter, she and the other woman told me everything they had tried to do to comfort her, and shared stories about their own struggles with leaving their babies. They babied me, and it was just exactly what I needed. They encouraged me to come again, and told me they would let her cry for as long as I wanted them to (up to 15 minutes, which is their policy limit), and come and get me every time, until she adjusts.

My son was in a smaller classroom today too, with 15ish preschoolers as opposed to what could have been 50 at the other location. I'm not good at guessing crowd size; I just know it was crazy busy. He said he liked it better at the northern location today, and that he played with a little girl, and she was nice and funny. My son really enjoys these opportunities to get out and play with other kids and new toys, which is one reason I feel like this is important.

Without the encouragement of the women in the baby room, it would have been very easy for me to walk out the door and say: forget it. Instead, I'm going to try using a treadmill or elliptical for short periods so she can get used to the new environment in small doses. I hate treadmills and elliptical machines (so fucking boring when I could be walking outside in the real world instead of on a machine; except for the part where my kids hate strollers and it's winter 6 months of the year here), but the warm, supportive environment made me willing to try harder to find a way to make this work.

I worked in childcare for years, and it's harder to reach out to the parents than it is to care for the children. In fact, when I got my last job, I was psyched about working with the infants and toddlers, and very uncomfortable about teaching parenting classes. But over time, the parenting classes became my favorite part of the job, and -I grew to believe- the most important. Being on the other side, now, of the childcare provider equation, it just reinforces how serving the whole family makes all the difference in the world. Free professional development for the out-of-work professional! Ha! I do imagine that the things I learn during this time at home with my kids will come back with me into the workplace, whenever I make my way back there, and make me better at what I do.

In the meantime: the fucking treadmill, for me. And the damn baby room, for her. C'mon kid. We can do this.

Anxiety Identified

I figured out what caused the anxiety that day. The Gym. And to be specific: the gym childcare.

It was a Tuesday when I went last time, and I had plans to go the next day too. But Wednesday came, and my daughter went down for her morning nap early, and we didn't get out of the house on time. Then Thursday we went back, but I kept the kids with me, and we visited the pool. No anxiety: we had a blast! The kiddie pool has fountains, slides, a basketball net! It's amazing, and the kids both loved it.

Meanwhile I'm concocting narratives to explain that disconcerting bout of anxiety to myself. None of them sound quite right, so I keep spinning stories. Days pass and the anxiety doesn't return.

Until yesterday, when I went and used the childcare again. It's just huge. And loud. And kind of a madhouse there. I dropped the kids the second time and went to the lap pool by myself where I swam a half mile.

I'd love to say that the feel of my arms slicing through the water and my feet flutter-kicking calmed me. And it did, kind of. I was a lap swimmer through college, and for a number of years afterwards. Then I became a fitness instructor and it fell by the wayside. I haven't swum laps since before we moved to our current city, which was 2004. It did feel good to do it again.

But every time I thought about my kids the anxiety would immediately begin again. And when I arrived to pick them up, my daughter's face was splotchy red and the staff was on the verge of coming to find me because she had been crying so hard, and they couldn't calm her.

I think most of that was bad timing. She had slept 13 straight hours the night before, so I didn't think she'd take her morning nap. Sorry, sweetie. The childcare is only open in the mornings, and she's in a transition where sometimes she naps and sometimes she doesn't.

My son, on the other hand, really enjoyed it the second time, crying only about the fact that he couldn't staaaaayyyyy when I came to pick him up. I think it's great he can have a chance to play with other kids (although he remains a little bitter about THAT BOY who beat him to the Thomas toy) since we can't swing preschool right now.

I'm not going to give it up entirely. I don't have a bad feeling about the place or the people; in fact, the staff seems very sweet. It's just scary. My kids used to be with a private sitter who I knew very well (we had been colleagues for a couple years before she retired and became my sitter), and she only had one other child there: her granddaughter, who was my son's age. So this big, huge place where my kids are separated into different rooms with what feels like a million other kids? It's a little intimidating.

But you know what else is intimidating? The 30 pounds I really, really want to lose. So let's keep moving forward, into the fear, shall we? Step by step, lap by lap, morning nap by morning nap. And hopefully we'll all come out the other end of this thing a little bit tougher, and a little bit less afraid.

Diving In

I used to be the first person to jump in the water, and the last one out. As a kid, I'd ignore my mother's repeated calls to get out of the pool and into the car. In college, while everyone else needed one more beer before they'd brave the ice cold lake --looked as big as an ocean from the sandy shore-- I'd be impatient, hopping from foot to foot, finally plunging in alone under the moon, feeling as free as I ever have floating in the indigo waves.

We took the kids to the beach again this summer. My son's not much of a swimmer, preferring to putter around on the shore, digging in the sand, creating worlds with his shovel. My girl wanted in that water though. I'd take her deep and she'd struggle to get out of my arms, imagining she could slip into the deep green of the lake and slither like an eel into it's depths. I'd hold her tight, take her closer to shore, and sit down, letting the waves wash over us, feel the undertow tugging at our toes as the water washed back out to sea.

She was fearless.

* * *

I'd never have quit my job; I loved it. It was perfectly tailored to my strengths and interests. It gave me an outlet for some of my obsessions, and the spiritual impulses I don't have anywhere else to put. Having had that, though: The Perfect Job, I find it hard to imagine settling for the Eh, It's Alright, I Guess Job. I sound spoiled as shit, saying that. I recognize that. People everywhere are scrambling desperately for the Eh, It's Alright, I Guess Job, or even the I Hate It, But It Pays The Bills Job.

I'm both incredibly lucky and a little bit smart, and I've dodged that particular bullet. For the time being, at least. We're all just one global financial catastrophe away from ruin, right? I say lucky, because I don't believe most of us earn the grace we're given, any more than I believe that we earn our devastation. God may or may not have a detailed plan for each of us; I'll leave that to the theologians. But I'm pretty sure the bumper sticker got it right when it read: Shit Happens.

I say smart because we bought a house in my husband's name, on his salary alone. Now, if he leaves my ass and takes the house, that won't look so smart anymore, will it? But when I lose my job and we don't lose the house, it looks rather brilliant. It was, brilliant or foolish, a conscious choice to set myself up for stay-at-home-motherhood, to prepare our family financially for that choice.

A choice I never made, although I certainly considered it often enough, even while fortunate enough to have landed The Perfect Job. A choice that has been made for me now. By the scarcity of part-time, professional positions, and my antipathy for full-time work. By the large-scale layoffs of teachers in my area, the scarcity of work available even if I wanted it. By the high cost of quality childcare, eating more than half of my take home pay in the best of situations. By the Congressional cutting, cutting, cutting, and the way the trickle-down effect seems as certain as death and taxes when it comes to poverty, but never to work quite right when it comes to wealth.

* * *

My favorite part of diving into waves has always been the feeling of utter freedom as your feet leave the sand and your body becomes weightless. My favorite part of motherhood is the abandonment of What's Supposed To Happen Now and the surrender to immersion in What Is Happening Now.

My favorite feeling? My very, very favorite feeling? The one I wish for my children, for myself, and for everyone I love to experience as often as possible?

Fearless.

* * *

It's so sad that my program has been eliminated. It's so very sad.

But it's not that sad for me.

This is why it's difficult for me to believe that God is stage-directing our every move, or that The Secret to life is as simple as Like Attracts Like. If God directed Congress to eliminate a GED program for parents so I could stay home with my babies, then I'm terribly sorry to be the one to call attention to it, but God is an asshole. And if I Secreted myself into unemployment because I secretly want to be home, and the collateral damage is a group of barely literate mothers who have even fewer options than they did a month ago, then I'm an asshole and should be banned from Secreting things into being ever again.

So I'm left with bumper sticker pseudo-wisdom, luck, and smarts.

I can work with that.

Boundaries

The thing is, I want to write about everything you're not supposed to write about.

I want to write about work. I want to talk about what I do, and what it does to me. And so I write, and then I disappear the post a few days later.

I want to decipher the complex code that is work-life balance. How much of my identity is work? How much is motherhood? How much is being the specific child of my specific parents raised in the house where my father was raised, in a neighborhood that gets uglier every time I drive through it on visits to my hometown, the town where my parents no longer live?

I want to name names and streets, addresses, and the state of my heart when I see my childhood home sinking into squalor as the ghetto I escaped swallows it whole. My sisters yelled at me when I called my parent's move white flight, and I tried to explain it was a sociological term, but it offended their sensibilities.

How much of my identity is that I am my husband's wife?

I want to unpack that rather imposingly large baggage (larger by leaps and bounds than the bags that sit unpacked on the dining room floor for days after we return from a trip) but I shouldn't.

I shouldn't tell you how we fought today. Me, making empty threats to try to break through his refusal to acknowledge the plain, simple, fucking truth of what I'm saying. Him, with defenses so high they could protect Berlin, Gaza and the Mexican border, all without breaking a sweat.

I shouldn't tell you how he sometimes lets me down on the big things: that dinner to celebrate my new job, the hospital stays after the births of our children, the loss of the only job I ever loved, a couple of Christmases. How I forgive him every time because I love him so deeply I can't tell where he ends and I begin. How he pisses me off and how he brings me to my knees, humble and grateful. How he makes me better, and although it's what I love about him, how I sometimes hate it while it's happening.

How my mother, when I told her I was engaged, told me: Marriage will let you down.

I want to talk about who and what and how is God. That's what I really want to know, if we're getting down to it. I want to know who is your God, and how did you find him?

How much money do you make; what do you spend it on?

What happens in your bedroom? What happens in your marriage, your divorce, your solitude?

How do you feel when you drink too much? When you're scared?

I want to talk about when you look at your babies and your heart stops dead in your chest. How do you catch your breath, right then?

How do you do it?

The Personal and the Political

Osama Bin Laden was killed last night.

* * *

I had already gone to bed by the time it was announced. The only conversation I had later in the night was with my husband, who woke me up to ask why I always leave the unfolded laundry on his side of the bed. I mumbled something in response; I don't know what I said; I don't know why I always leave the unfolded laundry on his side of the bed. It may well be that I leave it on my side, snuggle in underneath it, and gradually kick it over to his side as I get overheated. Or maybe I pour it onto his side straight from the basket? I don't know. I don't pay much attention to the laundry, to tell you the truth, even though it's my chore and I do it. I do it quickly. Half-assed. It's how I'm doing almost everything these days.

* * *

So Osama is dead and the laundry is -again- unfolded.

* * *

I found out this morning. I was standing at the kitchen counter debating between peanut butter and jelly on a deli round versus chopped chicken breast and a slice of whole grain (for my son; I'm eating chicken quinoa soup this week), and all of a sudden my husband says: Osama Bin Laden is dead.

It's not even like it was the first thing he said to me! We had already talked about the water pressure in the shower and the whole unfolded laundry issue. I had semi-apologized, while at the same time noting that we really have no workable system for our laundry. He had simultaneously grumbled at my poor laundry-putting-away skills and grunted acknowledgement that Martha Stewart herself would battle with our poorly-developed laundry system.

And then it's pb&j versus grilled chicken and: Osama Bin Laden is dead.

* * *

Did I brag on this blog about how my two-month baby was sleeping through the night? I can't remember if I said it here or on facebook, but I knew -even as I typed each foolhardy letter- that bragging about your sleeping baby to the internets was just asking for trouble.

And sure enough, it hasn't lasted. My four month old could use some lessons from two months ago. Ah well, it'll come and it'll go. Sleep, that wily bastard. She's too busy chewing her hands and drooling enough to soak her tops straight through.

On the other hand, my daughter? The teething, awake-far-too-often one? She's a riot! She is the grinniest and giggliest thing I've ever met, but when she wants something she just goes ahead and yells out whatever it is in her loudest, most demanding voice, and the rest of us pretty much step to it. And then she laughs at us.

I adore her!

* * *

So Osama is dead, and the laundry's unfolded and my daughter's teeth are teasing us all with their elusive presence, and what she lacks in sleep she makes up for in magnificent smiles, looking coyly up at me from the breast and giggling that hoarse baby giggle that sounds like it should come from the lungs of a long-time smoker.

* * *

I wonder if Osama Bin Laden's mother breastfed, if he ever suckled, hungry and innocent at someone's breast, if he laughed. I wonder if someone held him, loved him beyond measure when he was just four months old.

Where is she now?

Can you imagine?

I don't think I can.

* * *

September 11, 2001 was my first day teaching preschool in conjunction with the local school district. All I could think of later was how much time, effort and energy had gone into planning and preparing for that first day of school. While I had been doing that, other people were planning and preparing for 9/11. It all seemed so incomprehensible.

We watched it on our neighbor's TV because we didn't have one. They had NASCAR decor in the dining room and made vaguely racist comments about their daughter's failure to win the public school talent show. Still, they seemed mostly goodhearted.

We lived above an African imports store, which was short-lived, and a long-time beauty shop. We were only blocks from one of the natural wonders of the world, but already neck-deep in poverty, crackheads in the alleys, unlocked cars picked over in minutes.

We lived in my hometown, which I loved and hated in equal measure. It was just over a year after we got married. The fall before I had walked to the Convention Center two blocks from our apartment to vote, early in the morning, before work. I walked the same direction to get to the local newspaper, where I stopped in on my lunch break one day to drop off our wedding announcement, that same fall as the election. The fall before the planes crashed on the first day of school.

* * *

I'm listening to the radio in the car in the morning. After a certain time it becomes clear that all the information they have has been imparted. Facts are repeated. This is what we do. We keep talking when there is nothing more to say.

My son says, from the backseat: I don't want any more talking on this radio, Mommy.

Do you want music? I ask, my hand hovering over the scan button, ready to run through stations until we find a song we like.

No, he says, I would like quiet, please.

I turn the radio off and we drive in silence through the rain. Trees are budding green all around us, and daffodils, crocuses and tulips are popping up in all the yards. My children are warm, dry, and safe with me for the time being.

I don't know the meaning of life and death. I don't imagine I ever will.

I know the washing sense of relief when your babies are safe. I know how to drive through the green and the rain. I know how to be silent.

And so that's what I do.

From Extreme Stress to Easter Sunday

The thing about extreme stress is that it burns itself out eventually. You can't stay that stressed out for long before you collapse in a heap, have a good cry or an afternoon nap, and then let it go for a while. Or at least, that seems to be my coping technique for the time being.

Letting it go.

Not completely, of course, it's still my life after all, that I'm called upon to participate in, but I'm trying to do the work I have before me to be done each day without letting it consume me. Without imagining that I control the outcome or can will things into being with the power of my mind (a delusion I seem to be particularly susceptible to).

Whoever dies with the most stress doesn't win.

I took a line from the "Our Father" and made it a mantra: your will be done. I repeat it when I feel stressed, and it's proven to be surprisingly effective! Although I think the particular package of stress that I've been carrying around recently (aka: what the heck's going to happen to the rest of my life, starting any minute now?) was just plain getting too heavy and was ripe to be set down anyway. The teacher will appear when the student is ready, and all that.

So I guess I could claim I've been praying, although it's mostly just that phrase said again and again, on an as-needed basis. Still, that's something, right?

My mom's birthday falls on Easter Sunday this year. My husband and I -not-practicing-religious-anythings- never celebrate Easter except as a family holiday, getting together for brunch or dinner with extended relatives if we live close enough. This year we're dyeing eggs with the kids, but that's more a good excuse for an art project than any real observance of the holiday. But I grew up Catholic and all six of us girls got new dresses and hats for mass on Easter Sunday, and searched the house for candy to fill our baskets every Easter morning. My mom still goes to church on Sundays and I proposed to my husband that we dress the kids up and take them this weekend. It's her birthday, and that's where she chooses to spend it, so I thought it might be nice to join her.

And it's fitting to say thank-you -on the celebration of the resurrection- for my prayer: your will be done. I let go, and God appears, and carries my load. I'm sure it's a story told countless times in countless creeds; the Catholics don't have any special claim on grace in the universe. But here I am in this story, in my story, and when I look around at what's before me to do, it's to be in charge of dinner rolls and green salad for twenty, hard boil a dozen or so eggs and bring dye kits, suffer through a couple hours in the car with my kids to break bread with my family, and to keep on praying my four word prayer.

And I think it might also be to celebrate mass with my mom on her Easter Sunday birthday.

It's the Middle of the Night

It's the middle of the night and I was feverishly rearranging my kitchen when I heard my son start to cry.

It's the middle of the night and I was feverishly rearranging my kitchen to set the groundwork for tomorrow, when I'll cut the rotten spots off the apples and juice the remainders. The juicer is low where the toddler can -and does- help me to make it, forcing the fruit into the machine and mashing it down with my help. The juicer is right next to the spot where the bread machine will go if we buy a bread machine.

It's the middle of the night and I was feverishly rearranging my kitchen. Was it to make room for the imaginary bread machine in the imaginary future where we can't afford the delicious bread we like to buy from the Farmer's Market, and so we have to make our own?

In part, it was.

It's the middle of the night and he began to sob and instead of being upstairs sound asleep, I was in the kitchen right near his room and I darted in. He began to talk, but between the crying and the fact that he seemed to be saying more nonsense than sense, I didn't try to understand; I just soothed.

We sat in the rocking chair in the corner of the room in the middle of the night, rocking. I used to sit there with him every night and read stories and listen to lullabies; that was our bedtime routine. Somewhere late in my pregnancy the rocking chair got uncomfortable and we started to read stories on the living room couch instead. Then, because it's a cardinal law of science that a pregnant woman ensconced upon a couch remains a pregnant woman ensconced upon a couch unless the actual force of going into labor acts upon her, my husband would carry him into bed. So now that's our new routine and we don't sit on the rocker in the corner anymore.

He got big. He got huge! How and when and why did I not notice this? His head was resting on my shoulder and his toes grazed my calves! In the darkness of the middle of the night my two and half year old felt like he could 5 or 7 or even 12. He felt like a boy, a big boy, even though sometimes the pudge of his cheeks or the open wonder of his face suggests he's still a baby.

It's the middle of the night and now instead of feverishly rearranging my kitchen I'm rocking my baby who has suddenly morphed into a tween in my very arms and I don't know how or when or why this all happened so suddenly. And at the verysametime I'm feverishly rearranging his bedroom in my mind's eye, which can see into the imaginary future, while I sit in the rocking chair in the corner of the room and rub his back.

I'm rearranging my kitchen and his bedroom because I don't know if I have a job for much longer, and it looks like I might be working from home in my imaginary future with my imaginary bread machine. And so the arrangements that have worked for a working girl will have to be changed and also I had coffee in the late afternoon while I usually just drink tea now, and that mostly in the morning.

So my mind is racing to rearrange our imaginary future, to make it into a manageable vision, to smooth it into something that will work for our family, to flat out will it into some way in which we will survive. My mind is feverishly writing some story in the middle of the night, some tale in which the details look like blueprints and bake like bread machines and smell like freshly baked bread rather than a dream deferred, and in this story we will not only survive, we will thrive.

It's the middle of the night and I'm feverishly rearranging my whole entire life.

My baby's lullabies are playing, but there's a gigantic boy in my arms, and I can scarcely believe he's even letting me hold him still, large as he is. My imaginary future is moving right into my home -now!- in the middle of the night, and there's nothing I can really do to stop it.

And although I know it's the middle of the night, I don't know exactly where we are, and I don't know where we're going, or when we'll get there. All I know is that we seem to be moving awfully fast.

Let the Freakout Commence in 3...2...1...

Over the course of the last week, I found out: first, that funding for my program was on the Congressional chopping block; next, that it had been cut in a Continuing Resolution and might not be restored, and finally, just this morning, that if it is not restored (and it's being said by those in the know that restoring the funding is a long shot), it will end in approximately five months.

*Gulp.*

Last night I misunderstood. I thought we had more like a year and five months. I was even saying fall 2011, but in my mind it was still 2010, and fall 2011 was a lot further away than it really is. Last night I spent a few hours convincing my husband not to freak out. I have a back up plan, I told him, and we have over a year to get it in place. I trusted in those chimes to keep sounding in the wind. Today I realized I have just months to get my backup plan in place. Today my husband is convincing me not to freak out. Today I'm thinking if I want those chimes to keep sounding I'd better be prepared to stand next to them, huffing and puffing like the big, bad wolf because the weather is pretty unpredictable lately.

I love my job. I love my life. It took me a long time to get here. And honestly, if I had my druthers, I wouldn't change a thing.

But I'd be lying if I said there wasn't something inside me that thrills to the notion of burning it all to the ground and starting anew.

 * * *

I met a girl once who told me a story of how she lived for months in the woods. She brought nothing with her and when she woke each morning she would pray. Pray that she would get only what she needed to survive that day. And every day, she did. I'll be honest: I don't know that girl from Adam, and I have no idea if she was telling me the truth. Matter of fact, that was the only time we ever talked. But I've never forgotten her story.

When my husband and I were first married we went through a patch where we were very poor. Like creditors calling the house making you feel like not having any money was a malicious choice you had made rather than an awful circumstance you were trying your hardest to escape. It was tough. But for some reason, every time that bank balance reached zero, instead of panic, I felt a certain sense of freedom. Nothing left I can do now, I shrugged, and my spirits momentarily soared.

I believe that the universe is abundant. I believe that I am resilient. I believe that my family is creative and resourceful. I believe that when your bank account is empty, you can still be somehow, paradoxically free. I believe that love is greater than fear. I believe that when  the world around you burns to the ground, you can sift through the ashes and still find beautiful things.

And I believe it's okay to freak the fuck out, as long as I remember to come back and visit this quiet, calm space I keep somewhere in my center every so often. Even without religion, I'm pretty sure it's God there.

In the Winter You Were Born

My dear daughter,

In the winter you were born, in the month you were born, in the city where you were born, a record amount of snow fell. White flakes floated, or blew, or raged from the sky almost continuously, a trend that continued as your birth month passed and a new year began. You cuddled in in the arms of your family, while they huddled inside the house, staying warm and waiting for brief respites from the winter weather in which to venture out from the confines of a safe and cozy abode. You rode in a backback on your mother's chest one warmish morning while she tromped through a forest path in snowshoes, your big brother in a red sled pulled behind your father while he, too, snowshoed between the trees, leafless and draped with a heavy, wet blanket of white. You traveled similarly through the farmer's market on Saturdays when the weather was above 20 degrees (your mama's cutoff for taking you out), wrapped in a blanket so warm, soft and beautiful she was stopped by strangers to ask where she got it. But mostly, that winter, you stayed in. Snuggled on the couch alongside your daddy's legs when mama's arms and shoulders ached from holding you all day, or tucked into the fold of your brother's lap while he listened to stories. In the winter you were born, you were welcomed by mother nature in the form of a wild, white storm that lasted so long it was as if father time fell sound asleep in the corner couch at your coming-home-from-the-hospital party and was forgotten, failing to move forward to spring, suspended in that wild, white winter.

In the winter you were born your big brother outgrew his afternoon nap, and moved from diapers to underwear, and learned that letters had sounds, and sounds started words, and he could match those letters to their corresponding sounds and words if he wanted to. He sang the alphabet song loud in your little ears while you tried to eat, and sleep and lift your head to give him goofy grins which only encouraged him to sing his song again, louder. He listened for your cries and rushed to find you as soon as he heard them. He gave his parents advice on how to calm you when you fussed and he laughed out loud when you looked at him and when you made sounds, saying: she talking at me! In the winter you were born he asked, again and again, I me? And you Mommy? And that Daddy? And that our baby? We a family? And again and again, your mother told him yes. Yes, we are a family.

In the winter you were born your mama got to spend the season as a full-time stay-at-home-mom, leaving work just days before winter officially started, and returning on the first day of spring. She was scared of the season, of the constant cold and the stuck-inside and the cabin fever aspects of the whole endeavor, but in the end, she was happy, and nothing she feared was nearly as bad as her imagination had whispered that it might be. Which is a good thing to remember all your life, because it often works out that way, and so it's important to be brave. In the winter you were born your mother, who almost never left the house over the course of those frigid months, managed to catch a virus one Saturday when she did venture out into the winter weather to take you to a birthday party with your brother, to celebrate his friend's turning three. Fortunately, you did not get sick, and neither did your brother, so your mama just hunkered down and whisper-read stories through her sore and sorer and sorest of throats for over a week --it felt, at times, like the longest week of her life-- and when the pain began to lessen she realized she had only one month left at home with her babies. And she was sad. Because the winter you were born was a magical winter for your mama, and despite her deep and abiding love for the arrival of spring, in some ways she wanted the winter you were born to last forever. In some ways she wanted father time to stay asleep.

In the winter you were born your daddy spent a lot of time outside of the house with a shovel in his hands. He fixed a snowblower before you were born, but it broke again shortly after you entered the world, and was too expensive to fix a second time. He went to work early each morning, and came home happy to see you, to take you into his arms and ooooh and goooo at you until you smiled your silly smile, where the corner of your lip curls up and the rest of your mouth opens wide and exhales an aaaah or maybe it's a haaaa in appreciation of his efforts. In the winter you were born your father felt buried, sometimes, under snow and stress and the pressures of providing for a family of four. And so your mama sent him down into the basement, where he keeps his art supplies, and told him to dig into his materials, and not to come up until he had used his hands and his eyes and his heart to create some sort of order out of the chaos he kept safely from the rest of his family with all of his hard work.

In the winter you were born, you didn't care much for the motor skills you were supposed to work on. Tummy time was a waste of time, as far as you were concerned, and holding your head up was fine, as far as that sort of thing goes, but even though it was your very first season here in this big, bad world, what you really wanted to do was to stand up. You took every opportunity to push your feet firmly into whoever's thighs might be available and heave your torso up into the air above those thighs, head a-wiggling and arms a-wobbling, and a look on your face like you've both discovered and conquered the greatest adventure in the world at the verysametime. In the winter you were born you showed us what you were made of and it was: determination.

And right from the very first winter you were born: we were delighted by everything we saw in you.

Random Bits and Bame-ing

My brain is skitter-scattered, and I hop from one train of thought to another.  It's hard to finish anything.  I have five weeks left at work, and I need them to prepare for my three months out.  My doctor said yesterday that we should hope I go into labor naturally at 37 weeks for my best chance at a successful VBAC.  That would mean two weeks left at work.  If I could focus for those two, I might complete five weeks worth of planning and preparation.  The aching in my knees gets in the way of my focus.  So do thoughts of my attic.  And daydreams of Christmas trees.  I have little desire to focus, or finish, even though things are lining up, piling up, begging to be done.  I finish novels and naps, and books with my boy.  I finish bathtime and bedtime, but we are often running late.  And then again in the morning: running late.

If my daughter runs late, they want to open me up and fetch her from my womb.  I try to balance all the medical information, but I'm easily distracted, and I've read it all before, and there are no real answers there.  I find myself wondering: is that rude?  To slice right in and fetch her just because she's running a little late?  I wouldn't appreciate it.  Then again, I didn't appreciate it when my son decided to burrow in and remain in my belly for nine extra days.  I didn't hold it against him because --being unborn-- he hadn't yet learned about overstaying one's welcome, but clearly it's a lesson we'll need to review at an age appropriate time.

I had a dream I had a baby boy.  As soon as he was born he knew how to run, throw and bang.  He had my long hair, which made him look like a tiny rock star.  He threw toys everywhere: at me, in the fireplace, on the floor.  He was a little bit scary, actually.  A newborn with toddler capabilities and desires.  I woke up relieved I'm having a girl.  Not that she'll refrain from running, throwing and banging, but she won't be the dream baby, that destructive rock star, and for that I'm relieved.

My son's personality continues to change before my eyes.  He's developing the kind of characteristics that make people look at him and say: that one's all boy.  Throwing and banging are currently high on his priority list, and I'm trying to entice him to pound on my back and shoulders, although he hasn't entirely bought into this plan yet.  He plays with verbs and verb tense all the time too.  I tumbled.  I dumbled.  I dumbaded.  I dommed down.  I dommded down on the floor.  I banged.  I bammed.  I boomed.  I bamed.  I bameded.  I bameded Mommy!

Ouch!  No more bame-ing, I say.  I don't know precisely what bame-ing is, but I don't want any more of it on my head.  No bame-ing Mommy in the head.  That hurts.  You can bame and pound on my back if you want.  But you need to be gentle with my head.

The doctors seem less and less VBAC happy with each appointment.  They don't want me to go past my due date.  And did they mention my slim chances of success?  And oh!  Look at the increased risks to our lives and well-being if I try and fail.  There are numbers, and the numbers look worse every time.  But there are other numbers they aren't reciting, and those numbers tell a different story.  And then the fact that all the numbers in the world can't tell one woman's story. 

What do I do?  What do I decide?  I told you, my brain is skittery, and my thoughts are slippery.  They don't stay in my head.  Also, my knees ache, especially the left one.  Is there anything you can do about that?  No?  Then how can I be expected to juggle all these numbers and come to a conclusion?  My knee aches something awful, and my attic is a mess.  It needs to be organized.  Doctor, can you offer me something for attic organization?  No?  Would you like to hear about my Christmas tree?  It's going to be beautiful!  The numbers will have to wait.  Why are you always bame-ing me in the head with these numbers?

In another dream I drove a monster truck and had a pet bear.  We cut through someone's house, and my monster truck got stuck in their hallway and I had to abandon it and travel by foot.  But they had a pet gorilla who began to chase me.  My bear hightailed it out of there, and I was so pregnant, racing through the city streets with the gorilla hot on my tail.  I woke up breathless.

Birth seems like the perfect time to let go of the illusion of control.  I have a voice in my head that says: you create your own reality with your thoughts.  You need to BELIEVE you can do this, and WILL it into being!  Another voice responds:  That's both silly and arrogant.  Sit down and be quiet.  Give it to God.  Let go.

And the numbers float in and out of my daydreams, hanging on my Christmas tree, gathering in the boxes in my attic, poking me in the knees with their perpetual ache.  And in my dreams I have rock star babies with personalities too big to manage, and monster trucks and pet bears and gorillas out to get me.  How can a woman possibly juggle numbers, or complete lists of tasks on a teacher checklist, or make a life and death decision about one's daughter with all these distractions?  I wonder if they'll understand if I just explain how the distractions are constantly bame-ing me.

I'm sorry doctor/ supervisor/ State Department of Education.  I was not able to complete the tasks you entrusted me with.  You see, I've been bamed in the head with all manner of distractions.  What's bamed, you ask.  Well, I think that's a perfect example of the type of distraction I'm talking about.  Let's talk about the word bame.  What does it mean to you?  If you're not the type to define your own words, then perhaps you'd like to hear about my pet bear instead.  He rides beside me in my monster truck.  I think it's clear I'm going to need an indefinite extension on those responsibilities.  Might I recommend a pile of novels while you wait?  A lovely afternoon nap?  A life and death decision to ponder while you rest?  Just relax right here, and try not to bame each other in the head.  Be gentle, authority figures.  Just be gentle while you wait.  All this bame-ing me in the head isn't helping anyone at all.

Fall Melancholy

The first time I remember experiencing a certain feeling I've come to associate with autumn, I was in high school, maybe tenth grade.  I was waiting for a ride from a friend, and rather than wait in the house, I decided to wait outside, where I'd be able to see her arrive.  It was early evening, and beginning to get dark, the days getting shorter as we moved further from summer.  I walked outside and balanced on the hood of my parent's station wagon parked at the curb, my knees bent high, feet perched on the bumper, and looked out into the distance, waiting to see the headlights of her mother's car.

As I waited, I became aware of the early darkness, the leaves beginning to fall, and the gathering chill in the air.  I noticed a distinct feeling of ..... melancholy is the best word I can find ..... and the interesting thing about the feeling is that it didn't seem to reside within me, where I might expect to find feelings, but rather in the very air around me.  I wasn't sad, pensive, wistful.  But the season was.  Fall carries those feelings in its cooling air, and the early dark of its evenings.  I could sense them in the breeze around me, and I remember feeling distinctly fortunate, protected by my big, boisterous family gathered in the house, and the imminent arrival of my good friend.

The next time I remember that fall melancholy was my freshman year of college.  I lived in a dormitory overlooking the entrance to the campus library, and while it was busy most of the week, Friday nights looking out that window was like looking out on a ghost town.  I wasn't so lucky to have family or friends around me at that point; I was terribly lonely, and it seemed like those fall feelings were just whipping around in the wind outside my window, waiting to get in and annihilate me.  I would shudder looking out at the empty campus walkway, and hurry to make plans with any group of girls seeking company that I could find in my dorm.  It took a few months before I found my close friends and it was frightening, in the meantime, the way that autumn melancholy threatened to eat me alive every weekend evening between dinner and whatever protection I could seek from the comforting presence of others.

As an adult I've noticed it most years, usually just as a sense of something stirring in the air, something slightly haunted maybe, beneath the surface of our lives, right as we begin to move away from our neighbors and into our houses, the long hibernation of winter lurking ahead around the edges of the imagination.  It's in such contrast to summer, where what you see is what you get.  It's too damn hot to hide anything in the summer, there's no space for secrets in the constant and overbearing light of the sun.  Neighbors and strangers, both friendly and nosy, share the city spaces as we all escape our houses in search of relief from the heat. 

Last night I sat outside after putting the toddler down to bed, and I could feel that fall melancholy, whistling like the breeze through the leaves beginning to turn colors in the trees.  I put my hand on my belly, and felt the kick of my unborn daughter as an omen of protection, and then hurried back into the house to snuggle with my husband as the night got darker and cooler.  We awoke to the aftermath of a rainstorm, opening early morning curtains to wet black pavement and glistening overgrown grass in the yard, under a still-gray sky.  I made pancakes and hot coffee while my husband fried bacon and eggs, and then we sat together at our dining room table by the big windows overlooking the yard, eating and drinking hot while the wind blew cold outside through the waterlogged leaves of trees and bushes just outside our fence.

Every year I say fall is my favorite season, and it's true --there's so much I love about autumn-- but every year at this time I'm grateful that I'm not alone.  Fall is the loneliest season of them all, just on it's own.  It doesn't need me to add to its melancholy, and I don't want to be trapped by its sadness either.  I gather my family around me like a circle closing, like a latch on a gate never used in the winter.  I thank the gods with each leaf that falls, golden or red or browning at the edges, that I have them, that we are together, and safe.  The sky turns a darker gray and I turn the lamplight brighter against the coming of that haunted melancholy that fall carries with it just under the surface, somewhere invisible in the air.

Femasculinity

When I was a girl, my mother told me that the reason women do more cleaning than men is because "men don't see the dirt".  If women wait for men to see the dirt, so that they will clean it, it's the women who will have to suffer through a long drawn-out period with an unbearably dirty house.

I remember thinking at the time:  Oh, I can outwait a man.  I can not see the dirt.

In this one small circumstance, I was right, and my mother was wrong.

There are some ways in which I inhabit stereotypes of masculinity.  There are some ways in which my husband is more in tune with what's been pigeonholed as feminine.  I would love to report that he sees the dirt so quickly, and then takes care of it so seamlessly, that I can amble in like the bumbling husband on a sitcom or a commercial for dish detergent, and find only clean counter tops and streak free glasses, and never goldfish crackers ground into the floor, but alas, in this regard, we are more like a caricature of two men married to one another.  Neither of us particularly notices the dirt.  Or, if we notice, the sight does not move us enough to keep things constantly sparkling.  Like I said in my last post, we catch as catch can, and content ourselves with mediocrity.

No, this is not really about housework, which is equally shared in our home.  It's about emotional temperament.

And in this, I have always felt more male than female.  I am detached, and compartmentalize my feelings.  When I struggle emotionally, I withdraw.  Typically, I am even-tempered and slow to anger.  When angry, I am logical to a fault (and I do mean a fault.  It's incredibly annoying to argue with me!  I have all the answers, and what's more:  I'm always right.).  I want to process quickly, find solutions, and move on.  I am also inattentive and oblivious to my surroundings.  I don't notice things like new haircuts, or outfits, or where in that pile of crap on the countertop my keys could possibly be hiding.

My husband is very emotional.  He feels things deeply, and is quickly moved to anger, frustration or sadness.  He processes with his heart, rather than his mind, and there is no place for logic when emotion is at the fore.  He often calls himself a "moody bastard," and I do my best to bite my tongue, so as not to shout out: hear, hear!  Still, I coddle, and cajole while he's in the clutches of these moods, and although it can take a while, he eventually works his way out of their grip.  He is, on the other hand, incredibly attentive to detail, and notices and remembers little things about people and places that I easily overlook.  He also finds my keys and sunglasses all the freakin' time, and without bitterness.  I moved directly from my mom finding my things, to my husband, and if left to my own devices I think I'd have to get multiple body piercings and hang all of my belongings directly on my own body.  Knowing me, this still might not be sufficient.

I was talking with my sister this weekend.  She has a daughter three months younger than my son.  She's due with her second baby three weeks before I'm due with mine.  She has a feeling she's having a boy this time, and thus far, no strong feelings for me: I'm just curious about whether I'll have a boy or a girl.  We were talking about gender, and the expectations and reactions it provokes in parents, as well as other people.  Her daughter is a beautiful girl, and people stop her all the time to tell her how adorable she is.  My sister is concerned about this because her daughter (not yet two), is beginning to get dressed in the morning and then turn to her mom and ask: adorable?  I thought it was interesting because that's something I don't even think about with my son.  Sometimes I say to him: you're just so CUTE!  But he's never picked up on it or repeated it back to me, and to worry about it simply never crossed my mind.  I don't anticipate a lifetime in which he'll be judged first and foremost on his appearance.

My son has my temperament, and for this I am grateful.  There are many things I hope he inherits from his father: his artistic aptitude, work ethic, cooking skills, superior visual-spatial abilities, creativity and problem solving, his good looks, and the way he throws his whole heart into everything he does.  But I'm glad he has my sunny temperament, and I'm grateful I inherited the same temperament from my father.

So now comes the time when I admit something I'm not particularly proud of.  If my son were to have inherited his father's temperament, I think I would indulge him, the same way I indulge it in my husband.  An emotional temperament is the flip side of sensitivity, and so I can forgive it in the male species, where sensitivity is considered a rare and coveted trait.

But if I have a girl with her father's temperament?  I think it will be hard for me to be equally accepting.  Because girls are stereotypically sensitive, emotional, moody.  Because I am not.  Because I don't really get people who are, and I don't expect to get boys and men, so I can chalk it up to the great unknown, and be happy my husband is so loving and attentive.  Because my husband will never be a teenager under my care, and my son will be a stranger in a strange land while he navigates teenage boyhood, where a daughter will be walking a path I walked once, and it might be harder to separate myself from her.

This is all empty conjecture, at this point.  Perhaps I will have another boy.  Perhaps I will have a girl with the sunniest of spirits, and she will make my son look like a great big grump in the shadow of her perpetual cheer.  We won't know, for quite some time now.  But it's funny how we wonder, and worry, and weigh possibilities in the interim, while we wait.  Or at least I do.  My husband is less likely to follow every "what if" to its possible outcome.  I'm the one always imagining what the future might be, tracing endless narratives to their various conclusions, weaving tales to tame the unknown.  And isn't that just like a woman?  ;-)

Irrational Fears

We were driving through New Mexico from Kansas, where we lived, to visit my sister in Arizona.  It was the middle of the night, and pouring rain.  I'm not a skittish driver, and I'm not usually afraid of driving at night, or in the rain.  The highway began to curve; it was a long, slow arc to the left, around a rock wall.  The road opened up to the right, but because of the night sky, and the rain, I couldn't see what it was opening up into.  A lake?  A cliff?  It was just open space, and darkness.

As I began to steer slowly to the left, following the curve, I could suddenly see our car sliding rightward.  Toward that open space.  Off the cliff.  Into the lake.  Out into night air and nothingness.  Only we weren't sliding.  And I knew that, but it didn't stop me from seeing it.  I saw it happen, as if it were happening, all the while knowing it wasn't actually happening.

Which is why I called out:  It feels like we're sliding!  It looks like we're going over the edge!  My husband (then-fiance) reassured me that we weren't sliding, or going over the edge, and then offered to drive since I was obviously freaking out.

I thanked him, but continued to drive.  I was 22.  My fears were not going to get the better of me.

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My sister completed grad school last week.  Her graduation was held downtown on Saturday afternoon, and we took the toddler.  Of course, he wasn't able to sit quietly for the two plus hours the ceremony lasted (actually, it was longer than that, but we left after she walked the stage), so the hubby and I took turns playing with him in the spacious hallways while the other one attended the ceremony.

The building is a huge, brick, multi-storied affair, used for theater productions.  We were seated in the balcony, and there are many places where I could look down to the first floor.  Along one of the side walls was a velvet curtain that you could reach out and touch.  It draped from the ceiling past all the levels of seating all the way down to the floor.  I held my son in my arms and let him touch the velvet.

Suddenly, in my mind, I saw him falling over the railing and down, down, down with the velvet to the bottom floor of the auditorium.  I imagined people trying, and failing, to catch him, as he plummeted past.

I walked quickly away from the velvet curtain, and we played elsewhere for the rest of the ceremony.  My heart is thumping in my chest just typing this.

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I never heard the story of Ted Kennedy and Chappaquiddick until I read Black Water, by Joyce Carol Oates.  It wasn't until I got to the end of the book that I found out it was based on a true event.  Much like the anti-abortion movies I watched as a Catholic child, that book dug its way under my skin and has never quite left.  If the intent of the novel had been to brainwash, it would have been a smashing success in my case.

My biggest irrational fear is getting trapped in a car under water.  Now that I have a child, that fear is so much worse.  Don't get me wrong; it's not something I think about every day, and it has no real effect on my behavior, or my everyday life.  In fact, my mother-in-law, after hearing about my fear, bought me a little hammer designed to break a car window in the event you are trapped under water.  Because my disorganization is larger than my irrational fear, I have no idea where that hammer is now.  I do know it's not in my car.

But I have visualized saving myself, my son and my husband from seatbelts, and windows stuck up, and doors nearly impossible to open and air so far up you can't even see to the surface, so many times it is surely ridiculous.  And again, I must remind myself to breathe--slowly, deeply--while I write this.

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During my first pregnancy, I was blessed with the certainty that everything was going to be just fine.  I felt great; the baby would be healthy, and all was well with the world.  I'm usually pretty happy-go-lucky, so this wasn't out of character, but the depth of my certainty surprised even me.  I just felt it, all the way down to my bones: things were good.

I think it was my miscarriage that has made me more skittish this time.  I'm a little bit afraid to be certain.  I waited with my heart in my throat for the heartbeat at the first sonogram.  I'm still afraid to exhale until the next appointment, when, at twelve weeks, I'll be mostly out of the woods, as far as miscarriage is concerned.  I spent a week battling a crazy little voice inside my head that was just certain this was an ectopic pregnancy, all because I had mild pains low on one side of my abdomen.  I called the doctor's office, and they didn't think they needed to see me, which quieted the voice, but didn't shut her up altogether.  I'd like her to shut up!

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When I was six years old, I came home from school one day, where my mother met me in the hallway with a broom.  She walked me upstairs, explaining that a bird had flown into my bedroom, and she needed me to go in and shoo it out the window with the broom.  I found out later that she had recently watched Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, and was in the grip of an irrational fear of her own.  She said that knowing it was irrational allowed her to send me in with the bird without fearing for my safety, but there was no way she was ready to face that bird.

At six, it never occurred to me to ask why I was the one assigned to this particular chore.  I waved the broom overhead like a wild woman, watching the bird dive and weave through the room, until it eventually made its escape.  I thought it was grand adventure.

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A car that drives itself off a cliff can turn into a magic carpet.  A child falling from a great height can grow wings, and begin to fly.  A woman trapped in a car underwater can transform herself into a mermaid and rescue her family with nimble fingers and lightening-quick fins.  An unborn baby dances with danger, like the rest of us do, and a heartbeat is a drumbeat is a story told round a fire about the miracle of us all, living and breathing and loving each other, despite all odds, every day.

I will wave a broom overhead, and whoosh my fears out an open window.  As a girl, I conquered the fear of my mother.  This makes me invincible.  I will remind myself of this every day.  I am 34.  My fears are not going to get the better of me.