Torpid Trifling

Just Do It With Love

2012-02-10T14:06:00.000-05:00

Emily, at Keeping Time, invited us to Celebrate Parenthood today. I didn't know if I'd make the deadline. I wanted to, but my confidence level was low. And then I visited Emily's blog, and she said the following magic words: stream of consciousness. And the sun came out from behind the clouds and I thought: I can do this!

So here goes:

The alarm goes off in the morning, and I groan. But then I roll over, walk down the stairs, and start my day. I have about 15 minutes to myself before the first of the boys I babysit arrives; my kids are usually still asleep. I meet little Noah (not his real name) at the door, and lead him into the living room, where we read stories until we hear Lulabelle, my baby girl (see previous disclaimer :)) beginning to stir. He looks at me and says: Baby!

Yes! Baby's waking up. Should we go and see her? I ask, and we walk to her room.

The next hour is a blur of diapers, and dressing, and Milo -our other friend (and another not-real name)- arriving, and my three year old boy, Ben (last fake-name announcement!) waking up. It's booty-wiping, and hand-washing, and tooth-brushing, until we all make it back to the living room.

I lie down on the floor, and await their gifts.

Can you read me this?

Looka dis!

My turn! My turn!

Oooh! Oooh! Oooh! (with much pointing)

I a airpwane on you yegs pwease?

Mommy, mommy, I need a turn! I want to go first!

Katy, Katy, you read a choo-choo book a me?

Uh! Uh! Uh! (with much reaching)

I read. I look. I remind: it's still his turn. did you offer a trade? maybe he will trade you for another toy. I decipher: I think Lula is showing us her rattle! Pretty cool Lulabelle! I airplane, and keep track of whose turn it is. I read again, and decipher again: Up? Up? You want up? Heeere we go!

Eventually the chaos settles for a moment of pause. I gather them in, my children, and the children who aren't mine, but who are part of our story nevertheless, and who need me to care for them in the same ways my own do. In the same ways someone else cared for my babies while I was at work.

I gather them in, and I open a book with feathers, furry animal patches, rough denim and straw, flaps of fabric populating its pages, and I begin to read.

What dat?

Where is the rooster GOING, Mommy?

I touch! I touch!

Me turna pages!

What dat? I say what dat? And what dat, too?

Mommy, Lulabelle is climbing on your head! She is like the rooster in the hen house!

Baby! Baby on you head! Dat silly!

I touch!

My turn!

The cacophony begins again.

In the half hour I've spent in this stream-of consciousness, I've also: helped Ben make "words" with foam letters, retrieved an early-waking Lulabelle from her crib, shared an armchair with my two children, had my "hair done" by tiny fingers, brushed a baby girl's barely there hair because she likes the feel of the brush on her head, offered board books and kleenex, stopped to sing a song or two, kissed and been kissed.

The floors haven't been fully cleaned, from lunch. There's a load of laundry, waiting to be switched over to the dryer. I really need a cup of coffee. And I think that's Milo I hear, beginning to stir, an hour early.

There's always too much. There will always be too much, as long as I do this work. I'll never finish. So then the question becomes: Did I do it with love?

The answer, almost every day, is yes. Yes.

The Myth of Doing it All

2012-02-07T22:56:00.000-05:00

I found this today. Nearly a year late, but I'm not going to apologize for that. Because keeping up on blogs is not something I do anymore, although I once did. And what's more? I needed this today. I read through all 82 comments, and each and every one was a balm to my poor, angsty soul (I find myself embarrassed by the naval-gazing angst I'm able to summon at 35. I thought I was done with that after 17. Apparently not. I'm a veritable fountain of naval-gazing angst these days. You short on it? No worries. Just fill me in on the details of your situation. I can probably summon some extra angst on your behalf. I can gaze at your navel too! Life is hard for everyone. I find myself particularly skilled at bemoaning that fact on a regular basis these days. ).

So, in the spirit of myth-busting, here are the things I don't do:

My appearance doesn't really matter a fig to me right now. I color my hair from a box, less frequently than I ought to, if the goal is really to cover the grey. I wear yoga pants daily. Sometimes they even have bleach stains or small holes (that I tell myself nobody else notices). I'm 30 25 pounds overweight and have VERY few clothes I fit into. I don't buy new clothes because I'm cheap, and I'm broke, and I fully intend to lose this weight, even though I've accepted that it might take me a long time to do so. (I just took up jogging and lost 5 pounds in 10 days. Exercise is one of the things I DO do.) I almost never wear make-up, and I pull my dirty hair back into a tight ponytail, imagining that no one can tell how dirty it is far more often than is recommended by any standards whatsoever. Manicures and pedicures are foreign concepts to me, and I'd choose a massage first anyway, if offered the choice. There are so many things in my life that need work. My appearance is simply not one of them that matters enough to me. I'll be beautiful on the outside when I'm beautiful -and balanced- on the inside. I'm content to wait, and focus my attention on the inside for the time being.
I don't fold the kid's clothes. At some point in the last year, I realized that all of my children's clothing are made of cotton and/or fleece. WHAT is the point of folding that? I separate them into piles and stuff them into drawers. Far from apologizing for this, I think it's genius. My only regret is that it took me more than 2 years of my son's life to figure it out. I'm also pretty bad at keeping up on the laundry in general. I do it, but not in a timely fashion. And then once I wash it, it takes me forever to fold it and put it away. We live out of laundry baskets is more or less what I'm sayin'.
I'm really floundering, professionally, and I beat myself up over it pretty regularly. I plan curriculum for the kids, but infants and toddlers don't care that much about curricular plans, and so I fail as often as I succeed. I started a professional blog, and then froze, afraid to ask the parents for permission to blog about their kids. It's sitting, a series of incomplete drafts, waiting. And judging me. I need to ease up on myself here. And I also need to just ask permission, already. I'm stuck at frozen, though. And maybe that's okay. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's okay. But at the same time: I have a really hard time just letting it be okay.
I've always been okay with letting my housework suffer. I frankly don't give a shit if my floors are clean. But suddenly, I can't ignore dirty floors! My house is my classroom. This: Honestly, it SUCKS! I actually kind of miss my dirty house. But, I've hired someone to help me keep it clean, and I have no qualms or guilt over this at all. Just grateful it's an option, and determined to do what I have to do to balance the budget and make it work (no new clothes? no problem! as long as someone other than me cleans the friggin' floors!!!).

And -because I haven't done it enough recently- I want to look at what I AM doing:

I'm a kind, loving parent and child care provider. I don't give myself nearly enough credit for this. Some days I really beat myself up over being "short tempered". And then I really think about it and realize: I sighed. That's all I did. I sighed a few times, and inside my mind, I'm suddenly a terrible, terrible teacher, ZOMG! The kids don't seem to notice. And that's because I am -the vast majority of the time- patient, loving, and kind. And the kids who come here know it, and they're happy here. And MY kids know it, and they are loving and kind to me in return. That's important. And I do it well. I should pat myself on the back for this more often.
I exercise nearly every day. I do yoga stretches almost daily, and pilates and jogging a few times a week. I've always hated jogging, and this past month is the first time I've stuck it out. Tonight I walked a half-mile to a reservoir near my house, and jogged 2.4 miles around it (3 laps). Then I walked a half-mile home. For the first time ever, it felt great to jog. I'm proud of myself for that.
Since September, I've been working very hard to eat intuitively. This is SUPER HARD for me because I HATE to pay attention to my body. I'm NOT a sensory learner, and it takes a lot of hard work and concentration to tune into sensory cues. But I've done it, and I've gotten better with practice. I didn't lose any weight at all between September and January, but (like I mentioned above) I lost 5 pounds in 10 days as soon as I started running. I believe this is due not just to running, but to the fact that I've been practicing listening to my body, and feeding it healthy food that makes it feel great for the past number of months. We also plan our lunches and dinners, and eat whole, fresh, homemade foods regularly. This is very hard work, but we make the time and effort for it (my husband gets the credit for cooking it!), and we're doing a better job with it now than we've ever done before.
I make the effort to plan curriculum, and carry it out with the kids. Not all the time, and it doesn't always work. But it would be easy not to make the effort at all, and I do. And when I fail, I come back to the drawing board and try again. This, too, is an area where I tend to see my failures looming larger than my successes. But I think making the effort, again and again, is a success of it's own. Both of the boys have significantly improved language skills since starting here, and while I can't claim all the credit for that, by any means, I can probably claim some. I'm a good teacher. It's often feels like I'm teaching in a vacuum, where no one cares if I bother or not. I'm used to reporting directly to the state department of education. I'm used to having big names in Albany in my rolodex, and my in-box. So what I do now often feels like less like a step down, and more like a leap off a cliff to the no-man's land below. But I haven't given up. I practice good teaching in no-man's land. Nobody sees it. Nobody seems to care. But I keep doing it.
Finally, my husband and I both deserve some credit for this: we are in what's probably the hardest season of our life together so far, and we are kind to one another. We are soft, and supportive, and loving. We make each other better, but we also make each other feel better, when it might be easier to blame or bicker. Sometimes I am so full of the overwhelmed it seems impossible that it won't leak out the seams and spill all over the one person who can take it. But I breathe deeply, and ask him how his day was, and then rather than fight, we sit together and talk about how hard life is for us right now, and we offer each other permission to forgive ourselves our failings. We're in it together, a good team. And sometimes it seems the way we baby each other through the hard is the very best way to survive it.

What do you do best? What could you give a flying fig about? Tell me in the comments, pretty, pretty please. I need to hear it! And maybe, just maybe, it would do you some good to say it, too.

Change

2012-01-31T22:21:00.001-05:00

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

2012-01-29T22:23:00.000-05:00

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.

School

2012-01-19T21:02:00.000-05:00

I want my son to go to school next year. I might be the only one who feels that way, though. He'll be 4 in July, and we live in a city that offers free Universal Pre-Kindergarten (UPK) classes for all 4 year olds in the district. Our assigned neighborhood school isn't great, but another elementary school in our neighborhood is considered excellent, and I'm prepared to do what I can to try and get him transferred into the better one. I didn't think I'd be able to do that until kindergarten, but it looks like they just added a pre-K class, so I might be able to get him into the preferred school right away. I'm planning to start making calls next week, and official registration happens in March. We're headed down this path, I'm leading the way, and it seems I'm just dragging everyone else in my wake.

I started by talking to my husband about it. I worry, he told me. It seems so early to send him out into the world. Even for a half day preschool class.

Umm, it's full day, I told him. 9-3 if he gets into the school I want him in. 8-2 at the other one.

My husband grimaced.

I took my boy for a walk past one of the school playgrounds. That might be your playground next year, baby! When you go to school! Won't it be fun to play there?

My son squinched up his face and began to whine. I don't want to go to school! I want to stay home with you forever and ever!

We visited my mom for the weekend, and I told her about the dilemma. When I mentioned the 6 hour school day, she winced.

I guess I'm the only one looking forward to it! And it's not because I want him out of the house. Actually, we'll miss him here. He plays a great little leader role with the 2 year olds! My job might be harder without my helper.

But I used to teach UPK, and here's the thing: It's FUN! It's a play-based curriculum, and they do lots of amazing literacy activities (I'm very familiar with the district curriculum from my previous job), and develop pre-math and pre-science skills, and he'll get to socialize with other kids his age in large and small group activities. I remember my UPK classroom so fondly, and my boy is exactly the type of kid who will thrive in that environment. I want to give him the chance to do that. Does he need preschool? Probably not. But I think he will love it. Once he gets used to it.

So I'm going to make those calls next week, prepare for battle to get him transferred to the better school, and show up at registration in March with my boy's hand in mine. If I'm wrong? I'm wrong. It's never to late to learn something new, and make a better choice. We're not going anywhere, and he's always welcome back! But for now: it's time to get ready for school. And if I have to be chipper enough to bouy the whole darn ship about it, well then, that's just what I'll do!

Pre-K! Woohoo!

Snow

2012-01-13T07:57:00.003-05:00

Everything outside is covered in white, and it keeps on falling. The bare branches outside my window are frosted delicacies, and the city streets look cleaner than white china right from the dishwasher, whiter than a duvet cover freshly laundered in a bleach load. The city sleeps under a snow blanket, and loathes to rise.

I spent last night unable to sleep, thinking about my boy (my baby!) starting school next fall. Or not, as the case may be. There's this whole new world, waiting for us just beyond the horizon. Our worlds keep changing so quickly it's hard to catch up. Who knows where we'll be by next fall.

But today is the first real snowfall. My husband has a snow day. My kids are still asleep, even though one of their friends has arrived and is happily bogarting the train tracks and engines.

Today we'll stay in, and stay warm.

There is comfort in that.

Scattered

2012-01-08T12:22:00.003-05:00

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 More the Merrier

2012-01-04T14:02:00.000-05:00

You wouldn't think the antidote to feeling exhausted by parenting two kids would be to invite two more kids into the mix. But today's our first day having the boys I babysit here after a 10 day break, and it's so nice to have them back.

Between caring for the kids all day and then sleeping in my daughter's room at night while she wakes repeatedly, nursing, climbing, and rolling on me, I feel less like a person and more like a creature with child-sized appendages. There has been no space between my body and the bodies of my children, and at times it's all I can do not to hiss: don't touch me.

But then the boys come, and because I'm not their mothers, they don't treat my body with the same sense of cavalier ownership. I hold them, sure, and ruffle their hair and give them hugs, but all of a sudden I'm something more than just a mother, and a sense of self emerges from the primordial ooze of constant neediness I've been navigating with my children.

They play together on the floor and I compose questions to facilitate language development. They bicker and I intervene to model age appropriate social skills. They begin to bounce off the walls, trapped indoors by the whims of winter, and I introduce a new gross motor activity.

It's the same things I might do with my own children -and do- but the distance I gain in the subtle shift of roles: mother to teacher, is just enough room to take a deep breath and by redefining my role, find and tap into some source of energy I've been lacking.

The kids, too, come alive in the presence of their peers. My boy is showing off his new train table and sharing in ways that eluded him when it was only his sister dismantling the tracks. My daughter deigns to remove herself from my lap and squeals with joy passing plastic food back and forth with her friends.

It's funny to find it here, but I think this is why some women value their work so much: it offers a chance to define the self in a new set of parameters, to discover and prove a different set of competencies. It's amusing that I can see it so much more clearly all of a sudden when I'm working from home, caring for other children in addition to my own. Because my professional work has always included a healthy dose of care-taking, it was difficult to discern the difference between what I did for a living, and what I did at home. Now the two spheres overlap more than ever, and yet the differences stand out more starkly.

Welcome back boys! We missed you.

Walk, baby. So we can sleep.

2012-01-01T23:45:00.000-05:00

The baby, she can almost walk. She can cruise the couches, the train table, the walls and doors of the house. She can stand unsupported, and step forward with one foot. But then ... a careful lowering into a squat ... forward dive aaaaand ... supercrawl! It's faster.

You know what's not faster, though?

Bedtime.

Her feet walk sideways through space, legs extended off the side of my lap while I nurse her. Her arm rockets rhythmically through the air: pumping up and down, or shaking side to side, or spinning small circles; it seems beyond her control, almost. There's so much potential energy bound up inside that little body, it's spilling kinetic all over everything she does.

You know what else isn't faster? In fact, it's so much slower. Endlessly longer. Longer than it's ever been, it seems.

The night.

She woke up six times last night. Every time, standing up, still half-sleeping, gripping the crib bars and marching in place while she cries out for relief from this endless obsession her body has with walking. Each time I had to soothe her back to sleep while her fingers and feet continued to pulse energy out into space, like a metronome or a padded fingertip callused by years of drumming the same beat, a sound that will never leave your poor mind be.

Her body is exhausted, and yet it can't. stop. moving.

She slept only an hour today, and took multiple tries to fall asleep at night, hours late, though she was rubbing her heavy-lidded eyes and weepy for so long before finally -mercifully- giving in to slumber.

I've been sleeping in the futon on the floor of her room; navigating the stairs up and down from our attic bedroom is too much six times in a night. I feel weepy and exhausted myself, parenting round the clock for a one-year old who won't ever sleep, and needs to act out her overflow of motor activity at all times. I've been head-butted and hair-pulled, palm taps pick up speed and become slaps on my shoulder, she kneads the top of one breast while nursing from the other, walks up my torso and steps on my face when I hold her standing on my thighs.

Sleep, baby, please, sleep. I beg her as we rock. Click, click, click, the recliner ticks and tocks an endless song, all day and all night. I stare at the corner of her room, where the chocolate brown of the east wall meets the soft pink of the north one. I imagine a contraption, half-hamster-wheel, half-treadmill. She climbs on with a giant grin, two bottom teeth jutting from the gums with irrepressible relish, and suddenly her legs know how to walk, to run, to sprint in place, until the energy is finally spent. I look down and her eyes are still open. They meet mine, both of us requesting relief. Neither of us knows how to give it. Sleep, baby, please, sleep.

I hope she learns to walk soon.

Teacher

2011-12-30T23:07:00.000-05:00

So, I've been reading. Reading like an addict, which is something I've been accused of on more than one occasion, and by more than one individual: You're addicted to reading. You just check out. It's like you'd rather read than hang out. You totally zone out. You don't even hear us when we talk.

Which, most of the time? Yeah. Reading addict. Confessed.

I've been soaking up SAHM stories wherever I can find them, and I've come to realize: I'm not a SAHM. I'm a teacher. A part-time teacher, working MWF from home, but I'm still a teacher. The teacher in me bubbles up to the surface; there's not a whole lot I could do about it, even if I wanted to.

So: Reading Addict. Teacher.

I always wanted a mentor. I spent years fantasizing that I would meet someone who knew everything I want to know. She would be a yogi, and a poet, and a storyteller. She would have practiced ballet and studied neuroscience, with a minor in anthropology, and she would always effortlessly look good (without ever having studied fashion) because her skin glowed with fresh air, pine trees and the wide open mystery of living. I never found her.

But the reading addict in me (she devours the written word like a crack addict; makes no distinction between the back of the cereal box, the New York Times, a hand-drawn graphic novel found in the woods, someone else's junk mail, an old love letter from my husband, Anna Karenina, Brown Bear, Brown Bear), she read somewhere (self help literature maybe, or a quote from Ghandi) that if you can't find what you want, try to become what you want.

And so I became a teacher, and I headed down the road I imagined my imaginary mentor would have headed down. Except it's slow going, because there are no gurus here.

There is just me.

And so I'm a beginner at yoga: teaching senior citizens and learning from books, websites, and practice. And I wrote poetry for a few years, when I was younger, but never really progressed beyond loving and imitating the Beats. Now I'm a storyteller for children and -occasionally- in this space. The last time I took a ballet class was in high school. Actually, no, that's not true. I took a class with two of my sisters when we lived in Arizona. Spring of 2000, I'd guess. I loved the barre work, still. I liked barre work as a child, too. I've studied neuroscience in the context of early childhood education, but anthropology remains a pipe dream, right alongside looking great without effort.

There's this image I've long held in my head, about turning 35 (which I did last March), and it's been flashing through my mind again recently. I'm in a large crowded hallway. If I examine it further, the hallway is a replica of the first floor of the Catholic elementary school I attended, which housed kindergarten through second grades. We're all trying to get in line, and I'm late. The line starts to move forward, and I slip in at the last minute, and I don't get caught. I made it! I am full of relief.

Just before my 35th birthday I returned to work, following maternity leave after the birth of my second child. Married? Check! Kids? Check! Job? Check! House? Check! I made it. Full of relief.

And then it all went to hell. Well, that's not precisely true. Only my job went to hell. Or wherever jobs go when they're killed by Congress. The back of a very long line of lobbyists, perhaps. A purgatory worse than hell.

I thought I was going to stay home with my kids. And then, you know, babysit. No biggie. But the imaginary mentor I've been imitating all these years? It turns out she's really, truly come into her own as a teacher. And every time enthusiasm bubbles up inside me and then overflows into joy? It's because I'm giving her free reign.

I'm a teacher. Losing my job doesn't put a damper on that, because it's not just a job. It's a calling. But it's also my career, and I'd like what I'm doing now to further it, even if I'm not technically in the workforce.

So in 2012, I guess I'll have to figure out what it means to be a teacher, working from home, with no employer. I've put the imaginary mentor on the job. And if she can't do it? Well, I guess I'll just have to do some more reading.

Still here. Just hibernating

2011-12-29T22:39:00.000-05:00

I feel bad about going missing from this space. I have a whole lot of half written posts cramming the crevices of my mind, but when I try to write, I ..... wander off. Into my mind, or into the other room where I find myself mindlessly tidying, or into the never-ending wormhole that is the rest of the internet where I read instead of write.

It seems as if time is just careening by me, and I can't catch up. My baby turned one, and I can't finish the post for her birthday. I love her so, but the cost of caring for her almost constantly is a certain lack of focus. My boy can say, and do, and imagine new things almost every day, and they're slipping by me while I run, run, run, race in place, just maintaining the status quo. Just getting us all in clean clothes, and bathing every other day or so. Just planning a week's worth of meals at a time and getting the toys back on the shelves.

It's not too much, although it sometimes feels that way. It's just enough that it stretches me in every direction, and anything extra means something else has to go. I watched a new baby for a friend of mine who was returning to work and had childcare fall through at the last minute. He was a sweet boy, who was happy as long as he was in my arms. But with my own daughter not quite ready to relinquish my arms full-time, and my preschool son, and the two toddlers I watch three days a week, it was a lot to take on. I survived, and then suddenly there was just a week until Christmas.

We've been hibernating over our holiday break. The kids play on the floor, and the husband and I cuddle in warm, snuggly blankets and try to trick each other into changing the next diaper. New Year's is coming, and I'm full of ideas, and excited for what's to come.

I hope words are among the blessings to come. I miss writing. I miss you guys. I hope all of your holidays have been wonderful.

But I'm not quite ready to disentangle myself from the snuggly blankets just yet.

The Really Funny Story About The Time I Nearly Lost My Mind Taking Care of Five Kids Under Four For Ten Days

2011-12-12T23:07:00.000-05:00

At least I'm hoping it's really funny, once it's over. Because right now I'm smack-dab in the middle of the story, approaching the peak of the narrative, which is probably where my brain explodes and my head shoots around the room like a loosed balloon slipping from your fingers before it's tied, or bounces off walls like a ping-pong ball in a greasy pizza arcade. Why? Because: BABIES!

Okay, perhaps I exaggerated. I blame: BABIES! I had five kids under four three days last week, and two days this week, and four under four today, and three under four the remaining of the ten days. But whatever. That's far more math than I'm currently capable of doing.

It's two: BABIES all ten days. An eleven month old (teething) baby, and a four month old (teething) baby, and for those of you who can't add, that's A WHOLE LOTTA MOTHERFUCKIN' BABIES!!!11!@#%! I warned you about math already. Brain no compute good. Because: BABIES. Need things. All time.

And the future love of my life, the cleaning lady, who is needed more than ever because: BABIES, has yet to start because I can't leave the house because: BABIES!

So all I'm saying is, there better be a really funny punch line coming up. Even if it's at my expense. Which I have a feeling it is. But I'm so tired I'll probably laugh really hard for a while before I even catch on.

BABIES!

*twitch*

One Brand New and Marvelous Thing

2011-12-08T20:50:00.001-05:00

I have so many things I could tell you about. So many nights I've planned to write, and then the couch beckons, and the soft, fleecy blanket gets tucked around my toes, and all my good intentions are fast asleep before I type the first word. So tonight I'll tell you just one thing.

Since beginning this new chapter in my life, as a SAHM, or a WAHM, or a homeschooler of the infant-toddler variety, or whatever it is that I am since losing my job, there is just one thing that has troubled me. Just one thing that makes me feel as if I'm failing, as if working as hard and as fast as I can will never be enough. Just one thing that overwhelms me, fills me with resentment, and makes me question my ability to continue on this path. And I know there's no one in my life who can help me overcome this. I love my husband, but he can't be there for me in the ways I need. I've known for a while now that I needed someone else, someone brand new.

Today someone came to my house. We met over Craigslist, exchanged a few e-mails, set up a time to meet. The car was late arriving, and I stood at the window, began to feel hopelessness creeping in. But then I saw a vehicle creep slowly down the street, pull up in front of a grassy patch in my neighbor's yard, and park. I rushed to the back door, waiting to answer it before I even heard a knock. We walked through the house together, spent just moments in each other's company, but before leaving, this person spoke the words that delivered me from doubt, fear, and resentment. Spoke the words I so desperately needed to hear.

Yes, after seeing the house, I can do it for the price I quoted you over e-mail. I use all green cleaning products, so it will be safe for the kids, and I use a steam mop on the hardwoods. I can start next week, so just e-mail me your schedule and I'll fit you in a slot.

I have a housekeeper.

And I won't know for sure until next week, but I think I'm in love.

Settling In

2011-11-07T13:40:00.000-05:00

Have you ever been in a meeting, and there's an announcement about some upcoming changes in the way things are done, and suddenly everyone is bustling with questions, complaints, objections, and a long list of all the problems that are sure to ensue?

Well, that's the point where I'm totally silent, and what I'm thinking is: damn, you guys, quit harshing my buzz! this could be, like, the BEST. THING. EVER!

And then the upcoming changes become the new normal, and all the nasayers have generally adjusted by that point: questions are answered, complaints are addressed, objections are either sustained or overruled, and the long list of problems are solved or never come to be.

And at the beginning of the new normal I'm still like: potential best thing ever, right? the sparkly unicorns will be here momentarily?, and then around the middle I'm like: wait...no sparkly unicorns? nirvana has not descended upon us? not best thing ever? then...maybe...worst thing ever? ummm...how do i feel about this? paaanickyyy!?

So August was the buzz of the upcoming change, which was, of course, quite possibly the beginning of the best thing ever. That carried me through most of September, but then by October all I could see was that -WTF!?- life still consisted of a whole string of absolutely normal moments strung together, and things like eating, playing, cleaning, and going for walks had somehow failed to be fully transcendent experiences. So, did this mean I hated life?

Fortunately, November arrived, and with it the realization -yet again, because I seem to suffer the same delusions no matter the change, or my age, or circumstance- that: oh yeah! regular life! i remember this! it's just, like, normal. okay. cool. i can dig it.

A schedule with the little ones has evolved, mealtimes have settled down, and a certain peace has settled over the land. My husband built a walkway through the backyard -our final project before winter arrives- (we're going to pretend the whole fixing-the-snowblower-thing will be but a minor blip in the radar, yes, indeed we are), and then suddenly appeared back in our family life for the first time since August (it has seriously been 10-12 hour days every weekend completing projects around the house ever since I found out my job was ending. the house looks great. we are both completely burned.), and my loneliness abated.

The leaves are all falling, yellow, from the trees. I watch them from my perch on the couch, holding my travel mug of hot tea aloft in the air so the little bodies clamoring up and down don't knock it over. And although I know more changes are coming -winter's just around the corner- it feels as if I've finally caught up with the ones that have already happened.

This is my new life. And although the sparkly unicorns appear to have been waylaid somewhere along the way yet again, although nirvana has yet to show up at the door, let itself in, and take up permanent residence: it's still a pretty darn good one.

Kafka and My Feet (finally) in the Sand

2011-10-25T19:06:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I finished reading Kafka's The Trial. This morning I woke up without the cloud of melancholy that I've been unable to shake for the last week or so, when I spent a little time each morning and evening losing myself in Joseph K.'s tribulations. It was an engrossing read, but perhaps starting and ending my days with it was the wrong approach.

I know I've thought of the tedious process of washing, drying, folding and putting away laundry as byzantine more than once in the last week. I don't think the word byzantine is anywhere in the book, but I'm willing to bet you'd find it in the Cliff Notes. And considering that my washer and dryer are just down the basement stairs and to the left, straightforward would probably be a more accurate description of my laundering process. Boring would suffice if you wanted the subjective experience captured in a word. Byzantine it is not.

I also remembered that 1) my previous employer (actually, it's the agency we partnered with, but my office was in their building, and they thought of me as their own, so...) holds a Thursday morning playgroup for stay-at-home mothers and their children, where I can stop weekly and visit my old friends, and 2) I had promised to host a Friday night get-together for all of them, and promptly forgotten all about it. So for all my complaints about loneliness, in lieu of making new friends I could choose to expend a modicum of effort and simply get in touch with the ones I've got.

My husband spent the weekend building a walkway from our driveway to the deck of our home. It was an eight hour Saturday followed by a twelve hour Sunday. I think this concludes our home-repair projects until next spring. We do have to fix the snowblower (again) but he claims that this will be short project (I'm not sure why I believe him; this is a standard lie he tells me to make both of us feel better; we always choose to believe it; we want to feel better).

He has done a major home repair project every. single. weekend. since. the first one in August. No wonder I'm lonely! I lost my job, began working at home with only the company of young children, and lost my husband to a mistress much larger, older, and more demanding than myself, all at the same time!

He has a new job; I have a new job; our home repairs and upkeep have been on fast-forward (and our previous speed was ultra-low), and we've taken almost no time at all to rest, relax or unwind. This is a tough transition. We're ready to shift gears, settle down, maybe spend a Saturday picking apples and pumpkins instead of replacing doors, rearranging attics, building fences or scrubbing baseboards.

I kept wondering why Joseph K. continued to show such willingness to participate in his trial. It's as if the events swept him up and along like a river, and he couldn't seem to stick his feet in the sand and stop moving. Reading the book was dream-like: the attic labyrinths with their stuffy air where the court resided, my short morning stints to myself before being overrun by the needs of several small children, the odd encounters he had with strangers who seemed to know more about his own trial than he did; my husband and I, self-deluded and scrambling to survive this last, momentous project we had promised to complete before we had any inkling of how overwhelmed we would find ourselves by late October, the way he knew he was supposed to plunge the knife into his own heart at the end, the harsh standards we're holding ourselves to, and the moments where we find ourselves, exhausted and almost weeping over the kitchen counters, clinging to each other, showing one another the kindnesses we seem to be withholding ourselves for no very good reason whatsoever, except that we've been picked up by this current and carried so far into the river of having to do it right that we haven't stuck our feet in the sand and simply stopped.

The Court wants nothing from you. It receives you when you come and it dismisses you when you go.

And it's that simple! Well, then, I think it's time to go.

Lonely

2011-10-23T18:06:00.001-04:00

I'm lonely.

There, I said. Not that it was particularly hard to admit, but it was hard to recognize. It shouldn't have been--I knew that I got my fill of social interaction at work. I worked with a great bunch of women, and I'm terrible at keeping up friendships. My sister -who also just became a stay-at-home-mom- was here this weekend, and we were talking about it. I started off by saying: I guess I should try to make some friends.

But then as the conversation continued, and I listed the type of actions I'd have to take to make -and maintain- friendships, I realized I might well choose loneliness: I hate making phone calls, and plans. I hate sticking to plans. When would I do things? Tuesdays and Thursdays are my only days with just my kids, and we already have a routine we like. We go to the gym one day and a museum the other. We like that! There's only a three hour window where we can get out anyway. Evenings? Between dinner, and bath and bed? Weekends? The only time I see my husband? Ugh. Forget it.

So I might just have to live with it.

The way I see it is, there are two paths to take with any problem: Accept it, or change it.

I usually try acceptance first, and see how that goes. This will be no different, I guess. So I'm lonely. The question is: can I live with it?

The Unofficial Performance Review

2011-10-21T13:31:00.000-04:00

Have you ever read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig? It's my dad's favorite book, so I read it one summer; I think I was 19. There's a section near the beginning of the book where the narrator -a former college instructor- talks about an experiment he did, eliminating grades for his writing students. The good students get better, pushing themselves harder than they've had to in the past, when the stakes were clear. The bad students get nervous and panicky, suddenly interested in what the criteria are for passing the course. Suddenly they begin to pump out work: more and of better quality than ever before.

I don't know if I'm a good or bad student in this comparison, but it's a little disconcerting that the goal posts have not just moved: they're nonexistent in my new life. And I'm running the gamut from panic to pushing myself harder in response.

I was always a good student: from kindergarten through graduate school. The criteria were clearly spelled out, and I did what I had to do to fulfill them. When I went to work, I did the same. If I had questions, I asked my boss, or did some research to find out what were considered best practices in the field. There were always rubrics and protocols, checklists to guide me. The challenges were usually intellectual.

Now the challenges are largely emotional, the terrain has shifted, and I'm out here on my own, with little guidance, and nobody observing, measuring, giving feedback, grading my performance.

I get nervous and panicky some days, like Pirsig's poor students, wondering what the minimum requirements are to consider this venture a success. Other days I go above and beyond what I imagine myself capable of, like the better students when the parameter defining the upper limit was suddenly lifted.

In the past week, I've finally gotten some concrete feedback, and it felt good.

One of the boys I babysit is dropped off by his grandmother once a week, later in the morning because he gets early intervention therapy at her house beforehand. She said as soon as she pulled into our driveway he began to pump his fists, kick both feet, and squeal with joy! This little boy has never been outside of the care of his family before, and he greets me each morning with a huge grin. It made me feel good to know I'm providing his first taste of life outside his family home, and that he likes it out here in the big, bad world.

The other boy has been in child care twice a week since he was born, with the same caregiver, before coming to me a little less than two months ago. His dad drops him off because he has such a tough time separating from mom, and he always cried and cried if she did the drop-off. But his father had a conference this week, and mom had to do it. She arrived, obviously nervous, with her son in her arms, and dropped down to one knee to set him on the floor. Suddenly my son opened his bedroom door and peeked out to see his buddy arriving. The little boy's face lit up, he yelled: Bye Mama!, kissed her quickly, and ran toward my boy, ready to play. She said in the year and a half he'd spent with his other sitter, he had never been so happy to leave her side. It made my day.

This is a challenging transition for me. Not the identity piece, which I expected, and which hasn't really turned out to matter a whit to me. I know who I am, and a professional title -or lack of one- doesn't change that. But the balance that I so carefully and deliberately set out to create for my life has been flipped topsy-turvy, and that is taking some time to get used to. I find myself more exhausted and emotionally depleted than I have ever been before. I find I need to dig deeper to find reserves of patience, compassion, and willingness to wait, to try again, to return to the same problems until they are solved to my satisfaction. I have to learn to take care of myself in ways I didn't have to before. I'm somewhat surprised to find out how hard on myself I can be.

But I'm doing right by these babies, if squeals of joy, pumping fists and feet, great big grins, and feet racing into our house and our hearts are any indication. And it's not like I'll be getting a performance review this year -or a raise!- so, hey: I'll take 'em! I will most definitely take them.

Mealtimes, Squealtimes

2011-10-19T13:44:00.000-04:00

It's the mealtimes that are really challenging. I'm brainstorming to see if I can come up with a better system, but so far, I can't. Feeding four children, ages 0, 1, 2 and 3, is just very, very difficult. And very, very messy.

Here are my biases, laid out from the start: I've seen research that suggests that kids who are permitted to eat whenever they want spend more time engaged in learning. Kids who are forced to eat at preplanned mealtimes spend more time wasted: in lines, waiting for adults, sitting or standing around doing nothing. This is in a child care situation, not at home. There's plenty of research supporting family mealtimes, so that's not what I'm talking about here. Another bias I hold is that I think it's a good thing -and important- for kids to learn to listen to their bodies. To eat when and what their bodies crave. So my ideal is an eating area where children can come and go as they please, grazing through their day, getting the energy they need to learn.

You can probably imagine that this could easily be recipe for chaos, but you guys, I am already so far from my ideal!

The boys arrive in the morning and my kids are usually still asleep. They wake soon after the noise level begins to rise in the living room, and we all play for a half hour or so, until I get the hungry signal from one of the kids. Fortunately, once one of them wants to eat, they all want to eat, so I'm not completely abandoning my wait-for-their-signals approach to individual eating.

My daughter's in a high chair. The two boys are in small chairs with trays on the floor. My son sits at a child-sized table. When it's dry food, I let the other two boys sit at the little table. I like this: the camaraderie, the family feel of it, the opportunity for interaction between them. But if it's wet food, the 1 and 2 year olds will end up covering the wall and floor in it, and it's nearly impossible to clean off the wainscoting and out of the crack where the wall meets the floor. So I've limited that to dry food.

Breakfast and lunch work about the same way. I'm scrambling to get hands washed by holding each kid up to the sink and scrubbing their hands with mine. Then I pop the three younger kids in their chairs and click their trays into place, leaving my son to his own devices. I sprinkle dry cereal or snack crackers across their trays to keep them happy while I warm their food in the microwave.

The two boys bring their own meals (they need to, due to feeding and sensory issues, so it's not an option for me to provide the same thing for all the kids) and obviously I'm providing for my kids, so we have -at best- three different meals that typically need to be heated (that's if my kids are eating the same thing, which: sometimes).

Everybody spills, so the floors around each seating area need to be cleaned. Hands need to be cleaned. Faces need to be cleaned. Everybody has a variety of snacks in addition to the meals, so I'm just racing: back and forth from the kitchen with heated foods, with Clorox wipes for the floor, to rinse dishes and get them in the dishwasher, with high chair trays and rubber bibs, and cloth bibs that need to be tossed down the stairs to the basement laundry, with one more snack to try because low blood sugar is an issue, to slice that apple because he can't eat one independently, to peel that pear because she can't eat the skin, to refill juice glasses and make chocolate milk, and wash my hands again because I just used a Clorox wipe to get the oatmeal off the floor and I don't want to touch the banana with Clorox wipe residue all over my hands. My son is the only one who's really talking yet (we've got some special needs in the group), so there's lots of grunting, and lots of whining, and lots of frantic pointing, and it's all happening at once while I'm running, running, running. And also, I don't microwave plastic (ew, scary cancer stuff, I just won't do it), so all the food is scooped from plastic, to ceramic, back to plastic (they'll drop and break ceramic), and all those dishes need rinsing before they go into the dishwasher, and before I can even stop for one second one is whining to get out of the seat, and then another, and then another, and I have to clean up: the floors, the trays, their hands and faces, and everyone's whining all at the same time, and:

It's just really stressful.

I keep my cool on the outside because I am good at keeping my cool on the outside. It is, in fact, my job to keep my cool on the outside. But inside, it makes me feel like a crazy woman. An unhinged, panicky, crazy woman.

And that's not really good for anyone, now is it?

Today I tried to eliminate mid-morning snack-time (we have breakfast, then a mid-morning snack, then lunch, then an afternoon snack. Can you see why this is a problem?), but then I was hungry (I can't eat while they're eating; when would I eat?) and tried to sneak away to eat something and they all trailed me (like Greyhounds, they are!) and found me and wanted to eat.

For lunch today I fed them each individually, which was actually quite peaceful, but it took and hour and a half, and the ones who weren't eating were playing in another room and that's a long time for them to play without any interaction from me (I can see them, so they're supervised, but I wasn't in there playing at all, which -in my opinion- is a big part of what I'm here for, and: is the fun part!). It worked out okay today, but my daughter skipped lunch and went down for her nap early. I don't think it would typically work, and I'm not crazy about it anyway, as a regular thing.

I have tried to simply stop stressing out about it, but it's not working. Which leads me to believe that maybe I need to change the circumstances somehow, instead of trying to ignore the chaos. Figure out how to make it less chaotic.

But I'm not sure where to start. Anybody got any ideas?

Students and Teachers

2011-10-17T20:59:00.000-04:00

My husband noticed he had a voice mail on Saturday morning.

What's this? I missed a district wide call last night? What could this be about? he asked as he dialed to retrieve the message.

And then: Oh. Oh God. No. Oh my God. No. Oh God.

He frantically scrambled for a pencil and began taking notes on the back of an envelope. When he hung up the phone he stared into space, shell-shocked. I glanced down, but could make little sense of the random collection of words he had jotted down: a boy's name, a small town south of us, the hospital where I took my daughter when she fell and hit her head.

I asked: What is it? Are you okay?

He just shook his head, and kept staring forward, looking at nothing.

* * *

Nearly three years ago a girl walked into my classroom with her eight month old son. She was a teen mom, there to take the entrance test to qualify for our GED program. Her son had never -since birth- been separated from her at that point, not even to sleep. He cried for 3 hours while she labored over math and reading problems. We took turns passing him from staff member to staff member, trying every baby calming trick we collectively knew, to no avail. He sobbed until he was back in her arms.

* * *

One of his students died on Friday night. He sustained a hit to the head during a football game. He continued the game for a few more plays; no one even knew there was a problem. He got hit again and went down. He rolled over, sat up. He could talk, but wasn't making a lot of sense, so they called an ambulance.

They were en route to the hospital where I took my daughter, when he took a turn for the worse in the ambulance. They headed for a closer hospital in the small town south of us where the game was being played. He died there, a junior in high school.

* * *

She qualified for the program, which means either her reading or math scores had to be below ninth grade level. I can tell you it was both. Later we found out she had a learning disability that had gone undiagnosed for her entire school career.

She was on her mom's public assistance case, and their welfare-to-work caseworker wanted her back in high school. The same high school, same district, that missed her learning disability for all those years. The same district that had shuffled her through to tenth grade when she was reading and doing math on an elementary school level.

They wanted to put her baby in full time daycare so she could go to school. They pay for it, but they don't pay much, so he'd have been in the cheapest daycare she could find. They told her it was that or find whatever job she could without a high school diploma, and they'd pay for daycare for that too.

They didn't want her in our GED program, where she would get parenting classes, and interactive time with her baby. She didn't know why they didn't support it, and they certainly didn't feel they owed her anything like an explanation for the decisions they were making about her life.

She'd never been a good student, and they wanted her in a substandard school that had already failed her. She had no work experience, and no marketable skills, but they wanted her in a dead end job. She had one thing going for her: she loved that baby more than anything, and her instincts were dead on when it came to mothering. She had that one thing, and they wanted to take it away from her.

* * *

My husband walked around in a fog all weekend. We took the kids to the farmer's market, and he kept forgetting what was on the list. He tried to plot out the sidewalk we're building through the yard next weekend, and couldn't focus on the numbers on the blueprint. The boy's story was on the front page of the Local section of our Sunday paper, and when I asked him if he read the article about Obama in the Opinion section, or saw the Victorian house for sale in Homes he shook his head and said: I didn't read anything except the article about my student. I never got any further than that.

* * *

I called my boss, and my boss called the caseworker's boss, but to no avail. They assigned her to high school, and she never went, never enrolled her son in daycare, just skipped every day and sat at home with her baby. They started docking her mom's public assistance, so her mom went down and screamed at the caseworker, who finally relented, and assigned her to our program instead.

She had perfect attendance. Her son, almost 2 at this point, still sobbed when his mom left his side. So we set up a desk in the nursery, and she worked there, while he gradually ventured further from her side. Finally we began taking her from the children's classroom for short -and then longer- periods of time. We were shocked to discover that working unassisted in the nursery she'd brought her reading scores from a fifth grade to a tenth grade level.

She was a month away from passing her GED when we lost our funding and had to close up shop.

* * *

The student who died would have been in my husband's first period, Monday morning class. Going into work this morning was daunting. I saw the weight of it across the slope of his shoulders as he headed out the door. I turned the tea water on, and wished there was something I could do.

Later, I took the kids for a walk and saw a large bunch of deep red mums that someone had tossed out with the trash, though they were still in bloom, whole, and beautiful. I picked them up, folded them gently into the hood of the jogging stroller, brought them home and arranged them in a vase. I placed it where he'd see them when he first walked in the door.

At some point between walking out the door of our home and into the door of his school, he squared those shoulders, heavy with the weight of the responsibility he bore for the students who would have even less ability than he to make sense of the senseless tragedy. He squared his shoulders, walked into that first period class, and spoke to the kids in his first period class, minus one.

* * *

I called her caseworker before our program ended and she assured me she'd transfer my student into another GED program. Her son is old enough for preschool now, and we pulled every string we could to get him enrolled. He cried the first time he took the bus without her, but overall, he's doing incredibly well.

The caseworker didn't keep her word, though, and refused to refer her to another GED program, after all. The day she found out, I invited her over for a bowl of ham and bean soup, a hot cup of tea, a honey crisp apple. We looked online for another GED program, one that doesn't require a referral from her caseworker. We're still trying, and she's worried her math and reading skills are slipping.

Her son is testing above the 90th percentile for his language skills though, a testament to her strong attachment to him, her willingness to throw herself wholeheartedly into parenting, to soak up skills like a sponge and then pass them on to him. She wants his life to be easier than hers.

We were texting last night, talking about her love for her boy, when all of a sudden I read the following line:

I was forest to have sex, thats how my baby was made.

I had to whisper read it aloud to myself, to be sure I understood.

I wrote her back:

You are an amazing person.

She sent me a smiley face emoticon before I went to bed.

* * *

I can debate educational theory all night long: Maria Montessori and John Dewey, the Reggio Emilia approach, and what the latest findings in neuroscience mean in the context of the day-to-day drag.

I have opinions about the politics of it: unions versus reformers, Michelle Rhee and what she did in DC, merit pay and standardized testing. And if my husband and I get started, the next thing you know the wine bottle is empty and we're both all riled up. A perfect date night for me would be back-to-back showings of the most recent educational documentaries followed by debriefing over generous glasses of Cabernet.

But what's missing from the conversation is the slope of my husband's heavy shoulders as he walked weary from our house into the still dark morning, saddled with the weight of what he'd say to those kids. There's no place in policy for the way my heart stopped for a moment and the muscles in my abdomen involuntarily clenched when my student sent me a text that spelled forest for forced.

We talk numbers, and strategy, and we have to. We have to. But every time someone's child connects a letter to a sound, sketches a still-life on a thick sheet of off-white paper, finally figures out what the hell fractions are all about ... there are billions of beating hearts behind it. And if it didn't start -and end- with our heavy, hurt, imperfect hearts: all the theory and politics in the world would come to nought.

Dinosaurs Eating, Vivid Motion, and Other Worlds

2011-10-15T00:02:00.000-04:00

My son stood up on his child-sized chair, where he could reach the chalk and draw on the bottom of the chalkboard hanging on the dining room wall. It's high on the wall because the lower half of the room is covered in wainscoting, unsuitable for hanging much of anything, let alone an oversized and very heavy, wood-framed chalkboard.

And then, because it's high, we've adopted it for ourselves: we make grocery lists, jot down appointments, and detail our lunch and dinner menus for the week. The adults have bogarted the big blackboard, and the children must make do with the much smaller chalkboard aback the white board easel that I got for free when my former employer tossed it in the junk pile.

But the boy managed to balance his feet where his seat should be, and draw on the bottom of the blackboard, and then he said: Mommy, look at my chalking!

I forgot all about how you're supposed to ask about the picture instead of telling about it, and I said: Hey! Y'know what that reminds me of?

And he said: what? And so I told him.

It reminds me of a dinosaur, like, his head is right here? And this is his tongue! And he's eating this ... ball of stuff, over here. It reminds me of a dinosaur who's eating.

And he didn't have any particular objection to that interpretation, in fact, he welcomed it, and so it became a dinosaur, eating a ball of stuff.

Over the course of a week or so he added more stuff to the dinosaur's ball-o'-food. He filled in the dinosaur's head. He called my attention to it each time, and each time I validated his efforts to increase the concrete-ness of the dinosaur, dining in our dining room.

And then, one Friday night, his father -who hadn't been privy to the ongoing conversations about said dinosaur and his insatiable appetite for round-or-sometimes-oval balls-o'-stuff- erased the bottom of board.

In Daddy's defense, we had an especially long grocery list that week. We'd been out of town the weekend before, living on leftovers, and a large number of household staples were depleted.

Once all of us realized what had taken place, my son said: Mommy, can you help me make my dinosaur again?

And I said: No! We can never make the same dinosaur again. We wouldn't be able to do it right. You can't recreate the past. But you know what this is perfect for? I can wash the board with a wet paper towel, and you can start a brand new picture, and the colors will be so vivid! It can be anything you want! And I can't wait to see it!

And he grinned and agreed. And he started anew, and at the end I said (forgetting again): Y'know what THIS reminds me of? People running. It reminds me of motion. The purple and the yellow, and the orange and the blue? Look like they are racing across the chalkboard like Thomas and James race to the Wharf!

And he didn't have any particular objection to that interpretation, but he did enjoy the word vivid. And so we talked about that for a while.

As parents, we define dinosaurs, motion, and vivid. We can make or break the meaning of things. We're creating and defining worlds here. This is powerful, important stuff. This is exciting, my little boy's favorite word. More exciting than Thomas and James racing; more exciting than what a dinosaur eats for lunch.

We can create worlds, erase them. We can start anew. Where else do we get the chance to do this?

Schedules Unfolding

2011-10-14T14:10:00.000-04:00

The children are all here today. Three are asleep while my oldest plays with wooden trains in the living room. I mopped the dining room and kitchen floors as fast as I could once the kids went down, hoping to find some time to sit here and write, although now that I'm here, a folded towel under my feet that I used to shuffle-slide across the still-wet floor to get to the computer, I can't remember quite what it was I was so anxious to say. I was thinking while I rocked one of the boys to sleep, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star playing quietly in the background, my mind wandering from the room where I sat. I was comparing my house to the classrooms where I've taught in the past, and...

...Oh yes, the unfolding. More about the unfolding. So here goes:

The first thing I would do as a teacher is make a schedule for the day. When I taught preschool, it looked a little something like this:

9-9:30: Arrival; Free breakfast for those who qualify; Free play for others in limited areas of the classroom
9:30-10: Circle Time; Make a plan for free play
10-11: Free Play
11-11:20: Kids meet with teachers in small groups and debrief: talk about how the play plan went (this, incidentally, -the making of, sticking to, and discussing play plans- has been shown to do more for a certain type of early brain development than any other single thing you could do in a classroom. I loved it.)
11:20-12: Outdoor/Gross Motor play and Small Group Activities
12-1: Lunch, followed by Storytime
1-3: Nap/Quiet play/Books for those who wake up

When I taught family literacy, with infants, toddlers and parents, it looked a little something like this:

9-9:10: Arrival
9:10-10:05: GED class 1/Parent and Child Interactive class 1 (half the parents went to GED while the other half stayed with their babies in the classroom)
10:05-11: GED class 2/Parent and Child Interactive class 2 (the groups of parents switched)
11-11:45: Parenting class; Kids with staff
11:45-12: Circle Time; Dismissal

You'll notice the second schedule was more for the parents than the kids. That's because while infants and toddlers need routines, each child will need a slightly different routine. If you have a group of them, a new routine will evolve. Their needs will change as they interact with the others. So I have four children to care for, and it's been six weeks, and we don't have a schedule that fits on paper perfectly yet.

Who do you imagine is the only person in the group who has a problem with that?

If you guessed me, you win the prize! It's a handful of goldfish crackers and a Thomas the Tank Engine sticker. Also, you'll have to swing by and pick it up. I drive a Hyundai Accent and there's no way four carseats are fitting in that sucker.

I like things written out on paper: schedules, to-do lists, projects I'd like to complete around the house, shopping lists, meals planned for the month, developmental checklists with little boxes where the abstract beauty of a child's first word or step can be reassuringly checked off, made concrete, filed in a drawer somewhere, perhaps never to be seen again. Doesn't matter. I just like the making of the lists.

But instead, I keep choosing things like caring for babies and yoga. Things that don't lend themselves to list-making, things that laugh in the face of the best laid plans. Things that unfold. That emerge, half formed, from an interminable period of time where one sits. Sits with discomfort, and simply observes it. Sits with sometimes a rising panic, a screeching JesusFuckingChristJesusFuckingChristJesusFuckingChrist inside one's mind. And why? Because the noodles aren't heating fast enough. Observes the screeching mind and says: it's only noodles, heating in a microwave, and the children are only mildly hungry. it isn't the end of the world. I keep choosing things that demand that I separate my better self from the screeching voice and say aloud, in a calm voice: the noodles are almost ready, my little pumpkins! patience, babies, patience! your food will be here in a moment.

They eat at regular intervals, and their naps are synced up, but the rest of the day -the learning- just won't adapt. Babies demand that the universe adapt to them, which is one reason why I like them so much, if you want to know the truth.

My son just interrupted me. He told me: Mommy, I want my engines to drive on the back of the brown couch! Not on their rails, just on the couch! I could tell he found this most amusing, although I wasn't exactly sure why. Do you want to come and see them? he asked me.

I asked: Can I come and see when I'm finished writing? and I saw his face fall, just a fraction of a millimeter, it's true, but I spotted it. Or can I come and see it real quick right now, and then finish my writing?

Yes! he replied with a giant grin, and he raced into the living room and leapt onto the couch. His engines were lined up and squished between the back of the couch and the seat cushion, and while I'm still not entirely sure why this is even funny, he burst into giggles every time he looked at them. So I did too.

It only took a moment, and that moment meant more to him than another half hour uninterrupted at the keyboard would have meant to me. And yet I yearn for a piece of paper that says: 1:30-2: Writing.

It's the silliest thing, when I can escape the screeching brain and just look at it slantways, out of the corner of my mind's eye, and see it for what it is. It's a way to feel some semblance of control. I keep walking off the edge of whatever cliff I've arranged my life upon, and then lamenting the lack of control in the free fall. It's the silliest thing.

So I'll sit with it, and see what happens. Something always does, eventually.

Hope and Change

2011-10-12T22:09:00.000-04:00

I haven't told you the whole truth. I have another job, of sorts. I'm a private early child care provider, if you want the report for the resume. I'm a babysitter, if you want it plain.

Twice a week I'm a SAHM, two kids, both mine, 3 years and 9 months. Once a week I've got my two and a third, a boy, 2 years old. The other two days I've got four kids in all, ages 0, 1, 2 and 3. Three boys, the oldest mine, and then my baby girl.

The day I realized I was super badass is the day I realized my mom, mother of six, a SAHM for 20+ years, never had this many kids, so close in age, home at the same time.

It is, without a doubt, the hardest thing I've ever done.

* * *

So, Occupy Wall Street? Anyone else amazed and hopeful? I walk through my house, wiping food from the hardwood floors with generic Clorox wipes, putting random CDs on -I let my 3 year old pick from his daddy's CD shelf and hope the swear words aren't audible, being not-a-music-person myself- and dancing with babies, one on each hip, and I hope for the future so fiercely it hurts.

I just believe in humankind. For no good reason, against all odds, I just believe in us. We're mostly good. We're working our way to better, even though it doesn't always look like it.

I mean, what's the alternative? Babies and dancing can't be in a world without hope.

* * *

The leaves are changing. What does time mean when you're no longer shackled to a narrative? My present story has been written down on paper, but it seems I haven't quite caught up to it yet. Or maybe it to me. Things speed up and other things slow down. Time is going faster than ever -can it really be mid-October already?-, but allowing things to unfold at their own pace -routines, and the suppleness needed to navigate the days gracefully- is excruciatingly slow. I'm bad at it.

I'm bad at allowing things to unfold at their own pace. I'm impatient, mostly with myself, but it slips over onto other people too.

And yet I keep choosing things that take time to unfold. Pursuing paths that require patience that I can only hope resides in my toes I'm digging down so deep.

* * *

We try, and we fuck up. And then we try again.

There's only ever hope and trying.

Any other way, the story ends.

And this feels so much like a beginning.

Roles and Reversals

2011-09-24T23:25:00.002-04:00

My husband becomes a summertime SAHD and we joke that he's turning into me: an unrepentant, satisfied slacker. I lose my part-time job, become a SAHM and -go figure- I start turning into him: an unapologetic, driven perfectionist.

We've traded roles so many times in our marriage, and -look!- here's another brand new amalgamation! I'll tell you what: it's a lot harder to be him. Unrepentant, satisfied slacker has a lot to say for itself. But alas, it doesn't seem to be that season for me. And Lord knows, I can't say I haven't had my turn!

So it's the season of change, for all of us.

Our boy turns three and sentences start tumbling through his mind faster than his tongue can formulate the words. Whole worlds are unfolding in the creases of his brain. He fights for control of whatever he can control, out in the real world. When given the reins, he spins narratives like spider webs: marvelous and shimmery, suspended in the air, catching us all.

And my girl? Oh, you guys, my wonderful baby girl!? Remember when I worried about her potential 'tude, right here? Well, she is just the sweetest thing ever to melt in your mouth since butter. But she knows just what she wants, and she will let you know just what she wants, and she will not stop letting you know, with increasing volume and intensity, until she gets it. Whereupon she's sweet as butter, once again.

I've been swimming laps, when I can. This Saturday and last I completed a mile. My husband kept the girl so I could swim without fear of interruption. The plan has been to gradually allow my daughter to adjust to the child care at the gym, with the end goal being that I could pick up more fitness classes. That seemed like the most practical thing: ensure myself exercise, and get paid for it at the same time. It would mean more teaching: I'm teaching my babies all day, and yoga one evening a week.

When I swim, though, I feel like the student. Like I'm asking my body and the water a new question with every pull of my arms through a stroke. I look at the space and the light between me and the ceiling, in a backstroke, and it's a little bit like talking to God. And what I'm saying is like some great big question that I can never quite put into words. My body is slicing and curving through the water like a question mark, like hands cupped in prayer.

I wonder if what I need right now is just to be the student.

The Gym Childcare. Again.

2011-09-15T22:22:00.000-04:00

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

2011-09-14T22:41:00.000-04:00

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.

Twenty True Sentences and One Lie

2011-09-09T22:32:00.000-04:00

I complained about wanting throw pillows on my blog, and my mother-in-law visited and bought us beautiful new throw pillows.
Even though she doesn't know I have a blog (I don't think...)
She also bought us a carpet for our living room.
Speaking of rooms, I rearranged our dining room tonight.
And then sat in it and looked at the moon out the window from my grey computer chair w/wheels. I want to make a rule that the kids can't touch that chair; it's not safe (or it's safer not to) (or easier, for me) . But that rule won't fly; I can already tell. A chair with magical wheels (and aren't wheels just inherently magical?) must be touched. I will need a new rule that means: be safe, in the context of the magical wheely chair.
It's been raining a lot lately.
(Could that be the lie?) (Boring!)
The smell of rain is in the air all the time; I love the smell of rain.
A 4 year old girl around here died of a mosquito bourne-illness recently.
Then they sprayed, locally, to kill all the mosquito larvae.
Now my yard has hardly any mosquitoes.
It's weird. But kind of awesome, not to have them there.
For some reason, looking out my window at the trees makes me want to have sex with my husband right now.
He's reading in the boy's room.
Sometimes our son needs -or wants- one of us to sit in the armchair and read by the light of his nightlights while he falls asleep.
Sometimes one or the other of us doesn't mind doing just that.
My daughter is ferociously teething.
I'm pretty sure I'm fatter than I've ever been.
We skipped the State Fair this year.
I have a "music center" in my hallway now, and it's all kinds of awesome.
I am super tired lately. (Wouldn't it be nice if that were the lie?)

Anxiety

2011-09-06T20:37:00.000-04:00

It started last night, as my husband prepared for his first official day of school. He went in last week, but it was just to hear the superintendent talk, meet with other teachers, and arrange his room. Today was the real thing, with the kids. This is a new job for him: he's still teaching art, but with a different age group, in a new building, and he's specializing in photography, which is also brand new. It will be demanding, and my husband's a perfectionist.

He's the only other person who would ever care as much as I do about the state of our house, and the day-to-day details of our children. Watching him pile stacks of paper, jot notes, and pack bags, I knew I was losing him. It'll just be me and the house and the babies. My head feels competent enough, and my heart's downright loosey-goosey about the whole thing, but my stomach has it's doubts.

We got up this morning, and I got us all packed and out of the house right away. The baby needed to have her ID photo taken for her new gym membership card, which continues to amuse me! The boy and I went downtown together on Saturday and upped the free membership I get for teaching yoga to a family membership. But each member of the family gets their very own ID card, with photo, so we took the baby this morning to stand in place against the wall (with support, since standing independently is still beyond her ken) and receive her very own laminated card.

Then we all drove out to the suburban location about a half hour away. They have free child care (the downtown location doesn't offer this service) (remind me to rail against the race/class assumptions at work there another time) so I can work out while they play. I wanted to do a trial run today, and see how it went before I actually tried a workout. The preschool room was a madhouse, and I was nervous leaving my boy, but he was enthusiastic, and a kind young woman took his hand and guided him toward the toys. He went with her willingly, so I walked over to the baby room. It wasn't quite as much of a madhouse, but still pretty hectic. The staff seemed nice enough.

It was weird being on the other side. Usually I'm the teacher. I know how to calm a nervous parent, put a mother's mind at ease, make sure she knows her baby's going to be okay. Leaving my babies with a bunch of strangers was a lot harder.

I didn't even plan to work out today; this was just a trial run to check out the child care situation. I was wearing flip-flops, not prepared for any kind of workout unless they had a quiet room for individual yoga (they don't). So I wandered the hallways. It's a nice facility: a cycle studio, a huge family art studio, multiple swimming pools for adults and kids, a teen center, Weight Watcher's meetings here, a strength training class there. Time was ticking by very slowly though, and my hallway wandering began to feel a little creepy after I noticed the same people staring at me more than once while I passed them by, slowly and aimlessly.

I found a corner in the locker room and sat down, wishing I hadn't forgotten my cell phone on the mantle at home, so I could text someone to pass the time. I watched the seconds tick by on the wall clock. My stomach was jumpy, just like last night. This is all such easy stuff: I'm visiting a gym with free child care, for Christ's sakes, not performing brain surgery blindfolded! But it's so new, and it's scary. I had told the woman at the desk where I dropped off my children that this would just be a test run for our first time. I said 20 to 30 minutes. I watched the tick ... tick ... tick ... I determined that it would take me two minutes to walk from the locker room to the childcare center. At 17 minutes I could stand it no longer, and headed down the hallway, walking quickly, anxiety and relief brewing in my belly like a half-caf blend.

My daughter was fine. I had left her sitting on a thick mat on the floor, with a foam mini-staircase/slide apparatus off to her side, chewing on her name bracelet and grinning at the toys and other children around her. She was in the same place, but had tried to climb the stairs before rolling onto her back, the better to chew her toe and grin at the people behind her.

When I went to get my son, a few staff members told me he had cried for me. But he wasn't crying when I spotted him at the train table, and his first words were: Hi Mommy! Hi baby sis! I don't want to go HOOOME!

The utter disdain embedded in the word home could not be mistaken! I asked him about the crying on our way out to the car.

Oh yeah! he told me, I needed to find you and tell you about THAT BOY! He took my Thomas engine from the train table! I needed to tell you about it, and the teachers said I couldn't!

Did he take it out of your hands? I asked.

Well, no, Mommy!

Where was it? I asked.

It was on the train table! he answered. But I was seeing it, and I was wanting it for myself!

It was hard to get too worked up about that. I'm sure my firstborn told THAT (poor) BOY just how he felt about seeing it and wanting it for himself. A little crying about having to share at age three isn't going to hurt anyone. The kids were just fine.

So it was just me and my knotty stomach, all alone.

We came home, played and ate and one napped and the other watched a little PBS, and I kept the house clean as a whistle (my other great fear about being home: I hate cleaning. Straight hate it. I'm here to be a teacher, a mother, a reader of books and a builder of minds for my babies, not a maid. But since we can't afford a maid, there's a little bit of indentured servitude built into the role, and I'm not sure how well I'll deal with that!).

My husband came home so late I had to call and cancel my chiropractic appointment. The kids went down early in the evening, for what I'd love to call the night, but is more likely a late day nap.

It all went fine.

So why is my stomach still in knots? For God's sakes: what am I afraid of?

A Room of My Own

2011-09-05T22:52:00.002-04:00

I wrote this post a year ago this weekend. I continued teaching yoga through the rest of my pregnancy, but didn't return after my daughter was born. I went back last Thursday night, and I'll be teaching the same class I write about here. At least for the time being! It's a nice reminder that life is cyclical. Someday I'll be returning to professional life too. We always find our way back to the things that matter most to us. Today that's my babies and my yoga practice. Tomorrow? Well, who knows!

So just hours after I post about how now is not the time for my yoga practice, I go teach my first class in over a month. And suddenly I remember why I've been fighting for this ever since my son was born, why I hold on so tight. Something magical happens when I teach a yoga class, and while these next few years may not be the time to focus all my energy on that magic, to help it blossom into whatever it might become given proper time and attention, neither am I really ready to let it go.

I felt ready to let it go, for a combination of reasons. One of my classes got canceled for the summer, so I was down to just once a week. Because of our week down South, our beach trip, and my sister's wedding last weekend (which I haven't written about, but really should, because it was beautiful), I had to find subs for nearly half of those weekly classes. Then, when I returned after missing a few weeks, I found out that one of my subs had never shown, so my class members were upset, and I had another week where no one showed up in protest (not sure if I was back on the schedule and not wanting to take any chances with another potential no-show sub) and I went home without teaching anything.

So I've been out of touch. Literally. Out of the touch of my hands and knees to the floor in cat and cow, and out of touch with my breath expanding into my back ribcage in forward bends, and out of touch with where my breath goes easily and where it seems to struggle, and how it feels to stretch my spine in six different directions (forward, back, side, side, twist right, twist left, in case you were wondering).

And out of touch with the dim light of a studio in the evening, the day's last rays of sun slipping in between tall brick columns to filter through old windows in an old brick building in the heart of downtown where I walk past unwashed men digging bottles and cans out of city garbage pails to redeem nickels for the booze they hope will redeem them. Where I wave to the Pakistani parking garage toll booth operator, and sometimes stop to talk with him, though I know not his name, nor he mine. Where I pass the bar best known for beer and beef on wick, the first bar I ever visited in this city, years before it was my own, visiting a friend who attended graduate school here, and that never fails to alight a quick thought about the pleasures of beer and beef on wick before I quickly remember that I have both a baby in my belly and a toddler at home, neither of whom are particularly on board with Mama and Daddy doing nothing but drinking beer and eating beef sandwiches for the next hour or so. Where the old man who's been attending my yoga classes for years now always waits outside the studio door and greets me with a smile and a story of his new granddaughter, born premature, but doing better each time I see him. Out of touch with all these things that I have made my own over the past six years, and which I'm not quite ready to walk away from entirely.

So yoga and I, we'll be those friends who can't find the time to catch up as often as we'd like, but stay in touch just enough to keep the friendship alive during long patches of busy, bustling lives full of other obligations. We'll be a marriage where we slip past one another as we hurry-scurry about, not quite able to remember what we used to talk about for hours, but once a week we'll reach for one another under the sheets, and for the time being, that will have to be enough. It will be tiny corner that I keep swept up, even while the rest of my life is a messy blur of chaos, one little place for myself that perhaps has no space to expand, but that I don't fully abandon either. It will be a room of my own. Even if I very rarely visit.

Bloggin' 'Bout Bloggin' 'Bout Mah Issues

2011-09-04T21:17:00.000-04:00

I had to remove my last two posts from the "unpacking privilege" series. They were less "unpacking" it, and more "dwelling in it, with failure to recognize". My younger sisters used to have a code for when things smelled bad. They would say: rank, stank, and reek. As in: Your sneakers? Um, sorry to say, but ... rank, stank, and reek! I got off on the right foot (ha!), examining my own privilege -making it visible- but I ended up invisible and rank, stank, reeking of it. I'll come back eventually. I always do. I'm grateful to have a forum for these issues, especially since my job -my previous place to unpack all this- is no more ...
On the other hand, I never really intended to unpack my "spiritual issues". I've long felt that my religion of origin -Roman Catholicism- didn't resonate with me in any meaningful way. I went to Catholic school as a kid. Religion was like math--something to memorize. Very little I learned dug any deeper than that. But, by the same token, I didn't think there was another religion that would resonate either. I suppose I still feel the same way. And yet ...at the same time... I feel very deeply devout. Toward ... well ... something. I guess I just haven't found it yet. And I certainly never expected blogging to be a vehicle toward finding or defining that something.
My desire to discuss my differences with my husband surprises me. Now, I don't necessarily mean our differences in opinion (though that's part of it), but the actual differences in who we are and how we think, learn, and move through life. We are very different people. I love the hell out of my husband; I'm pretty sure he feels the same way. Since we've met, we have encouraged each other to take the path that felt right -regardless of the relative difficulty it might result in: financial, timewise, or otherwise- so we've run the gamut: from volunteer jobs, to working nights and weekends, to remaining unemployed for long periods of time while waiting and looking for what works. This results in any number of challenges: who's responsible for what on the home front? And at any given time? We are willing to keep that question -and others: who are we? who do we want to be? how do we get there?- open. To negotiate. And renegotiate, as circumstances change. And as they change us. And I can't help but want to talk about those changes as they take place.
The Mommy Wars! Truth be told: I've long been obsessed with the Mommy Wars. Super obsessed. Since waaaaayyyyy before I had kids of my own. And at the same time, I think they are totally lame and outdated. I think we *ought* to be beyond them. Meanwhile, they fight to the death within me. So I guess I'll be "unpacking" that baggage as I work my way though it. Mommy Wars: you are my nemesis. And also kind of my BFF.
For all of you: reading, commenting, writing your own way through these questions: thank you. This makes it so much more interesting, intriguing, worthwhile ... You bring me back to my keyboard, time and time again. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that. Another thing I never expected ...

Identity

2011-08-29T16:51:00.006-04:00

It was supposed to be Consequences. The title. Choices was last time, and consequences come after choices, right?

Well, they do in the linear and just version of the world we inculcate in our children in school. The same one advertisers use to sell us products to protect us from the consequences we don't really deserve if we can purchase our way out of them.

The truth is, I'm not certain I believe in consequences, or at least not as a simple and direct result of choices. Life is capricious and fickle. Things happen, certainly, but who can point to why? Why is a story we tell. Everything is really just a story we tell, when we get down to it.

Identity, though. Identity is a question mark. An ever-moving target. An amalgam of choices and consequences, resentments and realities blended together like stone soup. A story told by a notorious liar.

Someone I've worked with for the past five years asked me what I'm planning to do next. When I told her stay home with my children, she sighed. I already mentioned you to someone on the hiring committee, she told me. The job has Director in the title, and the employer is a prestigious university. I'm honored she would think of me. I'm worried the years off will hurt me in the job market in the future. I'm a little scared of walking away after working my way up to administration from lowly part-time teacher.

Later she told me, via e-mail: I think you seriously underestimate yourself. I think she's wrong there. I might underestimate the value of my particular skill set in the marketplace; she may have a point there. But I don't underestimate my abilities. It's just that I know what else I want out of life. And there's so much else.

There was another job in the paper last Sunday: a list of all the things I love to do; all the same things I've been doing at my present job. The pay was approximately quadruple what I've ever made before in my life. I called, just to be certain, but it was just as I thought: it required a credential I don't have. I breathed a sigh of relief. Then a colleague told me: You should apply anyway. Not many people have the skill set they're looking for, and you do. If they don't find anyone they like, they'll consider you without the credential and give you time to get it. I tucked that information away in my mind, and did nothing while the deadline passed.

I have choices (and they have consequences, though they don't seem simple), but here's what I just can't choose: I can't choose a job where I leave my babies in the early mornings and pick them up late for dinner. I can't choose a job that takes so much of my brain there is nothing left for daydreaming. I can't choose a job that allows me to do good in the world at the expense of being able to do myself any good.

I don't want fingernails bitten to the quick. I don't want to be lost in the shuffle of constant thinking so that when my husband speaks to me I don't hear what he's saying. I know myself. I know my capabilities, and my limitations. There are choices that sound so tempting, but there is no hesitation in my voice when I ask myself if they are what I really want: No. Not now.

My boss hugged me goodbye and she said: I'm just afraid when I call you back with another grant you'll tell me no. That you're too happy where you are. I couldn't answer that right away. I still don't have an answer yet, although the conversation's long over.

This isn't about sacrificing myself for my husband, or my children, although it might look that way to some. My teaching assistant told me she won't work full-time because her household won't run well if she does and I thought: Your kids are in school now! Your husband can't help with that? We all judge. I mean, really, who am I to talk?

This is about choosing not to sacrifice myself to a job that would fascinate me, even as it ate me alive. This is about me, and my need for time to breathe. This is about working out my identity, which is more than just my work. It is, in fact, partly based on my willingness to walk away from work that doesn't suit my needs. To trust (in the face of some very real fear) that I will find work that does suit me, when I am ready to look.

And so I stir my own stone soup, a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, added onto a base built of fairy tale fiction. My story about myself says this: She felt afraid. But she kept moving forward. The path was clear, but she didn't want to follow it. She forged her own, despite the fear.

My story about myself says this, and when it's very late at night and my children are asleep, when I look up at the stars I can almost believe it: She did just what she wanted, and she never paid the price.

Choices

2011-08-25T10:49:00.001-04:00

It's 1996 and I'm in the woods with a bunch of strangers, backpacking through rural Arizona. We're about to embark upon what's called a "solo," where we split up and spend three days completely alone: sleeping on the ground, fasting, drinking from streams after adding iodine drops to our water bottles.

This will change you forever, my guide intones. At the end of my solo I had streaked my face with mud and discovered a side of myself I didn't know existed.

I knew it wouldn't change me. All the things they say will change you: travel, falling in love, becoming a mother: they've only ever made me more deeply myself.

I spend those three days naked on a rock, looking up at desert trees, writing bad poetry and making lists in my mind: all the things I'll eat when I finally get out of the woods and back to civilization; my various perfect dream jobs, in order of likelihood of actual occurrence; all the religions I'd be willing to try out, knowing I'll never find one that fits. Then I plan my wedding dress, even though I'm not engaged, or even dating. I haven't met my husband yet; I'm decidedly single, just out of a long-term relationship that held on longer than it ought to. And I'm not a wedding dress planning kind of girl. I've never dreamed of that big day, never played wedding with my barbies, never particularly cared about weddings one way or the other before.

But here's what's inspired me: I bought a dress at the Salvation Army before the backpacking trip began. It's blue, with chiffon layers starting at the neckline and running all the way down to the floor. I want my Salvation Army dress remade in white for my wedding. My grandmother will do it; I know she will.

I don't meet my husband for another year after that trip. We're engaged within three months. My grandmother makes my dress: a replica of my thrift store find. My husband's grandmother makes his suit out of hemp; we order yards of it from somewhere on the Internet. We make our own invitations on homemade paper and the wedding is held in my parent's backyard. Our flowers are bought from the farmer's marker and stolen from farmer's fields the morning of the wedding. I make the arrangements myself, stick them in mason jars, and place them on the tables. My grandmother also makes the bridesmaid's dresses; she teaches me how to do the last one, and I stay up with her and sew the maid of honor's dress for my sister late into that summer night. The sky is dark when we finish, and I've made my first --and last, at least for the next decade, as it turns out-- dress.

Someone calls it a hippie wedding and I'm half-offended and half-amused. But of course, it was.

My father, a year earlier when he heard of my engagement, had asked: what's he going to do?

I knew he meant for a living; my fiancee was an art major with no job prospects after graduation.

I don't know, I answer honestly. But we're smart, dad, and not afraid of hard work. We'll figure it out.

I can hear my father's grin through the telephone wire; he approves of that sort of answer.

The point is, we've always been the sort of people to look at a bright, shiny, perfect wheel right off the assembly line, glance at each other, smile, and say: Bet we could reinvent that!

That's who we are. For better or for worse.

Unpacking Privilege: Reality

2011-08-24T12:13:00.000-04:00

This is Part 2 in a series examining privilege, and how it plays out in my life. For Part 1, go here.

I walk into work, fresh from a weekend of nursing my resentments. My tiny wounds --grudges borne carrying the weight of class consciousness around on my shoulders for years, though no one has asked me to do so-- blossom like blooms in May, fed by images of a life I imagine easier than my own. I'll be laid off at the end of this month; I'm going to be a stay-at-home-mom, but money will be tight, and I will have to juggle. I want to be a stay-at-home-mom with money that is not tight; I don't want to have to juggle. What I want is so very close to what I have, but rather than recognizing my good fortune, I feel slighted so close to the goal. Why can't I have just a little bit more?

My office phone rings. A student tells me her name, but it takes three times before I can make it out. She's practically whispering, and her voice just doesn't sound right.

I'm sorry I didn't come to school last week. I'm going to come this week. We had a terrible week, our family, last week... her voice breaks off.

I've learned not to ask too many questions over the years. They'll tell me if they want to.

Some people think if you accept any kind of government aid, representatives of that government have the right to ask you any questions they want. To insult and harass you, to accuse you of lying. To insert themselves into your personal business, into your bedroom, into your very soul. To determine your worth as a human being before the eyes of God and the Government before they help you eat or feed your children, receive medical care, earn an education.

I'm not one of those people, so I shut my mouth, listen, wait.

My brother was shot in a drive-by, she chokes, the bullet went in his back and came out his face. I want to finish school, I do, it's just ... last week, I just ... couldn't. He's alive. I'm the only one he'll let near him. They released him, but I have to bathe him and everything. I want to finish though. I'll come this week. I'm sorry I didn't call. I didn't make any calls that day. I didn't answer my phone all day. But I'll come back this week.

This student is the only one who's been here longer than me. I've bought her Christmas presents, held her babies, taught them the letters in their name and listened to her fears about raising them in the same streets that claimed her brother years ago.

Once in parenting class we were discussing spanking, and she yelled out: If spanking worked, my brother wouldn't be running the streets the way he is! 'Cause I know he got his ass beat enough times, if it was gonna work, it would have by now! Shit, it MUST not work!

That evidence was far more persuasive than the research I presented, for many of our parents. They argued my research, loudly, point-by-point, but when she spoke the room got quiet. I saw heads nodding as they considered her first-hand evidence, anecdotal but no doubt echoed by experiences of their own.

I reassured her that it was fine to miss a week; that we'll be here this week, and then help her figure out where she needs to go next to finish her education. She's lucky, in that all her kids will be in school starting this fall. She can attend classes during that time; she won't need childcare. She has options. Lots of the others don't.

So if she's lucky, what am I?

I hang up the phone and pass the rest of the day in a pensive fog. My heart is heavy.

But I'm through feeling sorry for myself.

Unpacking Privilege: Resentment

2011-08-23T11:04:00.002-04:00

I spent this past weekend with the kids so my husband could continue attacking our home repair projects like the one-man construction crew he is. I have home projects of my own to do: there are bags and boxes of outgrown clothing to store behind the attic wall, and other bins to pull out, unpack, fold, put away. There are baseboards to scrub and bins to buy; books to stack and art supplies to arrange. In the rush to make our home presentable before the start of the school year we've moved a lot of things up into our attic bedroom. These things need to be sifted through, organized, made sense of.

I need some time to make sense of everything, but there is no time. My husband has heavy lifting to do, and I need to corral the kids so he can get it done. This is the way our marriage must function, for now, --and this is neither the first nor the last time it will be so-- and both of us struggle with it. He doesn't want to be a one-man workhorse, and I don't want all my work to be pushed to the back burner until his is done. But this is how it is. It's temporary. It's going to get us where we want to go.

In between entertaining the children and attempting to mop the hardwood floors I tried to sooth the rough edges of my anxiety by perusing blogs online. Rather than finding any solace, I found myself resentful of the following things:

Beautiful houses (that do not need ridiculous amounts of work). (In my state of mounting resentment I was sure -absolutely sure!- that nobody but us owns a fixer-upper. Nobody!)
Expensive accessories, including, but not limited to:

purses (I have about 12 trillion purses upstairs that I own but never use, but no matter)
shoes (ditto)
jewelry (yep, ditto there too)

Pinterest boards of all types, especially those featuring:

clothing (I haven't bought clothing from anywhere but the Salvation Army since 2007; I'm feeling a bit peevish about it, can you tell?)
home decor (I want new throw pillows. I can't have new throw pillows. This makes me grumpy.)
anything nautical (get out of my face with your adorable beach house!)
uplifting or inspirational slogans (if I wanted to be uplifted or inspired, do you really think I'd be sitting here feeding my resentments so voraciously!?)

And finally: anyone with any certainty about God and "his plan". (If God is involved enough that he cares about the minute details of your homeschooling curriculum then where the fuck has he been when it comes to the entire continent of Africa for the last several decades?!?) (And er, um, why do we have to fix up our own house instead of hiring a professional to do it?) (I think I somehow managed to think both of these things, with a special sort of resentment-fueled cognitive dissonance.)

It was one of those moods.

For Part 2, go here.

Diving In

2011-08-22T11:08:00.005-04:00

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

2011-08-18T15:49:00.000-04:00

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

2011-08-15T12:39:00.002-04:00

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

2011-08-03T16:03:00.000-04:00

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

2011-08-02T12:17:00.000-04:00

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

2011-07-19T01:24:00.010-04:00

I was up with the kids at sunrise, serving up popsicles and painkillers, but then we all slept until just after 10.
I worked a later day, afternoon instead of morning, to attend a training.
Today was hot as hell.
My husband was at home with a large number of unpacked beach bags leftover from the weekend.
The baby was fussy and napless.
My training at work was air conditioned.
But it was also super boring.
Draw.
Iced coffee with honey and whole milk happened.
Iced coffee with honey and whole milk happens almost every day.
It might be why I'm an optimist.
The boy was cabin-feverish when I got home.
We offered choices and he chose: go downtown!
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.
I felt like there might be a perfect poem somewhere in there.
And then for lack of anything else to do in the pouring rain, we went to the mall.
Not a big fan of the mall, me.
But: there's a library branch there, which just happened to be open: score!
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!
Also: they have a climbing thing, and a certain little someone might just be in heaven when he's climbing: home run! Or something.
So, you know, it's not all about me. Or my tortured sports metaphors.
My boy said to me, at the climbing thing: Oh Mommy! I am having fun!
He sounded downright rapturous, about the climbing thing, at the mall.
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.
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.
Bedtime kinda sucked.
But that's also kinda par for the course right now.
We're getting there with the bedtime thing. Slowly. It's summer, after all.
I guess if this day, or my life, had a message, it would be:
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!)

2011-07-08T14:48:00.000-04:00

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.

Flashback: Learning to Lift That Head

2011-06-22T21:01:00.000-04:00

When Ryan, over at Pacing The Panic Room wrote about Priceless First Attempts last week, it immediately reminded me of a series of photos I took of my son shortly after he was born in 2008. His head was so big he had a hard time lifting it, and it was comical to watch how much effort it took him to try.

I know it should probably be baby pictures of the actual baby, but in true second-child style, the photos that have actually made it from the camera to the computer have not been converted to JPEGs or compressed down to user-friendly size yet. One of these days...

In the meantime, though, enjoy! He's almost three now, and while his noggin' is still super-sized, he doesn't seem to have any problems hauling it around atop his neck anymore!

How Things Are Now

2011-06-03T14:35:00.001-04:00

The morning before grocery day, scavenging frantically for a breakfast I have to pack and bring to work because I don't have time to make it, I spot a lone bottle of beer, standing tall at hearty hops and barley attention in the vegetable crisper (beer's not a vegetable?).

I actually paused, like maybe -just maybe- it was a good idea to bring a beer. To work. For breakfast.

In the end, I went with a whole grain dinner roll and a jar of natural peanut butter, thick with oil and gooey nutty goodness (no time to scoop a single serving into a tupperware container; the whole jar tossed in the lunchbag; quicker), the best I could do on the way out the door the day before we replenish our food supplies.

* * *

We left the sandbox open at some point. I don't know exactly when it happened, but we left the lid off the sandbox, and between the neighborhood cats and the falling tree debris, it's just not fit to use for another summer. So we need to empty it out, but where to put this big box full of sand?

The groundhogs who used to live in our yard seem to have abandoned their abode. The first year we lived here we shared the space with a groundhog bigger than my ten pound baby. He was pretty confident the property belonged to him. The house sat empty for over a year before we moved in, and he had gone ahead and made himself at home, digging burrows closer and dangerously closer to our foundation. Last year we found one of his babies dead on the sidewalk leading from our yard out toward the street, flies buzzing over his tiny body decomposing where we imagined our children might one day play with sidewalk chalk. His family ate all our next-door neighbor's garden vegetables. We aren't disappointed that they have gone. They weren't the most pleasant of squatters to share the property with.

We threw our Halloween pumpkins in his hole to rot, and covered that compost with a thick layer of yard waste in the fall, and then again in the spring. The hole was near-full, but still not quite level with the surrounding grass. I emptied the sandbox, shovel by shovel, into the rusting metal wheelbarrow we found when we moved in. I dragged it up the grassy hill to the groundhog's former hole, and -shovel by shovel- I buried the remaining evidence of their existence.

There's so much work! my husband despaired, looking out over our property.

We're filling the holes, baby, I said as I rubbed the space between his shoulder blades with my hand. We're finally filling the holes. Think about what this looked like almost three years ago, when we first moved in. And now? We're filling the holes!

Damn, he said, you're right. We're filling the holes!

* * *

I meet with my boss, and my collaborating partner, and her boss, around a rectangle of conference tables. We have stacks of paper hundreds of pages deep: requirements for reporting our progress, rubrics for measuring our success against the other programs competing for limited funds, budget spreadsheets, and various pieces of a report that will determine our future strewn across the tables.

We look good.

It's on me to make sure we look good. And we do. We look good.

Maybe June will just be an early-to-rise, nose-to-the-grindstone, Puritan-work-ethic type of month instead of a clusterfuck of epic proportions. I can handle early-to-rise. Inhale. I can do nose-to-the-grindstone. Exhale. My Puritan work ethic is all polished up and pretty; it's in fighting shape what with all the practice it's gotten over the last couple of months. I'd make a fine farmer's wife these days with my ability to work dawn to dusk and then on and off overnight tending to a baby in need of mother's milk.

I can survive another month as a farmer's wife. Especially as opposed to a clusterfuck of epic proportions, which is what I was expecting. Another month as a farmer's wife is doable.

And there's always beer for breakfast, if things should come to that.

* * *

I scrub out the kiddie pool, hose it down with a jet spray, unscrew the nozzle and slowly let it fill while my son hops foot to foot with excitement in the soon-to-be summer air. I pop my baby girl's backside into the Bumbo seat, placed strategically in the shade of the conifer tree where she can watch me work and listen to the birdsong and windchimes hover in the humid air.

We've been walking over patio stones for going-on-three years now, never knowing they were there, buried under the grass, until our feet wore a path deep enough into the ground to discover them. I dig them up, one by one, and place them in a pile by the back deck. They'll need to be reset in the soil, somewhere higher where the rain water won't flow over them, burying the rock in mud and allowing grass to grow over them again.

Sinking the blade into the dirt at the edge of the stone, I place my foot atop the hoe and heave my weight forward. Again and again, I dig down into the earth -this piece of earth that we own! just imagine that!- and reshape it.

My children laugh in the background. Their voices mix melodically with birdsong and windchimes. And I work, and I work, reshaping the very earth upon which we live.

* * *

I am so tired that days and nights blur together. I close my eyes in my office and wish for a pillow in place of a keyboard. I drift off on the couch with my children crowded close to my body, listening to late afternoon rain, and waiting for my husband to arrive home from work. I pause in the early morning, gathering my bearings, wondering if a single beer is a suitable breakfast for a workday lunchbag before coming to my senses. Sometimes in the middle of the night I lie awake and watch my daughter kick her little legs and laugh like a banshee before cuddling her in and nursing her back to sleep. My life resembles a rushed montage from a movie more than a linear sequence of events occurring in real time.

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel, fast approaching while I ride this wild wave to the end of June.

And I am reshaping the ground beneath my feet, building my future with my hands, digging through dirt and sheaths of paper to unearth whatever comes next. And it looks good.

It looks good, you guys.

Inhale. Exhale.

Can't Stop! Don't Stop! Won't Stop!

2011-05-20T13:09:00.002-04:00

Click-clack. Click-clack.

All the trains rush down the track. Where is Thomas going?

Wait! That's not where I meant for this to go.

It was supposed to be my heels. My ~~high~~ low (I'm clumsy, with weak ankles; I don't do high) heels click-clacking on the hallway floors as I rush back and forth, over and over again, every day, delivering reports and reminders, escorting students and staff to the Next Important Event that Simply Must be Completed Before the End of the Year, checking post-its for phone calls to return, and the copier for copies to collate, and the fax machine for faxes to file, and the supply room for posterboard for parenting projects (we're out, don't bother to dig, I already looked everywhere yesterday) and ... And ... ANd ... AND ... itNEVEReverEVEReverSTOPS!

Can't Stop! Don't Stop! Won't Stop! Get it! Get it!
Can't Stop! Don't Stop! Won't Stop! Get it! Get it!

Sorry, thought we could all use a dance party break there. What? That was just me? Oh.

I knew when I came back to work at the end of my maternity leave that I was looking at the toughest ~~three~~ four (?pleasedon'tbefiveorsixorseven!) months I've ever navigated in this job.

I was right! I was riiiiiggggghhhhht!

And never have I been so dissatisfied to be so dead on. Can I get a refund on my right-ness? I want my maternity leave back! I'd like to take a moment to mourn, just a little jiffy to cry like a baby here in my own special space. Boo-hoo-hoo. (Babies don't say boo-hoo-hoo! Who came up with that?) WAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH! There, that's better. Life is sooooo hard, and the world's tiniest violin is playing a special tune, just for me and my first world problems.

No, really. I hear it somewhere in the distance.

Oh, that's just my ringtone? Another phone call I'm ignoring? Another voice mail I will reluctantly retrieve later with another little job I will promptly forget to do after jotting it down on another little piece of paper which will vanish into the ether (or more likely the mountainous paper pile that feels like it follows me around at all times, invisible, but there. Can to-do lists come back to haunt you if you've killed them without actually completing all the items? If so, I am so fucked.).

Basically, I'm drowning here. But it's Friday and lack of sleep along with a serious case of weekend-itis, topped off with an over-consumption of caffeine, has made me a little loopy. So rather than focus on the drowning, I would like to throw on some of those little arm floaties (they should fit my wrists; my upper arms are looking a little linebacker-esque these days and have no desire to be squished into floaties, adding indignity to the drowning! Plus fat floats, so they should be fine!) and call it a pool party.

Wanna come? Thomas the Tank Engine will be there, click-clacking down the track! He's going to Knapford Station! We'll have a lil' hip-hop dance party (Can't stop! Don't stop! Won't stop! Get it! Get it!)! And all the while, the world's tiniest violin will be playing in the background.

Pour yourself a drink! Toss it back and think of me! Nah, none for me, thanks, I can't afford to be hungover; my to-do list is ten miles long. You're going to have to party for the both of us.

Are you up for this challenge? I'm thinking it might require shots (for you, of course. I hate shots, but these are desperate times, and desperate measures might be required. Again: for you. I have quite enough desperation already, thankyouverymuch).

I would love to say I'll be napping while you do your party duty, but I'm pretty sure that won't be happening. If there's one thing I know, it's that: Life?

Can't stop! Don't stop! Won't stop!

Get it! Get it!

Christ Is In All of Us, Right?

2011-05-10T18:20:00.000-04:00

After a long and stressful day at work I came home to change my daughter's explosive diaper. Noticing how far up her back it had travelled, how infinitesimally close it was to staining her freshly washed onesie, I was heard to utter the Lord's name in vain.

Of course the almost-three year old picked up on it. Of course.

You said 'Christ', Mommy?

Eager to correct my errant ways, or at least cover my ass for the time being, I replied: I did. I said a prayer to God. I'm asking 'Christ, please help me clean this mess'. (I take a generous view of those of us calling on the Lord in less than orthodox ways.)

My son, ever certain of his exalted place in the world, responded to my plea: No Mommy, not right now. I don't want to help.

Well, thanks anyway, kid. I wasn't previously aware of your divinity. Perhaps you can nip your sister's explosive diapers in the bud and we'll have more time for your regularly occurring temper tantrums there, Jesus Himself.

The Personal and the Political

2011-05-02T20:29:00.033-04:00

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

2011-04-21T19:26:00.001-04:00

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.

The Best Laid Plans

2011-04-13T22:08:00.000-04:00

I wanted to work part time when I had children. I was adamant about this. I quit my full time teaching job and taught yoga for a couple years, looking for a part time teaching job, waiting for my husband to find full time work and health insurance. In December of 2006 I was hired to work 16.5 hours per week, teaching infants, toddlers and their parents. That was perfect. Exactly what I had in mind. Something simple, a small-j job, just keeping my toes in the professional pool, a backdrop for almost-full-time motherhood, something I hoped for very soon in my future.

* * * * *

My husband found a full time teaching position in September of 2007, and signed up for family health coverage. I got pregnant in October. I worked through my pregnancy, enjoyed my 16.5 hours per week, planned a life in my mind for my baby, for our family. Three weeks after the birth of my first baby I returned to work for a one week training before finishing my three month leave. It was on infant brain development and I brought my newborn son, who lounged in his carseat next to me in the conference room and nursed in my arms while we listened to lectures. We were guinea pigs for the demonstration on how to do home visits. I looked up to the women who taught the training. They were both in their sixties, stylish and smart. Someday, I thought, someday that will be me. My career will peak -like theirs- later in life. Now is the time for my family. Now is the time for my babies. But someday I, too, will be sixty-something, stylish and smart, standing at the front of a conference room, the very picture of competence.

* * * * *

I hoped to come back 12 hours a week, and then gradually work back up to my 16.5. Instead, they rewrote the grant while I was out and expanded my role in the program. I came back 18 hours a week. Less than 6 months after I returned they offered me a promotion. It required 25 hours a week, which then crept up to 30. I negotiated, and ended up at 20 hours with a teaching assistant. I was stressed out a lot of the time. But I loved the work, and it grew more manageable over time as my skill set grew. It wasn't so simple anymore though. Somehow I had ended up in a capital-J Job.

* * * * *

Time passed. I miscarried. I couldn't get pregnant. I weaned my son, waited a couple of months, conceived. Members of my team at work left; new people were hired, and suddenly I was the person with the most seniority and a position of leadership. I got better at the work; it wove its way deeper into my identity; it became a career. Small c. That's more than I wanted, but I found I could handle it. Small c. I could handle it.

* * * * *

I had my second baby, took another 3 month leave, ended up working a little bit of it, and then drew some boundaries and settled into a long winter with my babies. Daydreamed stay-at-home-motherhood, but committed to my small-c career, to my part-time, perfectly balanced, so-well-plotted-out-on-paper-before-I-ever-had-babies, my precisely planned, small-c career.

And then the funding was cut by the federal government, and the professional rug was pulled out from under my not-yet-steady work legs.

Still lost in the magic of my babies I concocted a Plan B. Plan B happens in my home. Plan B happens with my babies. Plan B probably ends up bringing home more money than Plan A because Plan B doesn't spend over half my income on child care. Plan B ain't anything fancy on the ol' resume, but that's okay because I am nothing if not the master of beautiful bullshit, most especially in the realm of the ol' resume. Plan B, while not the thing of beauty that is sticking-with-Plan-A-because-it-took-me-long-enough-to-get-here-and-I'd-prefer-to-avoid-any-more-change-right-now-thank-you-very-much, has a helluva lot going for it, assuming it works out alright, which it probably would.

* * * * *

I went into work this morning to find a surprising e-mail. There's a chance we can continue our program. We'll be in the running for a small pool of state funds against a number of other highly competitive programs. If we win, we'll be funded for one more year, and then begin the process of seeking alternative federal grants, revamping and reorganizing our program to align with the goals of the federal government's vision for the future of education in our country. For this to work I will need to be a teacher, an administrator, a team leader, a grant writer, a political player of sorts in the field of early childhood education, and an advocate for the work that we do on a local, state, and national level. Please don't get me wrong; I'm not bragging. I'm not claiming to know how to be all these things. Quite the contrary. I feel as if I'm suddenly staring down the barrel of a capital-C Career.

* * * * *

How in the hell did I end up here so soon?

Too Much, Too Soon

2011-04-11T13:43:00.003-04:00

I'm usually good with change. I thrive in ambiguity. I have a high tolerance for living in the in-between; it's always seemed to me to be the place where dreams and possibilities reside. One reason I love my job is because it doesn't always look the same. We have to work toward what's officially called "continual improvement," which really means constant change in the service of making things better. Data is collected and analyzed all the time and we can decide on a dime to change a morning class to evening to accomodate a student's work schedule, or devise a brand new parenting lesson plucked from the results of a recent rubric that suggests reading storybooks to toddlers is a skill that needs some brushing up.

It's what I liked best about being home with my kids too. The rush of realizing -through an ongoing process of careful observation and constant reflection- exactly what my children needed in any given moment, and then successfully supplying it. My brain moves fast; I never stop thinking; I've always related well to people with ADHD although I don't think I have it myself. I like when life requires me to think as fast as I want to, and then to implement those thoughts almost instantaneously. It's a challenge that makes me feel alive.

What I take for granted when I find the thrill in these challenges: I have gotten enough sleep, enough of the right things to eat, and a chance to exercise. In short, I've got to be in fightin' shape to get out there and get the job done. And right now: the job is kicking my ass.

I'm exhausted. Constantly stressed out. I feel like my stomach acids are eating me from the inside out. This is too much change, too soon, and way too much time in the muddled middle, uncertain of what will happen next.

I became a super-bitch on Sunday morning, huffing and puffing over piles of laundry and snapping at everyone in sight. It was all of sudden, and my husband began to press me on it: What is going on with you? What is this really about?

Suddenly I heard myself shout: My job is over! It's gone! It's gone! And I LOVE my job! And then I burst into tears. I actually had no idea what it was really about before I said it. In fact, until I finally spit it out, I found it irritating that he kept questioning me. Can't a girl huff and puff over a pile of laundry and snap at everyone in sight for no apparent reason? Apparently not. And thank you sir, for asking, and asking, and then asking again, because I didn't know why I became a super-bitch. All I knew is suddenly the bitch flag was flyin' high and the super-bitch cape seemed to be secured very tightly around my neck and I didn't have the slightest clue of how to go about loosening it.

Then he reminded me that the federal budget that finally passed this weekend, eliminating my program, was for this fiscal year, and not next fiscal year, and so technically speaking, I'm still waiting-and-seeing, which is actually not comforting at all. I'm both impatient for and resistant to change right now. I want it done already, and I also want it not to happen at all.

But it's happening.

And the most I can aim for is to navigate it with a modicum of grace.

This morning I carried my daughter into my son's room to wake him, so we could get on with our day. He was fast asleep and didn't respond to my voice or my hand on his back and she was squirmy-whiny, so instead of waking him I sat down in the recliner in the corner of his bedroom to nurse my squirmy girl. She pounced on my breast like a small rabid animal and nursed like she was coming off a fast. It's teething, starting already. Both my kids are crazy little nursers when they teethe, preferring my poor nipples to any of the nice teethers they have on the market nowadays.

She settled into a tentative peace, relaxing and suckling for a short while in my arms. And then she began to squirm again, flailing her head back like an infant possessed, stretching my nipple as if it were made of taffy. This is a sign I recognize. I removed her from the breast, placed her in a sitting position on my lap, administered a few sharp pats to the center of her back and heard the loud burp I knew would be coming soon enough.

I felt as if I could sit in that dark room, listen to my son snore, and breastfeed my daughter forever. I want to hide out in a cave. Most days I feel as if I can't take anymore.

But like her, even if I found that temporary peaceful place, I am still subject to forces rising within me that I can't quite control. Even if I took a week and lay on a beach somewhere (oh, please! oh, yes! oh, yes please!), there would still be real, immutable facts of life that have concrete and tangible consequences, and I can't control them. I can't daydream them into alignment or frogmarch them into submission. I can only sit, and squirm, and burp in the face of God. And trust that the universe loves me like a mother and will somehow take care of me despite it all.

I'm not at trusting yet. I'm still at squirming. I see a lot more squirming in my future. Maybe I can squirm my way into fightin' shape.

Lots of Words for Plumb Worn Out

2011-04-05T23:13:00.002-04:00

I am so tired.

So tired that after I wrote that sentence, I considered leaving it as is, a one sentence blog post. Then I figured it would be more appropriate as a status update on Facebook. I sat, staring stupidly into space, wondering if it would be easier to click over and rewrite it, or copy and paste it. I thought about it for what might have been a very long time.

Neither one seemed easy enough.

I am so sleepy.

My first day back to work was my colleague's first day out. Her three month medical leave perfectly backed up against my three month maternity leave. We didn't quite get to pass the baton. And her medical needs escalated so quickly at the end that there was no time to arrange for a substitute teacher. So my first day back, we're down a teacher -the only teacher qualified to teach GED classes- and I'm winging it.

Covering for my colleague, without any of my regular duties, could be my whole job, and I wouldn't run out of things to do. But that's not my whole job. And I'm feeling so spent.

I planned curriculum for my leave, left three detailed months in the hands of another colleague, who covered my parenting classes while I was home parenting my own children. I came back to big stacks of curriculum to assess so I can take over my classes again. But I haven't even had a moment to skim the stacks. So I'm winging it, making lessons out of thin air, observation, and an ongoing attempt to get to know the new parents who started our program while I was out.

Curriculum -planning and teaching it- used to be my whole job. It kept me plenty busy. There's so much more to do now. And I'm beat.

The funding is cut, but the advocacy isn't. There are letters to be written and congressional offices to be called, and websites to be visited to stay on top of the changing news, and information to be digested, interpreted, shared with my team. There are questions to be formulated, and answers to be sought, and plans to be made, and back-up plans for when the first plans potentially fall apart. I am so winging it here.

Political advocacy is a job I've never done. It's a job I might have grown into slowly, through years of experience in the field. Or, in this case, overnight. And not a night with nearly enough hours for sleeping, did I mention? I am feeling fatigued.

We have a major visit quickly approaching, in which the person directly responsible for funding our program comes to see if we are meeting all the requirements in the legislation that originally created it. This happens once every four years, and it's the first time it's ever happened with me at the helm. I'm following detailed written instructions and a long list of highly specified legal requirements. And yet, it still pretty much feels like I'm winging it.

Preparing for this visit could easily fill every minute of every day between now and the time it takes place. But I don't have that many minutes available. And I'm feeling so done for.

After the visit is done I start our annual report. At this point, it looks like I will still have to write the whole darn thing, even though it may well be the last time I write it, since further funding is not -as of this juncture- forthcoming. Every year this report is the biggest, hardest, most time-consuming-est thing I do. With so many other things to do, I'm afraid this year I'll be winging it.

I'm dog tired. All petered out, played out, tuckered out, plumb worn out.

But when I look back on this fifty years from now, I don't think that's what I'll remember. I think I'll remember that I did it. That I kept my head above water. That when my limbs were nearly limp from exhaustion, I kept on treading.

The Think Aloud

2011-04-01T22:27:00.000-04:00

In grad school I had to take a number of classes on best practices in teaching literacy. I found these classes almost unbearably boring at the time (and yes, I do work for a literacy program now, but it's not my job to teach literacy to the adults; I teach parenting. And literacy with birth to three year olds, which is part of my job, is very different and -in my opinion- much more fun!), but some of the information stuck with me, and even comes in handy sometimes. This morning it offered me a new strategy in managing the minefield that is my toddler's emotional development.

I talked in a recent post a little bit about how we're using time out non-punitively, as a place to go when your feelings are out of control, to express them safely and pull yourself together. This is difficult. It's a much more challenging balance to strike as a parent than using it like "the naughty chair" SuperNanny espouses (I'm not anti-"the naughty chair" either, although that name really needs to go. I just want to try another approach.). What makes it so complicated is that I really want to put my son's emotional choices back in his own lap. I don't want control. I don't want it to be my job to decide when he's out of control, when he can pull himself back, and when he needs assistance to do so. I want him to own that, as well as he can at two, and ultimately, in the long run of his life. So it's a slower, more halting process, and I have to be observant, reflective, and willing to revisit the same questions over and over as circumstances and his skills change. This requires more of me as a parent than making a list of grievances that will land him in the naughty chair and then enforcing the policy the same way each time. Consistency is important, but so are critical thinking, empathy, and flexibility due to circumstance. And so is grace, as my friend's posts here so eloquently reminded me when I was struggling with my boy last week. Weighing all of this can be a really hard balance to strike, especially if I'm tired or stressed.

I say "I" here because I have the kids alone for most of the day. My husband leaves for work before they wake up (most days), so I'm on morning duty and then I spend the afternoons with them while he's at work as well. So I'm usually formulating and testing our discipline strategies, and then we talk it over in the evenings. We try to be generally on the same page in our approaches, but I have a non-interference policy. If I don't like the way he's handling things, I talk to him about it later, but at the time I let the two of them work it out (I say two because it's only ever my son he battles with. For now. Heh! I'm sure the three month old will be pushing the envelope soon enough!). Even if we disagree, I figure he's their dad; they're going to have to learn to deal with him one way or another! So these are largely techniques I'm trying on my own, at least at first.

And thus it was with the think aloud. The think aloud is a technique straight from literacy teaching techniques 101 (or 501 if that's how grad school works), and I never expected to use it in my parenting. It's a way to demonstrate how strong readers think. Research has shown that when strong readers read, they are constantly making connections to the text. Three types of connections they make are: text to self (how does what you're reading connect to you?), text to text (how does what you're reading connect to something else you've read?), and text to world (how does what you're reading connect to the world as you know it?). A technique to teach these connections is called the think aloud. While you read a story, you pause and "think aloud" about these type of connections, making your invisible thought processes visible for those students who struggle to make the connections for themselves: Oh, the little piggy in the brick house reminds me of my grandmother's house! It's made of brick too!

This morning I was standing at my daughter's changing table, getting her ready to go the sitter's house, so I could go to work. My son was whining at my knees: I don't want you a go to work! I want you a stay home wif me!

I tried to explain that I had to go to to work, but of course, at two, he wasn't getting it, and continued to whine. Suddenly I found myself in the midst of a think aloud:

I DON'T WANNA GO TO WORK EITHER! I WANT TO WATCH TV ALL DAY AND EAT CANDY!

Now Mommy, you have to go to work.

NO! NO! I DON'T WANT TO! I'M TIRED! I DON'T FEEL LIKE IT!

Mommy, you have very important work that you must do. You can't stay home and watch TV all day, no matter how much you want to. Can you pull yourself together or do you need some time to sit in time out?

OK, FINE! I CAN PULL MYSELF TOGETHER! I GUESS I WILL GO TO WORK.

My son stared up at me, head cocked to one side like a little puppy, face twisted into a mask of concentration. Then he slowly broke out into a great big grin and said: Mommy, argue wif you-self again!

He didn't give me any more trouble getting ready for the day. It's nice to know that expensive special education degree, complete with expired certification and no intention to work in the field, is good for something after all!

Baby to Big Boy Blues, Part 2

2011-03-26T11:03:00.005-04:00

For Part 1, go here.

Friday morning our son woke up early. Early enough that his father was still home to get him out of his crib. Or try to anyway. As soon as he entered the bedroom he was greeted with this all-too-familiar cry: NOOOO! ONLY MOMMY! ONLY MOMMY!

So my husband left the room dejected and I got him from his crib, and already nobody's particularly happy.

We've been dealing with this ONLY MOMMY! ONLY MOMMY! thing on and off for quite some time now and we've taken different tacks, none of which have been especially effective. I tell my husband not to wear his heart on his sleeve, not to show our boy so blatantly what power he holds over his father's emotions by issuing his ONLY MOMMY (usually accompanied by I DON'T YIKE HIM!) proclamations. My husband is about as capable of disguising his emotions as the toddler himself though, so that hasn't worked. We've flatly insisted that his dad do some things for or with him and resolutely followed through, which is somewhat effective, but when my husband is so hurt and angry that following through means a household full of fighting and two crabby males for the remainder of our time together it's very difficult to sit it out and then sit with the fallout. I do a lot of setting the stage, soothing, reinforcing the positive, re-framing the issues. For both of them, frankly. Usually I don't mind it. I've been smoothing the rough edges of my husband's emotions for over a decade. He does equivalent things for me in other areas, and I'm just as big of a baby in my own ways, so we deserve each other. My son is two; I expect it. Sometimes, though, it's exhausting.

And sometimes the easiest thing is to do it myself from the outset. If I offer to do it early enough we avoid the rejection and everybody's happy. It's not the best long-term technique, but I don't think it's the worst thing either. The only approaches I've taken that I feel bad about are using bribery and guilt. Once I said to my son: I'll take you for a walk outside if you're nice to Daddy, and another time I pulled him aside after an incident and laid it on pretty thick about how bad he made his father feel, and didn't he want to say sorry? The guilt worked; the bribery didn't. But I didn't feel good about either one, and haven't used them again.

So it wasn't a good start to the last day of a difficult week. My husband left for work and I continued to prepare and pack for the day while my daughter slept upstairs. Her sleeping was the last bit of luck I had on my side, and I needed it to get everything done. If she woke up crying, it was all over. So when I had to run up there to grab a sweater I told my son he could follow me only if he was extra-extra-quiet so as not to wake his sister. I dashed up the stairs, looked quickly for my sweater, and couldn't find it. Then I thought maybe I knew where it was, in a different closet downstairs (we're midway through a closet rearrange which, especially when combined with the paucity of clothing choices that both fasten around my fatter-than-ever waist and look professional enough for work, make dressing each morning a fraught endeavor), so I sailed back down the staircase moving in fast-forward speed to try and find it.

It was at this point that my son decided he absolutely needed my help to walk back down the stairs, a task that he's more than capable of completing independently. I was already all the way at the bottom of the stairs before he began to whine. I stopped, looked up at him, and calmly said: You can walk down the stairs by yourself, bubby. I need to go get my sweater right now. Hold on to the railing, and you will be fine.

He was standing mere feet from his sister's bassinet. He opened his mouth and began to scream at the top of his lungs. This is new. Just this week he began the screaming. He does it when he's not getting his way. The screaming is the primary reason we're using time out. He was standing at the top of the staircase that we use as the time out space. In order to escort him there, I would have to walk back up the stairs and, you guessed it, help him down. Exactly what he wanted in the first place. I walked away, and looked in the downstairs closet for my sweater, which wasn't there either. I returned to the bottom of the staircase, where he was still screaming as loud as he could. And I lost it.

How dare you! I hissed at him, How dare you!? We talked about being quiet! We talked about how your sister is sleeping, and now you are screaming! About walking down the stairs by yourself, which you are perfectly capable of doing! I will not help you! I am angry with you right now! I am very angry with you!

I walked away again, full of righteous fury, but later, when I got to work, I cried. I cried because I lost my temper, which I almost never do. And I cried because it isn't entirely his fault that he expects my help with tasks he's capable of completing on his own. It's my fault too. And it's not fair to hold his hand one day and lose my mind the next at the same request. So I cried in my office until my colleague came in, shared some stories about her own kids, an older boy and younger girl with a similar dynamic, and reminded me that the occasional yelling never killed anyone.

And here's the thing. After I walked away? He stopped crying, walked down the stairs on his own, found me and said: I'm all better now, Mommy. Yes I CAN walk down all by mine-self!

So while screaming (on either of our parts) might not be the best way to get there, it's clear that he is capable, and that we'll have to seek other paths to get him to do things without ONLY MOMMY all the time. I never found my sweater and felt way too fat all day at work with the only replacement I could find at the last minute. But my daughter? She slept through the whole thing!

Baby to Big Boy Blues, Part 1

2011-03-25T10:38:00.005-04:00

Since the birth of my son -my first baby- I haven't spent a lot of time worrying about my parenting. I don't go in for mother-guilt, and I generally think I'm a good parent. I have fun with my kids and enjoy their presence. I can count on one hand the number of times I've raised my voice in the past two and a half years, and when I did, it was usually strategic; I still felt in control.

Until this morning.

There was a moment a few months ago where I recognized myself in an article I was reading, and it gave me pause, but didn't fundamentally change the way I parent. I was reading a magazine in the waiting room of my OBGYN. It was written by the mother of two boys and she talked about how she allowed her second son to feel more frustration before intervening than she ever did with her first. Her second son was demonstrating greater independence than his older brother, whom she claimed would probably still be happy to allow her to cut his meat into tiny pieces for him when he went away to college. I felt a ping! of recognition when I read that. My boy, too, might be happy to eat his dinner bite by bite from a fork in my hands for the foreseeable future, even though he's more than capable of feeding himself. I recognized it, but I didn't take any specific actions to change it, and honestly, I didn't really see it as a problem.

Until this morning.

He's had a tough transition this week. The baby girl and I have been fine. I jumped back into work with both feet and although I landed directly in the deep end, it's nothing I feel I can't handle. My daughter got dropped off Monday morning having never tried a bottle and by Wednesday she sucked down everything I had sent for the day by 10:30am and I had to leave work early so she wouldn't starve! But that was the biggest problem we've had with her. She's smiley, sleeping fine and gulping milk from both breast and bottle like the little champ that she is.

My boy, on the other hand, is struggling.

He was thrilled to go back to his sitter. He loves her, and he loves her granddaughter, a little girl five months older than he is who will play with him all morning long and is far more fun than I am! She also got an inflatable bounce house for Christmas and has it set up in the house. He's in heaven while he's there. It's the coming home part that's tough. So many changes recently in our family, in our home, in our lives, and this is just one more to get used to, one more adjustment he has to make. He's been acting out every afternoon and evening, moving from temper tantrum to temper tantrum without missing a beat while his father and I wear ourselves exhausted trying to determine the best way to deal.

We've been using time out, but making every effort not to use it punitively. Instead, we've presented it as a safe place to go when your feelings are out of control. It's okay to yell and shout there, or to punch pillows or cry. I've used it myself when I'm mad, modeling how it works, and if he asks (in his "big boy voice" not in a screaming screech) one of us will sit there with him and help to provide comfort. He doesn't seem to want to go there (except the once when he was on his way into bed and asked to go into time out instead to "stay up and work out his bad feelings about going to bed". Um, no. But good try.), but once he's there it seems to work as intended. He's been slightly less tantrum-ish each day, and although we're exhausted, we feel like we're generally headed in the right direction.

Until this morning.

And now I'm a lot too tired, a little too sad, and way too weary at the end of this very long week to tell you the rest, so...

Until tomorrow...

A Different Place with Number Two

2011-03-20T00:39:00.000-04:00

I was inspired by World Momma to think about the differences in my life, and in my thinking, between babies one and two. Here goes:

My husband and I have always answered the same way when asked how many children we planned to have: Two, maybe three. I think it was usually me adding the maybe three. Coming from a family of eight, anything less than four seems almost unthinkably small. Even at one point when we thought we'd settled on keeping it to two kids, I told him we'd have to be the house to which all friends were invited, so as not to seem too quiet and leave me lonely! Other times I absolutely love the idea of a quiet, empty house, and feel perfectly content to stop at two.

After my OB-GYN started my surgery he told me: Your scar looks great; we can cut along the same line, and then: You're in great shape here--I just wanted to let you know, in case you wanted to have another child. That would be fine.

At that moment I was flooded with joy (even though I hadn't worried -or even really considered- the possibility that I wouldn't be able to have another child, if I wanted one), and I thought I would definitely have another. This hormone high lasted for a number of days and I felt certain I wanted another baby.

The moment ended abruptly one afternoon shortly after returning home from the hospital, while I looked out my living room window. I've talked before about how I live on a steep hill. I looked up the hill, and envisioned myself climbing the hell out of that hill, my body strong, determined and, most importantly -following a long and uncomfortable final trimester of pregnancy, and knowingly heading into both the immediate postpartum period and a CNY winter- my own. My body, my own! There was a flood of joy there, too.

After my son was born I think I expected to know, certainly and deeply, the way I sometimes know that marrying my husband was the right choice, whether or not I wanted a third child. After my daughter's birth, I'm surprised to find that I still don't know. And that I'm okay with that.

Employment. Well. You've caught me at an odd time! But there are professional parallels between my maternity leaves.

When my son was born, I wasn't an administrator yet. I was just a teacher. And the administrators above me were rewriting the grant for our program shortly before I started my leave. I left not sure I would have a job to return to. As it happens, we were rewarded the grant and I returned to the same job I left, only to be offered a promotion a few months later.

When my daughter was born I left assuming we had the remaining years left in the grant cycle we had been awarded during my last leave. And I was both more dedicated to and more defined by my new job. Still, I thought a lot about the possibility of staying home full time, during both my pregnancy and maternity leave. And now suddenly -due to budget cuts- it might be a reality, much sooner than I ever anticipated. I wasn't expecting this at all (my job has always been dependent on federal funding, and thus always theoretically in jeopardy from year to year; I coped by never thinking about it).

I still can't say how I feel about all these changes. This weekend has been a bit emotionally intense (I return to work on Monday), but there are lots of moments when I feel like things will all turn out fine, despite my long laid life plans all going to shit.

In other employment news, I used to work half time as a fitness instructor (in addition to my half time teaching position), before the birth of my son. I anticipated cutting my hours, but before having kids I thought I could reasonably teach one hour a night during the week. After having my son I returned to three classes a week, then dropped to two. After dithering during my pregnancy I resigned altogether after my daughter was born. A big underlying factor in these decisions is the fact that my fitness jobby doesn't pay me enough to afford child care. I can't justify working when it costs me money to do so!

I think in both cases, the difference between number one and number two is that with the first baby, I expected to have a plan, and for that plan to work out reasonably well. This was an expectation that made sense given the context: I'd waited years to have a baby, in order to lay the groundwork for that plan. This time around the future seems much more uncertain. Sometimes that's terrifying; other times it's bursting with possibility.

It's the Middle of the Night

2011-03-15T02:41:00.002-04:00

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...

2011-03-08T18:53:00.000-05:00

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.

Changes, Wind and Chimes

2011-03-07T23:43:00.000-05:00

I got an apartment my sophomore year of college with a tall, long haired strawberry blonde. She liked sparkles, laughed a lot, and claimed to read minds. She also bought me a set of wind chimes, rusty metal hearts with little bells attached. I still have them and feel inordinately proud of that fact. They hang on the pine tree beside my back deck.

I bought two matching sets of silver chimes, one bigger, one smaller, the metal round and hollow like reeds, each sound a higher or lower echo of the other. I placed them on either side of the heart chimes on broken pine branches just off the deck.

I worked for years with a woman who drove me crazy. When she was finally moving on she offered a set of chimes up to anyone in the office, black, wood and gold. I took them immediately, knowing it would be so much sweeter to remember her with chimes when she was always such a stubbornly flat note in my real life. They hang on that same tree.

After our daughter was born we moved up to the attic. When you get to the top of the stairs there are two corner windows looking out on the backyard. Looking over that pine tree. It felt so different to be climbing stairs every night for the first time since we moved in, sleeping in a brand new bedroom with a brand new baby. But the wind chimes always sounded in the wind. The same wind chimes we listened to all last summer, and the summer before. The constancy is comforting.

I always see snow out those corner windows when I ascend the stairs. It's been there since we first started sleeping in the room; it seems as if it will always be there. But the sound of the wind chimes is also a reminder that spring will come, and then summer. Change will keep coming, too.

I found out in the past week that my job -indeed my whole program- will likely be eliminated in the next federal budget. I've had my head and heart lost in my babies and really haven't begun to wrap my head around everything this means. I do know that it means some very big changes are ahead. Again. But I can't help but feel that the wind will keep blowing, summer or winter, and that those chimes will somehow continue to play.

How Our Mornings Begin

2011-03-06T23:14:00.000-05:00

My boy calls me in the baby monitor that we never used when he was a baby because we were right across the hall. Now we're up in the attic and our walls are made of plaster and sound doesn't travel well so we use the monitor and he calls: Mommy! Come a get me! I calling you in the monitor, Mommy! Come a get me!

My girl might be nursing or she might be sleeping in the crook of my arm or in the bassinet beside my bed. She might be staring wide eyed up at the ceiling waving her arms and legs in the air, cooing and gooing and grinning with delight.

I go and get my son. She accompanies me if she's up or she stays if she's sleeping and acts as an excuse for me to sneak back upstairs with my boy close at my heels and steal a few more minutes in bed. This usually ends after he plays a little too roughly with the curtains on the slightly broken rod that I haven't replaced yet. Not only is the room flooded with the too bright morning light, but the cotton blue curtains we bought for our first apartment after we got married collapse along with the barely bent metal rod that came with the house, landing with an audible bop on our heads. This is our cue to go downstairs and start the day.

I put water on for tea, take my asthma medication, brush my boy's teeth and my own. I change my girly's diaper, wash her face -which she loves!- and smooth lotion on to soothe her dry skin. I fill a sippy cup with fresh water or juice if requested, put toast in the toaster oven or cereal in a bowl, pour my first cup of tea and stir in milk and honey, administer vitamins all around.

From here our day is both busy and mellow, ebbing and flowing from moment to moment. It's like a dance I have to perform. I know the basic steps but never the tune that will play from day to day. So I have to improvise. Sure, I trip sometimes, end up in a heap on the floor, both babies crying at the same time, one wailing and bobbing at the breast, the other climbing loudly onto my lap, competing for space and seemingly for volume with their sobs. But even this is part of the performance. Can I keep my cool? Can I breathe into my belly, straighten my spine, scoop my daughter to the side to make room for my son, spread my arms wide enough to embrace them both, set my voice to the most soothing of tones, and move us all from chaos to a carefully choreographed quiet?

When I do find the rhythm? When I manage to dance through the day with something resembling grace? To keep balanced both babies, my husband and my house and a small space for myself, just enough to catch my breath and stretch, to catch the beat and ready my feet for the next number?

It's exhilarating.

From My Brain to Your Screen

2011-03-02T10:48:00.000-05:00

So I'm a listmaker, and my brain has been brimming with a million ideas for posts that I never quite find the time to make sense of. So I'm just going to spit it all out, bullet-point style (I love bullet points) (yes, I'm totally serious) (bullet points are awesome!), and we'll see what ends up rising from the muddy swamps of my mind.

I love, love, love being home with my babies. Less than 3 weeks left of maternity leave. I'm not ready to go back to work. At all. But I'm going to, for a couple different reasons: financial/practical (I've wanted to talk for a while about Linda Hirshman and the so-called opt-out revolution; it's playing an ironic role in my own choices right now), the feeling that I'm doing good in the world through my work (is this a spiritual impulse? maybe.), and an overall desire to integrate my family and work life, which I think will mean a lot of hard work for me, but will be so worth it in the end (this is a spiritual impulse).

And speaking of spiritual impulses, remember when I said I would pray about how to practice spirituality since I'm not particularly religious? Well, I did, and I got an immediate and very clear response. The answer was not particularly surprising; it's something I've thought about for years. And yet, months later, I'm still not doing it. I might need to create some Internet accountability by writing about it here!

Blogging about blogging: I'm recognizing a certain tendency in my writing to describe things in a vague, stylized manner. It's all well and good, for what it is, but I don't think I know how to write plainly about everyday life, and I want to be better at that. I don't know exactly how, but I'd like to work on it.

And one reason I want to be better at it is because I want to capture the everyday details of this time with my babies. It's magic; it really is. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever done, and I want to remember every crazy minute of it. So I have to capture some of the stories that describe how we spend our days. This could easily be a series of posts, rather than just one.

Finally, I might need to mourn the end of my maternity leave, in words. And I might need to give myself a pep talk about returning to work, because I do know it's the decision I'm going to make (I can't say the right decision because there are so many decisions that could be right. This is the best one for where I am right now.). And I do love my job. I could just use a reminder to psyche me up, after I'm done saying goodbye to my (too) short stint as a SAHM.

And oh yeah, exercise again. I finally made the decision and resigned from my yoga jobby. I'm really committed to figuring out how to give my body what it needs without counting on "going to work" to provide it. It will be a huge challenge for me, but I want to try. I think it would be the very best gift I could give myself.

So these are some of the ideas I've had swimming around in my head. Whaddaya want to hear about? Any requests? Maybe if I know somebody is waiting for a story it will inspire me to sit my sleepy butt down at the keyboard instead of on the couch one of these nights and start writing, sooner rather than later! Any of the above, or something brand new? I'm open to inspiration, universe! Sock it to me!

March is Here!

2011-03-01T23:55:00.000-05:00

So much to say, but time and inclination don't seem to be lining up together lately. One of these nights, I promise ... I think I feel a random list post coming on, one where I empty my brain onto the screen and see where it takes us!

All in all, life is pretty wonderful right now. Here's a little taste of what today looked like:

How much longer do I have to dress like this?

Hey, maybe not so much longer after all! There's life under the snow!

Mud is a sign of spring. And so: mud is beautiful!

Happy, happy March! I wish you more blessings than raindrops. And more raindrops than snowflakes (fingers tightly crossed!). I'm taking this week to count my blessings, and they feel deeper than the snowbanks that have buried us since December. Hope yours are too!

In the Winter You Were Born

2011-02-19T18:35:00.003-05:00

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.

This is a Boring Post

2011-02-11T22:30:00.003-05:00

I hate fitness blogs. Not because I have anything against fitness, obviously, after all, it's my jobby (job/hobby) (more hobby than job these days). But because other people's workouts are boring. Who gives a crap about your workout! I can barely be bothered to keep up with my own!

So consider this fair warning: the title of this post ain't no lie. I'm 'bout to talk about my workout.

Here's the deal:

I read about the 30 Day Shred online, and it seemed to be the general consensus that it was one of the more intense, short, and effective workouts available via DVD. I bought it, and that much was true, but so was this: it wasn't enjoyable at all. At least to me. I'm more of a yoga/pilates girl; jumping jacks just don't motivate me to come back to the workout again and again.

So I stole the format: 2 minute warmup, 3 minutes of strength, 2 minutes of cardio, 1 minute of abs, repeat sequence twice, cooldown. And I replaced her moves with yoga, pilates and dance. I've written about this before, called it the ultimate workout. It's a great workout but it's only been done a handful of times, and mostly exists as a lesson plan on a piece of paper.

Since sometime in early January I've been doing it a few times a week after the kids go to bed, albiet a very gentle version--I do all the moves for the length of time the workout specifies, but I let myself do as much stretching, resting, nursing and other necessary interrupting as I need to throughout the workout. I just try to come back to it until I finish.

Lately, I've been having a hard time motivating myself to do the workout, even though I know it's a guarantee that I will feel great afterwards! What is up with that? I did it tonight for the first time on a few days and --as usual-- feel great. Both physically and it's a better mood lifter than anything else I've ever tried!

So at the end of this boring post, is a boring message to myself: If you're sitting there not doing your workout, for God's sake, get up and do it! You know you're going to feel great! What the heck's the matter with you?

To the rest of you: We will now return to our regularly scheduled mommyblog. Sorry for the interruption of what was, essentially, a PSA to myself. And in case you don't hate fitness blogs, here's my ultimate workout:

Warmup:
2 min: Sun Salutation

Circuit 1:
3 min Strength: Alternate Plank Pose & Warrior I
2 min Cardio: Alternate toe touches/sky reaches & standing Cat/Cow
1 minute Abs: Pilates Hundred

Circuit 2:
3 min Strength: Alternate Revolved Triangle & Warrior II
2 min Cardio: Alternate squat/twist/reach & plie w/side stretches
1 min Abs: varies, today was Pilates Rolling Like A Ball

Circuit 3:
3 min Strength: Alternate Bow Pose and Bridge Pose
2 min Cardio: Repeat each from Circuit 1 & 2
1 min Abs: varies, today was Pilates Single Leg Stretch

Cooldown:
Supposed to be head to toe stretches, but I just do whatever I want here. Usually hanging out in Standing Forward Bend.

Adds up to 20 minutes plus whatever you spend cooling down. I usually do it in more like 30 minutes if I don't stop for the baby (just extra stretching and taking my time getting through it) or 45 minutes if I stop to nurse.

Report from Inside the Residence

2011-02-09T22:27:00.004-05:00

Yesterday, watching the local closings/cancellations scroll across the bottom of the television screen, I felt as if I might go insane. It was the again-ness of the whole thing. Again!? Seriously!? It feels like it's been snowing since early December without cease.

I spent a week and a half without a car, so we didn't leave the house at all except for weekends when my husband was home. During that time I stumbled on the fact that my son has zero accidents with the hang-out-naked-around-the-house method of potty training, and he can initiate and use the bathroom completely independently (still needs help cleaning up). We've halfheartedly tried a number of potty training methods with varying degrees of success, but never 100%! The only problem with this skill is that it, too, requires never leaving the house.

So between the ceaseless snowfall, the car in the shop, naked potty training, and the presence of a six week old with age appropriate feeding and diaper needs, we pretty much never leave the house.

Wow, now that I write it out like that, it becomes clear I deserve much more credit than I've been giving myself simply for not going insane!

Yesterday was actually one of the first times I felt the pressure. The housework was killing me; I tried so hard all day to clean, wearing my daughter on my chest to keep her from crying, attempting to engage, or distract, or redirect my son through a series of tasks so oppressively repetitive (laundry, seriously!? dishes!? what is up!?) and soul-wearying..and that isn't even what was killing me. What was killing me was that five hours later, the house was somehow, still, unbelievably, not clean! I was doing my best at a boring, crappy job and I was failing!

Just to be absolutely clear, the housework was the crappy job, not the kids!

As a teacher, it was so easy to separate child care from cleaning. You did the cleaning either while the kids were asleep or after hours. While the kids were awake, you interacted with them, taught them, played with them. This is how I envisioned my primary role with my kids if I eventually stayed home with them.

This part? I love.

But the problem with this lovely vision is that it turns out when you're in the house all the time (and please remember that I do mean all the time), you create messes. And babies and toddlers? Create lots of messes. And it turns out that if you don't clean them? They TAKE OVER YOUR LIFE! Like a mild cold turns to deadly pnemonia, the baby/toddler messes will rule your home in no time flat without constant vigilance. And the other thing it turns out? Babies and toddlers suck at both constant vigilance and cleaning! I know!

But for once, the answer wasn't to chill, or ignore the mess, or even to leave the house and avoid the mess (all my usual coping techniques). I wanted these feelings --the exhaustion, the irritation and frustration, the looming sense of failure-- to go away, but instead I sat with them. And then I sat with my husband while the kids slept and we talked. We talked about things we fear and things we hope for and things we carry around wrapped tight in the white-knuckled fists of our deepest hearts while we stumble through our days at work and at home, feeling our way into this family of four.

And then I woke up this morning and made egg, cheddar and spinach sandwiches for myself and my son, nursed my daughter at the dining room table while we ate breakfast and looked out the window at a squirrel atop a fence in the deep, deep snow. I rinsed and stacked dishes, did as many loads of laundry as I could manage, changed diapers and emptied trash cans, cleaned out the kitchen sink. We spent a small part of the day with the toddler in underwear (with no accidents!), and we watched the closings and cancellations scroll across the bottom of the television screen. Again.

The answer, this time, was to dig in deeper. To try harder. To do better. To (wo)man up. Right now I'm here with my babies and it's winter, and we're learning –which is messy-- so I need to clean up.

Today, I did, with a smile. And that feels good.

Not as good as the first day of spring, or the day in my future when I finally hire a housekeeper. But for a constantly messy crew surviving an upstate New York winter, half-naked and stuck in the house? We're doing alright.

A Mother's Dream

2011-02-02T15:37:00.000-05:00

I am dreaming a daytime dream of a long nap in a dark, quiet room, uninterrupted by small cries, clamoring children, and urgent, unmet needs. My blankets are thick, soft and heavy across my limbs. My body sinks into the bed like sand packed tight on a warm, wet beach on a sweltering summer afternoon. My eyelids drop like a guillotine blade, cutting me from consciousness as swiftly and irrevocably as a beheading. The pillows embrace my ears like long lost friends at a reunion.

The white noise of the wind and snow keeps any other sounds from my sanctuary. The phone doesn't ring. No one knocks at the door. My name is not uttered for hours on end. Everyone is quiet and content in my dream, silent and satisfied outside my bedroom door.

I sleep for as long as I want to sleep. Hours pile upon lazy hours like afghans on a northeastern couch over the long winter. Not a word is spoken.

I wake slowly, deliciously dozing and peeking at consciousness at my own lingering pace. Eventually, I sit up and stretch. I want tea. When I emerge from the dark, quiet cave of my imagination my family is happily occupied throughout our home, each beloved body bathed in the early evening light reflecting off the thick, white snow outside. And there is hot tea with milk and honey.

Midnight Check-in at Just Past Six Weeks

2011-02-01T00:03:00.003-05:00

We see everything about her that makes her different from her brother, notice everything she does that makes her uniquely herself. Everyone else who sees her notices all their similarities. They say: She's exactly like he was!

And so right from the start, family is the backdrop against which we are defined. I am not you, and I am not you, and I am not you; I am me! See me! we say to each other. And then they say to us out in the world: So, you are one of them. And we lurch to these opposing tunes for years, trying clumsily to define ourselves.

It's been six weeks; some women go back to work at this point. I've already been back to work a little bit, but I'm glad I'm only halfway through my leave. I got an e-mail about a series of meetings they're holding the week after next. I thought about attending for a few minutes.

And then I thought about this afternoon.

I stayed up hours too late last night, finishing a novel I just couldn't seem to put down. I was tired all day, and my cups of coffee didn't seem to make any meaningful difference. I took my daughter and lay down with her on the futon on the floor of her future bedroom; it's being used for guests for the time being. Moments later my son, her brother, came to climb in with us. He brought books and being too tired to keep my eyes open and read them myself, I asked him to read them to us. He recited all the words he remembered from the pile of library books he'd dragged in from the living room, leaning his head in toward my own and his sister's, tucked snug in the crook of my arm. I near-dozed to the lull of his voice and the sound of her steady, rhythmic breathing, sound asleep after nursing herself into a stupor of contented sighs, smacked lips, and eventual silence.

I never did fully wake up today, and my lids were still heavy when my husband got home from work late in the afternoon. I wondered a few times if I ought to have gotten more done, more cleaning or writing, something to point to and say: I did THAT today.

But instead I spent an awful lot of time on the floor, cooing and cuddling and kissing and repeating silly, nonsensical words and phrases, just to laugh at the funny way they roll off the tongue. HECtaDOR! in the haberDASHERY! To tickle little faces with the ends of my hair and feel it clutched tight in small fists. To look at my babies and think about what a short time it is that they are so very tiny, fitting so fully in our arms, their worlds so completely in our hands. It's such a short time I have to spend with them, this stretch of winter weeks stuck inside together, beginning to pull together and push against one another, to figure out where any one of us ends and the others begin.

I am me! See me! say my babies, with sobs and sentences, grimaces and grins. I send an e-mail and say I won't be able to make it to any more meetings until my leave is over.

Show me! Tell me all about it! I'm here. I'm listening. I say to my babies, lurching to the floor, clumsy and eager for whatever the next six weeks will bring.

The Detrius of Everyday Life

2011-01-28T20:31:00.001-05:00

It Could Always Be Worse

2011-01-25T23:28:00.000-05:00

Last time I wrote I was nervous --nay, I believe I said terrified-- of the long days alone at home with the kids that I was about to experience. Well, as it turns out, I didn't have to worry about that. This last week has turned out a little different than I expected.

Anyone remember the Yiddish folktale It Could Always Be Worse? This guy visits his rabbi to complain about his crazy, overcrowded house and the rabbi tells him to move all his farm animals in with him one by one. In the end he kicks out all the animals and the same house he complained about at the start of the story suddenly seems calm, quiet and peaceful.

If weeks came with titles, I'd be plagiarizing a fable for mine.

My sister came to town to help with the kids, so I thought it would be nice for all of us to swing by my job and check in. They're working on our mid-year program report and I had planned to stop in at the end of the month and assist with reflections on our data anyway. I figured my son could play in the toddler classroom with my sister while I held the baby, glanced over what they'd done so far, and banged out a few e-mails.

Instead, it became very clear how loved and appreciated I am by my coworkers when I was overrun with a million immediate requests for assistance. And as much as I didn't particularly want to put in the time to help rightatthisparticularmomentthankyouverymuch, it's a small program with a lot of new staff and there is no one else who can help them. And they were doing their very best with some very challenging tasks. Upon which our continued funding depends. And I love them all dearly. So. I spent a couple days stopping in at work to help out, toting one or both kids, caring for my children and my colleagues simultaneously, which was sometimes fun, and other times manageable, and still others one very small step shy of feeling as if my brain was about to burst into bits and explode all over the walls from the constant and contradictory needs approaching me from every direction and at every. single. moment.

Then I spent an early morning googling projectile spit-up in infants and urinary tract infections in toddlers. And a midmorning --in just above single digit temperatures-- pulling the windshield wiper blade off the passenger side of my car, where the windshield wiper doesn't work, and putting it onto the driver's side, which works, but the wiper blade decided to do a kamikaze leap from the car to the road last time I drove. And these kids need to get to the doctor and it's snowing. And an early afternoon dragging both children down a snowy street in a stroller not designed for blizzard treks on unshoveled sidewalks where I forgot to even ask the doctor about the projectile spitter-upper because holding a screaming toddler while he is catheterized after failing to pee in a cup on command is far too traumatic an experience to leave room in the brain for projectile vomiting. And a late afternoon waiting for the drive thru pharmacy to finish my son's goddamn prescription already, please, and we'd better go ahead and fill that one for the blocked tear duct that I've been carrying around in my purse while we're at it, because suddenly it looks like my daughter's eye is getting worse after all. I see this through my own tears because we're both sobbing but she's shedding more slime than tears from one eye. (She cries when the car sits still too long; I cry when my children have medical procedures that seem more like torture than treatment, and although it was necessary, it was quite possibly the worst thing I've ever experienced, and I say that without any hint of hyperbole. It really fucking was.)

And then my husband was home for the weekend, and my sister had to leave town, and groceries were purchased, and weekly menus planned, and weekend chores tended to, and my mom drove into town, and --look!-- it's the end of the month already and now it's that time I was originally planning to go into work to help write the reflections for that report, so I was back at work, baby at my breast while typing one handed at my desk, and holding meetings where she's passed around the conference table to give my sore upper back a break and my hands a quick chance to jot down the million and one things I don't want to forget. And I'm still not entirely done with this seemingly ever-expanding task I agreed to, but I'm hoping my husband can download the program I need to access our database from home to finish up, because my mom leaves tomorrow and suddenly:

The life I feared would overwhelm me a week ago? The long days alone at home with my two kids? How calm, quiet, and peaceful it sounds now. If I could manage all this chaos with the help of my (admittedly very helpful) sister and mother, I think I'll be able to manage the three of us at home with nothing to do and nowhere to go.

I will finish that report late at night when the rest of the house is asleep. It's due at the end of the month. My children will be finished with their various prescriptions by that time. I can't tell you how glad I'll be when the last of these damn farm animals is gone.

Slowly Scrambling for Balance

2011-01-17T22:31:00.001-05:00

I feel as if I have stories to tell, or something to talk about buried somewhere in my brain, but I haven't left the house in days now, and yesterday I held my daughter for six hours straight and my shoulders are sore, and the couch and rocking chair are likely both molded to the shape of my spine. I breathed her in (the smell of a baby's head is divine) while my son slept in the late afternoon for the first time in what felt like forever, but was probably only weeks.

It's different with this baby. I give her what she needs, but I'm racing between the two of them, and if he's awake all day he seems to need me all day. Part of that is change, the arrival of his sister and departure of his daily routine, part of it is being stuck indoors so much, and part if it is that since he's not napping, he's getting overtired in the evenings, and therefore more demanding.

I feel as if I get so little of the time I got with my firstborn with this baby: sitting, rocking, nursing, in no hurry at all. He napped for hours yesterday and I just held her while she ate and slept her day away, and even though my arms and shoulders were all cramped up by the end of the evening, it was nice. Breathing in the scent of a baby's head is calming, meditative.

And my son was so easygoing after his nap, a pleasant reminder of how he used to act every night when he napped religiously! I'm going to try and return naptime to the schedule, but I think I have to think of it as quiet time and be willing to end it after an hour if he doesn't fall asleep. He seems somewhere in the middle of needing and outgrowing it, and I think I'll need to be flexible.

Tomorrow my husband goes back to work; paternity leave is over. One of my sisters is coming for a few days, so I will still have some help for a few days, and then I'll be on my own. I'll be honest: I'm a little terrified. When I only had one and I heard things like: Motherhood is the hardest job in the world, I always thought: Really? It doesn't seem that bad!

I felt easy, breezy, confident, at least, much of the time. With two to manage, I get glimpses of how this job might knock you to your knees, or break your heart in half. But I've been practicing my breathing, doing a little bit of yoga with my boy, having an afternoon cup of tea, breathing in the scent of my girl's scalp, and keeping the clutter up off of the floor. Amidst these little things, I attempt to find my footing.

Winter: You do not get the last word. This is my blog.

2011-01-15T21:10:00.004-05:00

What's harder: A summer baby or a winter one? And going from none to one, or one to two?

In the interest of killing two birds with one stone, I can simply answer: this time. Harder. Much harder.

Count me firmly in the camp of those who say it's more difficult to go from one child to two than it was to go from none to one. I was afraid this would be the case, but crossed my fingers hopefully every time I heard: Well, it's a lot easier to adapt to a second kid than it was to adapt to the first one!

My first kid, though? He was easy. And in fact, this second one? She's easy too. On her own. Luckily, my babies have been easy ones. And my toddler is easy(ish) for me to handle when I can give him my full attention. It's the balancing act on the high wire of their vastly differing needs that's got me desperately seeking my footing, and often failing to find it until after a crash or three on the circus floor of sulking, tears and tantrums (the toddler's, the baby's, my own or my husband's; it's hard to say some days who'll fall apart first!).

And this whole living in your house, like, nonstop, round the clock, with your immediate family all up in your grill at every conceivable moment? Intense.

In. Tense.

That's all I'm going to say about that.

Except: Can I plead extenuating circumstances?

Yes, I can (being judge, jury and executioner in these here proceedings, I vote yes, I may proceed with the plea). Let me lay out my case for you, dear reader. Perhaps you can serve as my witness.

Extenuating Circumstance Number One: Winter. This could easily equal case closed, not guilty by reason of insanity, right here, with that one word. But there's more..

Extenuating Circumstance Letter B: My husband threw his back out the day after I was released from the hospital. Did we let this slow us down? No, we did not. I shared my Percocet prescription (shhh...) and we rearranged all the furniture in the house, including moving three dressers and a queen sized bed that had to be sawed in half and then repaired up a flight of stairs into the attic, aka our new bedroom. Bad back and healing abdomen be damned!

Excruciating Circumstances 1.0 and 2.0: Mastitis (1.0). Followed by a regiment of antibiotics. Followed by a recurrence of mastitis (2.0). No, I did not share my Augmentin with my husband, in case you were suspicious. I'm midway through a second prescription and just now beginning to nurse without feeling like ground glass is being sucked through my mammary glands.

Dietary Bylaw Breakage 2,011: I abandoned the diabetic diet that sustained me through my pregnancy, and promptly began forgetting to eat. Until all of a sudden I find myself starving, dizzy, headachey, and in dire need of large quantities of the closest available convenience food. Bad habit to get into. Still trying to break it. My dinner tonight? The crusts of two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, the rest of which were consumed by the toddler. I still have some work to do in breaking this habit.

Exclamation Oh-Fuck-No! Number Zed: The sudden death of the afternoon nap. That's right. The boy has chosen NOW to abandon his long held practice of sleeping away a good portion of each afternoon. It took us over a week to realize we could put him to bed hours earlier instead of spending those evening hours in the presence of His Royal Highness Mister Meltdown Extraordinaire. Quick thinking appears not to be a hallmark of the post-partum period.

Strange-But-True Happenstance Letter K: I seem to have morphed into Mrs. Martha Stewart Kiddie Home Living. Which means there are four of us living in a home we haven't managed to organize in the two plus years we've been living here, and suddenly I find it unacceptable when the wooden toys aren't arranged just so or the alphabet puzzle is no longer in alphabetic order on the floor. I think I have uttered the phrase: A place for everything and everything in it's place more often in the past weeks than ever before --cumulatively-- in my entire life. I may not have eaten since breakfast, but goddammit, you could eat off my son's truck rug (freshly vaccuumed!) if I remembered to offer you something. Which I wouldn't. Unless you're a toddler desiring crust-free sandwiches. Or you have a breastmilk fetish. So help me God, if you don't take your shoes off when you enter my house, though. No breastmilk for you! I can abide a pervert, but don't you dare go tracking snow up in here after I just cleaned the hardwoods, motherfucker.

Final Closing Argument, Gavel Pounding in Agreement: IT'S WINTER! Seriously, what's a mama (of two) supposed to do? IF it were summer (or spring, or fall) I could take my offspring into the great outdoors and allow nature to work it's magic, running my boy's energy off like he's entered a marathon, providing my daughter the Vitamin D she must resort to a dropper to get in this wintery clime, burning baby weight like the fiery sun while I pushed my younger child and chased my older one. Winter, it's not the first time I've said it, and it likely won't be the last. I don't care how pretty you are in pictures, dude. You, my friend (and when I say friend, that's a polite way of saying enemy, you know, like they do in Congress): are an asshole.

Case closed.

ReRun: Well Played, Winter. Well Played. Slay Me with the Beauty.

2011-01-13T10:40:00.000-05:00

ReRun: A Metaphor for Winter

2011-01-12T00:20:00.001-05:00

Scene: My Inner Therapist's Office. Winter's in one chair; I'm in another. My Inner Therapist is gazing down her nose at us through cat frame eyeglasses. We all look uncomfortable.

My Inner Therapist: So we're here today because LazyBones *shuffling through intake paperwork* wrote some things on a blog? Is that correct? On the Internet? And Winter, that made you feel.....well, why don't you tell us? How did that make you feel?

Winter: It made me feel terrible, just terrible. *Sniff* Can I have a tissue? I'm sorry, I just, this is very emotional for me. The holidays always bring up a lot of emotions, and then this...this attack! Out of nowhere! I just...this is difficult.

MIT: Take your time Winter, we're here.

Would you like to tell us more about these holiday emotions?

W: Everyone wants me around for Christmas, and New Year's, but then it's just Poof! Be Gone! Like I'm not good for anything else! It hurts! Every year I give it my all, I give everything, and in the end I just...*whispers*...I just feel so used.

MIT: LazyBones, how does it make you feel to hear what Winter is expressing here?

LazyBones: Well damn, Winter, I wasn't trying to bring up all that. I mean, it wasn't even personal! It's like, you're just a metaphor, Winter. A metaphor for the existential emptiness we all experience from time to time. I was just using you as a metaphor...

W: So you WERE using me! I knew it. I knew it.

LB: Not like that! I just wanted to express the melancholy and the rage I was feeling, and you seemed like a good symbol for that. I'm sorry Winter. I never meant to hurt you.

MIT: This is good, this is good, we're airing our feelings here. Winter, would you care to respond?

W: It's hard for me to accept the apology after yesterday's post. I was treated like a cheap floozy. It's hard to come back from that. LazyBones has proven that entertaining this...blog audience...comes before my feelings, and I don't think I'm ready to forgive that right now. I'm more than a metaphor! I am a season. I deserve more.

LB: More!? More!? You already get six months of the year, and Summer, Spring and Fall share the other six! How is that fair? When I lived in Arizona you barely got a month! Now we're in upstate New York, you get six months and you deserve more!? You take over half the year, and get all the major holidays and then you complain about being a metaphor? Winter, I'm sorry, but when you take up six months worth of my psychic space, you end up as a metaphor.

And yesterday? Okay, I came at you wrong. You're not a cheap floozy; I'm just not ready to commit to you and--you're right--I shouldn't have tried sweet-talking you that way. My Inner Playa came out as a metaphor for making up, and my metaphors got mixed. I didn't meant to hurt you.

Besides, it's an honor to be a metaphor. All the seasons have been metaphors for me.

W: Really? *dabs eyes* Even Summer?

LB: Yes, and I complain about Summer too. She's stifling; she has a forced cheerfulness about her, and her expectations are always too high.

MIT: How does this change things for you, Winter?

W: Well, I appreciate the apologies. I do. And now that I know Summer is a metaphor, I feel...better somehow. Like it's not as personal as I thought before. I've been told I tend to make things all about me.

I guess I do need to learn to detach. I've been working on that with my own therapist.

MIT: Good Winter, good. Keep that up. And LazyBones, how are you feeling about our session today?

LB: I want to get along with Winter, I really do, but we've had issues all my life, and.....at this point, all I can say is I'll try.

MIT: Alright, good work you two, I feel like we really started a dialogue here. We can continue this at our next session. We'll leave it at that for today.

ReRun: Wooing Winter

2011-01-11T00:18:00.001-05:00

C' mon baby. It don't have to be like that. I know I said ... some things ... the other day ... that maybe I shouldn'ta said, but you know how I get sometimes. It didn't mean nothin'. I'm still here, you see me right here, don't you? You really think I'd spend 6 months outta every year with you, right here in CNY baby, if I didn't have feelings for you? I was just bloggin', baby, I was just tryin'a entertain, you feel me? You know how it gets out there.

But I'm here with you now, ain't I?

What, you need proof? Look around my house!!! What do you see? FLEECE! How much fleece I got up in my house, and you're gonna question my feelings for you just causa some shit on the Internet!? You know you ain't supposed to believe everything you read on the Internet, anyway. I got, I got...LAYERS! Look at this: non-cotton for next to the skin so I keep that heat in, I got blankets stacked up from ceilin' to floor, I got, I got...hoodies! How many hoodies I got right here in this room!? And these is just for inside the house!

Winter, I am HERE! I am here with you baby, right here, and I don't know what I gotta do to make you see that.

Okay, winter.....it's like that, then? It's like that? Okay, then. I'ma remember this. I'ma remember this, though, winter. This shit ain't over, winter. This ain't over. You'll be hearing from me again.

Half-Assed Interruption

2011-01-10T00:55:00.004-05:00

I hate to interrupt our regular schedule of reruns, especially for a clear case of half-assery, but I just want to say, in my defense ...

It started well. It really did. I was determined to begin moving our bedroom upstairs into the attic.

We weren't going to do that yet. We were going to stay downstairs in our old bedroom/the baby's new nursery. At least until spring, if not summer. We haven't even bought her bedroom furniture yet. She's in the bassinet next to our bed, which makes it easier to nurse her in the night. And I planned to use some of our tax return to buy her bedroom set, so there's really no hurry for us to move upstairs.

Except.

Well, except ... me.

It seems that giving birth makes me a bit manic. When my son was born I directed that energy outward, visiting parks, pushing his stroller on trails, making the most of the summer weather, and even taking up jogging, which I enjoyed for the first time in my life. This time around, since we're mostly stuck in the house watching the morning PBS lineup and the snow fall outside our windows, my manic energy becomes directed at our home. Each day I have to not only tidy and keep up on the regular chores, I have to accomplish some task that I've deemed "above and beyond," which means that once it's done I won't have to do it again. I need this, to feel satisfied.

Thus, the Christmas ornaments were taken down earlier than I had planned, packed away and re-stored in the attic. Including the new ones I created out of silver and gold ribbons, bows, and beaded hooks that I made my husband take me to the store to buy the day I was released from the hospital. And stayed up half the night making after wrapping all the presents. Yeah, just a little manic.

The toys were thinned out to make room for new ones, and the toy shelves have all been reorganized thematically to soothe both my frenzied ambition and my teacher's need for order. I've even purchased toys and created activities with the express purpose of expending physical energy (both mine and the toddler's), but it isn't quite enough for either of us.

So when my son emptied his dresser drawers onto his bedroom floor, in what was likely an attempt to entertain himself with some grand physical gesture to compensate for the household's sore lack of playground equipment and running space, I decided to go ahead and go through them all for a size check, making bags for the attic and the Goodwill, labeling and delivering them instead of shoving them back in the drawers and smooshing them shut, like I would have before having the baby.

And when I ran out of areas to organize on the first floor, my attention turned upward. And all of a sudden, I felt certain that we needed to move upstairs A.S.A.P. That way, not only could we start to organize the attic (a task that feels just as ambitious and unlikely as running a marathon) (which also means I totally want to do it! Today!), but we could clear the first floor of all our bedroom clutter --laundry piling up on top of dressers waiting to be put away, or dirty on floors where a basket should be, but isn't because it's been left in the basement, the odds and ends my husband manages to collect that have no defined place yet (these odds and ends are endless when you live with an artist/packrat!), the ever-increasing number of newborn baby/new mama supplies (where's that lanolin? didn't someone give me a box of breast pads? we need alcohol to clean my scar and her cord! and cotton balls!), and all the jewelry I've been keeping only semi-organized up until this point-- and create space for a beautifully spare future nursery/guest bedroom containing nothing but easily tidied and well-catalogued, necessary items.

The vision? A place for everything, and everything in it's place. Are you with me?

The reality?

I took the drawers out of two dressers and placed them --precariously balanced-- on the attic stairs. I cleaned a stack of storage cubes from my son's room and carried them to my daughter's. I dragged the dressers to the hallway, waiting just below their drawers to make that big move to the attic. So far, so good.

But then, my boy: Mommy, I need some-ting.

What do you need, sweetie?

I need some extra hugs.

And so, extra hugs were given.

And then my girl: Waaahhh! (Food. I wants it now.)

And so, food was given.

And suddenly, my husband: The snowblower broke. I need to go to the hardware store.

And then my son needed some-ting again, and so did my daughter, and then my husband: It didn't work, and now I need to shovel the drive.

And so it went.

The attic stairs remain adorned with dresser drawers, the hallway with dressers sans drawers. And the bathroom: sink and toilet cleaned, tub and tile floor awaiting further attention. And the living room: armchair halfway to the guestroom/ future nursery, piled with pillows from the couch while that cover finishes its trip through the laundry.

It's halfway there.

Of course.

And here I am, too tired to finish a single thing I started today. Except for the beer I'm drinking. And, apparently, this blog post. And, presumably, the night's sleep I'm about to embark upon, until my daughter wakes me with a wail.

Whereupon I will scramble from my warm bed, gather her in my arms, snuggle her tight, and give her the breast. She will open her mouth like a baby bird, latch on, eat heartily, and continue to grow. Fortunately, even amidst the mess I've left in my wake today, there is nothing half-assed about that.

ReRun: If I Meet Winter In A Dark Alley I Will Thrash It With A Garland Of Spring Flowers

2011-01-09T00:04:00.001-05:00

Winter is coming to Upstate New York, and with it the melancholy that I wrestle every year as the season changes. The air gets colder and the sky darker and the green earth turns grey, and before I can embrace hibernation I rage against the change. Can there be melancholy and rage? I think there can. The rage is suppressed, helpless, like violence hidden underneath a heavy blanket of snow. Like frostbite eating away at your fingers and toes while you sit, so tired and still, as if in a trance, slowly freezing.

I should be grateful that it's December (or that we can pretend it is for the sake of a rerun) and winter is only now rearing it's ugly head. I am not. At least not right now. This is not a grateful post. This is the end of a long, lonely day covered by a cloudy sky and full of dirty floors and unending laundry. This post is about boredom, and the purgatory of transition. It's about resistance to inevitable change and stubborn, futile defiance, digging heels in when it makes no sense whatsoever to do so.

It's about the start of winter.

I don't want to go gentle into these dark, endless nights and days. Winter lasts for months upon months in Upstate New York! I don't want patience. I want to rage like the rainstorms of early spring, melting ice with explosive strength. I want to burst into technicolor like buds on trees in March; I want to sweep away the debris that gets hidden under the snow; clean the streets with a wild, maniacal energy. I want to bare my teeth and rip berries from their vines before they have the chance to ripen; I'm so hungry for winter to be over before it begins.

Winter, you leave me no choice but submission, and in the meantime melancholy and a silent, seething rage. I'll play a collection of short films in my mind tonight and in each and every one I will be the heroine and you will be the villain and I will best you with ever more colorful, creative schemes. Tonight I will melt you with the fire in my mind. Tonight I will annihilate you. And in the morning I will wake to your bleak and unforgiving landscape just outside my bedroom window.

Tomorrow, you bastard, I will sigh and begin to embrace you.

Writing about Writing and Fighting with Winter

2011-01-08T00:02:00.001-05:00

As a child, I remember one thing I knew for certain was that I did not want any sort of career that required me to write for a living. See, I liked writing. And while this might seem counterintuitive, I didn't want that joy to be sullied by everyday repetition, regular requirements, and deadlines. I wanted to keep my voice for myself, to say only what and when I wanted to say, to hoard my words, a quiet source of solitary pleasure for a girl with five sisters who had few opportunities to have everything the way I wanted it, few chances to choose not to share, collaborate, compromise.

I wanted to be the whole and only boss of my words.

Though this has resulted in far fewer of them being written down, and less opportunity for development and improvement of my writing skills, I have never regretted it. If being a "real" writer means (as I have often read that it does) that you don't want to write, but that you must write, then I am quite happily less than real. Unreal. Or surreal? Whatever the case may be! I go long periods without writing, and I am perfectly content with it. It's not at all that I simply must write. It's that I want to. And I really like it that way.

Still a thrill, in my mid-thirties, to be the whole and only boss of something, even if it is only my own words, my own place to play without sharing a single thing!

So in the spirit of purely recreational writing, starting tomorrow I will be re-running a four-part series I wrote last year about winter. I had only been blogging about a month when I started it, and I drove home from work each afternoon thinking about the next post, excited to sit down after my son went to sleep, put fingers to keyboard, and see what happened. I had a lot of fun writing it! For me, and for now, that's the whole point.

This winter series is apropos for another reason too. Namely, here it is again, and here I am again, both hating its guts and trying hard to embrace and make the best of it. Having two children is thus far lovely, but it would be far lovelier in the spring or fall, with the option to spend some time each day outdoors. My son needs to move, and so do I, but it's hard to convince myself to do it when it's twenty-something degrees outside and it means leaving the baby and my husband indoors, carrying my cell phone and waiting for the call to rush home and nurse.

Yesterday my boy and I did an hour or so of yoga together, incorporating his new plastic play tent and tunnel as props in our stretching routine and utilizing his big alphabet floor puzzle as a cushioned mat between our spines and the hardwood floor. I let him climb me in certain poses (Child's Pose) and ride on my back in others (Cat and Cow), and directed him to crawl, jump and run while I contorted into corresponding poses (a homemade mash-up of Sun Salutation components) and offered enough high-fives and high-jinks to keep it interesting. But I'm not always quick and creative enough to make the best of our too-often-too-messy house to meet his needs, or my own, before we begin to get stir-crazy. We've gone out almost daily on "family drives" just to get out of the house, but neither cruising the city neighborhoods nor ransacking the various branches of the county library offers enough exertion to wear us out the way a summer hike or morning spent swimming would be able to do.

I choose to live in Upstate New York, in one of the snowiest cities in the continental United States, and yet winter and I ... well, we've never gotten along. And so each year I battle the elements, determined one of these days (or years) to be able to say: I love winter!

It won't be this year.

But last year: I loved writing about winter. And this year: I love that I keep trying to make the best of it, with plastic tents and tunnels, alphabet puzzle playmats, city drives through snowy neighborhoods, and everyday outings turned adventures with the inclusion of a new baby, the creative eyes of a toddler, and the ongoing efforts of his parents.

Much like the act of writing for my own silent pleasure in the words themselves, I like to sneak what moments of glee I can covertly gather in the face of an adversary much larger than myself. I won't win the war with winter. But that doesn't mean I can't score a few smackdowns in battles along the way, and take a couple moments to thoroughly savor their thrill.

I hope you enjoy reading about winter over the next few days as much as I enjoyed writing about it! And I wish us all much joy and pleasure in the words that the cold winter weather gives us extra time to compose. See, one more small seasonal victory! Take that, winter!

Cast of Characters, Reprised

2011-01-07T12:11:00.001-05:00

LazyBones, CoffeeBuzz, The Mama, The Wife, Teacher/Administrator/Yoga Instructor at Work, Resident CouchPotato and DayDreamer at Home: Does the Mothering and Wife-ing, major in General Studies: Household Organization, minors in Laundry and Menu-Planning. Works part-time in Education and has a Yoga Jobby (job-hobby). Prefers sitting to standing. Prefers lying down to sitting. Prefers daydreaming to almost anything. Requires coffee to achieve basic, everyday life tasks. Possesses an almost supernatural ability to chill. Moves at the speed of light for the amount of time it takes caffeine to travel throughout bloodstream, achieving monumental tasks such as: tidying living room, and starting the laundry. Resumes chilling immediately upon drug exiting the system. Waiting wistfully for the day when reading a book results in a clean house and mattress testers are finally paid what they are so clearly worth.

MoodyPants, SuperSpouse, The Dada, The Husband, Teacher/Artist at Work, Overachiever Everywhere, and Grump-or-Goofball Extraordinaire at Home (depending on the day): Does the Fathering and Husband-ing, major in Kitchen Care, minor in Grocery Procurement and Preparation. Teaches Art all day for pay; makes his own by the light of the moon. Achieves more before breakfast than most people do in a month. Cooks like a five star chef, cleans like a maid on meth, and works harder than John Henry with a hammer in his hand. But when it's a full moon: watch out. Possesses demon moods that have been known to escape the limits of the body and cast a dark shadow throughout the land. Attempts to harness said moods as weapon of warfare against rogue states currently ongoing. Ability to wither whole rooms with a look. Condition can be mitigated with ingestion of microbrewed beverages, so if you come calling when the moon is full, you'd better come correct. You've been warned. Wishing for a handyman, a million dollars, or both along with that beer, so he can take a well-deserved break.

The Boy, The Toddler, Boy Child, Big Brother, Etc.: Bigger of the two children, Toddler, Too-Soon-To-Be-Preschooler. Communicates primarily through Squealing (with joy), Shouting (goes well with any emotion!) and Repeating (until he gets the response he seeks). Thus far has demonstrated inheritance of the maternal capacities for both endless chatter and limitless loafing: chillin' out, maxin', relaxin' all cool. Still incapable of shootin' some b-ball outside of the school. Capacity to surpass father in the following cantankerous skill-sets: bursting into tears for no apparent reason whatsoever (Dada has simply never mastered this rudimentary skill), and winning arguments with a single word (see: MINE! NO! and WHY DADA?) (Okay, that's two words. But twice as effective.) (Neither parent has this skill.) (Why use one word when you could use ten?). Lover of cheese sticks, french toast, and those disgusting mandarin oranges that come in a can. Generally an easy kid, but he wants what he wants, when he wants it. And he will tell you about it. Again and again. Until you respond. Correctly.

The Girl, The Baby, Girl Child, Little Sister, Etc.: Newborn baby. Communicates primarily through Grunting, Rooting and Attempting to Latch onto the closest available protrusion (Mama's cheek, Dada's nose, why not?). Not a blank slate, but not prepared to be summed up quite so easily as all that yet, either. A mystery unfolding; a tale in the telling. A fat-faced, blue-eyed, breastfeedin' fool. Conceived on her mama's birthday following a miscarriage and months of waiting. Born days before Christmas, just on time to receive a tree full of presents and provide a tax break for the calendar year of her birth. A much wanted, much loved little bambina, just waiting to show us who she is. Certain only to be full of surprises.

Summer Boy and Winter Girl

2011-01-05T20:40:00.000-05:00

Before my son was born I did a lot of reading on infant temperament. There's something romantic to me in the idea that we are born with certain pieces of our personalities present --but hidden-- behind baby behaviors, coded in both their DNA and their daily cues. That babies hold mysterious secrets about who they'll eventually turn out to be, and that we can decipher them if we observe closely.

I wish I had written down my predictions about my son as I watched him carefully in the weeks after he was born. What I remember now is bound to be woven with the threads I've spun into his story ever since, and it would be tough to unravel the original from more recent interpretations. I remember thinking he would be an easy kid, because he was an easy baby, and so far that seems right. Sometimes I wonder if he's really the easy kid I choose to call him, or if I tell that story because infant-and-toddler-hood is a stage I like, and because I want it to be true. But then my mom spent a week with him and confirmed it, mentioning without any provocation: He's an easy kid. So maybe it's not just me.

I watch my daughter intently each day to see who she might be. I compare her to her brother, her father, to myself. I look for clues in her cries, her sleeping smiles, how she seeks comfort and how she tells us what she needs. She seems more particular than her brother was, more certain of what she wants, and more prepared to tell you if you're getting it wrong. My son is easy to redirect. She might prove to be tougher. On the other hand, she already seems to exhibit signs of greater independence, seeking ways to self-soothe even at two weeks, and frequently succeeding. She doesn't always need us when she fusses, and sometimes when we offer ourselves she lets out a wail that seems to say leave me alone, I'm getting there!

She's more of a fusser and a grunter, generally speaking, than my son was. He lay quietly comfortable until he wanted something from you, and then he cried. She tosses and stretches, contorts her face into little caricatures of cuteness, grunts, squeals and squirms, and then settles back down. She's working things out. She's checking to see what works for her. She'll let you know when she finds it, or when she wants your assistance. Believe me, when she wants you, you'll know.

Until then, take a seat. Settle in with a blanket to match the fresh one of snow we found this morning when we opened the curtains. Watch the winter wind outside, cup your warm mug in your chilly hands, and cuddle in close. Enjoy the cuteness. Like the winter, and hopefully the baby weight that seems as frighteningly endless from this vantage point as this long Upstate season usually does, it will soon pass into something else entirely. And it will be gone. So sink into the comfort of the couch. Watch the baby. Wonder. Marvel. And remember to breathe.

Happy, Happy New Year

2011-01-01T18:57:00.010-05:00

Sometimes when the doctors say: No Exercise, what they mean is: No Exercise Unless the weather gets above 50 degrees in Upstate New York on the first day of January after the snowiest December on record, AND you are attempting to engage in earnest with the fact that you have 50 (OMG!) pounds you would really, really like to lose, AND your toddler has a touch (just a touch) (or perhaps a chronic case) (and you might be catching just a touch of it yourself) (or a chronic case) of cabin fever, AND your neighborhood has an undeniable chronic case of hilliness with no flat places to walk whatsoever, AND there is a reservoir within walking distance of your abode and when you hike the steep, still-snowy stairs with your boy to the top the water is so blue it's indigo in some places and turquoise in others, AND you got 12 hours of cumulative sleep last night (not uninterrupted, no, of course not, but still, 12 hours!). But if all those exemptions apply, then by all means exercise.

At least, I'm pretty sure they mean exactly that.

I'm seldom moved to blog just to record the chronological details of my day, although it was exactly that impetus that inspired my first blog entry (which actually became my second) just over a year ago. And here I am again on a Saturday, the first day of the year which seems like it must be a good omen of some sort, and a similar sort of day (walking the neighborhood with my husband and kiddos) inspiring me to chronicle the details for posterity.

I slept til 11. I think that bears saying twice. I slept til 11.

And though it was New Year's Eve, I went to sleep at around 11 last night, too. Life is good, when such a thing happens.

We had company in the late morning (my sister and brother-in-law have been here since Thursday, and an aunt and uncle were in town and stopped by for an hour to meet the baby), and when the house cleared out ate a late breakfast of leftover quiche (we had an appetizer tray for dinner last night, with pale ales, a bottle of wine that never got opened, a fire in the fireplace, two Netflix discs of Modern Family, and more than one of us falling asleep in the living room before midnight. We still know how to rock it out, hardcore, as you can see.), took an afternoon neighborhood walk in the lovely warmth of the melting snow, then a slow, meandering city drive, and are beginning a quiet evening at home.

We maneuvered steep hills wearing ourselves and the toddler out, and I can't wait to move my body again. I never want to exercise so desperately as at the end of pregnancy and immediately post-partum. My body aches to be fast and fluid, in my command. I want to run.

Most of the time, let me assure you, I do not want to run.

And I really oughtn't to take up running before my six week post-partum check-up. I do hope that in a month from now I still want so desperately to run.

After our walk we came back for a quick lunch and then went out for a family drive, taking the easy route to putting the toddler down for a nap. We drove through downtown looking at lights, the giant tree they display every year next to ice skaters circling the rink, brick buildings hovering over our heads, humanity out in the streets en masse enjoying the unseasonable warmth of the day. Both kids slept peacefully while we wandered the city streets in my husband's car, staring out our windows in quiet contentment, weaving up and down side streets, through neighborhoods neglected backed up against those well loved, buildings swelling with light, heat and heartbeats interspersed with plywood windows and old graffiti fighting for territory. This city is my home, and the truth is, it's a version of the city I called home as a child, but with more hope. I breathed that hope in, quiet as a prayer while my children slept, breathing warm sighs into our car moving with stealth down streets of luck and ruin.

We came home to the place we make our own in this city we've chosen almost at random after a decade of flitting about. We settled in with my cup of tea and my husband's bottle of beer leftover from last night's bounty, still mostly untouched. The kids continue to sleep quietly, although the baby is starting to stir. I have time to write, and then edit one-handed with her tucked in the nook of my arm. My husband is on the couch, relaxing with the laptop his dad surprised him with for Christmas, the best gift he received by far this year.

I am greedy for the details of this day because I want every day to be as simple and exquisite as that day that finally drove me to begin blogging after almost a year of procrastination, so I would remember, have record, of the moments when the ordinary became extraordinary. I am greedy for more days as easy and magical as this first day of this new year, the second time I've been moved to jot down the details in remembrance of an ordinary day just splitting at the seams with simple happiness.

I think it was Anne Lamott who said that all prayers boil down to Please and Thank You.

Today is Thank You.

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, and a deep inhale, and a hold, like you don't even want to exhale. You just want to pause here, for a little bit longer.

The Beginning of the End of a Long Wait

2010-12-28T20:12:00.006-05:00

The only element that the births of my son and daughter had in common was the waiting. Well, and the cesareans, I suppose!

On my son's due date they gave me a sonogram. What baby is this for you? the sonographer asked in a hesitant tone. My first, I answered cheerfully. Ummm... don't panic, but we're gauging him at just over nine pounds. With an extra big head. But maybe that's a mistake! Let me look back at previous sonos! Silence. Oh. No mistake. He's always had an extra big head.

I was planning a natural birth in the birthing center attached to the hospital. They did offer pain relief (this was my one requirement; I knew I wanted pain relief of some sort available!), but not an epidural. The news from the sonogram shook me, but it felt too late to reconsider the birth plan. It was my due date after all!

I waited nine days, and went into labor the night before I was scheduled to be induced at 41 and a half weeks. I had rejected an earlier induction offer, still committed to the closest thing I could get to a natural birth, even though the reality of a great big first baby loomed larger in my mind as the days passed.

I was so pleased when I finally went into labor naturally, and again when I made it to ten centimeters (even though by this time my birth plan had been tossed out the window and I'd been transferred from the natural birthing center to the hospital for both Pitocin and an epidural), both signs (in my mind) that I would be able to birth this big baby.

In fact, I've believed for over two years now that if I had just been willing to push longer, eventually I very well might have birthed my son without the cesarean. Two different doctors have disagreed with my amateur assessment, but I've stubbornly continued to believe what I believe, regardless. None of us knows for absolute certain what might have happened, after all.

What I remember most vividly almost two and a half years after the fact though, is not the labor or the delivery. More than the failed attempt at natural birth, or the bitch of a nurse who put Pitocin in my IV when item #1 on the birth plan read: I do not want Pitocin during my labor. More than the relief of the epidural, or the disappointment when pushing and pushing did not result in any progress, and my younger sisters finally had to leave town before my son was born after waiting all day to meet him.

More than any of the vivid details of the day itself, I remember the waiting. The nine days between his due date when the sonogram offered the first confirmation that the child I carried in my belly was, indeed, as big as he felt to me (my OB-GYN, at 38 weeks told me: we have no reason to believe this is a big baby, when I expressed my concern that my belly felt a little out of control, as if I could clear forests by simply swaying side to side, if only they could figure out how to safely attach a blade large enough for the job). Those nine days were endless, an eternity of waiting, a purgatory I sat through; I remember it hazily, but I remember it well.

This time the waiting started --and ended-- earlier. Around 35 weeks I had a number of experiences where I thought I might be going into labor. Add to this my doctors repeated assertions that in my particular case it made sense to wait until my due date to allow a fair shot at a successful VBAC, but less and less sense to wait beyond it, especially if she seemed like another big baby as we got closer to the due date. And my chiropractor's repeated assertions that I was overproducing relaxin and my body felt soft, pliable, and ready for labor. When my coworkers moved my two baby showers up by a number of weeks because they couldn't watch me walk down the hall without fearing that I was going to go into labor momentarily it just felt like the stars were aligning. The waiting began in earnest about a month before my due date.

I had to report to the hospital at 6 am last Monday morning, and at 5 am, I was still waiting. I had worked through the middle of the month, finishing the last pay period before my due date. I had made it to my mom's arrival, which was hugely reassuring as far as child care for my son went. All weekend l I waited for signs that labor might start on its own, seeing some spotting that I thought was my mucus plug (it may have been, for all I know. It stopped after Friday morning.), continuing to experience Braxton-Hicks contractions and watching closely to see if they were anything I could consider regular, no matter how far apart (they weren't). I finished packing last minute items in the hospital bag, put on my coat, took my husband's hand, stepped out into the snowy early morning, and finally stopped waiting.

I'd wondered, when the waiting ended and the cesarean became a definite reality rather than a back up plan for a better possibility, if I'd be disappointed. But I wasn't. What I felt was peace. The sky was grey and white, with a bit of a yellow hue. It was so quiet. We drove to the hospital through some of the worst neighborhoods in the city. Everything was white, quiet and peaceful. We passed a black teenage boy on a bike, stopped to let him cross the street in front of our car. He gave us the teenage chin jut of greeting in return. He has no idea we're going to meet our daughter! I thought with a giddy sort of joy. It seemed like a magical secret that no one knew but us, alone in the quiet white morning, in the sleeping city.

We arrived at the hospital. I met my nurse and prepared for surgery. I met the surgical team and we proceeded with all the usual tests, pokes and pricks, weights and measures, questions and forms in triplicate, wrist bracelets amassing like silly bands in a classroom full of children. The surgery proceeded as planned, and when the doctor pulled my daughter from my belly he held her up over the curtain that blocked me from watching what they did to my insides, so that I could see her right away. Then they took her to warm and weigh and measure (she was 8 pounds, 10 ounces, significantly smaller than my son, though I shudder to think what she might have weighed had I not followed the diabetic diet, which prevented blood sugar spikes that act as a growth hormone on an unborn baby!) and begin her collection of wrist and ankle bracelets that marked her entry into this hospital, in this city, on this day, into our family.

My eyes filled with tears.

The waiting was really over now. And her life was beginning.

Arrival

2010-12-22T17:25:00.000-05:00

She's here! We're healthy and home from the hospital, released a day early to settle in and enjoy the holidays as a brand new family of four. I couldn't be happier.

Waiting

2010-12-18T06:21:00.001-05:00

It is the wee hours of the morning before Saturday begins. There is no baby yet, at least not outside of my increasingly crowded womb. I went in for my 38.5 week appointment just over a week ago, hoping for more good news: this baby is significantly smaller than your first; we anticipate a successful VBAC; oh look! you're already 5 cm dilated; would you care for an epidural while you wait for her imminent and painless birth?

Any of these options would have been pleasing to the ears. In fact, at 36 weeks, the first two pieces of good news above were, indeed, what I received, and from one of the more pro-just-schedule-your-section-already doctors in the practice.

But at 38 weeks instead I heard: She's clocking in at over 8 lbs. Hmmm, she appears to have gained about the same amount of weight as you have in the past two weeks. How big was your son? (9 lbs, 15 oz) And how late was he? (9 days) Yeah, if we let you go that late, you very well might be looking at another baby that size.

To which I replied: What is she EATING in there!? I'm on a DIET! I haven't had sugar since AUGUST! And then promptly developed an overwhelming craving for cheesecake which has neither been indulged nor abated in the past week plus.

But this time I was seeing one of the more pro-let's-try-this-VBAC-thing doctors in the practice, and so, while he did reiterate (which I've been told by multiple other doctors for some months now and more or less come to accept) that they don't want to wait past my due date, he was fine with waiting until my due date and trying the VBAC if she comes naturally by that time.

Tomorrow is her due date. My mom is here. My husband started his paternity leave yesterday afternoon. I'm scheduled for a c-section first thing Monday morning. And just as I began to wrap my head around the fact that I'm going to have a c-section, I began to lose my mucus plug. Very slowly, over the past 24 hours.

Which, like the sonogram's estimated weight, could mean a great deal. Or it might mean nothing at all. After all these years, so much about birth is still a mystery. My sister, a veteran of two home births, and I, awaiting and preparing for what might well turn out to be a repeat scheduled cesarean, talk often about how little is guaranteed, and how much available information is emotional and biased.

Which I suppose is preparation for parenting itself! I'm more vulnerable to the shoulds and the ought-tos around birth. My first experience turned out very different from the way I envisioned it. I wasn't traumatized by it, nor even particularly disappointed, but I suppose I did have a story in my mind where I could "correct" the elements that didn't go according to my plan or my liking the first time with my second birth. That this time, if I did everything right, if I tried hard enough, I could control the outcome. It's always worth a shot, to try and do things right, to attempt to control your own fate. But there is folly there too.

And so we wait. And when she kicks me hard in the ribs I say to her father: She's grounded after she gets here for that one. But then I think: She's alive! And healthy!

And all the shoulds and ought-tos fade into background noise. And while we wait, I meditate on gratefulness. And fantasize about cheesecake, with gloopy cherry sauce and graham cracker crust. And although I'm not entirely sure I believe it, I think: Everything happens for a reason. It's one of those things we say to make ourselves feel better in the face of uncertainty. Not as good as cheescake would feel, but sometimes what we have are our words, and so we do what we can.

And here comes Saturday, as the night sky slowly lightens, still grey where I am, over the white snow-covered ground. Waiting feels fruitless, but it does eventually result in getting you somewhere else entirely. I hope Saturday wherever you are is lovely!

Other People's Stories

2010-12-07T18:45:00.001-05:00

I was awake, sitting at my dining room table sipping coffee and looking out the window onto a cold blustery morning recently between 6 and 7 am. Looking down my hill I can see two rental houses next door to one another, both with double entry doors and covered front porches. From the house on the left, a white woman in a white hoodie emerged and lit a cigarette. From the house on the right, a black man in a black hoodie emerged and lit a cigarette. I watched them smoke in the still dark morning, their lit cigarettes the only light and heat source around, both of them alone.

Because of their odd symmetry, I wanted them to be friends, but they never spoke.

* * * * *

Earlier this afternoon, I was debating getting on the computer to finish the entry that began with the story above. I looked out my window and saw two teenage guys walking down the street in the fast-falling snow. A white dude in a white hoodie, and a black dude in a black hoodie. Maybe my city -or at least my neighborhood- is self-segregating by hoodie color. Kind of sucks to be me, because pale-skinned round people (in other words, me any winter, but most especially this one) do not need to be wearing white.

Shit is unflattering.

* * * * *

The parenting class I taught today had me laughing out loud. We're talking about managing stress on children, and got onto the topic of having extended family move in with you, and the stress it causes, especially in conjunction with the holidays. People had stories -oh, did they ever have stories!- and by the end of class we were all roaring with laughter and I could barely get them out the door on time. I find some comfort in the notion that all of us -no matter our socioeconomic status, background, ethnicity or region of origin- have in common at least one crazy-ass relative we have to deal with. And that humor is such a universal way of coping.

One of my students, in the midst of a huge family fued, recently put differences aside to support and witness her aunt give birth. It's amazing what the body can do, she said. It was beautiful. It was disgusting.

* * * * *

My son has been demanding and quick to dissolve into tears and whining if he doesn't get what he wants recently. He woke up from his nap this afternoon and had a hard time telling me what he wanted (a cup of water) without whining and crying. I was able to ignore the whining and crying and just softly repeated a few times when you can tell me with your words, let me know and I'll help you, then left him to work it out. Eventually he told me he needed water, and when I gave it to him along with a hug, he said I need you, I need to get up, and reached to me with both arms. I guided him to the rocking chair in his bedroom where we read books and listen to lullabies at night. Then I pulled him up onto my lap and we sat, rocking in silence, the only light coming in through the glimpses of window at the bottom of his curtains. It was pure white, bouncing off the freshly fallen snow, and our house was late-afternoon dim. We sat until he was calm and relaxed, and then he asked about his daddy.

When I said he was at the hardware store buying a spark plug to fix our second hand snowblower (we've had it for two years, waiting to buy a part for it that turned out -when we finally took action- to be available locally for under $20 with an easily found free online manual with directions for replacing it, although once we did that we discovered it also needed a new spark plug) my son was ready to get up and get going in good spirits. I need to go to the store, he said. I need to get barreties (batteries) and fix that blower for Dada.

Preparations

2010-12-06T14:26:00.001-05:00

Some days I feel so ready to go into labor it's a shock to find myself still pregnant and standing. Other days I feel so good I imagine I could last forever in this waiting state. One night I was possessed to pack a bag for my son with clothes and food for the next day. I told my husband he'd have to be ready to drop him off with his sitter first thing in the morning and meet me at the hospital because I felt the baby was coming sometime that night. The next morning I woke up feeling fine. Another night I woke up every few hours and refused to get out of bed to go to the bathroom. I was certain if I stood, my water would break, and since we didn't have anywhere to take our son until morning, I was determined to remain in bed until then. Again, the next morning I stood up and walked through the house without incident, feeling better than I had in days. Every day is different. If I make it halfway through this month at work, I get a final, full paycheck. On the bad days, I remind myself of that paycheck. I envision it like a light at the end of a tunnel.

* * * * *

My husband painted the nursery over the past week. Walking through our house now, we have color in the kitchen, dining room, one out of two hallways, and both downstairs bedrooms. Last year at this time we had nothing painted. It feels like an enormous accomplishment. Our living room is still stark white, but the paint is in good shape, and I haven't settled on a color scheme for that room yet, so I'm not too concerned. It's been a whirlwind of activity preparing the house, and I'm glad for so many good days when I can clean for hours, do the stairs and carry laundry, and organize things. This morning I had to clean a foot of snow off my car, and I realized that three weeks ago, I couldn't have done it. Today I could. What a relief!

My Christmas shopping is also almost finished, and I'm so excited to get the house decorated for the season, and spend our first Christmas together at home. I'm not a shopper at all, but I've had a blast buying gifts for my boy this year, even when I can barely walk around the stores! Our tree is up, but we're waiting for the branches to dry and settle before we decorate it. I will miss the tradition my husband and I started years before we had kids, of polishing off a bottle of red wine while decorating the house for the holidays. I thought kids were supposed to inspire traditions, not put an end to them! Ah well, I guess the wine can wait until New Year's, and my husband can have more than his fair share since I'll be nursing.

Sitting in our warm house with our two babies, a brightly lit tree, almost every room painted colors of our choosing, and maybe a fire in the fireplace will leave me warmer and probably happy-weepier than half a bottle of wine anyway!

* * * * *

My sister is now a week overdue. Her midwife recently decided she doesn't feel comfortable waiting 42 weeks, so she'll try acupuncture to induce, and if it doesn't work she may end up with a hospital birth instead of the home birth she's been planning all along. She's anxious, but so ready to be finished with a difficult pregnancy that I think it will be a relief to give birth regardless of the circumstances.

I, too, find myself less and less concerned about how the birth plays out, the closer it gets. I'd like my sister to have her baby first, so my mom is available to help her, as well as travel here when I need her without leaving my sister pregnant, overdue, and waiting. My sister has other family there to support her, and has been generous about saying my mom can come to me, but I'll feel better if she's given birth and had some time to recover first.

I've also been piecemeal-ing together child care for my son when I go into labor. If it's daytime he can stay with his sitter, who is available 8-4. If it's late afternoon or early evening, I'm sure she'd keep him for the 3 hours it will take my mom to get here. But she lives in another town and drives back there at 4, so even getting him to her if she's already left would be an hour trip, or double that if the driving is bad (schools are closed today because of snow). I have a friend just 15 minutes away who's willing to come over in the middle of the night if he's asleep, but she works until 10:30pm.

My worst case scenario is that my husband drops me at the hospital alone for 3 hours while he cares for our son and waits for my mom to arrive. Last time I went into labor the contractions started off at 5 minutes apart and were 3 minutes apart by the end of the first hour. I went to the hospital after that first hour and stayed there. Because we're attempting a VBAC they want me at the hospital as soon as I have regular contractions this time, no matter how far apart. I'm trying to psyche myself up mentally to spend a few hours alone at the hospital before my husband can come. Some moments I feel tough, and tell myself I can handle it. Other moments I want to hide in my bed and cry at the thought

All these difficult logistics make the possibility that she won't arrive by her due date and I'll end up with a scheduled c-section seem awfully convenient. I could arrange my mom's visit and child care! I'll make it home before Christmas Eve! So if she doesn't come early, there are benefits. The closer I get, the easier it is to simply shrug, and be willing to accept.

* * * * *

After moving the furniture back into the nursery and setting up the bassinet next to our bed (we're going to share the nursery with our daughter for the first few months and then eventually move into the attic and leave it to her. I don't want to worry about walking the stairs right away after giving birth, and if I'm nursing all night at first anyway it's just easier to stay downstairs.), I lay down in my bed and looked over at the bassinet, remembering setting it up beside our bed in our old apartment when our son was born. Then remembering waking up to nurse and change diapers every few hours.

And then I realized that I've been so consumed with preparing for my daughter's arrival: for the birth itself with my doctors, for my leave at work with my colleagues, for the house and holidays with my husband, for the arrival of a sibling with my son, for the logistics of child care with my mom and sister and sitter and friend, that I have given next to no thought whatsoever about what it will be like to be the mother of a newborn baby again. I'm not a woman who puts myself last most of the time. I'm inherently rather self-centered and have no problem taking care of my own needs, and asking and expecting others to respect them. But in this case, I have worked very hard to prepare everyone else for this upcoming event, and it suddenly struck me how unprepared I am!

I spent a few minutes thinking about incessant breastfeeding, and interrupted sleep, and soft skin and fuzzy hair, and remembering to support the head, and the intoxication of every little thing they do. And then I got up and gave my boy a bath, and tidied his toys, and folded a load of laundry and put it away, and there was no more time for reverie. But soon enough there will be plenty of time to sit and soak it all in. For now, we finish our preparations.

Thankful

2010-11-25T06:48:00.000-05:00

... That there is a holiday dedicated to being thankful. In a country as rich as ours, it's good to remember to stop and count our blessings.

... For the time I spent standing outside the other day, waiting for my son and his sitter to come downstairs from putting his friend down for nap and answer the door. The view from the house on the hill where he stays each day is amazing. I could see layers of fog hovering over the earth in the distant sky. Rain fell light like mist around me while I hovered under the covered porch. The world seemed full of mystery and ultimately unknowable.

... For the fire my husband built in the fireplace last night. The room was warm and the couch piled with more blankets than we could put to use. The world seemed cozy, safe, and familiar.

... For every morning that we hear the crows call Caw Caw while we ready ourselves for the day. My son said to me last week: Mommy, the little birds say tweet-tweet, but the crows say CAW-CAW! We like to listen to the sound of the crows.

... For the little birds too, who dip and weave through the sky like a symphony is playing, that only they can hear. Two flocks rose together and danced in front of my car window while I drove to the doctor yesterday morning, and it was like art rising up from the highway, a ballet in black against the grey white of the sky.

... For this morning, when I inexplicably woke at 5am, finally rising from my bed at 6, and still, walking through my house, my thoughts weren't grumpy or bitter. Instead, I thought: I love this house. I'm so happy it's ours.

... For my husband and son, who bring laughter and delight to my world every day.

... For my daughter, dancing in my womb and preparing for her grand entrance into the world. And for all the work we got done yesterday, preparing to welcome her: the attic is semi-organized (a feat unto itself), and furniture is moved and rearranged, paint is purchased and ready to go on the walls, and we are closer to welcoming her every day.

... For the basics: a roof over our heads, food in the fridge, medical care when we're sick, and then for magic: laughter and delight are magical, and I am most thankful for how much magic I find in the daily details of this ordinary life.

Happy Thanksgiving!

One More Month

2010-11-19T17:17:00.000-05:00

I feel substantially better yesterday and today than I have in a while. Last Monday I was afraid I might go into labor at any moment. I would find myself bent over a countertop swaying and moaning, and wonder: what am I doing? I'm not supposed to be in labor! I fluctuated between hot flashes and bouts of cold shivering, and I had to race to the bathroom multiple times during the day to empty my body out, fearing it would empty itself if I didn't ~~run~~ waddle at top speed. My face took on that soft, almost swollen glow that I recognize from seeing other women in late pregnancy, and the baby dropped noticeably lower in my abdomen. My chiropractor and coworkers both noticed and remarked that I looked like I could go anytime. I started to believe that I wouldn't make it to my due date, and a VBAC seemed more possible by the minute, since she'd likely be substantially smaller than normal coming so early.

But then Tuesday I felt better than Monday, and Wednesday better still, and now at the end of the week I feel almost like a regular person again. It feels wonderful to sit, stand and walk without significant pain, and even these small abilities make me feel so much more powerful and capable! Still, I decided against traveling for Thanksgiving weekend, which will be 37 weeks, and I'm doing my best to wrap things up at work and leave my colleagues with enough direction to make their lives as easy as I can while they cover for me for three months. I'm scheduled to work right up to the Friday before my due date, but we'll just be playing it by ear at the end.

For quite some time I didn't believe there was any chance my daughter would come early. I know this is a direct reaction to what happened with my son. I was so huge with him that people commented all the time that they wondered if I'd make it to my due date. I was so uncomfortable being so huge, and so hot in July that I chose to believe the man-on-the-street report and thoroughly convinced myself that I was going to go into labor early. I stopped working at 39 weeks, and then spent the next two and a half weeks sitting in the one small room in our apartment with a window unit air conditioner, reading and waiting. After that experience, I just had no faith whatsoever that any baby of mine would ever come early.

But I went to the doctor today, and the news was a lot more positive than my last visit. She's measuring exactly average, and at this point there are no contraindications to trying for a VBAC. That will change if she suddenly balloons into a little fatso, but for the time being, things look good. Also, I've been having contractions all week, and my cervix is beginning to thin out, in addition to the ridiculous amount of relaxin I've been producing for months. All of these are signs that my body is preparing for labor, and I had none of these signs last time with my boy, especially this early.

The doctors are still hoping she comes early, and in the meantime we wait and continue to check on her growth. I'm making my peace with the wait-and-see approach. In fact, I'd rather the universe decided this for me: either she'll come early, and be small enough, or she won't come on time, and I'll have to have a repeat section. I feel better leaving it in the hands of fate than having to make the decision myself. Practice for all the moments in parenthood that are more fate and chance than choice! So my due date, like the title of this post, is a month from today. My daughter's birthday, on the other hand, well ... we'll leave that up to the whims of the gods.

Nesting

2010-11-16T15:32:00.000-05:00

Normally, I like paperwork and hate housework. My job requires a rather ridiculously large amount of paperwork. I get a certain satisfaction out of organizing all this paperwork into systems I think work best for our staff. I want the paperwork to reflect the work we do on the ground; I want it to paint a picture of the magic we create with families. I usually believe I'm the best person to do this job, and the endless reading and printing and editing and piling and filing are part of this job, parts I do willingly, and with great satisfaction when I do it well.

Housework ... well, I guess I'd rather just skip to the end result. My son's too-small clothes are semi-organized. Meaning: that one time when my sister came to town and organized the 0-12 month clothes? Those ones are still organized. The 12 month to 2T can be found in an assortment of bags, both paper and plastic, and piles, most of which are found in the general vicinity of the attic, with no organizing principle whatsoever, except get-this-out-of-my-face. I don't necessarily believe that I'm the best person for this job. My sister showed me that in one weekend visit. In fact, I'm pretty sure she's the best person for the job! But the fact that she'll be birthing a baby any day now makes it substantially less likely that she'll show up and do it anytime soon.

And lately I've made a switch, as complete and dramatic as a florescent overhead light in a pitch black room. My disorganized attic calls out to me. It haunts me while I hobble to and fro on the first floor of my living quarters, trying to tidy things as best I can. I daydream sitting cross-legged (I can't sit cross-legged; are you freakin' kidding me? I can hardly sit at all.) behind the walls, in the uninsulated eves where we store all the belongings with no defined place, all the too-small baby clothes, boxes of Christmas decor, and bins of books awaiting the future purchase of bookshelves big enough to contain them, all our homeless, forlorn belongings. They whisper my name while I'm sleepless in bed, and I imagine myself creating order from that chaos, moving like a whirling dervish (yeah, highly unlikely) through stacks of stuff we've chosen to keep, but left neglected while trying to manage our everyday lives outside the attic eves, the parts of our lives the world sees.

And paperwork? Bah humbug! My dad recently retired from teaching, and has long enjoyed the cynical teacher's past time of scoffing at any new development designed to improve the learning of students, but seemingly more likely to create a new set of hoops for teachers to hop through on their way to wherever they were already headed. Usually I'm more optimistic. I readily adopt, and adapt whatever is sent to us, and attempt to use it to show how amazing what we do really is. I look at the endless forms, reading between formulaic lines for hidden poetry to unearth ideas for how we can be better. But now? Ugh. My desk? UNcomfortable! Forms? A PAIN in my ass! Paperwork? WHATever! I think I'm ready to be done with work.

My chiropractor recommended I not teach my last yoga class, scheduled for this Thursday evening after I told her I don't mind the stretching, but the students, my God! What are they doing there? What do they want from me? They need to chill. She told me about her last day of popping backs before her maternity leave a few years ago. She knew it was time to go when clients told her about their back problems and all she could think was: You think YOUR back hurts? I'm eight months pregnant here, buddy!

I want to retire to the cave-like clutter of my attic eves. My husband and son can come with me, and we can unearth treasures like children in a junkyard of discarded toys. I want to leave my office abandoned, let the spiders weave their webs between binders on my bookshelf, and my paperwork pile up to the ceiling, sniffling in sudden neglect.

I want to come home. I want to prepare my nest.