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.

Warning: Adventure Ahead

I can't help it. I like change.

I should be sad, and mourning, and lamenting, but I can't. I'm furiously daydreaming, and tidying, and my stomach is full of those really, really good kinds of butterflies.

It's like there's a free loophole in the universe by which I get to slip into a different fate. And I slipped!

And *arms in the sky* WOOOOOhOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo.....

I can't help it.

I just really like change.

Late Night Moments of Joy

I'm trying to balance the end of my job and the start of my something else, all at the same time, and what it mostly feels like is stress. Hustle and bustle, hurry and worry, if I don't cross this random finish line by that random deadline, all might be lost.

We built a railing around our deck. My parents came, and my dad and husband did the job in a morning. Then they fenced in the final side of our yard. The homeowner's insurance said we needed the deck railed, and my son's strong desire to escape all arbitrary limits imposed upon him necessitated the fence with double locks on the gate, so we would have done both projects regardless, but now we've been forced to do them sooner.

We got 300 square feet of patio pavers for free; had to rent a truck and take 3 trips to get them to our driveway. The boy and I stacked them high on pallets while the baby girl slept, and the husband returned the truck rental and moved on to addressing our electrical problems.

The next-door-neighbor (thank you God!) is an electrician, and he helped us safely dig the live wires out of the ground. They used to run to the garage, before the garage started leaning like the tower of Pisa and had to be demolished. Then we got some light fixtures installed on our kitchen ceiling so the wires no longer hang like tree roots out of a hole above the stove. He knew how to make old wires work with electrical tape; an old Greek who knows everything about everyone, and lends a hand like he's family.

Next will be a sidewalk with those free patio pavers, leading from the deck out to the driveway, so we won't have to tramp through the melting snow and muddy pathway we've used for the past three years. We'll be giving my dad another call for that project, and I'll be back on baby duty, keeping the kids out of harm's way so the men can work, and stewing in my worry about all the things I can't get done so my husband can be freed to do the heavy lifting I'm less capable of.

But then last night he came in sweaty and exhausted, and I tossed the children in his general direction and said: The toys are all set up on the shelves, and this room is clean and complete. Let them play. I'll be mopping the floors and making the rest of the house look presentable.

I took a break for bedtime, but then stayed up late into the night organizing board books by size, and setting out art supplies for ease of use. All of sudden, staring at my pile of sensory stories--those books babies can touch and grab before they can talk or read--my heart caught in my throat.

I went in to find my husband taking a well-deserved break on the couch with the new nutmeg-colored cover, purchased to replace the old one with holes in the arms. I leaned down, and choking back tears, I told him: All I've had time to think about so far are logistics. Getting things in place, lined up, the stress of this whole process. I haven't had a minute to think beyond that. But Oh God! I am going to LOVE this! I am going to LOVE this!

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?

To the Future

I have to say it somewhere and it's too soon to go to Facebook, so here I am.

My program has not been funded for another year. I'm out of a job in a month. Not sure what's next.

I just got back from a long weekend at the beach. I had a post in my head about the bravery of my daughter in the waves and the wind. Then I spent most of last night in the ER with her after Little Miss Brave fell backwards on to her head on a hardwood floor and then threw up a few times for good measure. She's fine--spent most of the evening charming everyone in the ER. 

But it looks like it's time for me to be brave. And smart. And a sober calculator of a risk-benefit ratio that resides in a future completely unknown. All the things I want her to be.

Here's to the future. The scary, scary future that just might be more beautiful than anything we've ever seen before.

Thirtyish Sentences About Today

1. I was up with the kids at sunrise, serving up popsicles and painkillers, but then we all slept until just after 10.
2. I worked a later day, afternoon instead of morning, to attend a training.
3. Today was hot as hell.
4. My husband was at home with a large number of unpacked beach bags leftover from the weekend.
5. The baby was fussy and napless.
6. My training at work was air conditioned.
7. But it was also super boring.
8. Draw.
9. Iced coffee with honey and whole milk happened.
10. Iced coffee with honey and whole milk happens almost every day.
11. It might be why I'm an optimist.
12. The boy was cabin-feverish when I got home.
13. We offered choices and he chose: go downtown!
14. We went downtown, walked around a fountain, walked around a block, greeted an exuberant homeless man who wished us a Happy Monday!, hurried through the beginning drip drops of rain, just missed the downpour with not a minute to spare, folding and stuffing the double jogger into the back of the car while fat, hot drops slapped my forehead.
15. I felt like there might be a perfect poem somewhere in there.
16. And then for lack of anything else to do in the pouring rain, we went to the mall.
17. Not a big fan of the mall, me.
18. But: there's a library branch there, which just happened to be open: score!
19. And: my husband had been wanting to go the library all day, but between the oppressive heat and the surrounded by unpacked bags and the fussy napless baby, it hadn't happened: double score!
20. Also: they have a climbing thing, and a certain little someone might just be in heaven when he's climbing: home run! Or something.
21. So, you know, it's not all about me. Or my tortured sports metaphors.
22. My boy said to me, at the climbing thing: Oh Mommy! I am having fun! 
23. He sounded downright rapturous, about the climbing thing, at the mall.
24. But later he fell into the (fortunately clean and unused) public toilet in the mall restroom, and he cried a little bit. But only a little bit.
25. We drove the long way home through the rainy city, yellow lights glowing on wet blacktop under a dark sky, my ability to find peace in the passenger seat ebbing and flowing with the sound of my daughter's cry in the backseat.
26. Bedtime kinda sucked.
27. But that's also kinda par for the course right now.
28. We're getting there with the bedtime thing. Slowly. It's summer, after all.
29. I guess if this day, or my life, had a message, it would be:
30. Every day has magic: moments of perfect poetry under a stormy summer sky. And every day has the mall, public bathrooms, spots of crying here and there.

Summertime Yellows (Cause it Sure Ain't the Blues!)

Holy hell, it's July! How did that happen?

The baby is growing like the weeds in our overgrown yard. The boy is bossing everyone and everything around (NO kitty-ditty! You canNOT sit on my chair! It is MINE! That would be a VERY BAD idea!). The husband is home for the summer, slogging through slow mornings sans coffee, as is his summertime custom.

I race off to work, late almost every day. It's so hard to say goodbye to my family, sleepy eyed and pajama'd in the family kitchen while I dart out the door in (still rather ill-fitting) work clothes. Kisses scattered in all directions, bags hanging over both arms, and one eye on the clock to calculate the time I'll arrive at the office, add five hours, and determine exactly when I can come back home to my loves.

It's summertime, and while the livin' ain't exactly easy with babies and yard work and a house somehow always in need of reorganization, it is sweet. Sweet like raspberries, lemonade, and sweet tea brewing in glass jars on the deck. Sweet like weather that beckons you to forget all the items on the to-do-list-that-won't-ever-die, sit down in the late afternoon sun and take note of the perfectly still air. So hot it could conceivably be another hot day from another hot year in the still, hot silence of your memory.

Or it could simply be now. Just one moment in this particular summer, staring at the shimmery air beating off the blacktop and feeling as if anything is possible.

God, I love summer.