Mental & Domestic

the grandma project

2009-07-17T07:25:00.000-07:00

my parents were, at best, neglectful. i think i'm almost over it. a little. maybe. it was their own circumstance, i've concluded, not any malicious defect. as i get older i've discovered i increasingly muster a lot of empathy about the difficulty of balancing me, marriage, and my role as mom. i can see how hard it really is.

and discovering that i am a fantastic parent, despite the indifferent example of my own parents, has certainly helped.

but what i did not expect to discover is how fantastic of a grandmother my own mom would become.

no, it didn't happen right away - as M has become more interactive in all ways, mom has blossomed as well. she is attentive and caring toward M, sometimes to a fault (one more piece frequently becomes 7 more pieces ...). mom nurtures M's interests and encourages her learning (i had no idea she was so gifted at teaching about language and spelling!). mom will spend hours upon hours playing with toys with M, no matter the frenetic shifts of toddler focus - from legos, to barn, to dolls, to cars, to mr potato head, all in a matter of sometimes minutes.

a lot of these are the base requirements of a grandparent. but having personally endured her almost total lack of the base requirements of being a parent, i admit my hopes weren't high. and my expectation early on of her certain failure, when M was tiny ... well, i see now how i and my poisonous proscribed reactions were absolutely part of problems we did have. but as i've grown into a confident mom, and she's grown into a wonderful grandparent, we've been made the better by the shared maturity of our roles. i'm indescribably thankful for this.

and even moreso today, which is my mom's birthday - always a celebratory occasion, even as her years have crept up to 69, but made more bittersweet this year with the recently confirmed return of her non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. looking forward, mom's coming year may well bring many unpleasant treatment choices, and may limit the kind of intensive play with M to which they've both become accustomed. it may be the beginning of a goodbye. it won't be easy for any of us, i think.

selfishly, i've already begun mourning that our second child may never really know grandma kathy, a thought that fills me with sadness for myself and for yet-to-be little J or S. mom and i don't talk about this. i think we both know it's one possible truth too painful for us to approach together. we just go on, with love, as we've learned to do ...

thinking about the body

2009-06-22T06:11:00.000-07:00

i've never seen such beautiful bodies than at the beach in Florida this June.

not the rippling-muscled, well-toned, firm bodies of [insert any vapid beach movie/TV show here] - i mean the diversity of people with every shape, contour, and size of body. every body.

all of us lacking all self-consciousness as we enjoyed the sea and sand.

the very old Middle Eastern men collecting shells, the charming Russian family and their bright beach umbrella, the disheveled couples chasing joyful young children, the svelte and stylish teenagers making out in the surf, the pale, round Midwestern tourists loping along the shore in tennis shoes ... in this company, my body, spreading out here and there on my beach chair, was just another of so many shapes, and perfect exactly as it is - mom belly, lopsided breasts, flabby arms and all!

comforts of home

2009-04-01T20:38:00.000-07:00

i like putting the baby to bed and taking a hard cider to the basement for late-night laundry.
i like the cardinals and bluejays who visit the backyard every morning.
i like showering by candlelight just before bed.
i like putting clean dishes away in orderly stacks.
i like the golden glow of my white oak floors in morning sunlight.
i like the patterns of shadow from the Japanese honeysuckle on the shades in the nursery at M's naptime.
i like our humming refrigerator's constant rhthym.
i like dusting lamps and picture frames.
i like giving drinks to cheery green houseplants.
i like the eager forsythia that i trimmed incorrectly.
i like to lounge in the Adirondack chairs out back in the sunshine on warm days.
i like snuggling down in bed with a warm husband, and a cat to keep my feet toasty.
i like my furniture.
i like the colors of the walls in every light and every season.
i like home. it's where i feel most safe and tranquil.

i will miss this house someday.

small view

2009-03-02T16:34:00.000-08:00

when my day turns out just so and i am given the gift of a peaceful hour in the kitchen after dinner, i wash dishes and meditate with the warmth of the water and the scrubbing of the plates and bowls and cups. i stare out the window, which is situated over the sink, overlooking the expanse of our remarkably secluded city backyard, through the tall trees of the neighborhood, toward the west.

as the sun sets in every season, i have enjoyed elaborate compositions of cloud and color, watched winged things - both bats and birds - take to the open air, and seen squirrels scurry across utility lines, tree branches to garage roofs and back. these sights are constants, though in every season, a different early evening landscape appears - winter's icy grey crispness against shimmering silver and pink clouds; the visible dewy softness of new green grass under glassy skies in spring; the thick indigo blanket of summer's humid dusk, full with cricket song; and fall's rough textures and ochre hues under elaborate branches of bare trees.

i lived in a townhouse for some time with a view over the kitchen sink of only the wall's fake brick veneer, painted white and peeling. to get any green at all i would have to crane my neck, when washing dishes, to look through the back screen door to the private shaded courtyard beyond. a large maple stood sentry just outside my back porch, and despite being downtown, raccoons and possums came to visit there more often than i expected. the courtyard was my island of nature among a sea of city asphalt, and my upstairs office overlooked it as well - a treehouse view, up in the maple boughs, which i loved and appreciated daily. but not over that kitchen sink! ... i might have hung a landscape painting if the walls had not been stubborn concrete and prone to crumbling.

my parent's kitchen window overlooks a wild quince bush, and beyond it a gratuitous strip of grass between houses, then a large old magnolia tree near a main road. even now, my mother gives me the weekly activity report from this narrow corridor - the bush seemed alive with one hundred tiny birds today; a rabbit came to nibble on the peonies and stayed quite awhile; the magnolia is blossoming and its heavy blooms are weighing the branches down. i have a lot of memories of my parents washing dishes together - one of their very, very few cooperative efforts - and in each i see in my mind's eye one or the other of them staring out that window as they talk, mom washing, dad drying, taking what peace they could from that small view.

demotivated

2009-02-17T21:25:00.000-08:00

i finished my master's degree.
now i have some time on my hands.
what to do, what to do?

my creative ideas know no bounds.

my physical motivation, however, knows many.

i like the saying above - 'my future will be happy and productive' - because i feel it encompasses the kind of waiting i always do when it comes to that which i want to either have or accomplish. waiting for the right day, the right feeling, the right idea, the right circumstance, the right economy, the right accomplice, the right guidance, the right moon phase.

it's an elaborate form of procrastination, i've concluded - meant to take the control (and thus the blame for total inaction) out of my hands. the waiting has become so much a part of my life that i now feel fairly certain i'll be waiting for the most favorable this-or-that until the day i die!

worse, i realize i have legitimately 'inherited' this propensity (and slothfulness, honestly) from my parents, both of whom had great potential and zero confidence, zero motivation, and zero will. two bright people who barely flickered in the dark of their small worlds. i'm their daughter! i'm barely flickering ...

i had hoped this realization and knowledge of the root of my enduring demotivation would somehow spur me to ... action. something!!! no. i'm just as wayward as i ever was. maybe worse, actually, now that i'm so sold on non-obligation. what's the kind of thing that gets a person like me going again?

obligation

2009-02-08T22:07:00.001-08:00

possibly the most untenable of all emotional conditions for me is the crush of obligation.

in some cases, i make my own bed, as it were: i invite and seek obligation, in return for some spiritual, intellectual, or monetary reward for the work. we all do this regularly, as fair exchange for our state as social beings. it's the sticky part of cooperative enterprise. that's cool.

but other times, i am writhing beneath obligation that came on like a whip crack, a hard, painful snap against my otherwise laconic reality. i hate obligation. i hate being reminded of it. i hate the expectation. the recompense. the horrible, angry, buzzing have-to - of all kinds of things and relationships and efforts.

tonight's been a bad reminder of that prison. and i still don't like his friends.

february

2009-02-04T19:53:00.000-08:00

what is it about winter?

that makes my motivation go
sad and frigid, against the landscape
of snow and branches
broken by the weight of ice -
the precious price of January.

i can't summon the work needed
to start and do the work i need to do.
i'm down. i'm tired, and you may notice
i can' t hold my end of the conversation.
i'm worthless in this bitter cold.

it could be the frozen shelf of ground
that isn't melting,
that should be melting.
it's a glacier all around - slick and shiny
enough to see the sky.

it could be the wind that swings
the gate open and shut, whistling,
like a lost traveler, an adventurer inured
to cold and wind and snow.
i don't know. i may never know.

but i hope to think more on this
from Gulfside soon.

being and void

2009-01-13T06:18:00.000-08:00

i've been feeling a little odd lately. i'm in what can only be called an existentialist funk, replete with a touch of nihilism. there are many cumulative reasons, starting with the day in my own childhood that i realized death was my fate - i still recall sobbing to my mother 'why? i didn't choose this!' she was horrified. understandably.

i was probably 9.

looking back, i suppose that's the sort of thing you'd never, ever, ever want to hear your child say - and in some ways, the guilt of bringing a child into the world, essentially condemning them to death, gave me great pause (like, for decades) whenever i even vaguely considered having children. which is why i didn't consider it much.

in truth, i now spend a lot of nap pre-sleep wondering how i'll explain this whole unfortunate existential mess to M when the time comes. i hope she is more accepting than i was and am. the whole death thing - still gets to me.

but with the help of ernst breisach, i've recently been working through the various iterations of existentialist thought - the friend who loaned me the book thinks i'm nuts for believing (and/or trying to truly understand) a word of it, my own husband thinks it's laughable and sort of representative of some imbalance of my psyche, and i've been frankly too embarrassed to discuss it with anyone else for fear of how they'd respond.

but it's been good for me, in that i have some clear avenues of thought to now obsess over, instead of the random thoughts about existence that have plagued me since age 9 - many are thoughts i've long held inherently but had never really seen developed as well as this book does [Introduction to Modern Existentialism]. (note: didn't i take philosophy in college? a lot? they taught the wrong things. no college professor i had - except Carson - ever felt like discussing being and void. so i feel like i'm just catching up! ... just in time for my 36th birthday ... )

along with trying hard to wrap my head around these ideas and interpretations of my existence and its possible meaning, i'm hard at work on my resolutions/goals for 2009. it's an interesting context in which to plan for improvement and growth. because to even articulate any resolution means i have hope, which means i am not as nihilistic as i fear. so that's good? sure it is.

to become

2008-11-18T21:42:00.000-08:00

becoming a mother has been, for me, an intense metamorphosis of being. i am certain i am not alone in this. but perhaps unlike others, i had never before given real thought to the idea of creating life, raising a small human, and loving so wholly until my uterus demanded it should be so.

i have become a mother, and m is truly my purpose. she is my pearl, and my love. i pour into her all that i feel, all that i know. i give her all i can summon to please and comfort and nurture and adore her, and, in so doing, i have little left at all! for all that, it is a conundrum to me that i am now discovering valuable pieces of myself because i have given so much away to m - the loss has revealed parts i always feared i'd miss, and revealed that in their loss there is much i've gained instead.

to become a mother, i have given up many faces, desires, wants, and illusions i once had for myself and my ego - these have been replaced with the consuming love i have for m. to become a mother, my already stark feelings of wrong and right have sharpened, because to help create the world in which i wish my daughter to live, fools cannot be suffered.

i'm now unbearably aware that with only a small slip, the space between all people can be as easily filled by the marks and matters of personal grievances, personal pain, personality, personal perception - care or crassness, vanity or compassion, disrespect or adoration.

it is perhaps more common, more mundane, though, that this space is filled only with increasing silence: it is true that the less we say to others, the less we find to say. sometimes the silence roars and roars - and there is still nothing, beyond the sound of it, to say. but there is no honesty in this silence. and without honesty, there can be no self. and without self, there can be no selfless love.

or we drift away and drown far apart in misunderstanding, indifference - indifferent to self, to love, to thought, to passion, to honesty, to conviction, to mystery, to beauty, to rage, to desolation, to the silence itself - this is the saddest fate, and one i don't wish for anyone. so i share with m and give to her everything and all that i can give her from myself. i know now who i am, because of her.

my head ...

2008-09-18T21:14:00.000-07:00

... holds a million thoughts i don't have time to free.

pictures of memories

2008-07-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

my mom famously said once how, if we didn't make pictures of an event or moment, then all we would have are our memories - and i quote, "...that will die with us!" now, my mom is known around these parts for a certain unmitigated hyperbole concerning most things. i learned some of this from her, i admit it. but i thought this declaration about memories was just too over the top and too morbid, even for her. i laughed and laughed about it. then rolled my eyes. then laughed again. i've been laughing for years about it.

then i found myself at a stoplight the other day, in hot july, watching a young blond man, dressed all in black, walking determinedly down the street - a very like image of my current husband, as he looked 20 years ago now, walking down this very street, during the hot summer when we first dated. such a flood of melancholy caught me, as i leaned forward and squinted my eyes, trying to erase the details of the current scene so i could visually, concretely re-experience the memory and long-lost image of a boy i so madly loved walking down a city street in mid-summer. it was as though my memory had been made separate and real for just a moment - real enough again to see it not only in my mind's eye, where i often revisit it, but in flesh and blood, the real pavement releasing real heat, a real person - alike enough for the vision - enacting a real scene from a memory that only i can see in just its way within my mind.

suddenly, at that stoplight, watching this, i knew exactly what my mother meant. what a sadness, to not be able to show my husband this beautiful image i save of him in my mind and heart. my memories can only be mine alone ... and yes, what loss to have these die with us.

it was sobering and made me feel a sense of longing for others' beautiful and horrible and awesome and individual perceptions and images and visions i will never see or know because of the nature of the human mind and memory. closed, internal, separate. it made me feel very much alone to think of it this way in that moment. i want to keep these images. share them. gift them to their subjects or my child. a way to transcribe thoughts and brain waves - the electrical patterns of memory - into actual media we might share and understand. not art - not writing, not picture-making - but true transcriptions of memory, an exact recording of our thoughts' form. it's the stuff of science fiction, i suppose, wishing for these pictures of memories.

sky blue

2008-07-15T20:43:00.000-07:00

i realized the other day that i spend a lot of time looking down.
when i walk, i look down.
walking the dog and M the other day,
on one of the most pleasant
summer days of memory,
i caught myself scanning the sidewalks,
looking for pebbles and stones,
examining trash left on the periphery of green yards,
tracing the asphalt repairs - thick black lines of tar -
with eyes that were looking down, down, down.

well, wouldn't that affect a girl?

so i tried looking up! i held my head up.
like mountain pose - strong! up! soft gaze up.
pushing that stroller, wrangling that dog.

i looked UP! i saw such a sky blue,
such meandering, simple clouds, moving.
i saw the tops of trees swaying. i saw green and blue,
my favorite colors.

it was very pretty. and it made me feel
confident - full of hope and happiness.

well, doesn't that affect a girl?!!

the long day

2008-07-14T08:50:00.000-07:00

sunday was a day like those of your childhood, when the hours stretch out and out and out, a mysterious gift of spacetime on a summer weekend -i'd prepared and eaten a huge breakfast, read a magazine before the baby woke up, finished the dishes, started some laundry, got the baby up, changed, and nursed, took a very long walk, weeded a bit in the garden, grazed for snacks, nursed again and put the baby down for a nap, and then realized it was only 1 o' clock! i haven't had a day like that since i was 10, but the memory and realization of it came back at once in a rush. such a nostalgic, unexpected joy!

the weather, too, was incredible for mid-July. clear, cloudless sky, crisp blue, with a breeze that rustled leaves and flowers, bringing the scent of my chocolate and orange mint into the screened porch. it couldn't have been 75 degrees when i got up, so i opened all the windows. what an unexpected surprise after the thick blanket of days we'd had last week. it seems saturday's rains really cleared the air.

cleared my mind, too, it turns out. and i needed it, because, without revealing identities or addresses, the party we attended saturday night at a most palatial (to me) home set high upon a hill in a very swanky ... um, village of the wealthy ... well, let's just say, when i discovered they were younger than us AND their half-bath was literally the size of our dining 'area,' i was brought to tears. not to mention the seething envy that seized me when i set eyes upon their walk-in kitchen pantry, with more storage and space than any one of our actual closets. i'm truly not usually one to envy the wealthy or desire Things that money can bring. but for some reason, in light of current financial ... um, uncertainties ... in our lives, this was too much. i felt so numb when we left the party.

but sunday's clear, long day, a pep talk from husband T, and a wonderful evening with friends Z and L did help. i found some gratitude for what we do have, gained a bit of perspective, and by the time i went to sleep last night, i was feeling sorry for the wealthy of the world ... always having to consume and dress well and throw parties with excessive coordinated themed decor. i can't imagine the pressure.

more than this

2008-07-12T11:15:00.000-07:00

look! i already didn't make a post on the very second day. my first post was a tall tale! sometimes the desire for solitude, even away from my own thoughts and experiences is significantly more important than making time to write. in fact, i am finding that is often true these days.

but i can't ignore myself, try as i might.

frankly, i am overwhelmed with my big ideas. i have plans for the house, plans for creative projects, plans for the garden, plans for a budget system, plans for selling things on CL, eBay, DS, or a yard sale, plans for this blog and others. then there are the recipes i want to try. the clothes i need to repair or alter. the letters i haven't written. the emails i haven't followed up. the lunches i haven't had, with friends i rarely see. the phone calls i don't answer. the forms i don't complete. the appointments i don't schedule.

i am overwhelmed. this is the battle i fight every day. one of the most difficult realities of being the mother of an 11-month-old is that my windows for self and purpose are so few, so brief, and often so unpredictable. i was so accustomed to my leisure, pre-M. accustomed to the languid pursuit of absolutely anything that struck me in any given moment. now, to have come to this place, where my lack of (indeed, my distaste for) intentional organization of time and activity ultimately undermine anything i want to begin or to try ... well, it's become more than i can bear, most days.

i've done it

2008-07-10T21:39:00.000-07:00

it's committed. i'm committing blog!
i'll write every day, and i won't leave out a day.
and i'll tell you everything, certainly.

i will write big words and small.
i will tell tall tales and make insignificant
any bad realities in my days. really, i will.

i've already begun. this is the first one.
i will be purposeful and true,
getting it out. putting it here.

you can come read it
whenever you want.